The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

Infantes were branded with infamy and their town passed to the Crown.
    Near the entrance to the town stands the ancient church of Santa María del Camino, which belonged to the pilgrim road. In Ponz’s day, in the eighteenth century, a feast was still held there every year to commemorate the liberation of Spain from the shameful tribute of the hundred maidens which King Mauregato was obliged to pay to the Moors and which, according to tradition, continued to be paid until the victory of Clavijo.
    According to tradition, too, the tribute of maidens was annually paid to the Moors at the spot where the church stands and on one occasion, when the maidens were about to be handed over to their Moslem masters, a herd of bulls violently attacked the Moors but did not touch the maidens. Every year according to Ponz a traditional sermon was delivered on that day called Doncellas y Toros (Maidens and Bulls). On the Romanesque façade of the church there are strange images which were supposed to be the Mithraistic bulls, which are never far from the incidents in the Jacobean story. *
    Near the Plaza Mayor in the calle de la Rúa is the most interesting church in the town, that of Santiago with its magnificent Romanesque porch above which there is a frieze of the thirteenth century with a majestic Christ in the centre accompanied by the tetramorph, and on each side in two rows the Apostles in their niches. The door is reminiscent of those at Estella and San Juan de la Peña, but it is more grotesque. The twenty-four miniature figures are not members of a heavenly orchestra as at Santiago in the Portico de la Gloria: although one of them is playing his harp like a minstrel eager to discover his duende, others are busily working like smiths or potters, and two more belabour each other with clubs, and a woman tears her cheeks in raging despair. The interior of the church is modern, for it was burnt in the War of Independence and no tiling is left of the ancient hospital for pilgrims next door but a pointed arch which gives access to a lane.
    After crossing the bridge over the River Carrión I came to the Benedictine monastery of San Zoil which was originally built in the eleventh century to house the relics of St. Zoil which were sent from Córdoba by the son of the founder. San Zoil was a great miracle-worker and for this reason attracted numbers of pilgrims. A contributory reason for the popularity of his hospice may also be that the Jacobeans here were given free bread and wine.
    At Carrión I discovered a small inn where I met a maternal landlady who made me feel as if I belonged to the family. She enters the little recess in my memory where I preserve the comparatively few good landladies I have known on my travels, for she was neither a shrewish virago, nor querulously slattern, but a buxom housewife with a smile that radiated kindness upon her guests. She called me at 6.30 a.m. and I was able to set out on my journey before the town was awake.
    At Calzada de los Molinos I was fascinated by the striking image of Santiago Matamoros on the Italian Renaissance retable of the church. The Saint is dressed like a Moor in a flowering gilt burnous with arabesques in green and blue; his cloak waves in the wind as he gallops upon a spirited white Arab horse which literally tramples on the heads of two Moslems.
    After Calzadilla de la Cueza I came to two villages, Las Tiendas and Ledigos, each nestling in a tiny valley paradise; the latter village was given in 1028 by Doña Urraca to the Apostle with all its buildings, meadows, orchards and vineyards.
    Sahagún is always a disappointment to the modern Jacobean pilgrim who has read of the immense wealth and power the celebrated abbey possessed in the days of Alfonso VI. So haughty were the monks in those far off days that though they did obeisance to Cluny they did more to Bishop, King and Pope, and Fray Prudencio de Sandoval says: ‘as the monastery of St. Peter of Cluny gave name to that religion, so this house gave its name to its monks, calling them of the Order of Sahagún.’ In the eleventh century Sahagún was the greatest power in Spain, and the centre of French influence and the symbol of Roman domination, for it ruled ninety monasteries and the Pope gave it all the privileges of Cluny. But the power of Sahagún was shortlived and it fell as rapidly as it rose when the Cistercians, following the ascetic teaching of St. Bernard, preached their puritan doctrines to the world.