The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

hear so much of pilgrim adventures on the return journeys, but sometimes disaster fell upon them as in the case of Andrew Boorde and the nine English and Scottish pilgrims whom he had accompanied to Compostella out of pure good nature. At Compostella, he said, they had plenty of meat and wine, but returning through Spain his friends were unlucky and ‘for all the crafte of Physycke that I could do, they dyed, all by eatynge of frutes and drynkynge of water, the which I dyd ever refrayne my selfe.’
    Andrew Boorde knew the accursed rivers in north Spain in Navarre against which even Aymery Picaud had warned pilgrims in 1140, and he was forever telling his friends not to drink from them. He even advises them to wash their faces only once a week, if they wish to clear it of spots. On other days they were to wipe their faces with a scarlet cloth or with brown paper that is soft. Alas his English and Scottish companions surprisingly (considering their nationality) neglected to follow his advice about wine or ale, and died from the water. Boorde’s kindly nature was exasperated by their folly, for, as he says, ‘I had rather they should dye in England thorowe my industry, than they to kyll themselfe by the way’. At the end he sums up his objections to the pilgrimage to St. James: ‘I assure all the worlde that I had rather goe five times to Rome oute of England, than one to Compostella: by water it is no pain, but by land it is the greatest iurney that one Englyshman may go.’ 23

Part Two
A MODERN PILGRIM

CHAPTER 3

THE FOUR FRENCH ROADS OF ST. JAMES

    B EFORE starting out a pilgrim of St. James, it is necessary to choose the road. Our twelfth-century French fellow-pilgrim, Aymery Picaud of Poitou, whose advice we follow implicitly, tells us in his Guide, which is intercalated in the Codex Calixtinus, that there were in the twelfth century four roads through France into Spain by which the pilgrims travelled.
    The first road was called the Via Tolosana and was the usual way of approach to Spain for pilgrims travelling from Italy and Provence. It began at Arles with its avenue of tombs called les Alyscamps and the Cathedral of St. Trophyme and passed by St. Gilles, the centre of a famous pilgrimage, and on through the Camargue, the rough hills of the Cevennes, through Toulouse with its Cathedral of St. Sernin, which was a rival to Santiago de Compostela itself, and on by the Somport Pass into Spain.
    The second road, which was called Via Podiensis, was the most severe of all, and was patronized mainly by the Burgundians and the Germans. Aymery Picaud describes how its remote town of Le Puy, perched on its precipitous rocks, was celebrated for its miraculous Virgin, who was venerated even by the Moors from Córdoba. From the mountainous solitude of Aubrac the pilgrims visited the sanctuary of St. Foy of Conques and descended into the fertile lands of the Romanesque Abbey of Moissac, and from there on to Ostabat at the foot of the Pyrennees, whence they ascended into Spain by the Port de Cize. Ostabat was the frontier meeting-place of the second and the two following roads.
    The third road, which was called the Via Lemosina, crosses obliquely the central mountain ranges high above its forests and fertile slopes sacred to the memory of St. Mary Magdalen. The pilgrims crossed the Loire at Nevers and journeyed through the plains of Berry and halted at the shrines of St. Léonard, the redeemer of captives, whose chains festoon his tomb, and St. Martial of Limoges, who in the eleventh century was even included among the Apostles. From there the road undulates through the pleasant hills of Périgord and Chalosse to Ostabat and the Pyrenees.
    The fourth road, which was called the Via Turonensis, was the natural artery linking France and Spain, and followed roughly the line of the Paris-Madrid railway. By that road travelled the pilgrims from England, Flanders, Paris and its region, and its principal stages were at Orléans; Tours, where was the tomb of St. Martin, the Apostle of Gaul; Poitiers, the fief of St. Hilaire; Saintes, the Sanctuary of St. Eutrope; Blaye, where pilgrims knelt at the tomb of Roland the martyr, and Bordeaux, the resting-place of St. Seurin. From there the pilgrims wended their way through the monotonous desert of the Landes to Dax, Ostabat and the Pyrenees.
    I had made my three previous pilgrimages to Santiago, following the Via Tolosana once, and the Via Turonensis twice, and I originally intended