The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

accustom himself to all weathers, and there was another proverb celebrating his stoicism:

    Vent du soir et pluie du matin
    N’étonnent pas le pèlerin.

    The rain in the morning he actually welcomed, for then the dust disappeared.
    To give a touch of ritual to the start, the pilgrims at first would launch out into the Cantique Spirituel which was also called La Grande Chanson:

    Aymery Picaud wrote the fifth book of the Codex Calixtinus, we are told, mainly as a guide for those who travelled on foot; if so they must have been powerful foot-sloggers in the twelfth century, doing thirty to forty miles a day through wild mountain country, liable to attacks at all times, and with the constant spectre of hunger to harass them. Even in the nineteenth century thirty miles a day considerably exceeds the estimate given by Richard Ford for a well-used horse. The road, however, never changes, and even today we may plan our journey from Aymery’s itinerary, and it adds zest to the modern traveller to compare the towns and hospices as described by the ancients with the conditions he finds today. Being a seasoned pilgrim, Aymery pays tribute to the various saints, who always gave him a helping hand, and he points out the advantages of choosing as allies only practical saints such as St. Raphael, the peerless guide of pilgrims, St. Roque, the plague doctor, and the muscular St. Christopher, deliverer from fires, floods and earthquakes. But pilgrims should not forget, he adds, St. Hilary of Poitiers, who will always give valuable information at a moment of crisis, nor St. Julian of the North, the patron of ferrymen and minstrels, who would give them a cosy refuge when a storm is blowing. Aymery Picaud’s was the first of a great number of guidebooks that were written by pilgrims in successive centuries. The monks of Cluny, who were especially interested in the pilgrimage and looked after the roads and hospices in France and Spain, compiled books of instructions for travellers.
    The route followed by English pilgrims in the fifteenth century is given in a quaint poem entitled Purchas his Pilgrime, published in 1425. The author, at the beginning states his plan as follows: ‘Here beginneth the Way that is marked and made with Moun-Joies from the Land of Engelond unto Sent Jamez in Galiz, and from thennez to Rome, and from thennez to Jerusalem; and so againe unto Engelond, and the namez of all the citiez be their waie and manner of her governaunce, and namez of her silver that they use be alle these waies.’ English pilgrims generally went to Compostella by sea, or at least part of the way as far as Bordeaux, but the hardships must have been very great if we believe the earliest seasong in English, an anonymous ballad of the time of Henry VI, describing the Pilgrim’s sea voyage and sea-sickness. The author makes vivid comments on the sufferings the pilgrims may expect, for as he sententiously remarks:

    Men may leve alle gamys
    That saylen to Seynt Jamys:

    or as we would say:

    You leave behind all fun and games
    When you set sail for Saint James:

    The pilgrims got in the way of the sailors hauling at the sails: “Put the boat ready, boatswain,” cries the master: “Our Pilgrims are like to cough and groan ere midnight.”

    Haul up the bowline, now, veer the sheet!
    Cooke, make ready our meat,
    Our pilgrims have no lust to eat.
    Steward, a pot of beer!
    Anon of the best.
    O see how welle our good ship sails
    And thus they say among.
    Steward, cover the board anon.
    And set bread and salt thereon,
    And tarry not too long.

    The wind freshens and the sea becomes rough. The poor pilgrims can eat neither boiled nor roast. They have their bowls by them and they cry out for hot malmsey:

    Some laid their books on their knee
    And read so long they might not see:
    Alas mine head will cleave in three.

    Then comes the shipowner who addresses them in many a royal word to see that all be well, and he calls a carpenter and bids him bring his gear and rig up the various cabins with many a feeble cell:

    A sack of straw were right good,
    For some must lie them in their hood;
    I had as lief be in the Wood,
    Without meat or drink.
    For when that we shall go to bed,
    The pump was nigh our bed’s head,
    A man were as good to be dead
    As smell thereof the stink. 19

    In spite of all the hardships people who could scrape together the cost and who remembered the traditional admonition, ‘if ye owe any pilgrimages, pay them hastily’, were