The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

be installed as bishop, and he thus became the first exponent of Nolo episcopari. The intelligent young Escolapian who showed me round described some of the ancient traditions of Irache. When a monk died, each of his brethren said seven Masses for his soul, and those who were not in Orders recited ten Psalters; on the day of his death they fed thirty poor men, and during the thirty following days of mourning they entertained a poor man in the place of the dead monk in the refectory, and gave him the dead monk’s portion. In later days, according to my informant, the poor man was given either food or money, but not invited into the refectory. This is an adaptation of the ancient pagan custom of speeding the parting soul with gifts of food and drink. The custom survives in Galicia, where at a wake the friends of the dead eat and drink, for every piece of bread they eat and every glass they drink means a sin the less in the load the deceased carried on his back into the next world.
    Logroño, where I next halted, has always been important in history as it is situated at the crossing of the Ebro, and it is the beginning of a new kingdom. Purchas, the English pilgrim, who went to Compostella in 1425, calls Logroño the last town in Navarre saying:

    There to the Gruon in Spayne,
    That is the last toune certaine,
    Of the Realme of Naveron.

    Laffi, the Italian traveller, calls it the first city of Castile. In the early days of the pilgrimage, in the beginning of the tenth century, when Sancho Garcés I of Navarre linked his forces with those of Ordoño II of León, the capital of the Kings of Navarre was Nájera which became the principal halting-place of the pilgrims. Logroño only rose to importance when in 1076 Alfonso VI incorporated Rioja in Castile, and Logroño remained the frontier city with an important bridge over the Ebro, which had to be defended. The bridge was built by St. Dominic of the Causeway (Santo Domingo de la Calzada), and rebuilt by his disciple St. John of the Nettles (San Juan de Ortega), in order to facilitate the journey of the pilgrims to Santiago. The bridge lasted until the nineteenth century with its twelve arches and three defensive towers, and was one of the finest examples of the twelfth and thirteenth century architecture. Even as late as 1829 every year the inhabitants of Logroño used to give public thanks to the Almighty for all the benefits which they had received from the architect saint, and they prayed to the image of the saint in a little shrine beside the bridge. *
    In the mediaeval Logroño there were two streets, the Rúa Vieja and the calle Mayor in which were the two celebrated churches of Santiago and of Santa María del Palacio. Afterwards came the two other churches of St. Bartolomé and St. María la Redonda. Many travellers refer to the lofty towers and steeples of the churches of the city. Enrique Cock, the guardsman, writing in the sixteenth century describes ‘the lofty belfries that make a fair view from afar’, * and Lope de Vega evidently had in mind the beautiful fourteenth-century spire of St. María del Palacio, when he wrote the lines:

    Esa ciudad que superior preside
    a estas amenidades,
    y con sus torres las estrellas mide,
    gloria de España, honor de las ciudades.

    That spire is undoubtedly the most beautiful in Spain and has been compared with that of Salisbury Cathedral. The most curious church is La Redonda, which, in addition to its fine late fifteenth-century Gothic has a kind of oval hall at one end, like a salon in a ducal palace, which gives a note of incongruity to the whole building. Far more interesting is the Church of St. Bartolomé of the thirteenth, but rebuilt in the fifteenth, century. The façade is crowded with dramatic carvings in grey stone of the history of St. Bartholomew, which follows the account given in the Golden Legend. St. Bartholomew, like St. Francis Xavier, was a great traveller and went to India where he healed the sick and destroyed the idols. Whereupon the king had the saint beaten with staves and flayed alive.
    As the day of my arrival in the city was Holy Saturday, I resolved to attend the Ritos de la Vigilia in the Church of Santa María de Palacio. As a rule the rites of Easter Saturday are celebrated in the early morning, but this year in Logroño, as an experiment, they were performed at night. In this way, after the Midnight Mass the bells of rejoicing were rung at the right moment instead of on Saturday