peregrinar-metafora
TRANSCRIPT
METAPHORS PILGRIMS LIVE BY:
METAPHOR SYSTEMS OF THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE
by
Todd N. Valdini
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of
The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts
Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, Florida
May 2007
Copyright by Todd N. Valdini 2007
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METAPHORS PILGRIMS LIVE BY: METAPHOR SYSTEMS OF THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE
by
Todd N. Valdini
This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate’s thesis advisor, Dr. Prisca Augustyn, Department of Languages and Linguistics, and has been approved by the members of his supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE: ______________________________ Thesis Advisor
______________________________ ______________________________ ____________________________________ Chairperson, Department of Languages and Linguistics ____________________________________ Interim Dean, The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts & Letters ____________________________________ __________________ Interim Dean, Graduate Studies and Programs Date
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Acknowledgements
I would like to extend my gratitude to my thesis committee for their thoughtful
and comprehensive reflections in the writing of this work: Dr. John Childrey for his
proficiency in metaphor in literature; Dr. Martha Mendoza for her expertise in metaphor
theory; and Dr. Prisca Augustyn who chaired this committee and put in additional hours
to help me put all the pieces together.
I am also deeply indebted to the unofficial fourth member of this committee and
personal political advisor Dr. Benjamin Goldman of the University of Syracuse: My first
and final line of defense.
Finally, I am truly grateful to Dr. Myriam Ruthenberg for her encouragement and
sage conversation over the past four years. Thank you for helping me navigate the
labyrinth.
This pilgrimage would not have been possible without all of your kind assistance.
Ultreya!
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ABSTRACT
Author: Todd N. Valdini
Title: METAPHORS PILGRIMS LIVE BY: METAPHOR SYSTEMS OF THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE
Institution: Florida Atlantic University
Thesis Advisor: Dr. Prisca Augustyn
Degree: Masters of Arts
Year: 2007
Pilgrimages have produced volumes of textual reflections by pilgrims and
outside observers. These writers represent a wide variety of disciplines from travel
theorists to travel bloggers, medieval historians to modern anthropologists and
sociologists. The findings of this study reveal two major complex metaphor systems:
one based on a series of interlaced existential metaphors orbiting the nuclear LIFE IS A
JOURNEY and the other stemming from a network of economic metaphors of MORAL
ACCOUNTING. The symbolic exchange embedded in these metaphorical systems
reflects the human desire for a meaningful and worthy life. These mutually
supporting complex systems of metaphor reveal an existential connection between the
medieval pilgrim and the contemporary tourist.
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This labor is dedicated to
Marcie and Al, my parents, who saw me off on the right path,
Jessica, my wife, who walks at my side always, and
Sarah, my friend, whom I’ll met again at journey’s end.
Table of Contents
Page
Epigraph ……………………………………………………………………………… ix
Author’s Note ………………………………………………………………………… 1
Limitations and Further Research ………………………………………………... 2
Chapter One: The Why of Saint James ………………………………………………. 4
The Way of Saint James …………………………………………………………. 5
The Way Yesterday …………………………………………………………... 7
Symbolism …………………………………………………………………… 9
The Way Today ………………………………………………………………. 11
The Great Age of Pilgrimage …………………………………………………….. 14
The Literary Tradition of Pilgrimage …………………………………………….. 16
Pilgrim: Universal Traveler ……………………………………………………… 18
Chapter Two: Life is a Pilgrimage …………………………………………………… 21
LIFE IS A JOURNEY ………………………………………………………………… 23
(Re)Birth ……………………………………………………………………… 28
Death and Afterlife …………………………………………………………… 31
LIFE IS A PLAY ……………………………………………………………………. 33
PILGRIMAGE IS NURTURE …………………………………………………………. 39
The Pilgrim’s Decision …………………………………………………………... 44
Pilgrimage as Hero’s Quest ……………………………………………………… 49
Implications and Conclusions …………………………………………….……… 53
Chapter Three: The Economics of Pilgrimage ………………………………….….... 54
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MORAL ACCOUNTING …………………………………………………………….. 55
The Corporate Structure of the Catholic Church ………………………………… 59
Sin and Penance ………………………………………………………………….. 61
Symbolic Exchange ……………………………………………………………… 63
Pilgrimage as Penance …………………………………………………………… 65
The Medieval Pilgrimage Business ……………………………………………… 71
The Contemporary Pilgrimage Business ………………………………………… 72
PILGRIMAGE IS A COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE …….. ……………………………… 75
A PILGRIMAGE IS A JOB …………………….………………………………… 76
A PILGRIM IS A LABORER …………………………………………………….. 78
A PILGRIMAGE IS WORK PRODUCT …………………………………………… 81
A PILGRIMAGE IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY ………………………………… 85
Implications and Conclusions ……………………………………………………. 89
Chapter 4: Pilgrims and Tourists …………………………………………………….. 92
The Turning Point in Pilgrimage ………………………………………………… 93
Touri-grinos …………………………………………………………………….... 94
Rites of Passage ………………………………………………………………….. 96
Liminality …………………………………………………………………… . 96
Communitas: the Other-hood of Pilgrimage …………………………………. 98
Tourism as a Rite of Passage ………………………………………………… 99
Pilgrim’s Return and Symbolic Exchange ……………………………………….. 100
Pilgrim or Tourist? ……………………………………………………………….. 102
Destinations ………………………………………………………………………. 103
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Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………. 104
Appendixes …………………………………………………………………………… 115
Appendix A: The French Routes of the Way of Saint James ……………………. 115
Appendix B: The Spanish Route of the Way of Saint James ……………………. 116
Appendix C: The Scallop Shell and the Way of Saint James ……………………. 117
Appendix D: Composite History of the Cult of Santiago de Compostela ……….. 119
Appendix E: Numbers of Pilgrims Gaining their Compostelas (1986-2006) ……. 121
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“The Road to Compostela is nothing but a metaphor.”
William Melczer, medievalist and Santiago pilgrim (1993, p. 23)
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Author’s Note
The pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela—also known in English as The Way
of Saint James—is one of many Christian pilgrimages. Its appropriateness to the current
linguistic study is due to its evolution from a religious ritual to a secular one, which is in
and of itself a metaphor for the secularization of life as such. Currently, the wealth of
professional and non-professional writing about the experience provides a deep pool of
linguistic evidence suitable for a scholarly evaluation of its metaphoric structures.
Because of the nature of this Christian pilgrimage, many of the writing samples available
are of a religious disposition. This study is based on the techniques of cognitive science
as developed by Lakoff (1994, 1995), Lakoff & Johnson (1980, 1999), Lakoff & Turner
(1989), Johnson (1987), and Turner (1991, 1997) to provide a better understanding of the
conceptual framework that lies beneath the thinking of contemporary pilgrims on the
Road to Santiago. Specifically, I have described the mental concepts that constitute the
writings produced by, for, and about the modern English-speaking pilgrims who
voluntarily take part in this thousand mile journey in the traditionally accepted modes
(i.e. by foot, bicycle, or horseback).
