The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

become a good scribe. If you are capable of understanding when you are, hold your tongue; that is my rule. A copyist cannot abide having a chatterbox by his side.”
    Sisebuto was a bishop but whenever he could he laid aside his episcopal pomp and spent much of the day and the night helping Velasco his chief scribe. Velasco was the head of the scriptorium and had been appointed with all the solemnity that was customary in ancient monasteries. *
    In the eleventh century life in a monastery was governed entirely by ritual and even the humblest appointments had their symbol. When an archdeacon was ordained, he was given a rod ( ferula ) and the abbot said to him: “Brother, here is your rod of office, which must be for you the emblem of your dignity and one instrument of authority.” When a sacristan was appointed he received a ring from the abbot, who said to him as he put it on his finger: “Be guardian of the holy vessels, porter in the porticoes and principal of the subdeacons.” And when a scribe had to be appointed to look after the books and the copyists, all the monks gathered in the sacristy, and the bishop handed the chief scribe the ring with keys for all the presses, saying to him: Be the custodian of all the manuscripts and master of the copyists.” *
    The most precious treasure in the monastery of San Millán, and one which attracted the Jacobean pilgrims from all over Europe in the Middle Ages is the casket of the eleventh century containing the relics of the Saint. It is Byzantine in style and of rough and primitive workmanship, but adorned with plaques of ivory on which are carved the various miracles of the Saint. Even in the seventh century San Braulio in his biography describes how pilgrims visited the tomb of San Millán and miraculously recovered their health, and San Eugenio, in his hymn De Basilica Sancti Aemiliani, refers to the multitude of blind, lame and leprous pilgrims who cured their bodies as well as their souls after praying before this casket. The carved ivories of the casket not only show his encounter with the devil, who is a fearsome monster with tail, claws, two horns like the satanic goat king of the Basque aquelarre, or Sabbat, and a witch’s face, but there are also country scenes such as we read of in the poems of Gonzalo de Berceo. It is interesting to note that the natives of Navarre and Rioja represented on these ivories are dressed in Scottish kilts, coarse woollen smocks and hairy sandals, thus confirming the accuracy of our friend Aymery Picaud in his Guide, which was written a century later.
    On my return to Berceo, I called in at the shop of my friend the apothecary and listened for an hour to his rhapsodic minstrelsy while I drank his Riojan wine and consumed a tasty cocido before continuing my tramp to Santo Domingo de la Calzada.

THE MYSTERY OF THE COCK AND HEN

    As the sun was shining and spring had returned, I tramped along the road gaily singing to myself a hymn to St. Dominic of the Causeway, the prince of Spanish roads. There is not a single peón caminero or road-mender in all the length and breadth of Spain who does not daily hymn the praises of that saint whose name deserves to be engraved in letters of gold, for he was the great protector of the kings and counts as well as the humble pilgrims who trudged along the Camino francés to Santiago in the eleventh century, when there were few roads and many forests. According to recent research he was born near Belorado on the Road of St. James and after having being rejected by the Benedictine Order he became a hermit and settled down by the pilgrim road where the forests were thickest, and where pilgrims ran most risk from highwaymen and wild beasts. Here he built a cell and chapel in the midst of the woods and bramble bushes on the banks of the River Oja. *
    After clearing the jungle he laid a causeway between Nájera and Redecilla and established hermitages where the pilgrims might halt and be refreshed before continuing their journey towards Burgos. Even today the road-mender one meets along the road pays tribute to the memory of St. Dominic who not only fed and clothed the poor but nursed the sick and buried those who died by the wayside. As he had been a shepherd in his childhood, he knew all the highways and byways of the region, and necessity drove him to become a bridge-builder as well as a road-maker. Nobody is a prophet in his own country, and St. Dominic had to overcome constant resistance on the