The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

sententiously, “some of them authenticated, and most of them not. None of them compare with the famous miracle that took place in my birthplace.”
    “Where was that?”
    “I was born and reared in the ancient town of Calanda, pertaining to the Order of Calatrava, in the Kingdom of Aragon, a town of noble traditions where they dance the most subtle and refined jotas in all Aragon.”
    “Do tell me about that famous miracle.”
    “I am very proud to possess a copy of the official process and solemn sentence recognizing the miracle, which was signed by the Archbishop of Saragossa and all the dignitaries of the city. So what I am going to tell you is no fantasy invented by beatas, but verdades como puños, yes, sir, truths that nobody can deny, for there is chapter and verse for all of them. This miracle happened three hundred years ago in 1640 to a youth of twenty-three years from Calanda, whose leg had been amputated by a surgeon in the hospital in Saragossa and buried in the cemetery. Two years and five months later in Calanda, one night in his own home, his leg was miraculously restored to him by Our Lady of the Pillar.”
    “What a fantastic miracle,” said I. “Was the new leg exactly the same as before?”
    “I am coming to that,” said the commercial traveller. “When the neighbours rushed in to see the miracle, the youth asked his parents to notice if the new leg was the same as the one that had been amputated, and, sure enough, it was the very same, for it had the scars and scratches he had received when roaming the mountains as a pilgrim.”
    “Was he able to walk as before his accident?”
    “In the first days he found it difficult to walk straight with the right leg, and it was of a violet colour, but after the third day he felt its natural warmth and he could move the toes normally. Gradually it grew to the thickness of the other, and he was able to run and jump and never felt any pain in it. Such, my friend is the great miracle of Calanda, which was authenticated by the Council of Trent, and on the 29th of March, 1940, we all celebrated in Calanda what I would be bold enough to call the greatest miracle of the world and one which is the most convincing proof of the resurrection of the body after death.”

CHAPTER 4

THE CRADLE OF THE KINGDOM OF ARAGON

    T HE soul o Jaca is the cathedral. It personifies the heroic spirit of the eleventh century, when King Ramiro I made Jaca the capital of the then tiny Kingdom of Aragon, and, as Gómez Moreno says, it embodies the aesthetic aspirations of the western Spaniards, whose romanticism sprang from it. Even outside Spain there is no other building of that period which can show such architectural and, especially, sculptural advance as Jaca Cathedral. * In Jaca indeed we feel as if the city had grown as an offshoot of the venerable cathedral and streets and houses were built of stone left over. Many of the houses are adorned with Romanesque mouldings and Gothic traceries which the master builders had cast aside. From the early times the city was called La Muy Noble Muy Leal y Vencedora. Its history must have seemed ancient even to the Middle Ages, for it had been a powerful stronghold in Roman days; it was the last to yield to the Moorish invader in 715 and the first to rise in support of Count Aznar and his followers, who strove to reconquer their land from the Moslem. Moreover, Jaca in the twelfth century had its own fueros which became the models for those of Castile, Navarre and other countries. The original Spanish words of the Fuero of Jaca are as follows: ‘Nos que valemos tanto como vos y podemos mas que vos, os elijimos rey con tal que gardareis nuestros fueros y libertades, y entre vos y nos uno que manda mas que vos: si no, no!’
    Here in Jaca in the twelfth century we discover the essential Aragonese spirit which is distinct from that of Castile. In Aragon the King and his Cortes were mutually dependent ‘for neither the King without the Kingdom, nor the Kingdom without the King, may themselves make a law of the land nor alter one agreed to, but all united must unite in making new laws and providing for the common good; and the more that is done without emplying force, cautel or deceit so much the more is it worthier, stabler and diviner’. * These words come from the Crónica de Aragon, which also has the following significant passage: ‘It is greater majesty to be a King of Kings than King of churls, for those who rule Kings are