The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

Manzanal, following the advice of the German Jacobean pilgrim of the sixteenth century, Hermann Kiinig, who emphatically believed that this road was easier. Jovellanos in 1722 chose this way by Bembibre, which in his day as today was famed for its excellent wine. By this road, too, retreated Sir John Moore in December 1809, when there was snow on the mountains. Bembibre with its pleasant valley was an oasis, but Ford says grimly that its vineyards were more fatal to Moore’s soldiers than the French sabres.
    At the Hotel Madrid in Ponferrada I met a big party of French pilgrims, mostly women, who were accompanied by two priests and a courier and travelled in their own motor bus.
    Ponferrada—the iron bridge—was built in the eleventh century by the Bishop of Astorga for the passage of pilgrims to Compostella, who travelled by direct route along the River Sil by Valdeorras and Orense. The town grew later, a little distance from the bridge, and belonged to the Templars who built a magnificent castle which dominates the town and all the country around. It stands proudly on the river bank and must have been impregnable, not only owing to its huge walls and massive battlements, but especially owing to the ingenious engineering device whereby the Templars were able to supply themselves with water from the river inside the walls. As I wandered through the ruins with Don Bernardo Castro, Juez de Primera Instancia in Ponferrada, to whom I had been introduced by my Astorgan friend, Julio Ogando, I questioned him about the Templars. Don Bernardo Castro is particularly proud of his Christian name, for it reminds him of the great Saint, whose famous letter to the Knight Templars is the noblest expression of the change which came over Christian society in the twelfth century, the century of the Crusades. With St. Bernard military valour became meritorious, and the gallant knight might hope for reward in the next world. It was St. Bernard, too, who gave the Templars their beautiful motto blending the ideal of the soldier and the monk, Non nobis, non nobis, Domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam, and to their ranks flocked all men of highest courage and purest devotion. The Order of the Templars was the first to be established in the Peninsula and was in Calatrava in 1139, and at the height of their power in Spain they owned twelve houses in Castile alone.
    “Remember,” said Don Bernardo, “how they suffered at the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. Their Grand Master, Gómez Ramirez, was killed, and in the Anales Toledanos we find the words: ‘There they died all.’ Even though the Order recovered and took part in the conquest of Seville in 1248, they began to decline, and they were expelled from Jerusalem. They declined because they forgot the ideals they had been given by St. Bernard at the Council of Troyes in 1128, and their wealth and pride brought down upon them the jealous hatred of the bishops, and their violent quarrels with their rivals the Hospitallers shocked the moral sense of Christendom.
    “And the Knights of Santiago,” he continued, “like the Templars, became wealthy and arrogant, a state within a state, and all the people were delighted to watch Ferdinand, who wanted their wealth, and Isabella, who wanted to be really Queen, finally abolish the Order of St. James, save as a label of distinction for nobles and courtiers.”
    The imposing entrance to the castle with its remains of a drawbridge and moat, and the massive walls reminded me of the gigantic ruins of the pilgrim castle of the Templars at Acre recaptured by Richard Cœur de Lion at the cost of a hundred thousand men. This castle of the Templars at Ponferrada, too, was a pilgrim castle bestriding the pilgrim road to Santiago and reminding those who passed this way of the age of the Crusades. It is a castle of romance, and because of the scanty information in documents concerning the history of the Knights Templars in Spain, many legends have been associated with it, as is shown in thenovel El Señor de Bembibre by Enrique Gily Carrasco which describes the Templars at the moment of the extinction of their Order.
    In 1185 they were in possession of Ponferrada, which owed its increase in importance to the mighty castle. According to Don Bernardo de Castro, the Templars there protected the Jacobean pilgrims and enabled them to continue their journey unmolested into the highlands of the Bierzo. The pilgrims in the sixteenth century used to make their way