The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

from the castle to the church of Santa María de la Enema, which is so called because in the twelfth century a statue of the Virgin was found hidden in the hollow trunk of an oak tree where it had been hidden for five centuries.

THE HIGHLANDS OF THE BIERZO

    From Ponferrada I came to the highland region of the Bierzo, which in the seventh century became a Thebaid in North Spain under San Fructuoso and his disciple San Valerio, who by their lives as Cenobites inspired generation after generation of monks amid these solitary mountains. More than twenty monasteries, most of them dating from the tenth century, are known, and though some disappeared, or else dwindled into small parish churches included in the diocese of Astorga, others became great religious centres during the later Middle Ages.
    Here and there throughout the Bierzo many of those Cenobitic centres were visited in turn by many of the Jacobeans, who deviated from the pilgrim road in search of alms or else to venerate the relics. One of such centres was Sta. María de Tabladillo, at the foot of the western slope of Mount Irago, which already in the tenth century helped poor travellers, and its charitable work was at a later date carried on by the hermit Gaucelmo in his hospice there.
    Richard Ford in 1845 paid a lyrical tribute to this fascinating highland country of the Bierzo, calling it one of the most interesting nooks in the whole Peninsula and wondering why it was all but unknown to the English antiquary, angler and sportsman: ‘here is scenery enough to fill a portfolio, and subject enough for a quarto; how many flowers pine unbotanized, how many rocks harden engeologized; what views are dying to be sketched, what trout to be caught and eaten, what valleys expand their bosoms longing to embrace the visitor, what virgin beauties hitherto unseen await the happy member of the Travellers’ Club, who in ten days can exchange the bore of eternal Pall Mall for these untrodden sites; and then what an accession of dignity in then discovering a terra incognita, and rivalling Mungo Park.’ *
    Very different is the tone of George Borrow who, together with his servant Antonio, left Astorga on horseback with fever upon him and ran into a fierce storm on the mountain road on the way to Villa-franca in the Bierzo, which incidentally inspired him to write one of the most eerie descriptions in the whole of bis book. When he travelled through this region in 1836 the monastic settlements in the mountains were desolate because in 1835 they had been suppressed and the only inmates were owls and ravens. A peasant fellow-traveller, whose mule had been blinded by the lightning said to Borrow during the storm: “Were the friars still in their nest above, I should say that this storm was their doing for they are the cause of all the miseries of the land.”
    Today the mountains of the Bierzo have no terrors for the traveller and expeditions of tourists start daily from Ponferrada, which is a flourishing modern town full of activity now that the River Sil, which George Borrow saw emerging from the gloom of the precipice above, white with foam and dashing down with thundering sound like an avenging fiend, has been tamed into ministering to many works of peace and comfort.
    The Bierzo is shaped like an amphitheatre and is shut out from the world by the great Asturian Alps sloping to the south-west and dividing into two barriers, the eastern formed by the Pass of Rabanal and Foncebadon; the western formed by the Pass of Cebrero and the Pass of Aguiar; and to the south which is, as it were, the base of the triangle there are the mountain chains of Segundera, Sanabria and Cabrera. The Bierzo is thus a deep valley like the bed of a large lake, which is shut out from the world, and is a paradise for those who wish to lead a contemplative life. This was the reason why hermits and Cenobites came there in the seventh century and built so many sanctuaries that, according to Florez, God alone, who can count the stars of heaven, could enumerate them. St. Fructuoso, the founder, was a kind of shepherd king of the Bierzo, who preferred to become a shepherd of men and gave away all his wordly goods and founded the monastery of Compludo near the Pass of Rabanal. Soon the fame of the religious settlements spread so wide and the valley became so thronged with pilgrims that St. Fructuoso was obliged to flee from the importuning crowds like St. Gilles, and roam from cave to cave in the