There are as many reasons for walking a Camino as there are pilgrims. Some walk for fun, for sport, for religious or spiritual reasons, after the loss of a loved one, to say thank you for something special or grace, after a change in professions, a change of life. (Very few pilgrims will tell you that they are walking to Santiago in order to venerate the remains of the apostle and pray at his tomb.)
When the Pilgrim's Office asks you this question they are only interested in four possible replies:
Religious. Spiritual. Cultural. Sporting.
They don't ask out of idle curiosity. T
his is one of the qualifying criteria when pilgrims arrive at the Pilgrims’Office in Santiago to collect the Compostela, a certificate
of completion awarded to pilgrims who walk the last 100km to Santiago or cycle
the last 200km.
Ticking two out of four will qualify, but if you don’t tick the
right box, you don’t get the certificate.
Many pilgrims know this so they tick the first two - or all four - just
to make sure. This probably inflates the statistics of pilgrims walking to Santiago for Religious reasons. For the first 5 months of this year (2012) the stats showed that Religious reasons for making the pilgrimage was about 41% whilst Religious and other was 53% and not religious was (5,52%)
Canon Genaro Cebrián reminds us that to be granted the Compostela "it is necessary to confess a religious faith. Pilgrims are not asked about their faith, if they are Catholics, Buddhists or Islamists. We only ask that the reason is religious", he added. "Therefore, atheists and agnostics can only aspire to an alternative “welcome” document." (I am a Buddhist, therefore a non-theist, so I don't ask for the Compostela although I did get one after my first walk in 2002)
Perhaps the Pilgrims’ Office should ask the question, “Are you Catholic?”
It would be interesting to know what
percentage of pilgrims who walk, ride or cycle to Santiago is Catholic because
this must impact on the person’s reasons for doing the pilgrimage, how they see
themselves – as a pilgrim or as a ‘religious tourist’ - and how they see other
pilgrims on the road.
Acts of penance, confession, revering relics, the power of the bones of Saints are all very Catholic and millions of Catholic pilgrims visit the tomb of Santiago every year arriving by plane, train, car, in church groups or on pilgrimage tours.
Every now and then, a returning walking ‘pilgrim’ (Catholic or Protestant –
we don’t know) will post a scathing attack on a Forum about his/her fellow
pilgrims because they did not fit his/her view of what a real pilgrim is or
should be. E.g: They should have walked
further, carried a heavier pack, not taken any transport or had any back-up
during the walk, not stayed in hotels, eaten frugally and so on.
In many cases those who have walked further, carried the heavier pack, not sent their packs ahead, and who have only stayed in pilgrim shelters, feel that their extra (self-imposed) hardship makes them a better pilgrim, more worthy of special treatment. The question they should ask themselves is, "In whose eyes?" Or, "In whose opinion?" The Santiago pilgrim's office doesn't offer extra Brownie points for phyiscal suffering or longer distances, nor do they care how your backpack reaches Santiago - as long as you can prove that have walked the last 100km or cycled the last 200km, and you claim to have walked for Religious reasons, you will get your certificate.
The narrow view of the mendicant, penitent, long suffering pilgrim is a hangover from the Middle Ages when Indulgences were introduced for the remission of sins and time spent in purgatory; when the longer and harder the journey, the more time you earned off purgatory. It no longer applies to those making pilgrimages today - and it never did apply to people who were not Catholic. Catholics can still earn an indulgence by visiting the tomb of Saint James but they don't have to walk or cycle there to do so.
An accusation often made is that pilgrims starting at the 100km mark
don’t deserve to be given a Compostela (even though this is the only
requirement imposed by the church to earn the certificate) and even if the
pilgrim is a local Catholic, fulfilling a pledge to walk to the tomb of his
patron saint with the intention of earning an indulgence by attending mass,
taking Holy Communion, saying confession and making a donation or doing a good
deed.
Non Catholic Christians (Protestants) don’t walk for rewards or believe in purgatory and the remissions of sins. Non-Catholics cannot earn indulgences or any other ‘get out of jail’ card as so many pilgrims seem to believe.The Compostela is a certificate, a lovely souvenir of your walk, but has no other function.