For the purposes of this discussion and to avoid confusion I will primarily be
looking at evidence from modern English speaking pilgrims on the Road to Santiago,
pilgrims who write from a non-religious—but often spiritual—point of view. The nature
of this particular pilgrimage has changed over time, from primarily religious to largely
secular. As such, the language used by these pilgrims lends itself to a diachronic
examination of a fundamental metaphorical system.
1
Additionally, the proliferation of web logs or “blogs” and online message boards
on the Internet has also increased the amount of material from which to cull linguistic
evidence. This material, which is frequently produced by inexperienced writers, has been
extremely helpful in identifying the most recent reflections on Camino experiences and
provides an up-to-date record of the metaphors by which English-speaking pilgrims
structure their experiences.
Different motivations for partaking in pilgrimage will reveal different underlying
metaphors. Because of the myriad interpretations of pilgrimage, we will have just as
many metaphors. Kittay (1987, p. 20) reminds us that “… metaphors are always relative
to a set of beliefs and to linguistic usage which may change through time and place – they
are relative to a given linguistic community.” While modes and motivations attached to
the journey may change slightly on the surface, the saliency of these English metaphors
remains fairly well intact. The overt or novel usages of pilgrimage metaphors has shifted
over time to become far more implicit and embedded in the language.
Limitations and Further Research
The institution of Christian pilgrimage has produced a tremendous amount of
linguistic material from which I might have chosen myriad additional examples of the
metaphors discussed herein. The material studied and represented here—although not
nearly exhaustive—paints a generally accurate picture of the major metaphors that
support the pilgrimage concept.
Additionally, not having a multi-language repertoire is a major limitation but not
a detrimental one. The Way is an international phenomenon—indeed it would seem to
predate the very idea of nations—and as such it has been interpreted and discussed in
2
various linguistic/cultural permutations. In the Holy Year of 2004, Spanish pilgrims
represented 75.8% of all pilgrims while the next three highest nation groups comprised
less than 5% each (Italy 4.2%; Germany 3.7%, France 3.6%) (Archbishop of Santiago de
Compostela, 2005, Peregrinos distribuidos según…). This suggests that there is
undoubtedly a deeper resource pool from which to draw for a more complete picture of
the pilgrimage. I think comparing the various other metaphor systems used in other
languages to describe the Western institution of pilgrimage would be another direction
that the current study could take. But that would exceed by far the limitations of this
study.
The sources in this study are therefore limited to those of the English language.
This is not a detriment to the current study because I am only discussing the cultural
phenomenon of pilgrimage as interpreted by an English-speaking culture which has been
profoundly impacted in its own right by the Way: “There are roughly four hundred
churches in England consecrated to St James and of these three-quarters were built before
the seventeenth century and would therefore have connections with the cult of St James at
Compostela” (Layton, 1976, p. 20).
Finally, I have at times used non-English material where appropriate, not to
expand the argument cross-culturally per se, but rather as a supplement to the themes. I
have tried to use the original texts when available and tendered professional translations
in footnotes. When unavailable, I have made my best effort to translate the material on
my own. Any mistakes to this end are my own.
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Chapter One: The Why of Saint James
“What is not a journey?”
Tzvetan Todorov, philosopher (1996, p. 287)
In the summer of 2006, my wife Jessica and I spent our honeymoon walking from
Le Puy-en-Velay, France to Finisterre, Spain1, an expedition of over a thousand miles.
We followed the same route traveled by countless pilgrims since the Bishop of Le Puy set
out on that same road in 950: The Way of Saint James. Like many modern day pilgrims,
our reasons for pursuing such an undertaking were numerous. We saw the pilgrimage at
once as an epic challenge to overcome together as a team, a relatively cheap holiday in
Europe, a long distance church crawl, a living history book, a strenuous physical
adventure, a chance to commune with nature, and a promise of spiritual fulfillment. Our
journey was each of these things to some degree and much more. The experience has
affected the way we look at the world and inspired us to apply our pilgrimage lessons to
it.
A refrain often heard by pilgrims of the Way is “it is not the destination, but the
journey that matters most”. The focal point of importance for other Christian pilgrimages
like Fátima or Lourdes is the shrine of devotion, the end point. The Way, by comparison,
unfolds its rewards over the course of the pilgrimage and beyond. Fellow veteran
pilgrims told us that the full purport of our endeavor would not be immediately apparent
upon our arrival at Santiago. Not until we had returned to our lives back home, they
informed, would the impact of our accomplishment have real significance. Indeed, over
1 Officially, the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela ends in that city, but many sojourners who have come that far will travel the additional 100 kilometers, usually by bus, to the coast at Cape Finisterre for symbolic reasons (explained below). We continued on foot for the extra three days to complete the journey the way we had begun it.
4
the distance of time and space a gestalt of our feat has emerged from storytelling and
reflection. Consequently, we continue to develop a deeper understanding of the
magnitude of this endeavor and of the impact it has had on the rest of our lives. We are
changed people for having made the pilgrimage to Santiago and yet we did not
necessarily seek this outcome.
It was as evident then as it is now that a pilgrimage is a de facto investment as
well as a metaphorical one. As with any other significant financial investment, I
wondered, “What has been our return on this pilgrimage?” Naturally, the boons of the
Way must come from the lessons learned and experiences gained from it. These rewards,
though, were not earned without paying the tolls of the road: the route requires an
extended span of time to complete (Jessica and I took seventy five days to reach the coast
of Spain); the constant, daily walking takes a tremendous physical toll on the pilgrim’s
body (aside from the horrendous blisters endured by us both, Jessica suffered tendonitis
in both feet twice and I lost nearly eighteen percent of my normal body weight); and for
the pilgrim of modest means, the financial strain can be more burden than one can bear
(we twice had money wired from family members in order to finish the arduous journey).
We are now returned pilgrims; our wounds have since healed, our inner clocks have
syncopated again with the rest of the world, and our families have been repaid. Since our
return we have gradually realized the return on our investment. The gift of the Way is the
discovery that you are not alone on this journey.
The Way of Saint James
The Way of Saint James—hereafter referred to as ‘the Way’—is known variously
throughout Europe as O Camiño de Santiago (Galician), Donejakue Bidea (Basque),
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Camí de Sant Jaume de Galícia (Catalan), Der Jakobsweg (German), O Caminho de
Santiago (Portuguese), Slí Naomh Shéamais (Irish); most commonly, it is referred to as
Le Chemin de Saint Jacques (French) and El Camino de Santiago (Spanish) since its
main footpaths converge in these latter countries. This linguistic variation is testament to
the route’s diverse popularity and reflective of the reverence held by Europeans, who
have preserved it as a continental treasure. The United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Centre (2007) added the Way to
its World Heritage List first in 1993 with the Spanish side and later included the French
routes in 1998. UNESCO (2007) identifies four major historical origination points in
France—Paris, Vézelay, Le Puy, and Arles—each fed by a number of subsidiary routes
all converging on the southern side of the Pyrenees and eventually terminating at
Santiago de Compostela in the northwest corner of the Iberian peninsula (see Appendixes
A and B).
