The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Europe. The merchants lived in the palaces built by the Jews above the river and the Church of San Salvador was constructed there. Estella was, in the thirteenth century, a city of merchants, and its fueros were proverbially liberal. So wealthy, in fact, was the city in the fifteenth century that King Charles the Noble introduced a law against the display of excessive luxury in dress, recommending the ladies of Estella to copy the austere example of the ancient Kings of Castile and Aragon and refrain from wearing gold and silver ornaments.
    After saluting the thirteenth-century statue of Our Lady of Roc-amadour, I made my way as a dutiful Jacobean pilgrim to the church of San Pedro la Rua, where there is an altar of St. James at which it was customary, even in the eleventh century, for pilgrims on their way to Compostella to leave an offering. Two wings are extant of the Romanesque cloister where Jacobean pilgrims were buried in the Middle Ages. As St. Andrew’s relic, which was brought by the bishop from Patras, the former’s place of martyrdom, is preserved in this church, the Saint is represented on the sculptured capitals in the cloister. On one he is conversing with devils; on another the artist follows the golden legend and we see the Apostle preaching and facing his judgment and martyrdom, when he said: “If I doubted the gibbet of the Cross, I would not preach the glory thereof.”
    One of the most striking works of art in Estella is the round-arched door of St. Miguel, which belongs to the thirteenth century, though the porch enclosing it belongs to the fourteenth or fifteenth century. The earliest figures are the eight apostles on either side of the arch. In the tympanum we see Christ amid the tetramorph, between Mary and St. John the Evangelist. The mandorla within which He sits is four-lobed and He holds a book marked with the chrism. In the archivolts are gathered all the hosts of blessed souls: six angels are musing and eighteen of the twenty-four Ancients are in pairs, holding their musical instruments.
    Before leaving Estella I revisited the church of El Santo Sepulcro, for the beauty of the Gothic portal quite dazzled me. The big sculptures of the side are older than the delicate figures in the tympanum, which are of the fourteenth century. Above is the Crucifixion, which

    shows Longinus blinded and another figure as well as Mary and John. Beneath that we see the sepulchre with soldiers sleeping, an angel sitting above, the three Marys, Christ bringing up the patriarchs from hell, and the Noli Me Tangere. On the lintel there is a very beautiful representation of the Last Supper with a tragically expressive Christ.
    From Estella I walked to the great Abbey of Irache, which is about three miles away, in the hills on the Road of St. James. According to Yepes, the historian of the Benedictines, who lived here, it was one of the most ancient monasteries of the Order and went back to Visigothic times. Here the King, Don Garcia of Nájera, built a celebrated hospice for pilgrims and endowed the abbey, which by the end of the Middle Ages could claim most of the land in Estella. The abbey was called after its most famous patron, St. Veremundo, the Saint of Charity, who not only founded monasteries, convents and churches but worked miracles. In the Renaissance its university ranked with Salamanca, Alcalá and Valladolid, and lasted until 1851. The church, which bears a striking resemblance to the cathedrals of Zamora and Salamanca, was built in the twelfth century. Lampérez thinks that the strange dome, which resembles that of Zamora, may be due to some Syrian architect who arrived like so many others by the basin of the Ebro to seek the Camino francés, or French Way, as it was called, to Compostella. * The doorway is of interest because of the capitals which have scenes from the life of St. Martin of Tours. It is noteworthy that St. Martin was a rival of St. James, even along the road to Compostella. There were many reasons why he should have made such a strong appeal to the pilgrims. For one thing, he was an international saint: born in Hungary, educated at Pavia, then a cavalry officer, he became celebrated for his benevolence to soldiers (even drunken ones), and his charity to the poor (as is proved by his gift of half his cloak to a beggar in Amiens on a wintry day). He was so modest and unassuming that he hid from those who came to escort him to Tours to