The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

Villasirga and prayed to Our Lady for forgiveness of his sins the staff crumbled into fragments. His sins were forgiven and he was released of his burden.”
    “God grant me release from my burden some day,” said the pilgrim, sadly, “but it will not come yet, for I must continue my pilgrimage of expiation.”
    The old man then told me a rambling story of his life. He had been a well-known lawyer in Budapest, highly respected by his fellow-citizens before 1939, but the Second World War had broken up his life, his wife had died of privations when the Russians had entered Budapest, two of his sons had been killed, and he and his remaining son had fled from the Communists through Austria into Germany. “Since then,” said he, “I have only one thought—to wander ceaselessly from one pilgrim shrine to another.”
    “But surely expiatory pilgrimages were imposed in other days by the Church upon those who committed grave sins, whereas you have been one of the innocent victims in the general holocaust.”
    “My life,” said the old man, “is not long enough to expiate the sins of my former existence when I lived thoughtlessly. I have nothing left; my wife and two of my sons are dead and the last one who escaped with me has disappeared and forsaken me. I must move on restlessly, mortifying my flesh and doing perpetual penance, for then I feel that I draw nearer to them on my journey towards death. As I make this pilgrimage towards Santiago I imagine at night when I look up at stars on the Milky Way that among the countless white souls making their pilgrimage after death are the souls of my dear wife and sons. The reason why I have travelled as a penitent four times to Compostella is that this is the only long pilgrimage which again and again reminds me of the last journey which does not end with the death of the body, for when that happens our liberated souls will join our dear ones in the shining cavalcade and continue the journey through the shadowy land.”
    “You remind me of the belief among the folk in Asturias that St. James suffered from loneliness in his grave in Ultima Thule, but God said to him: ‘Don’t be downcast; all those who do not visit you while they are alive will come again after death,’ and in many places the people believe that a shooting star is a departed soul hastening on its long journey and they speed it with the prayer, ‘May God guide you and Mary Magdalen.’ ”
    We walked towards the town of Carrión de los Condes at snail’s pace, for the old man had twinges of rheumatism in his legs and I noticed that his feet were lacerated. When I asked him if we could share lodgings together he said that he would not sleep in a bed, nor would be accept money from a pilgrim, for he had made the vow to walk barefoot, sleep in the open and live by charity.
    “Most of the convents and monasteries know me,” said he, “and they are so charitable that I do not have to beg. It is enough for me to say here in Spain that I am a fellow countryman of my revered Cardinal Primate Mindszenty for them to open their doors and fill me with hospitality, but I never say this, for I am on an expiatory pilgrimage.” When we arrived in Carrión I said farewell to him at the gate of the Monastery of San Zoil. Putting his arms round me he embraced me, saying, “We shall meet, brother-pilgrim, at the tomb of the Apostle.” Carrión de los Condes today is a prosperous small town in the fertile land of Tierra de Campos, but in the Middle Ages when it was the residence of the warlike Condes de Carrión it played a great historical part in the days of King Alfonso III the Great, when it acted as a bulwark to the Kingdom of León. Charlemagne passed this way, when he fought his campaign to clear the Jacobean road of Moorish invaders and in the epic poem La Prise de Pampelune when they saw Carrión they cried:

    “Par Dieu che tout justice,
    Sur le cemin Saint Jaques somes sens gaberise.”

    In the days of the Cid, Santa María de Carrión was governed by the powerful family of the Beni-Gómez (sons of Gómez), the descendants of the Count of Saldaña, son-in-law and ensign of the great Count of Castile, Fernán González. The Infantes of Carrión were the arrogant sons-in-law who ill-treated the Cid’s daughters and were challenged by the latter as traitors before Kings Alfonso VI, and he later sent his vassals to fight the Infantes in the vale of Carrión, where they were defeated. As a result the