Though the Way can claim noteworthy Santiago pilgrims of old—including
Charlemagne2, Saint Francis of Assisi, Isabella of Castile and, more recently, Pope John
Paul XXIII in 1989—the pilgrimage owes its enduring charm to its democratic appeal to
all travelers, not just those with Christian beliefs or the financial means to make the trek.
The accessibility of the Way is described by Roddis, et al. (1999): “Medieval pilgrims
simply left home and picked up the closest and safest route to Santiago de Compostela”
(p. 380). Though non-European pilgrims typically have to fly to their embarkation point,
pilgrims living on the continent still travel in the same mode as their medieval
predecessors.
2 Though apocryphal, since he would have been impossibly old by the time this Christian pilgrimage had been established proper, Charlemagne’s supposed pilgrimage to Santiago has become so much a part of pilgrim lore that his inclusion here and elsewhere is almost obligatory.
6
The Way Yesterday
The medieval Christian pilgrim had three main destination choices for his or her
peregrination: Jerusalem, Rome and Compostela, Spain. Each of the pilgrim roads
offered a series of blessings and indulgences to those who traveled their length: the
pilgrim who reached Santiago de Compostela, for instance, could reduce his or her time
in Purgatory by half. Those brave souls who endeavored to travel to the Holy Sepulcher
of Christ in Jerusalem were referred to as ‘palmers’ since they carried palm branches to
identify themselves as pilgrims. Those who traveled to Rome to visit the tomb of Saint
Peter were referred to as ‘wanderers’ or ‘romeos’ and identified themselves iconically
with the Cross. Pilgrims to Compostela wore scallop shells (see Appendix C) as their
signifying mark but were not referred to as anything other than ‘pilgrims’. Dante
Alighieri (ca. 1293) is thought to have been the first to define a pilgrim, doing so—it
appears—based on an assessment of quantity over quality: “[…] chiamansi peregrini in
quanto vanno a la casa di Galizia, però che la sepultura di sa' Iacopo fue più lontana de la
sua patria che d'alcuno altro apostolo3”. Dante’s insinuation that the Saint James pilgrim
is a sort of archetype of the practice may be an early indication of the mass popularity
and democratic appeal of the Way given that the title bestowed on this particular traveler
(simply pilgrim) is unmarked and linguistically paradigmatic.
Of the three pilgrimages, the first was—and still is arguably—the most important
in the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish traditions: “The Jerusalem pilgrimage was the
pilgrimage of pilgrimages; others were types and shadows of it, for Jerusalem was at the
center of the world (it is regularly pictured there in maps of the period) […] and it was a
3 […] they are called pilgrims if they go to the shrine of Saint James in Galicia, since the sepulchre of Saint James was further away from his country than any other apostle […] (Kline (Trans.), 2001)
7
symbol of the Heavenly City” (Howard, 1980, p. 12). However, outside historical
forces affected the popularity of the Jerusalem pilgrimage for would-be Christian
pilgrims setting out from Northern Europe. Principal among these was Muslim
occupation of the Holy Land. The overland route to the East was long, arduous and
controlled by Islamic empires that had long been at violent odds with the Europeans.
After the collapse of the Mongolian Empire and the rise of the aggressive and
expansionist Ottoman Empire, land trade routes which pilgrim roads often followed were
un-policed and became treacherous, limiting the possibilities for Europeans wanting to
participate in the popular pilgrimage.
Ironically, like the land eastward to Jerusalem, the Iberian Peninsula was also the
location of territorial disputes between Muslim and Christian forces. But the Catholic
Church was able to turn this to their advantage, stoking the popularity of the Way by
propagandizing the road as a crucial aspect of the Reconquest of Spain. Mullins (1974)
indicates that the Church was indebted to none other than their “infidel” enemy for the
idea behind this successful public relations campaign: “It was Islam that taught European
rulers the notion of a ‘holy war’, and taught European churchmen the binding power of
moral propaganda. Both were central to the spirit of pilgrimage” (p. 32). The
implementation of this campaign involved several historical revisions. Despite Saint
James’s legacy of peace—he was Christ’s apostle and is believed later to have
evangelized in Iberia4—the Church used the Saint as a rallying symbol for their ongoing
4 Though there does not seem to be any debate over the fact that Saint James the Greater did actually evangelize Christ’s teachings in the years after his mentor’s crucifixion (an avocation for which James himself was martyred later), the evidence supporting whether or not he did his missionary work in the area now known as Spain is murky at best: “Incredulous historians over the past centuries have doubted that it was physically possible for St James ever to have got to Spain, and what is surprising is that the learned St Isidore of Seville (seventh century) twice makes mention of the Apostle without commenting that he had any particular affinity with Spain” (Layton, 1976, pp. 28-9).
8
war with the Muslim interlopers. Even today in Spain there remains statuary of Santiago
Matamoros (Saint James as ‘Moor Slayer’), usually mounted upon a charger, wielding a
sword, and often trampling dark-skinned figures. The Archbishops who ruled
Compostela used the pilgrimage as a tool to raise arms and money to help fight the
Muslims as well as to promote their own interests. Their disinformation crusade was
hugely successful, resulting in the arrival of millions of devoted pilgrims—and more
importantly their money—from every corner of Christian Europe.
Symbolism
The Way is characterized by its wealth of natural symbols. The physical
symbolism of the Way invokes a mythological aura that certainly made it of particular
interest to its pagan purveyors. The sheer age of this archaic road alone lends itself to the
sphere of epic mythology. The road pre-dates the Christian inception of the pilgrimage;
some have suggested that it was in use even before Roman rule had spread to the
peninsula:
The kings of Spain had built a highway to assist pilgrims in the twelfth century:
but the road was there already. The Romans had built a military road as a sign
and condition of their domination: but the road was there already. Paleolithic man
had moved along it, and the stations of a living devotion today, he had frequented;
there he made his magic, and felt vague awe before the abyss of an antiquity
unfathomed (King, 1920, p. 22).
The conjecture concerning the road’s ancient existence—even Paleolithic existence, as
the author proposes—suggests that the Way is a suitable backdrop for the symbolic
associations between a pilgrimage journey and a life journey. The Way, according to
9
King (1920), appears to have been a source of existential meditation even before the
Church appropriated it for its own ritual.
Indeed, there is archeological information that suggests the Way was used
similarly by the Celts who settled the area5. The tradition, still followed by many, of
continuing the pilgrimage past Santiago and on to the westernmost tip of Cape Finisterre
is said to recreate a Celtic death journey. Finisterre translates roughly as “lands end” or
“end of the world”, which to the pagan and medieval mind, it most certainly was. The
nearby Costa de Morta (“Coast of Death”) also adds to the eschatological scenario. The
geographic actuality of the end of the road makes this mandatory termination of the
pilgrimage a more fitting resolve to the adventure.
