The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

grant their requests immediately, but the favour was sure to come, provided the devotee did not lose heart.
    By the twelfth century the multitudes that journeyed to Compostella from all parts of Europe were so great that they were compared to the clouds of stars of the Milky Way, and Dante in the Convito speaks of the galaxy—‘the white circle which the common people call, Way of St. James’. Women and peasants in Italy called it the Roman road, la strada di Roma, and in England, Chaucer tells us that the Canterbury pilgrims called it ‘the Watling Street of the sky’.
    Pilgrimages in the religious sense of the word appealed instinctively to man, as we can ascertain from the study of primitive religions. A pilgrimage for him meant the possibility of winning grace and getting into closer contact with the great mysteries of his religion. Even in ancient classical days thinkers like Cicero had spoken in glowing terms of their visits to the hallowed sites in Athens where great men had lived and died. Even though St. Jerome had said that the gates of Heaven were as open in Britain as in Jerusalem, religious teachers believed that special blessings could be obtained in places where saints and martyrs had died, and that men who had sinned could expiate their crimes at such shrines. A pilgrimage could be the easiest means of atonement, and so absolution was frequently granted by Papal Bull, upon condition that the penitent should visit certain holy places. Such was the atonement which King Henry Plantagenet made at the tomb of St. Thomas at Canterbury.
    Men, however, did not visit Compostella only to secure forgiveness of sin. Their motive often arose from a mental contract they had made with St. James himself. They pledged themselves to undertake the pilgrimage and make an offering at the Saint’s shrine, if he would grant their request. For this reason the journey was not always one of penitence, but sometimes one enabling the pilgrim to express his gratitude in the form of a costly offering to the Saint. In tins way the treasures of the Cathedral of Santiago and of all the other churches along the road grew in wealth and prosperity.
    In early days it was considered not only a duty but an honour to entertain the pilgrim and help him on his journey; thus charitable persons shared in the blessings that descended upon him. Pilgrims were instruments for winning grace and the monarchs encouraged them by granting them letters of commendation. Charlemagne imposed it as a legal obligation that pilgrims should be given roof, hearth and fire wherever they travelled. It was owing to their claim to be pilgrims that the Original Band of raggle-taggle Indian Gypsies were received with open arms when they knocked at the gates of Europe in 1417.
    Before the pilgrim set off from his town he went to confession and communion in his parish church and his name was publicly read out before the altar by the parish priest. Pilgrims were a familiar sight in the French and Spanish countryside in the spring and summer. They travelled together in great numbers, as it was dangerous to be a lonely wanderer on the roads that were infested by highwaymen. As they slowly wended their way they cheered their hearts by chanting hymns and psalms like the Israelites of old when they journeyed to Jerusalem. Some of these psalms are called in the Authorized Version Songs of Degrees , and signify the steps and progressions in ascent to sanctity, such as Levavi oculos meos in montes and Laetatus sum in his. Of the mediaeval hymns chanted by the pilgrims, especially by the Teutons, who were famed for their singing, there were two included in the Codex Calixtinus by Aymery Picaud: ‘The Little Hymn’ and ‘The Great Hymn of St. James’.
    The latter was sung in later days in a French translation and it is significant to note that in the refrain the pilgrims pray to the Blessed Virgin and to her Son Jesus to give them grace,

    Qu’en Paradis nous puissions voir
    Dieu et Monsieur Saint Jacques

    In 1718 a manual of pilgrim songs was made from those sung by the pilgrims from the' Abbey of Moissac, who were known by the picturesque name of Les Rossignols Spirituels, —the Nightingales of the Spirit—on account of their singing as they tramped the Road of St. James.
    In the morning when they set out they looked at the weather and the horizon, for they remembered the proverb:

    Rouge vespre et blanc matin
    C’est la journée du pèlerin.

    The pilgrim had to