The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

leaving Vilar de Donas and joining again the main road I ascended to the top of a hill called El Rosario from whence I could see in the distance to the west the Pico Sacro which overlooks Compostella.
    At Libureiro the Jacobean road runs slightly to the south of the main road through a wilderness called the Magdalena and at the bridge over the small River Purelos there is a house with a porch and an ancient arched doorway which used to be called the Encomienda. By turning aside from the main road on to this little abandoned portion of the original Jacobean road with it settlement for pilgrims, I slipped back instantly four centuries, for the causeway had not changed since the days when Andrew Boorde, Rozmital and Lalaing, Seigneur de Montigny, had passed that way and the population, living in the hovels by the wayside, were poor and ragged. Although the children were now well fed and healthy, they mobbed me for perras chicas in good old pilgrim style.
    At Mellid I emerged on to the main road and found myself amid crowds of merrymakers, for today was the annual Feria del Carmen, and every street in Mellid was hung with pink and yellow flags. Drums were beating, trumpets blaring and tracas were exploding everywhere. I went to the Fonda de Calvo, whose owner was a friend of mine of former years. After a festive meal shared with some fellow pilgrims I set out to see the churches in this town of five thousand inhabitants which in the Middle Ages was an important pilgrim centre, as is shown by its castle, its churches of San Pedro and Sancti Spiritus, its two important hospitals and leper house. Its importance arose because it was situated on the junction between the main Jacobean road and the other which came through Asturias from Oviedo, and because many pilgrims halted here on their return from Santiago de Compostela, which they would reach by Oviedo, in order to visit the Cámara Santa.
    After Mellid I passed Castaneda, which used in the days of Aymery Picaud to be called Castaniola, the place where the pilgrims used to deposit the stones they had brought from Triacastela from which cement could be obtained for the Cathedral of Santiago. After Arzua I passed Ferreiros, a tiny pueblo set in a pleasant valley, and after Sabugueira, I came to the stream of Lavacolla, which by its name perpetuates the place where the Jacobean pilgrims halted to wash their necks. What exactly these purificatory ablutions meant in the Middle Ages is explained more fully by Aymery Picaud, who calls the spring Lavamentula because in it the French pilgrims to St. James washed their private parts, and also all the dirt from their bodies, for love of the Apostle. * When I reached the spring I contented myself with following the instructions given by the modern name Lavacolla, and I washed my neck in the spring and drank some of its fresh water.

MOUNTJOY

    Upon a hill stondez on hee
    Wher Sent Jamez ferst schalt thou see,
    A Mount Joie, mony stonez there ate.’
    (Purchas His Pilgrim, 1425.)

    Less than a mile after Lavacolla I came to the ‘Monte Gaudi’ or Mountjoy, so called because from its summit the pilgrim for the first time sees the towers of the Cathedral of Santiago. And so, to be precise, on the fifteen of July, 1954, the Holy Year, at sunset, I hastened up the road to the crest of the hill of St. Mark. Below me outlined against hills and the flaming sky in the west I saw clearly and unmis-takeably the three bell towers of the Cathedral of St. James. Like the French pilgrims of the Middle Ages, when in the joyousness of their hearts they saw the portus quietis and the end of their long toiling, I, too, cried out, “Mon Joie! Mon Joie!”
    I looked round for a band of pilgrims to echo my ritualistic cry; alas, there was no one but an old peasant riding a donkey. He halted and the donkey flapped its ears and brayed dolefully.
    “You’ll soon be there,” he said encouragingly as he prodded his beast into a trot.
    In the ancient days there was always a race between the pilgrims to reach the summit of the hill of San Marcos, and he who reached it first was saluted as ‘King’ by his companions. Our Italian clerical companion of the seventeenth century with whom we have travelled in spirit becomes emotional when he reaches the summit of Mountjoy and says: ‘When we saw the long-desired Santiago but half a league away, we threw ourselves on our knees, and such was our joy that tears fell from our eyes and we began to sing the Te Deum