The symbolism associated with the Way is not only the ground below the pilgrims’ feet,
but also in the sky above their heads. The nighttime sky is responsible for providing
orientation for the pilgrimage to Santiago. The Way is also often called “the Milky Way”
because the pilgrims’ course was supposedly plotted there (Bignami, 2004, p. 1979).
Other legends have suggested that the star configuration is the dust kicked up by the feet
of years of Santiago pilgrims. The Spanish refer to the Milky Way as “el camino de
Santiago”. This celestial corollary has inspired travelogue titles like Edward E. Stanton’s
(1994) Road of stars to Santiago. Also, incidentally, the directional orientation of the
Way, with its eastern originations and western destination, satisfies a symbolic aspect of
the pilgrimage. For all of its paths originating in Northern and Eastern Europe, the
direction of movement for the pilgrim road is an east-to-west orientation. Since this is
also the same physical progression of the path of the Sun–as we perceive it from Earth–
the parallels between this particular pilgrimage and the passage of time are quite strong. 5 The region of Galica most likely derives its name from ‘Gael’, someone from the Gaelic race, a Celt.
10
Further supporting the time symbolism associated with the Way is the fact that
European pilgrims, even today, initiate their journeys from the countries of their birth and
travel to Saint James’s final resting place, his tomb. The naturally occurring symbolism
of the Way provides the basis the pervasive conceptualization LIFE IS A JOURNEY, a
metaphor which I will explore in further detail in the following chapter.
Comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell (1986) suggests natural and
permanent metaphors of the kind associate with the Way can be particularly helpful in
sustaining the vitality of a tradition: “The life of a mythology derives from the vitality of
its symbols as metaphors delivering, not simply the idea, but a sense of actual
participation in such a realization of transcendence, infinity, and abundance …” (p. xx).
Pilgrim and novelist Paolo Coelho (1986) recalls his own meditation on the mythological
connection:
I was going to relive, here in the latter part of the twentieth century, something of
the greatest human adventure that brought Ulysses from Troy that had been a part
of Don Quixote’s experiences, that had led Dante and Orpheus into hell, and that
directed Columbus to the Americas: the adventure of traveling toward the
unknown” (p. 14).
Christianity has overlapped its own mythology surrounding the origins of the cult of
Saint James, providing an additional intrigue for travelers and compelling them to
participate in the legend (see Appendix D).
The Way Today
The popularity of the Way has survived into modern times. Though its numbers
waned greatly after the Middle Ages, the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela has
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become increasingly popular in the last thirty years and promises to continue its upward
trend (See Appendix E). Indeed the Way is a time-tested venture with numbers reaching
into the six figure range during Holy Years6. In the most recent Holy Year of 2004,
nearly 180,000 pilgrims completed the trek (Rekve, 2005). Last year my wife and I were
two of 100,377 pilgrims who received their Compostelas7 (Confraternity of Saint James,
2007).
Since the mid-eighties, books by popular modern and diverse writers (e.g., Paulo
Coehlo, Tim Moore, Cees Nooteboom8) about the Santiago pilgrimage have provided
insight into the written mind of the modern pilgrim. As a result of its being featured by
admired authors, the Way has become something of a pop-culture travel destination,
attracting greater numbers of people wishing to recreate the footsteps of these
romanticized journeys. Consequently, non-professional writers too have partaken in
written reflection in the form of shared experiences on list serves, journal writing, and
web logs (“blogs”).
Additionally, with the increased popularity of the Way, a system of free or
donation-only hostels to shelter and feed pilgrims has been reimplemented in the tradition
6 A Holy Year is when July 25, the Festival of Saint James, occurs on a Sunday. It is on these years that the pilgrimage surges most with traffic. 7 The Compostela is the name given to the document awarded to pilgrims who have walked at least the last 100 kilometers into Santiago de Compostela (bicycalists and horseback riders must travel the final 200 kilometers). Essentially, they are the modern equivalent of the medieval indulgence issued to pilgrims of old. 8 Paolo Coelho (1947-) is a Brazilian lyricist and internationally best selling novelist. His novel The pilgrimage: A contemporary quest for ancient knowledge (1986) is a spiritual allegory based on his experiences along the Way. Tim Moore is a British humorist and travel writer who wrote Travels with my donkey: One man and his ass on a pilgrimage to Santiago (2004). The title of Moore’s travelogue—based on his journey down the Way—is fairly self-explanatory and indicative of the author’s lighthearted take on the pilgrimage. Cees Nooteboom (1933-) is a Dutch poet, travel writer, and novelist who is frequently mentioned as a candidate for the Novel Prize in literature. His book Roads to Santiago: A modern-day pilgrimage through Spain (1992) chronicles his pilgrimage made on foot.
12
of the medieval pilgrim hospices that grew up along the road. The refugios of Spain
continue to keep the pilgrimage’s much-desired authenticity intact.
The Way has in recent times adopted more secular associations, drawing
adventurers from all over the world for physical, spiritual, and purely pleasurable reasons.
Some guidebooks tend to suggest that the Road to Santiago has undergone a
transformation from being a religious pilgrimage to now being more of an outdoors
physical adventure: “The Camino de Santiago (Way of Saint James) originated as a
European medieval pilgrimage. Today it is a magnificent long-distance walk spanning
738km of Spain’s north from Roncesvalles on the border with France to Santiago de
Compostela in Galica” Further on the authors list the benefits of such an excursion: “For
a great physical challenge, an immersion in a stunning array of landscapes, a unique
perspective on rural and urban Spain, a chance to meet intriguing companions, as well as
the opportunity to participate in a 1000-year-old tradition through a continuous outdoor
museum, this is your walk.” (Roddis, Frey, Placer, Fletcher & Noble, p. 381).
Though indulgences are now a thing of the past and the Way seems to have
progressed in a less religiously-oriented direction, the statistics (Archbishop of Santiago
de Compostela 2005) for the last Holy Year in 2004 reveal that most modern pilgrims
still claim to take part religious reasons. Those who claimed that their pilgrimage was for
strictly non-religious motives represented only 9.04% of pilgrims in that year while those
claiming purely religious motives represented 37.75% of pilgrims surveyed. The
majority of 2004 pilgrims (53.21%) answered that their motivation for making their
pilgrimage was “religious and other,” suggesting that little has changed on the road since
the Middle Ages. This information appears have inherent flaws given that the statistics
13
are taken by a source of Catholic bias and do not give the pilgrim a choice of “spiritual”
rather than “religious”.
Of the major Christian pilgrimages, none are better candidates for investigating
the shift in attention from religious to secular than the example of the Way of Saint James.
The Way not only saddles the gap between the ancient and the modern, but its physical
and symbolic characteristics make it decidedly appropriate for the current discussion.