Essentially, el Camino de Santiago is a Catholic pilgrimage. Founded when a long hidden tomb, discovered
on a hillside in Compostela, was declared to contain the remains of the apostle
Saint James the Greater – Sant’Iago. For
the first three hundred years pilgrims to the tomb were mainly locals. Those
that visited the tomb did so out of curiosity and a desire to visit the body of
an Apostle of Jesus. Indulgences for
visiting shrines were only introduced two hundred years later.
‘The earliest record
of a plenary indulgence was Pope Urban 11’s declaration at the Council of
Clermont in 1095 that he remitted all penance incurred by the Crusaders [to the
Holy Land] who confessed their sins, considering participation in the crusade
equivalent to a complete penance.’ (Wiki)
Indulgences were first written by hand but after the invention of the printing press, were churned out in their thousands.
It would be another two hundred
years before indulgences were extended to the ordinary masses which would
result in a tsunami of superstitious people seeking out shrines that offered
the most generous indulgences for time off purgatory - some up to a thousand years.
(The Orthodox Church did not believe in
purgatory as the word does not appear in the Bible so they did not follow the
Catholic Church in this practice.)
The earliest documented account of indulgences granted to pilgrims to Santiago dates from the middle of the 13th C and we can presume that
until then, pilgrims walked to the tomb of Santiago with a sense of piety,
caritas and curiosity – not for a reward.
Their reward was arriving at the tomb, kneeling before it, praying to
the saint and to God, and living with a sense of achievement and satisfaction.
Once indulgences were introduced, a cruel pecking order soon devleoped
based on who was considered more worthy of remission of sins; those who walked
a longer way, those who walked in winter; those who wore a hairshirt and self flaggelated along the way, those who died on the road to
Santiago. Rewards for taking part in all
sorts of rituals in Santiago were introduced and a 13th c catalogue, recorded
by the British
pilgrim William Wey in 1456, lists these indulgences:
·
for
making the trip to Compostela - remission of a third of one’s sins.
·
if you
die on the road - total remission.
·
for
taking part in each religious procession in the city
of Compostela - 40 days’
indulgences; if the procession is led by a mitered bishop
- 200 days more. if the procession is
on July 24th
- 600 days.
·
hearing
mass at which an archbishop, dean or cardinal officiates - 200 days.
·
hearing
mass at the Monte de Gozo - 100
days.
If you visited all the shrines along the way to Santiago de
Compostela, you could collect indulgences for thousands of days off purgatory –
it was a Holy rewards program, a bit like the modern day Voyager Miles program. By the 14th C wealthy people could
buy their indulgences instead of making long, dangerous journeys to far off
shrines. They could pay proxy-pilgrims
to visit the shrines on their behalf. By
the 15th C people were urged to buy indulgence for their
deceased loved ones who were probably burning in purgatory because they had not
had the opportunity to buy or earn their own indulgences.
Vast sums of money were needed to finance the colossal reconstruction
of St Peter's in Rome which had started in 1506. “Professional ‘pardoners’ (quaestores in Latin) -
who were sent to collect alms for specific projects - practiced the
unrestricted sale of indulgences. Many of these quaestores unfortunately
exceeded Church teachings, whether in avarice or ignorant zeal, and promised
impossible rewards like salvation from eternal damnation in return for money.”
(Wiki)
In 1517 Martin Luther, a German monk and priest, called for
reforms in the Church, including a stop to the selling of indulgences, the veneration of the saints as a means of reaching God, and the use of
opulence and graven images in churches. He argued that the forgiveness of sins came
through Christ alone who died on the cross, and that one could not buy His grace with
money or earn forgiveness through long journeys to the graves of dead saints.
"All
pilgrimages should be done away with" he wrote in 1520 "for there is
no good in them, no commandment, but countless causes of sin and of contempt of
God's commandments. These pilgrimages are the reason for there being so many
beggars, who commit numberless villainies, so all
pilgrimages should be done away with”.
