The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

many women are always praying at the tomb of the Saint?” said the benevolent priest winking at me.
    “They want a son.”
    “St. John of the Nettles, too, is the Saint and Protector of little children, and the reason why the great Queen Isabella the Catholic came here to pray for a son was that in 1450, when the tomb of the Saint was opened by the Prior of the Augustine fathers, Fray Gómez de Carrión, a swarm of white bees with fragrant odour rose from it and hovered above the tomb. As the ancient philosopher Porphyrins said, the souls of those who flit down on earth from the moon do so in the form of bees. It was said that the miraculous white bees of St. John of the Nettles were the unborn souls of children stored away by the Saint in readiness for the women who came to pray for a man-child.”
    “It is a very ancient belief, Father, for I have been told by Indians that in their country the bee is the symbol of the soul, the hive is the body and the fragrant honey a happy life. The ancient Greeks linked the bees with Zeus, the king of the gods, and fertility, and on the funerary vases the soul is represented as leaving the body in the form of a bee. The Romans too, had the same belief, for in the Georgies Virgil makes them rise from the putrified entrails of an ox”.
    “Diós mio! We have had too many pagan quotations,” said the parish priest, raising his hands to his head. “It suffices to know that the women who came here to pray at the tomb of our Saint for a son imagine that they will return to their homes with one of those white bees which will become the soul and body of the child they hope to have. And the great Catholic poet Dante knew of the white bees for in the Paradiso he describes the swarm of white bees humming and hovering around the ‘White Rose’:

    Le fácce tutte avean di fiamma viva,
    a l’ali de oro, e l’altro tanto bianco
    che nulla neve a quel termine arriva.

    The shrine of San Juan de Ortega stands in the chapel which he built in thanksgiving to St. Nicholas, but it was rebuilt by Isabella the Catholic in 1474 under a Gothic canopy surrounded by a wrought-iron grille. Around the base of the cenotaph some of the miracles of the Saint are carved, recalling those around the tomb of St. Dominic of the Causeway. The parish priest pointed to one of the carvings, saying: “See what has happened to the robbers around these parts who stole the Saint’s cows. They were caught in a fog and wandered about all night helplessly, and in the morning found themselves, cows and all, at the door of the Saint’s hermitage. You, too, were caught last night in the same fog of the district, but at least you turned up at my door with an easy conscience!”
    Another carving represents St. Nicholas appearing to San Juan de Ortega in a ship at sea; a third delightfully naïve subject shows the Saint reviving a man who had fallen asleep by the roadside and been run over by a loaded cart. The parish priest then showed me precious relics of the Saint, including his will, which was drawn up in 1152 and states how he had built the church of St. Nicholas for the protection of paupers on the Road of St. James, as these were infested with robbers who by night and by day killed Jacobean pilgrims and plundered many of them.
    As we walked up and down the grass plot under the dark trees near the church, the priest told me the story of the ivory crucifix which King Alfonso VII gave the Saint. He cherished it so much that he carried it about with him, often conversing with it, and one day when he had no acolyte to assist at Mass, the crucifix responded until the end of Mass.
    “After his death,” said the priest, “the village was called San Juan de Ortega from the thirteenth century onwards and people came from foreign countries because of the number of miracles that took place at his tomb. One of the well-known miracles happened to one of your own countrymen when an Irish married couple went on a pilgrimage to Santiago, bringing with them their little seven-year-old son who was mute from birth. They held the child near the tomb on which some women had thrown apples. As soon as the child saw the apples he began to speak, saying he wanted to eat them. But, alas, my friend, those great days have passed, though up to the eighteenth century this village with its church and hospital was thronged with pilgrims and its hospitality was proverbial, for pilgrims arrived at every hour of the day and night. Today