The Great Age of Pilgrimage
Pilgrimage had its greatest influence on the cultural mind of the West between
roughly 1000 and 1500. The ritual has been a devotional practice of the Christian faith
from its very beginnings when followers of Christ flocked to the site of his crucifixion
and resurrection (Addis & Arnold, 1957, p. 649). Christ’s model of suffering and
sacrifice are at the heart of the faith and could be enacted by believers through the
hardships of pilgrimage. Eventually, Christians made pilgrimages to various other holy
places sanctified by the Church. Officially these could be journeys of penance or
thanksgiving to a site associated with or containing the relics of a sainted figure of the
Church. In most cases, pilgrimages were spiritual exercises or quests as well as actual
journeys of salvation since one of the rewards brought back by pilgrims from those sites
were tangible, sanctioned documents awarded by the Church called indulgences
(remissions of the temporal punishment for sin).
Popular pilgrimages were also fueled by a medieval belief in the restorative
powers of the Church and its sanctified relics. A fervor generated by the so called “cult
of the saints” caused many medieval adventurers to go on far reaching expeditions with
the belief that physical contact with the relics of a saint would induce a miracle of
14
recovery, an idolatrous adulation encouraged by the papacy. Church-generated stories of
the healing powers of the pilgrimage destinations and the paraphernalia associated with
them also enticed believers to take to the road. Historian John Ure (2006) describes the
magnetic power of Church relics to draw pilgrims from afar, believing they might benefit
from their osmotic magic: “The inspiring power of physical association, relics and
miracles have often been inducements to tread the pilgrim road and it is equally true that
atonement for sins and punishment for crimes have also been factors in obliging unlikely
and often unwilling travelers to set out on far-flung quests” (p. 7). As pilgrimage became
more institutionalized by the Church, even some courts of law started to impose
pilgrimage as an alternative to execution or incarceration (Ure, 2006, p. 8).
Historically, pilgrimage assumed three forms: the actual or physical pilgrimage,
the labyrinthine pilgrimage, and the spiritual pilgrimage or ‘vision quest’. The latter two
versions were often seen as vicarious pilgrimages. In the medieval period pilgrims could
still satisfy a Church-sanctioned pilgrimage by labyrinthine means: “At its furthest
remove, it was possible to make a substitute pilgrimage by crawling about a cathedral
labyrinth” (Howard 1980, p. 12). The ‘vision quest’ required no physical movement at
all, but did call for sound mental discipline or psychotropic assistance and was often
found in an ascetic or shamanistic tradition. The current discussion, however, will focus
on those pilgrims who partook and continue to partake in the first of these modes yet, as
medievalist L. J. Bowman (1980) informs us, prototypical pilgrimages were not to be
casually undertaken: “the actual journeying was of no significance unless animated by the
spiritual quest of the viator9 seeking his heavenly home” (p. 12).
9 Latin for “a traveller [sic]” or “a wayfarer” (Simpson, 1989)
15
Despite its religious and spiritual associations, motivations for making
pilgrimages often varied. In part, these journeys were also undergone for mere curiosity
and the sheer adventure of travel. Considering that medieval Europeans lived in
relatively insular isolation, the pilgrimage offered a more complete worldview than the
patch of land they called ‘home’. In this way—and in many others, as this study will
reveal—the medieval pilgrim was the archetypical tourist who leaves home for the
promise of adventure elsewhere and the chance to improve their overall quality of life.
Mullins (1974) observes, “the pilgrim in the Middle Ages shared with the modern tourist
a conviction that certain places and certain objects possess unusual spiritual power, and
that one was a better person for visiting them” (p. 1). And according to MacCannell
(1976), modern holiday destinations and tourist attractions are “precisely analogous to the
religious symbolism of primitive people” (p. 2). The linguistic evidence of pilgrim
writers deepens this connection, revealing a shared metaphor system supporting both the
historical pilgrimage—religious and spiritual in nature—and the more touristic and
secular one of today.
The Literary Tradition of Pilgrimage
The highly symbolic quality of pilgrimage easily lent itself to the imaginative
invention of medieval literature. The pilgrimage motif emanates strongly from this
period starting with Dante’s fourteenth century La Commedia Divina (The Divine
Comedy), a metaphysical journey into Hell, through Purgatory, and culminating in
Heaven. About seventy years later, the theme was popularized in English with Geoffery
Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, a story cycle depicting an assorted band of pilgrim
raconteurs headed for the shrine of Saint Thomas Beckett of Canterbury. Using the
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pilgrimage frame allowed Chaucer to assemble a wide array of characters of varied stock
and social standing, thereby painting a detailed picture of English life in the Middle Ages,
a novel invention praised by scholars including Chaucer’s translator Neville Coghill
(1951): “In all literature there is nothing that touches or resembles the Prologue. It is the
concise portrait of an entire nation, high and low, old and young, male and female, lay
and clerical, learned and ignorant, rogue and righteous, land and sea, town and country,
but without extremes” (Coghill, p. 17). Chaucer’s cross-sectional portrait is also
reflective of the egalitarian appeal of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages. Furthermore, his
characters do not embody the typical image of the suffering pilgrim; in fact, they are
enjoying themselves: “they assembled at an inn, they all had mounts, and they entertained
each other with storytelling of a highly secular—and on occasion ribald—nature” (Ure,
2006, p. 14). Most of Chaucer’s pilgrims were atypical for the religious pilgrimage,
reflecting the historical reality of this changing tradition: motivations behind pilgrimage
had shifted or were shifting from pious devotion to secular tourism.
Contrary to common beliefs, great poets like Chaucer and Dante do not hold a
monopoly on the use of metaphoric conceit: the tools of the language trade are used by
every one of us. Metaphor in particular “is a tool so ordinary that we use it
unconsciously and automatically” (Lakoff & Turner, 1989, p. xi). The language used to
describe and to discuss the concept of pilgrimage is metaphoric, not only because we
conceive of all activities—extraordinary and ordinary—in this way, but fundamentally
because the act itself is a metaphor for human life. Pilgrimage is a living metaphor, an
act set upon the stage of a tangible world.
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Medieval biographers of pilgrimage recognized the saliency of this metaphor as
one for life and their depiction of it would create reverberations felt far beyond its literary
popularization. Howard (1980) informs us: “The pilgrimage itself, dead as an institution
in England by the end of the sixteenth century, lived on as an idea preserved in books.
There was never a time when the words pilgrim and pilgrimage didn’t have force […]” (p.
6). The extended life of pilgrimage as a literary concept testifies to its legacy as a
powerful metaphor. However, the pilgrimage metaphor would change as different ideas
of travel developed over time. For medieval travelers, the pilgrimage was symbolic of
the unidirectional journey from birth to death:
From early times it had the metaphorical significance of a one-way journey to the
Heavenly Jerusalem: the actual trip was a symbol of human life, and the corollary,
that life is a pilgrimage, was a commonplace. The pilgrim enacted the passage
from birth to salvation; at his destination he adored relics of a saint or, at
Jerusalem, the places where the Lord had lived and died in his earthly body […]
(Howard, 1980, p. 11).