Christian pilgrimage was practically built on the precepts of
relics, reliquaries and remissions of sins, and the money brought into the
churches’ coffers by pilgrims was essential to the continued building and
maintenance of the Vatican and of the great pilgrimage churches which started in the 11th C and 12th C. The result of this challenge to the church
was a split in the Holy Roman Catholic Church that changed Europe and
Christianity forever.
Until the early 16th C almost all Christians were
Catholic. By 1555 Christianity was
divided between those who agreed with Martin Luther, known as Protestants (from
‘protestors’), and the Roman Catholic Church. Religious
wars resulted in the slaughter of Christians from both camps and hundreds of
monuments and churches were destroyed. Pilgrimage
became unpopular and was banned in some countries. Pilgrims were looked upon
with suspicion and were reviled as vagabonds and villains.
The pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela didn’t suffer quite the
same fate as other shrines in Europe but it became a more local and regional
destination rather than an international one. In
1589 the relics of St James were under threat and were moved and hidden to prevent a possible
attack by Frances Drake. Their exact whereabouts were forgotten for almost 300 years. It’s not surprising that the number
of pilgrims to Santiago dried up almost completely. With no body
to venerate it would be almost 400 years before they started to arrive in
any numbers.
‘The Spanish
Civil War of 1820–1823 further prevented pilgrims from visiting Santiago and,
in whole of the 19th century less than 20 000 pilgrims visited Santiago – most
of them from the areas
around Santiago, and the majority of those arrived in the Holy Years.’ Don Jose
Ignacio Diaz Perez
‘In the Holy Year
of 1867 just 40 pilgrims turned up for the celebrated mass on 25th July.’ Cordla Rabe
A search for the
relics was launched in 1879 and they were eventually found between the walls of
the apse. Five years later, in 1884, a
papal bull from
Pope Leo XIII declared them to be genuine (which silenced the sceptics) and there
was a growing revival in the number of visitors to the
shrine. T
wo years later, P. Fidel Fita rediscovered
the Codex Calixtinus, a copy of
the so-called Pilgrims’ Guide that never was, after it had been lost for centuries.
This was fortuitous timing as it spurred historic research into the pilgrimage
routes to Santiago just when interest in the shrine was being revived.
After the
re-discovery and authentication of the saint’s relics, pilgrim visitors started
flocking to Santiago once again and there was a steady rise in the numbers
especially in the Holy Years. But, the old trail routes remained overgrown and
forgotten and the number of people walking to Santiago was so insignificant
that no records were kept of their arrival.
In the last century there
were always a hardy few, nostalgic Catholics, medievalists or other
academics, who tried to find the old pilgrimage trails to Santiago and
reach it by means other than by car or bus.
In 1917 Georgiana Goddard King completed The Way of St James, a three-volume work tracing the pilgrimage
trails to the shrine of St James, based on her journeys on foot, donkey cart,
mule and other transportation.
Dr Walter
Starkie made the pilgrimage through France and Spain on foot, by car and bus four
times from 1924 to 1952. In his classic book The Road to Santiago he makes many references to the work of G.G.
King.
In Pilgrim Stories Nancy Frey wrote: “In the 1965 Holy Year the number of
‘visitor pilgrims’ more than doubled (2.5 million) compared with 700 000 in the
1954 Holy Year but walking to Santiago was still not an important criterion.” The journey was not important - but the destination was. This still
holds true for the other great Christian shrines like Jerusalem or Rome and the
more modern Marian shrines of Lourdes, Fatima and Guadalupe (the most visited
shrine after Rome).
An article in the New York Times
(dated 16 August 1965) about the 1965 Holy Year describes the atmosphere in the
cathedral as thousands of pilgrims, who arrived from all over Europe in buses
and cars, lined up to kiss the stone-sculptured head of the apostle at whose
tomb they had come to pray. The 50 miles of road between La Coruna and Santiago
was crowded with huge tourist buses and cars. (There is no mention of people having walked
there although locals must have done so.)
