Camino de Santiago

Sunday, September 10, 2006

SantiagoCrossThis category of the blog will contain all of my posts as I walk the Camino de Santiago across the north of Spain. A 1000 year old (Christian) pilgrimage, it follows an almost 500 mile, or nearly 800 km path through some breathtaking scenary.

What is the Camino?

This requires a little bit of history. There was a guy some 2000 years ago that stirred up a bunch of trouble in the middle east. He rejected most of the status quo, surrounded himself with about a dozen followers, and pretty much pissed off all of the authorities, both political and religious. He made some outrageous claims as to his origins, yet somehow his ideas caught on (despite the irrationality of most of them). To be fair, he also had some pretty good ideas about to treat other people. Taken at face value, much was pretty good philosophy, if couched in supernatural terminology.

So, the Romans and the Jewish authorities tried to put an end to the uprising by offing the leader–we all know that pretty much failed. One of his followers, James (the greater), left the middle east after the death sentence of the ringleader and came to the Iberian peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal) to proselytize the people here. He failed miserably and after 12 years of trying he had only 3-4 new followers. Tail between his legs, he and his followers went back to the middle east, where he, too, was promptly dealt with by the authorities–they chopped off his head.

Now it gets strange. His new followers managed to obtain his body and his head, and jumped into a boat with no sails, no oars, and no rudder in the Mediterranean. That would be bad enough, but they happened also to pick a boat made out of stone–I guess they really were in a hurry. According to the legend, they drifted along for some time, and “miraculously”, against tides and currents, floated the length of the Mediterranean, out the Straits of Gibraltar, up the coast of modern-day Portugal, and landed in what is now the province of Galicia, in Spain.

The legend continues that they carried the boat, body and head (somehow, despite Mediterranean heat and time, it hadn’t rotted) inland. They placed the boat upon another rock, at which point it “melted” into the rock and formed a natural sarcophagus. This scared the bejeezum out of the local queen, who decided maybe these guys had something going for them, and she granted them the right to continue to proselytize the area. This was sometime around the year 47.

Leap forward about 900 years. Long lost, the boat, natural sarcophagus, and the body are rediscovered. Somehow, it was determined that indeed this was the body of James (the greater), and a church was built over the place. As news of the miracle spread, Christians from all over the known Christian world began to make the pilgrimage to see the tomb and to pray for various and sundry things.

Now walking across Europe and the north of Spain in the year 1000 had to have been pretty difficult, but as literally thousands and thousands of pilgrims made the march each year, a great deal of infrastructure was built up to accommodate the pilgrimage. The Romans, now converted to the ideas of the originator of the movement, built roads, passed some laws, built whole new towns, etc. Over time, the route through Spain became more or less fixed, and became known as the Camino de Santiago.

Why “Santiago”?

“Iago” is the way that you say “James” in Gallego, the language of Galicia. The “Sant” part is obviously “Saint”. Thus, the Camino de Santiago is the “Road of Saint James”.

The pilgrimage mostly died out in 1800’s, but it has undergone an amazing re-birth from the 1970’s to the present. When I left Roncesvalles, the pilgrimage authorities told me that even at that late date (already long after the height of the season), 200 pilgrims left that city alone every day. Add to that all the pilgrims that begin in other parts of Europe (Paris, St. Jean Pie-du-Port, Geneva, Lourdes, and dozens more), and there are 10’s of thousands on the road during any summer (and even around the year).

OK, so all flippancy aside, this pilgrimage has become huge. It was also among the most emotional things I have ever done in my lifetime. I am not a Catholic, I am not even a Christian (though somehow the fact that as an infant, with no choice in the matter, someone splashed water on my head makes me irretrievably a Christian as far as they’re concerned). I am, however, a spiritual person, and it is the spirituality of the Camino that has profoundly affected me, and will continue to affect me for as long as I have memories. People from all over the world, from every walk of life, make this pilgrimage. As pilgrims, we shared something that all humans should share–a brotherhood, and fellowship, great love, joy.

The Camino has changed the way I look at the world. In some respects the Camino has become my world. At this point, I can’t imagine being separated from it. That may pass, but for now I wake ever day thinking about the Camino, about what I and others learned while making the pilgrimage.

These posts can’t even begin to scratch the surface of what the Camino really is, but it’s what I have been able to write. The only way to truly understand it, is to walk it. It’s something I think virtually every leader of ever nation should do. It’s something I think everyone should do.

More to come…

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