Pilgrimage steadily became secularized with the help of the corpus of literature that
celebrated it; and as early as the seventeenth century this notion of a one-way journey
grew to include the return trip. The notion of the return changed the way people
conceived of travel and it is here that the mythology of the modern tourist is germinated.
Pilgrim: Universal Traveler
Pilgrimage is not exclusive to one culture, religion, or social grouping. In fact,
ritualized pilgrimages have been a part of cultures around the world for centuries. The
phenomenon can be found in all of the world’s major religions (the Islamic flight to
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Mecca, the Christian sojourn to Vatican City, the Buddhist journey to Kapilavastu10, the
Jewish visitation of Jerusalem). The meaning of pilgrimage has evolved to include any
journey that starts at home and ends at a particular site held sacred by the pilgrim. Non-
religious pilgrimages include protests such as Dr. Martin Luther King’s Selma-to-
Montgomery marches of 1965, charity fun runs like the American Heart Association’s
annual “Heart Walk”, even family vacations like those to Disneyworld can be considered
modern pilgrimages. One of the essential criteria for pilgrimage include a definite
purpose for—and worth of the journey to—the participants. The concept is such a
fundamental form of the journey schema that it has the metaphoric versatility to be
applied to events whose movement may only be implied. In this way, the current study is
a pilgrimage itself: it sets off from an initial idea, or starting point; it follows progressive
steps as it proceeds; the author—as tour guide—directs the reader’s attention to various
landmarks along the way, occasionally suggesting sites of interest; and eventually the
travelers arrive at the ultimate point of the paper, the sacred destination of the journey.
The highly flexible character and adaptability of pilgrimage is an indication of its
lasting influence on Western culture. The Oxford English Dictionary’s primary
definition of pilgrim is “a person on a journey, a person who travels from place to place;
a traveler, a wanderer, an itinerant. Also in early use: a foreigner, an alien, a stranger”
(Simpson, 2006). Not until the secondary definition does the modern inquirer discover
the word’s more germane legacy as “a person who makes a journey (usually of a long
distance) to a sacred place as an act of religious devotion” (ibid. [emphasis mine]).
Historically, pilgrims were only those people who fit the latter definition. However,
10 According to Turner (1973), Buddhist traditions of this kind are also shared with—and ultimately derived from—those found in the Hindu tradition (p. 204).
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because of the saliency of the institution of pilgrimage in the history of Western thought,
the word has drifted from the particular to the generalized in the English language. This
potential universality of what it means to be a pilgrim begets another question echoic of
Todorov’s: “Who is not a pilgrim?”
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Chapter Two: Life Is a Pilgrimage
“And what’s a life? – a weary pilgrimage,
Whose glory in one day doth fill the stage,
With childhood, manhood, and decrepit age.”
– Francis Quarles, Elizabethan poet (1634, 1808, p. 127)
The verse above by Francis Quarles (1592-1644) reflects a literary sensibility
flavored by the institution of pilgrimage and is indicative of the rich metaphoric
properties which made the concept such fertile material for English poets and dramatists.
In these three lines of verse, the author employs several concepts which are lynchpins in
the understanding of life and its metaphoric relationship with pilgrimage in the English
tradition. Though Quarles penned these lines nearly four hundred years ago, pilgrim
writers today rely on these same conceptual metaphors to craft their own musings on the
subject.
Two main metaphors are at work here which furnish much of our
conceptualization of pilgrimage today: LIFE IS A JOURNEY and LIFE IS A PLAY. These
metaphors will be explained herein using the imaginative language of poetry written in
the tradition English pilgrimage. These conceptual metaphors of existence are supported
by the PILGRIMAGE IS NURTURE metaphor establishing the core metaphors of modern
pilgrim writing on the Way. Pilgrimage is saturated with metaphor at many levels: from
the overall structure and shape of the activity down to the everyday language used to
describe it. The language of pilgrimage can often be a confounding subject to engage in
because of its metaphor-heavy properties since the line between symbolism and reality
easily becomes blurred: “Pilgrimage is often described both in terms of literal journey
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and as a lifelong spiritual experience but it is by no means always immediately clear
which is considered to be the metaphor and which the reality” (Dyas, 2001, p. 2). In the
following Coelho (1986) passage for instance, it is not certain whether the author means
his real ‘first step’ or his metaphoric one: “I was actually in Spain and there was no
going back. In spite of the knowledge that there were many ways in which I could fail, I
had taken the first step” (p. 10). Essentially, it does not matter which sense Coelho
intends because both effectively convey the meanings of pilgrimage and life as
significant journeys. For non-literary writers like pilgrim Louise Gehman (2006, April
30) the use of potentially metaphoric language in written reflection of the pilgrimage is
meant as literal: “[The ‘cuckoo’ birds] were particularly vocal when we walked about 2
km out of our way, thinking we were on the right path.”
The poetic examples here provide a historical reference to the importance of
pilgrimage in the literary tradition as well as demonstrate the foregrounding use of these
metaphors. The connections drawn between source and target domains1 therein have
become so engrained in the Judeo-Christian conceptualization of human existence that
they are largely taken for granted by the present-day language user. As a result, where
the poets’ use of the metaphors will have been explicitly metaphoric, the modern pilgrim
writings referenced here will demonstrate them as embedded metaphors. This is an
indication of the metaphors’ saliency and durable usefulness in the language. What some
would call ‘dead metaphors’ are really the bedrock of the language itself; as Deutscher
(2005) so metaphorically puts it, language is a river on which metaphors flow from
concrete to abstract concepts:
1 Cognitive linguists use these terms to explain the structure of metaphor as a transfer from one conceptual field of conventionalized information (source) to another more abstract one (target). This is called mapping from source to target.
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In this constant surge, the simplest and sturdiest of words are swept along, one
after the other, and carried towards abstract meanings. As these words drift
downstream, they are bleached of their original vitality and turn into pale lifeless
terms for abstract concepts – the substance from which the structure of language
is formed. And when at last the river sinks into the sea, these spent metaphors are
deposited, layer after layer, and so the structure of language grows, as a reef of
dead metaphors (p. 118).
The calcified metaphors embedded in this substratum of language provide evidence of the
mental framework of its users in much the same way that the fossilized remains of plants
and animals inform an archeologist about our prehistory. The coherency of the
metaphors of pilgrimage provides a barometer of Western culture’s consciousness. This
data can be extrapolated to discuss some of the fundamental questions about how we
conceptualize our existence. Consequently, the linguistic survey of the modern
pilgrimage also provides an insightful investigation of mythology’s role in this human
ritual.
LIFE IS A JOURNEY
The word journey, by definition, is connected wit the passage of time. It is a
twelfth century lexical borrowing from French journée meaning variously a day, a day’s
space, a day’s travel, work, employment, etc. (Simpson, 1989). The basic structure of a
typical journey provides an analogical comparison with the span of a lifetime. It has an
embarkation point (a birth), a series of stopping points along a distance (the stages of
aging), and a final destination (eventual death). And though life does not actually follow
a linear path—the way this analogy suggests—a journey and all of its entailed
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components provide experiential source material for discussing a human life in this way.