There are
no surviving records of pilgrims arriving in Santiago before 1970. The late Don
Jaime of Santiago’s cathedral found an old book kept by his predecessor,
which showed that in 1967 a total of 37 pilgrims arrived at the Cathedral’s pilgrim office and in 1971,
which was a Holy Year ,there were 491 pilgrims.
The revival
of ‘The Camino’ as we know it today only began in the late 1970s and 1980s with
a dedicated priest from O Cebreiro, a group
of hard working volunteers with a few tins of yellow paint, and the
formation of Camino interest groups. These events, coinciding with the
advent of Internet and the World Wide Web in the 1990s, saw the numbers of
people visiting Santiago explode with exponential
growth into the 21st century.
Millions of pilgrim visitors still journey to the tomb of St
James every year – an estimated 12 million in the
2010 Holy Year. We can presume that their motives were to venerate the relics
of St James the Greater. Unlike these pilgrim visitors, however, you
will rarely hear today’s walking or cycling pilgrims say ‘I am making a
pilgrimage to the tomb of St James of Compostela’. For the majority of walking pilgrims
today the Camino itself has become the destination – not St James’ relics in the Cathedral.
What is the
Protestant view today of pilgrimage?
"It's
been possible after several centuries to disentangle pilgrimage from the works
righteousness that Luther so disapproved of, so that now Protestants can go on
pilgrimages—though most often, they don't call them that—without any sense that
they are earning God's favor by doing so. For most, they are like study tours
or holidays with a spiritual dimension." [Christianitytoday.com)
I have
walked to Santiago six times and will do so again next year. I was raised a Protestant and was married in
the Lutheran church. For the past 35
years I lived my life according to Buddhist principles and have not experienced any conflict with the Buddhist way of life and my Christian upbringing. I do not walk the Camino for religious
reasons and according with Buddhist philosophy, it’s not the destination that counts, it’s the journey.
The Camino has become my alternate life and I can enjoy it at home. Besides memories, I live it in books, in DVDs,
in Cyber Space on forums, emails, with friends on Facebook, at workshops , hospitaleros course and pilgrim get-togethers etc. I sometimes think that I am like the Camino! What I mean by that is that although I walked
the pilgrimage for the first time in 2002 - I (Sil) became the pilgrimage – and
I am still on my own personal pilgrimage, processing the experiences of the
many walks I've done.
Walking it in different ways, on different routes, in different
seasons, with friends or alone, with my husband, with a group; as a 'real'
pilgrim carrying a pack and staying only in albergues, or with baggage transfers
and staying in Casas; serving as a hospitalera, writing about it, sharing at
workshops - all of this is beginning to come together as a whole experience and
not fragmented, different experiences.
My motivations for walking a Camino have changed from the first walk in 2002 when I did it for fun and as a physical challenge but although it has become a deeply spiritual journey, a I am not a Saint James pilgrim in the accepeted sense and still don't qualify for the Compostela.
Even though you have to look down at the path to see where you put
your feet, when walking through a village look up every now and then and you
will see dozens of charming weather vanes on top of churches and private homes.
A 9th
Century, a pope decreed that all churches display a cockerel as a reminder to
parishioners of the Last Supper when Jesus told Peter that he would deny Him
three times before the cock crowed in the morning. (Luke 22:34). These
eventually evolved into weathercocks and weather vanes. 
The Bayeux
tapestry, dating to the 11th Century, depicts a weathercock being
attached to spire of Westminster Abbey. 
When looking at a church, cathedral or other monument be aware of
the possibility that it might have an ancient sundial, high up, usually on the
South wall.
As Romanesque architecture developed into Gothic, the Way of St James facilitated the movement of builders and architects
between France and northern Spain. Masons from all over Europe worked on the
churches, cathedrals and monasteries constructed on the pilgrimage roads to
Santiago de Compostela. One theory on
the enigmatic symbol is that it represents a hexagram or Hexad,
sometimes known as a Thunder Stone. As
James the Greater was known as the Son of Thunder this theory suggests that the
symbol could represent San Tiago.
Another theory links it to the legend of Charlemagne and Roland.
