The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

The French pilgrims in the early Middle Ages were attracted to Sahagún because there the monks were fellow countrymen and a great proportion of the population of the town were Francos or privileged foreigners. 41
    The exaggerated influx of the privileged foreign tradespeople led to the serious fights which took place between them and the monastery. Sahagún was the obsession of Alfonso VI: he had lived there when disinherited by his brother and it was always in his thoughts. Although he died at Toledo, he was buried in Sahagún, and so, too, were his two French wives Doña Constanza and Doña Berta of Lombardy.
    Of the gigantic abbey, which must have rivalled Cluny in size and Jaca in simplicity and grandeur, nothing remains. Incidentally, the architect, according to the expert authority, Gómez Moreno, was Guillelmus Magonerius, a wandering Englishman, who was also architect of Jaca. * Even the countryside disappoints those who have read in the ancient romances of the plain of Sahagún, which could be compared with that of Granada, and our good mentor Aymery Picaud, after saying that Sahagún possessed every blessing of nature, tells us the story of the great batde which was fought in this plain against the Moor in which the spears of Charlemagne’s warriors, who died that day on the bank of the River Cea, were found next morning to have sprouted with leaves—a sign that the warriors had entered Heaven as martyrs.
    As Juan Uría Rúa explains in his masterly analysis of the Codex, this is the last war episode on the pilgrim road described by the Book of St. James, for Turpin knew more about Navarre and Castile than about León and Galicia, with the exception of Compostella. The deeds of Charlemagne and Roland were stressed by him in order to please the French pilgrims. After Sahagún the epic warrior spirit disappears, the descriptions of places are more laconic, as though both the Archbishop and Aymery had at last become wearied of telling us tales of miracles. A contributory cause, according to Uria, * was the monotony of the Leónese steppe and the lack of important villages on the Jacobean road in that region. Between Sahagún and Mansilla de las Mulas the villages such as Burgo Ranero and Reliegos were poverty-stricken settlements, even in the seventeenth century, for Laffi describes finding on the road, one league from Burgo Ranero, the corpse of a pilgrim on which wolves were feeding. He and his companions chased away the wolves and fetched a priest from Burgo Ranero to bury the dead man. They found lodgings in the village, but so poor that they had to sleep on the ground.

MUMMERS AGAIN AND A GHOST STORY

    At the venerable walled town of Mansilla de las Mulas I found myself among friends again. Near the entrance to the town I saw a big marquee. What good luck, I thought, I’ve caught up with the Thespian chariot. A few minutes later I met Don Eusebio and Don Miguel in the main street.
    “Vaya la coincidencia!” cried the actor, embracing me effusively, “Long live the wandering life when friends meet again and again along the road. Only this morning I said to my wife: ‘I wonder where the pilgrim with the fiddle is.’ Now that you’ve found us it is time to wet our whistle: I’ve a thirst on me that will wait for no man.”
    “Caballo que vuela no quiere espuela (a willing horse does not need to be driven),” said the perky little Miguel as he trotted behind us towards the tavern.
    Over a porrón of wine, I had to listen to a full account of Eusebio’s theatrical, managerial and domestic troubles since our last meeting, punctuated with laconic comments by Don Miguel, whose mission in life seemed to be to divert his chief from his main topic into irrelevant side issues.
    “Business has been pretty lousy since you saw us in Belorado,” said Eusebio, taking a long swig at the porrón. “The cold weather didn’t give us a chance at Burgos and we made damn’ all. Things brightened up a bit in Villadiego, but in Castrojeriz the rain ruined our show on the opening night, as it came through the tent and drenched the front six rows of the best paying seats. I had to return the money.”
    “That was the night,” said the beady-eyed Miguel, “that you had the row with Ricardo.”
    Don Eusebio’s eyes flashed fire and Ms face flushed with anger. “Don’t mention the name of that sinvergüenza Ricardo: I wish I had cut his throat that night.”
    “You nearly did, Eusebio,” said the little