The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

did obtain.

    Robert I, ‘the Bruce’, King of Scotland, before his death begged Sir James Douglas to carry his heart to Palestine in accomplishment of his unfulfilled vow to visit the Holy Sepulchre, and Douglas carrying the embalmed heart in a silver casket went by way of Compostella because ‘the Bruce’ had such great devotion to Santiago. And when in the following year 1330 the Black Douglas fell fighting the Moors, the heart of Brace, recovered by Sir William Keith in 1332, was taken back to Scotland and buried in Melrose Abbey. *
    Much of English as well as French history, is connected with the Jacobean road and the shrine of the Apostle, and we have only to turn over the pages of the Paston Letters with their vivid account of life in Norfolk during the fifteenth century to meet many a noble Jacobean pilgrim, for in those days so passionately devoted were the people of England to Saint James that representations of his shrine would be erected in the streets and churches, in order that those who could not make the long pilgrimage should perform on July 25 their devotions before the Saint’s shrine in their own parish. This custom lasted for hundreds of years, for children used on the day of the Apostle to prepare a little grotto, light it up with a candle and ask for a contribution, just as their ancestors did in times past for the larger shrines that were erected in the streets and in the churches. These grottoes or piles were built by the children of oyster-shells cast out of the taverns or fish shops, and passers-by were bidden: ‘pray remember the grotto’. With the pennies they received the children bought the candles and kept them burning at night in celebration of the Saint.
    From the Paston Letters we learn of the pilgrimage of the noble and puissant lord, Anthony, Earl Rivers, brother of Elizabeth Woodville, the wife of Edward IV, who was 'patron and associate of William Caxton. On his voyage of pilgrimage to Galicia he beguiled the time on board by reading in French the Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers, which he translated, and it was published in 1477 by Caxton—the first book printed in England.
    The Capture of Granada and the fall of Moorish power in Spain marks thfe apogee of Saint James’s influence, for at that time greater numbers than ever before flocked to Compostella, and Ferdinand and Isabella devoted funds, raised on the occasion of the capture of Granada, to the erection of the Royal Hospital close to the Cathedral of Santiago, where pilgrims might find shelter and the sick be nursed.
    Saint James the Moor-slayer, after inspiring the Spaniards to fulfil the national dream of eight centuries of struggles against the Moors, now crosses the ocean, riding in the clouds above the Spanish galleons of the Conquistadores. The war cry ‘Santiago y a ellos’ resounds in the battles against the Indians and Bernal Diaz the chronicler, in his description of the Battle of Otumba, describes how the Apostle was seen in the battle on horseback driving back the enemy.
    Even when the cult of Saint James began, under the attacks of Erasmus and Luther, to decline, many striking personalities enriched world literature by their memories of the pilgrimage. The charm of their accounts lies in their truthfulness and integrity as travellers.
    Some, like the Bohemian Baron Rozmital, journeyed with large suites, like wealthy globe-trotters making the ‘Grand Tour’, and declared that they were only interested in tournaments, jousting and meeting the great; others, like the Jerónimo Münzer from Nuremberg, went to Compostella solely in order to verify the miraculous transformation of Spain under the Catholic monarchs, and when he attended a funeral in the Basilica of the Apostle was shocked at the superstitious details in the ceremony, the money-grabbing of the clerics and the hubbub in the Cathedral, which was so great that he would have believed himself at a fair.
    Prince of all travellers in those years, however, was the inimitable Andrew Boorde, who certainly deserves the nickname of ‘Merry Andrew’, for never has there existed a more characteristic English traveller or a more charming companion. He is the ‘beau ideal’ of travellers, for he knew when to be an ascetic and when to enjoy the good things of life. He drank water three days a week, wore constantly a hair-shirt next his skin, hung his shroud or burial sheet at the head of his bed, and yet recommended pilgrims to have a good