The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

men disappeared into the crowd as it mounted higher and higher while flames and trailing clouds of fragrant incense became, as it were, the emanations of the soaring music from the choirs and the organ. It swept exultantly above the galleries to the very roof of the basilica and then rushed vertiginously down like a flaming meteor just above the heads of the watchful multitude. Meanwhile the organ rang out and I heard the choir and the massed pilgrims’ voices singing the mediaeval hymn of Santiago from the Codex of Pope Calixtus and towards the end of the hymn the flights of the monster censer became gradually slower and shorter, as its breath grew fainter, until at last it sank lifeless to earth, whereupon it was seized with amazing skill and rapidity by its custodian dressed in scarlet wool and his assistants, who bore it away to its lair in the library of the chapter house.
    I started dreaming of what the pilgrimage must have been in the twelfth century, the golden age of the great Archbishop Gelmirez, when the doors of the cathedral stood open day and night during the feast days and the vast basilica was illuminated with myriads of quivering wax tapers, for it was then the custom for pilgrims to group themselves by nations and sing songs to the accompaniment of their instruments. They would stay in their thousands all night jostling and struggling perpetually to watch as near as possible to the entrance to the crypt containing the body of the Apostle, and many a time fierce battles raged and so much blood was spilt that the basilica had to be re-consecrated. Every part of the cathedral, even the galleries above, were thronged with people who bivouacked there for days and nights, and so foul did the atmosphere become that braziers of incense were lit in the corners and, according to the Codex Calixtinus, a great botafumeiro was fashioned of silver to swing through the transept from the northern to the southern portal shedding incense and purifying all the upper church.
    Today the solemn pontifical Mass, the singing of the antiphonal choirs and the glowing colours of the scene reminded me of the pictures of Bellini I had seen in the Accademia in Venice. It was a Renaissance scene on this occasion, but I continually recalled responses from the wonderful mediaeval Mass which is the climax of the first book of the Codex Calixtinus and proclaims the majesty of the two sons of Zebedee, and I longed to hear the dramatic declamation of the celebrant and the bellowed responses Usque Jacobi and Usque Boanerges from the choirs. Today there is pageantry and ceremonial but we miss the fierce and primitive heroism which existed in the twelfth century and is the dominant note in that astounding Mass of Bishop Fulbert of Chartres.
    The national offering to the Apostle for 1954 was made by Generalissimo Franco in an eloquent speech describing Spain’s crusading spirit on behalf of the Church in the great days of her Empire and in the recent Civil War, and at the end he presented the national money offering in a gold cup, in accordance with the tradition instituted by Philip IV in 1646.
    After the Head of the State, the Cardinals and the great dignitaries had filed out slowly through the crowded basilica into the sunlit plaza we then witnessed a further traditional Spanish ritual which gave light relief to the ceremonies in honour of the Apostle—the arrival of the giants and the equally monumental Coco and Coca. The Gigantones wore eighteenth-century heads on top of their wicker-framed bodies but the Coco who was dressed in a kind of petty officer’s uniform resembled a longshoreman on the docks of Liverpool. The giants preceded by their pipers in yellow stood in the background whilst the Coco and the Coca danced the Muiñeira in front of the Apostle below the main altar, after which they retired with the giants and paraded around the cathedral and the Square of the Quintana before returning to their cupboards. The Gigantones and Cabezudos, as they are called, and their bagpipers and drummers are very popular with the country people, for they add a touch of quaint humour to the solemn ceremony and recall the ancient miracle plays and moralities with their grotesque scenes in which the devil and Herod played the parts of the buffoons and roused the rough humour of the masses.
    After the ceremony I walked out into the great sunlit square which is still traditionally called the Plaza del Hospital after the great institution