Pilgrim's Road

intention of making life easy for me.
    ‘ Mangare, mangare?’ I asked of the blue-tinged passers-by in the cobbled streets of pretty little Viana, hoping that the Spanish word would be something like; and they, clearly used to all sorts of barbarous utterances from passing strangers directed me without any signs of incomprehension to a serious looking café full of workmen busily tucking into platefuls of food. Once installed I could get out my phrase book and ask for the menúdel día. This produced a large bowl of chickpea stew, another trout with a slice of crisp bacon — the last of this regional speciality as I was on the point of leaving Navarre — and a crème caramel all for around the equivalent of five pounds. I did experience a twinge of guilt that I could be made so happy simply by eating. A true pilgrim, surely, should have her mind set on higher things.
    Disappointingly there was nothing relevant to medieval pilgrimage remaining in Viana. Its major claim to fame now is as the burial place of the brilliant and unscrupulous Cesare Borgia, the illegitimate son of the dissolute Pope Alexander VI. Cesare Borgia was one of the models Machiavelli drew on heavily for The Prince , and like his literary counterpart he suffered no moral scruples about achieving his ambitions. After a breathtaking career of political murders and machinations, he had been killed in a skirmish in 1503, at the age of thirty-two. Had some spiteful cleric not been true to the vengeful spirit of his times and removed the tomb from the church I wouldn’t have been able to see it at all for, true to Spanish custom, Viana’s churches were firmly shut after midday. But there it was — a large ancient tombstone with the name Cesare Borgia on it set into the pavement for passers-by to walk upon.
    From Viana I passed almost immediately into the rich agricultural lands of the Rioja, an autonomous region now, but once much fought over. Latterly it was a valuable part of Castile. When Alfonso VI had wrested it from Navarre in 1076 one of the first things he put his mind to was improving the pilgrim route across it in order to promote trade. Wide rivers watered these plains and one of them, the Rio Oja, gave its name to the region. For the bridging of these rivers Alfonso employed the services of two gifted monks, later to become St Dominic and St Juan of Ortega. I crossed the impressive River Ebro on a replica of their first bridge to the bustling capital of Logroño which had sprung up on the west bank as a result of their work.
    Logroño was the most modern town I had seen since leaving London. Full of rushing traffic and tall faceless buildings, it could have been almost anywhere. It was rather disorientating until the first yellow arrow led me back to the now familiar time warp where the Camino passed through the medieval remnants of Logroño on the ghost of its ancient route, while the traffic of the parallel modern thoroughfare thundered away on the left. The cathedral being closed, there was nothing of sufficient substance to encourage me to linger, though I did pause before the lively statue of St James as Matamoros on the wall of the Church of Santiago. Not far from Logroño is the site of the Battle of Clavijo where, in 834, King Ramiro I is said to have decided to fight the Moors rather than to continue to pay them the yearly tribute of a hundred virgins. It was on this battlefield of Clavijo that St James first appeared on his white charger at the head of the Christian army, laying about him with a great sword until he had piled up a personal tally of 70,000 infidels.
    Many scholars claim that the battle itself was a myth, with or without the intervention of the saint. What is certain, however, is that real or imaginary, the battle was the basis of what seems like one of the longest running frauds in history. Some three hundred years after St James had put in his first appearance as Matamoros, certain clerical dignitaries in the cathedral of Santiago alleged that in thankfulness for the saint’s help in the Battle of Clavijo, King Ramiro I had instituted a corn and wine tax on the Spanish people to be paid in perpetuity into the cathedral coffers. A document ordering this tax, the Diploma of Ramiro I, was alleged to be held in the cathedral archives, and on the basis of it monarchs were encouraged to make shift to collect the tax from their subjects. Many attempts were made to force the authorities to produce this Ramiro