Accordingly, one of the ways in which English speakers conceptualize their own lives is
through the complex metaphor LIFE IS A JOURNEY. Lakoff and Johnson (1999) dissect
this pervasive metaphor, revealing that it is in fact composed of elemental or primary
metaphors through which we conceive our day-to-day experiences. Metaphors are based
on cultural assumptions and agreed-upon expectations. In the case of the LIFE IS A
JOURNEY, one assumption is the seemingly self-evident notion that actions are motions;
this gives metaphoric movement to the accomplishment of a task which may not require
any actual travel. Additionally, Westerners believe that in order to have purpose in their
life, they must have goals for which they strive. They conceive of these goals as
destinations in time and space which they must arrive at as one might arrive at an actual,
physical location in order to achieve some purposeful task (“I want a book about
pilgrimage, so I must go to the library.”) Similarly, more abstract purposes and goals are
also conceived of in this way (“I want to be rich and famous, but I still have a long way
to go.”). A pilgrimage offers its participants a definite purposeful destination and—as I
will discuss further on—can provide the successful pilgrim with renewed meaning in
their post-pilgrimage lives.
Implicit in these fundamental metaphors is an understanding that goals are
tangible things. Santiago pilgrims look at their final destination not as an elusive dream,
but as a real object that they will eventually acquire: “I still had two weeks in which to
reach Santiago […]” (Selby, 1994, p. 89); “[…] I pressed on and by the time I reached
the monastery at Irache, barely two miles outside the town, I was again flagging under
the appalling heat” (Neillands, 1985, p. 103). Not only is the purposeful destination
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metaphorically graspable, the latter example also suggests that the physical difficulty
involved with the pilgrimage can be pushed against like an actual negative force. This is
all to suggest that our metaphorical understanding of a journey with a purposeful
destination is interactive. What is more is that in the case of the pilgrim writers, the
destination is not conceived as an object that might be reached in the future; its
acquisition is only a matter of time.
These primary metaphors animate the basic structure of a physical journey
(ACTIONS ARE MOTIONS and GOALS ARE DESTINATIONS). These three conceptions
provide the blueprint for the complex metaphor A PURPOSEFUL LIFE IS A JOURNEY which
entails the following metaphoric notions:
(1) A PURPOSEFUL LIFE IS A JOURNEY
(2) A PERSON IS A TRAVELER
(3) LIFE GOALS ARE DESTINATIONS
(4) A LIFE PLAN IS AN ITINERARY
Quarles’ somewhat pessimistic verse falls directly in line with this metaphorical
concept, casting Man as a weary traveler whose only real destinations and goals are the
biological realities of life’s progression (birth, adulthood, death), hardly the only goals
that modern man and woman are likely to strive for. To be sure, Quarles does not
explicitly refer to life as a ‘journey’, but pilgrimage is, as has been shown, a special type
of journey—it is one of the fundamental forms a journey can take: it is one which has a
purposeful destination in the form of a sacred site that is only arrived at after undergoing
a series of struggles over great distance.
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For these reasons, pilgrimage assumes greater significance as a fundamental
version of LIFE IS A JOURNEY—we might even say LIFE IS A PILGRIMAGE. And since
geographical journeys were frequently understood as representing moral or spiritual
progress, pilgrims of the Middle Ages did just that, believing their journeys took on
symbolic significance: “… pilgrimage was a metaphor for human life: life is a one-way
passage to the Heavenly Jerusalem and we are pilgrims on it” (Howard, 1980, pp. 6-7).
Pilgrimage was indeed idealized as a unidirectional, upward journey from earthly reality
to heavenly perfection by many medieval pilgrims. Clearly, the numerous perils along
the way made the journey’s successful conclusion questionable—even doubtful—but to
arrive at the final destination and to actually die there was the ultimate ideal of
pilgrimage, “the return voyage was a mere contingency, an anticlimax” (Howard, 1980, p.
48). It was considered desirable to die at the destination because embodied in that act
was the perfect union of symbol and reality. Today—as we shall discuss in detail
below—the pilgrimage is not really complete until the pilgrim returns home for the final
stage of the journey takes place there.
One of the more famous, novel uses of the LIFE IS A JOURNEY metaphor in English
pilgrimage literature is John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678, 1957) in which
pilgrimage and its trappings take on allegorical significance. By the time Bunyan was
writing in the seventeenth century, the great age of pilgrimage had already passed in
Europe and its presence had become well established in English literature. Bunyan’s
Christian allegory relies heavily upon the use of character and place names which
symbolize moral qualities and refer to biblical passages, essentially having double
signification in- and outside of the narrative itself. For example, the main character and
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primary pilgrim is called Christian; he travels through locations with names like the
Slough of Despair and the Valley of the Shadow of Death on his journey to the Celestial
City, meeting along the way characters named Evangelist, Hypocrisy, Faithful, and
Hopeful.
Bunyan’s allegory is an extended parable that uses metaphor, not as a simple
embellishment of the language, but as a basic tool of reasoning. One of the central
purposes of a parable is to teach a lesson. Bunyan’s didactic use of metaphor is an
example of the literary sensibility of human cognition. Turner’s (1996) theory amends
the generally accepted notion in the field of linguistics that the human mind has a genetic
predisposition to the application of grammar, proposing instead that the human capacity
for story telling precedes grammar: “the linguistic mind is a consequence and
subcategory of the literary mind” (p. 141). His theory suggests that, “Narrative
imagining—story—is the fundamental instrument of thought. Rational capacities depend
upon it. It is our chief means of looking into the future, of predicting, of planning, and of
explaining” (pp. 4-5). A key ingredient of the literary mind is the ability to map one
story schema onto another, using a narrative that is already culturally established to
illuminate aspects of a less familiar one. In The Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan maps the
universally understood story of a journey onto the story of a righteous life in order to
teach the virtues of Christian doctrine.
Bunyan self-consciously makes his case for the appropriateness of his use of the
extended metaphor in the Author’s Apology, preceding Part I imploring:
But must I needs want solidness, because
By metaphors I speak? Were not God’s laws,
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His gospel laws, in olden time held forth
By types, shadows, and metaphors? (p. 4)
Here Bunyan defends his use of metaphor in his discussion of weighty religious issues (in
this case the soul’s spiritual salvation), presaging Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980, 2003)
insistence that human cognition is developed from an imaginative rationality that is based
on metaphoric reasoning.
The linguistic evidence appears to be in Bunyan’s favor on this account given that
Christian teachings have—from their inception—been steeped in metaphoric language.
