Pilgrim's Road

of honouring St James. By medieval times the motif of the scallop adorned churches, monasteries, fountains, wayside crosses, reliquaries and numerous other objects along the entire route. Even in countries as far flung as northern Britain and Poland there were numerous shell-hung St James’ chapels showing how wide an appeal the pilgrimage enjoyed.
    The ‘Pilgrim’s Record’ which the Confraternity prepared for its members (and only those travelling by foot, horse or bicycle qualified as true pilgrims) had spaces for collecting the rubber-stamped symbols of significant churches along the route. With its pages duly filled, I could present this document on arrival at the shrine in Santiago, and if I satisfied the cathedral authorities that I had made the journey in a suitable spirit, I would be awarded my ‘Compostela’, the official certificate of the St James pilgrimage. This would not be the glittering prize for which my medieval forerunners risked their lives; for them, already blessed with the remissions of time spent in purgatory which they had been able to collect at important shrines along the way, arrival at Santiago meant a wiping out of one third of all their sins, and if the pilgrimage was made in a Jubilee or Holy Year, i.e. a year when the Saint’s day fell on a Sunday, forgiveness was absolute (providing the pilgrim was also appropriately penitent). Medieval pilgrims also received their tangible record of completed pilgrimage, but as Compostelas did not bear the name of the recipient in their day, a brisk trade was to be made in them.
    The immediate effect of collecting proof of my progress meant knocking on doors and making efforts with the French language. At Bourges, on my second day out, after wandering through the deathly cold, mouldering Gothic cathedral of St Etienne, vainly looking for a cleric with a rubber stamp, I was directed to the nearby presbytery, a building dating from much the same period, but warmer and infinitely more cheerful. Three priests, napkins tucked under chins were sitting at a well-stocked table in a room that without changing one detail could have been the film set for a period drama. They rose to welcome me, ‘A pilgrim from England? Come in, come in. A Catholic? Ah well, no matter, Protestants are also welcome.’ And in spite of my embarrassment at finding them at lunch (I tend to forget the lateness of provincial France’s midday meal) and my attempts to escape, I was urged to seat myself and, at the very least, to take a glass of wine before the tampon was produced and my card stamped. ‘ Priez pour nous en Compostelle ,’ they said as I departed half an hour later, as warmed by their friendliness as by the heavy local wine and rich pâté.
    Issoudoun, Chateauroux, Neuvy St Sepulchre, Crozant, La Souterrain — slowly the pages began to fill with stamps, some with a handwritten tag underneath — ‘ Bonne Route', ‘Bon Voyage', ‘Bon Courage', 'Paix et Joie ’ and the lovely ‘ Priez pour nous’ . Seldom did I find a church actually open, nor did I meet another priest quite as hospitable as the three at Bourges, but those I did meet were friendly and approving, as though they considered I was doing a good thing, and one moreover in which they had a share. But pleasant though it always is to be thought well of, their respect made me a feel a little uncomfortable, as though I was inadvertently sailing under false colours. Although I profess myself a Christian in the broadest sense of the term — which is to say that while I am sure I would have been excommunicated or burnt for my heretical views in an age of strict orthodoxy, I managed to scrape together enough tatters of faith and belief to see me through confirmation in more flexible times. I certainly did not think of myself as a pilgrim following a penitential path for the salvation of my soul. As far as I was concerned I was making this journey from the same motives as I made all my journeys, in a spirit of enquiry and interest. After all, I enjoyed travelling, and whereas I believed that all journeys were a form of pilgrimage in the sense that they offered time and space for reflection and for looking at life from a fresh angle, I had no expectation of any particular reward or enhanced spiritual state at the end of it. Since papal indulgences and relics have long lost their credence for most of us, I couldn’t see that the route I was following was necessarily holier than any other. It was the