The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

effect of horror, and recalls the mummified martyrs dressed up in satin and brocade with white gloves on their skeleton arms that I had seen in some of the Italian churches.
    According to tradition the sculptor of the crucifix was Nicodemus, and it was said that it had been found floating in the sea by a merchant from Burgos who was returning from Flanders, and who presented it to the convent of St. Augustine. 39 The first Jacobean pilgrim who mentions the crucifix, Baron Rozmital, in 1466, describes how the priests touch His limbs with the greatest reverence, singing and ringing all the bells. 40 Travellers in later days mention the hundreds of lighted lamps of gold and silver and the three curtains concealing the crucifix, which are drawn aside after the appropriate ritual.
    No sooner did I appear in the Espolón, which in the summer months is a paradise of thousands of children, reminding me of the frolicking multitude of Titian’s cupids in the Prado, than I came across a number of old friends. One wanted to drive me in his car to Santo Domingo de Silos and Covarrubias; another offered me a long siesta under an oak tree after a Lucullan banquet. As I was adamant against temptation they insisted upon toasting me in a neighbouring tavern, and, fortified by this stirrup-cup, I made my way to Las Huelgas and the Hospital del Rey, which lie about a mile out of the modern city, beyond the Leper’s Bridge (Puente de los Mulatos ) where a lazar-house existed in 1165.
    No monastery along the road so completely embodies the historical significance of the Jacobean pilgrimage in the Middle Ages as the royal abbey of Las Huelgas. It is, as a modern historian calls it, a precious album preserving the memories of epic deeds and the splendour of solemn ceremonies. From this abbey kings and knights entered the pages of history. *
    Here in 1219 Ferdinand the Saint, the grandson of the founders, Alfonso VIII and Eleanor of England, received the Order of Knighthood: here in the same century the Infante Don Fernando de la Cerda was married to Doña Blanca, daughter of St. Louis of France: here in 1331 was held the coronation of Alfonso XI, the victor of the Battle of Salado.
    Las Huelgas, which Miss King neatly translates ‘Les Loisirs’, was a country lodge of Alfonso VIII in the forest by the river Arlanzón, which in 1187 he gave to be a convent of Bernardine nuns, whose first abbess, Doña María Sol, came from Tulebras in Navarre. Although it was formally incorporated in 1199 in the Cistercian Order it was of no diocese but held obedience directly from the king who granted the convent complete exemption from taxes and the rights of free grazing m the royal pastures. These privileges the kings increased and eventually the abbess had power over sixty-four towns and could confer benefices, impose discipline upon secular clerics and receive instructions directly from the Holy Father. So eminent was she, in fact, that on one occasion Cardinal Aldobrandini is said to have exclaimed:
    “If the Pope were to take a wife, he could not find a fitter one than the Abbess of Las Huelgas.” * It is evident from the account given in the Crónica General of Alfonso X the Wise that Alfonso VIII wished to create a religious house which would outstrip in wealth and grandeur all other monasteries and convents. Thus Las Huelgas did not in anyway conform to the rules laid down by St. Bernard for the Cistercian Order, which had been waging a campaign in favour of simplicity, humility and poverty as against the pomp and splendour of the churches and monasteries of Cluny. St. Bernard had cried: “Vanity of vanities! The walls of the church glitter in a splendour but the poor are in rags: with the money of the needy it flatters the eyes of the rich!” *
    Las Huelgas was in complete antithesis to all other Cistercian convents, for it was destined to be the residence of queens and infantas and to minister to the glory of a pomp-loving monarch who wished to create a kind of feminine principate that would emulate the glories of the Cistercian Order. *
    In the foundation of the royal convent with all its splendour and ceremony it was the Queen rather than the King who was the dominating influence. Queen Eleanor was the daughter of Henry II Plantagenet, King of England, and sister of Richard Coeur de Lion. She was born in Gascony, the land of troubadours and jongleurs, and at fifteen years of age was married to Alfonso VIII in 1170 at Saragossa.
    She