The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

away with a basket-maker from the province of La Coruna, though his had been no ordinary tinker’s wedding. “I was,” he said heatedly, “apicholado (married) with bell, book and candle, before the caligo (priest) and never imagined my wife would turn into a whore ( cigota ). B ut the foolish girl has no shame ( a sinada no ten coera): she was not one of our confraternity and does not speak our language. One day, please God, I’ll be revenged and slit that basket-maker’s throat with the knife I have here.” Before I parted from the knife-grinder at Lestedo we had a carafe of Ribeiro wine, which I called Wine of the Moor, because it had not been baptized, but he in bis jargon called it amece moro (pure wine).
    At Lestedo, which Manier in his eighteenth-century itinerary called Loutiede, the pilgrim road from Sanabria and the south of Spain joins that from Lugo, and the place is dedicated to Santiago and had a hospital in ancient days. A short distance further on I came to a rough turning to the north, which led to the ancient monastery of Vilar de Donas, bosomed high among its trees, about a mile of the Jacobean road. This monastery is of exceptional interest for the pilgrim, for it belonged to the Order of Santiago ever since the heyday of the pilgrimage in 1184, and it was considered the chapter house and general burial-place of the knights, who lived in the Galician monasteries. All that remains today is the Romanesque church, which is one of the most beautiful in the province of Lugo.
    I was most hospitably received by a youngish, athletic-looking priest, Don Victoriano Frade. He lives the ascetic life of the early Mediaeval Cenobites who tended the early shrines on the Jacobean road, and in this little Romanesque church with its striking stone altarpiece representing scenes of the Passion of Jesus Christ, the Descent ftom the Cross and the Resurrection, I felt nearer to the spirit of the early pilgrimages than elsewhere. I rejoiced at the discovery of such a hermitage at the end of my long journey and on the threshold of Compostella. The priest invited me into his cottage at the back of the church, and outside was a little yard where he had Ins hens and ducks. He gave me what he called a tente en pié, or snack: slices of smoked ham, bread and wine. We talked for hours of Spain and the Civil War, of the modern world and of the materialism which has sapped the spiritual strength of the people everywhere and weakened the moral law. Don Victoriano believes that there is no hope for the world until a spiritual alliance is made among the different peoples, but first of all there must be social justice to enable the Christians to take their full share in the struggle against the tyranny of the godless state and communism. Today every country is threatened from within by the fifth column of international communism, which is the writing on the wall. Destruction lies ahead if we do not heed the warning and gird our loins for the war against Anti-Christ.
    “In the ninth century,” said Don Victoriano, “Western Christendom was in a similar state of chaos and despair, but then came the miracle of the discovery of the tomb of the Apostle Santiago, which lifted up the hearts of man and gave new hope to Spain and spiritual leadership for the crusade. But in those days men felt themselves to be nearer to God and His saints than we do today: even the stars did not seem far away in the distant heavens, but flickering near the earth just above the wooded hills, and even the humblest folk set a place at their table for the Heavenly Guest, as if He might miraculously appear. Today in our age of disillusion and unbelief we need to rediscover that spirit and draw nearer to God’s angels as men did in earlier times.”
    The priest showed me in the chapel the remains of fifteenth-century frescoes on the walls representing St. James, St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Andrew with his cross. According to him the monastery was called after the donas or dueñas, the noble ladies who tended the sick in the hospital attached to the church. On one wall I could make out the figures of two youngish ladies wearing big pink head dresses and veils, and on the wall at the other side was the very expressive face of another lady with golden hair. “They are all very attractive,” said the priest, “and they were great ladies who retired to this desolate spot to succour the poor and tend the sick pilgrims who passed this way.”
    After