The New Testament gives us the believed word of God through Jesus’ message: “I am
the way2, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me” (John 14:6
[my emphasis]). Not only is this message metaphoric but it fits perfectly into the A
PURPOSEFUL LIFE IS A JOURNEY Metaphor. It is reasonable that the Christian belief
system would conceptualize the course of a life from birth to death to an afterlife in terms
of a path on which ultimate harmony is achieved through struggle and effort given Lakoff
and Turner’s (1989, p. 61) observation that conventional knowledge of journeys dictates
that “to understand life as a journey is to have in mind, consciously or more likely
unconsciously, a correspondence between traveler and a person living a life, the road
traveled and the ‘course’ of a lifetime, a starting point and the time of birth, and so on.”
(Re)Birth
In some ways, the highly symbolic make-up of the Christian pilgrimage is still
intact in the structure of the Way today and is fundamentally consistent with the
2 Just as Christianity is not the only religion to employ pilgrimage as a ritual of devotion, it is also not alone in using the A PURPOSEFUL LIFE IS A JOURNEY METAPHOR. The biblical verse above is echoic of the famous Taoist teaching in which tao translates as “way” or “path” and is literally the path to enlightenment (Tzu, 1963).
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overarching conceptual metaphor A PURPOSEFUL LIFE IS A JOURNEY. With this in mind,
typically one’s literal home is the staging platform from which a pilgrimage to Santiago
is embarked upon. While non-European pilgrims will typically make use of other means
of vehicular transportation (airplane, automobile, etc.) in order to arrive at their official
starting points, the first steps of the pilgrimage begin by studying the pilgrimage course,
reading returned pilgrims’ testimonials, researching guidebooks, making inquiries at
confraternities associated with the Way, etc. The point being that even today’s pilgrim
literally begins their pilgrimage at home.
While modern conveniences of transportation give today’s pilgrim the luxury of
choosing the actual location from where they will embark, pilgrims living in the Middle
Ages had no choice but to set out from their front door. Even today, many Europeans
leave from the very place in which they were born—if not their hometowns then the
countries of their births (their mother- or fatherlands). The association of a journey’s
beginning with birth is represented in Geoffery Chaucer’s3 (1957) description of spring
as the appropriate season for making a pilgrimage in his General Prologue to The
Canterbury Tales:
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
3 Susan Alcorn’s 2006 travelogue Camino chronicle: Walking to Santiago suggests that Chaucer may have actually walked the road to Compostela in his lifetime. What is more certain is that Chaucer probably took many insights from actual returned Santiago pilgrims from England (Mullins, 1974, p. 61)
29
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, […]4 (p. 17).
This passage relies on the metaphor A LIFETIME IS A YEAR, by which time is condensed
within the scope of the solar calendar and the spring season is one that teems with new
life at its beginning. This metaphor derives from the natural phenomenon of the
changing seasons which are a constant physical reminder of the passage of time.
Speakers use this metaphor to highlight only the most symbolic seasons, specifically
winter and spring since the natural characteristics of these months provide cognitive
associations with the beginning and ending stages of a life (“He’s a man of sixty winters”,
“She is in the springtime of her youth”). The metaphor is consistent within the general
scope of LIFE IS A JOURNEY in that the journey in A LIFETIME IS A YEAR is that of the
Earth around the Sun. In addition to the practical basis for starting in spring—the
lengthening days and the entire summer to finish the round trip before winter—the
imagery of birth and rebirth symbolized in springtime fits well into the idea of a
4 When in April the sweet showers fall And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all The veins are bathed in liquor of such power As brings about the engendering of the flower, When also Zephyrus with his sweet breath Exhales an air in every grove and heath Upon the tender shoots, and the young sun His half-course in the sign of the Ram has run, And the small fowl are making melody That sleep away the night with open eye (So nature pricks them and their heart engages) Then people long to go on pilgrimages (Coghill (Trans.), 1951, p. 19)
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pilgrimage as a life, making it clear why the metaphor LIFE IS A PILGRIMAGE developed in
the medieval mind, persisting today with the Way as its proof. Accordingly, the
beginning of a pilgrimage, just as in a life, is a place of birth. As we shall explore later,
the promise of a spiritual rebirth is also a motivating factor in the pilgrim’s decision to
participate in the ritual.
Death and Afterlife
By comparison, then, the final destination of a pilgrimage is a representation of
death with the reward of afterlife. Again, we can look to Chaucer (1957) for a fitting
example of this metaphorical connection:
This world nys but a thurghfare ful of wo,
And we been pilgrymes, passynge to and fro.
Deeth is the ende of every worldly soore5 (p. 44).
These lines from Part IV of The Knights Tale are in keeping with the medieval
conceptualization of life as a pilgrimage (line one), people living as pilgrims (line two)
and death as the end to the pilgrimage and deliverance for the pilgrim’s efforts (line
three). The participation in a pilgrimage was a suitable method of doing so. Suitable
insofar as the Catholic Church was concerned as the medium between the human world
and God’s.Contributing to that metaphor today in the Way, is the notion that the
endpoint—Santiago—is literally the final destination of the pilgrimage and thus—
metaphorically—death. Symbolic support of the idea of death in Santiago is the fact that
the main attraction in the Cathedral is the alleged relics of the long expired apostle Saint
James the Greater. Here the symbolism of a final resting place marking the final stopping
5 This world is but a thoroughfare of woe And we are pilgrims passing to and fro. Death is the end of every worldly sore (Coghill (Trans.), 1951, p. 95)
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point of a journey is apparent. Additionally, pilgrims just outside of the gates of Santiago
would wash their bodies in the stream at the nearby village of Labacolla in preparation
for their arrival (Mullins, 1974, p. 196). The symbolic aura of Santiago as tomb brings
added significance to these ablutions as ritualistic preparations of the corpse before its
ceremonial reunion with the hereafter.
Pilgrims seeking the radiating powers of holy relics sought a personal contact
with the eternal, with the afterlife. The word relic derives from the Latin verb relinquere
meaning “to leave behind” (Simpson, 1989). The underlying significance of coming into
contact with these relics was to encounter that which was left behind by some saint or
other holy person, usually, literally, the corporal remains either in part or in whole.
Implicit here is that these holy men and women, like Saint James, whose relics have lured
pilgrims from the far corners of Europe for centuries were here once but have now left to
travel the ultimate pilgrimage to the world beyond: Heaven. Not only is the notion of
journeying contained in the etymology of this word but also is the idea of a separation
between body and spirit. It is the spirit of a person that continues beyond this material life
journey and into the ethereal world. The earthly pilgrim sought the promise of their
eternal life with God.
The Church supported the idea of eternal splendor through the symbolic
garishness of their cathedrals. The grandeur of the Santiago Cathedral is a physical
representation of that heavenly reward for which pilgrimage has been traditionally
undertaken. This heavenly reward was represented materially in indulgences which were
essentially shortcuts to the afterlife, reducing the time a traveler spent in Purgatory.
Today this is represented symbolically in the form of the Compostela (See Chapter One).
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Furthermore, the end of the pilgrimage is not the end at all just as the winter season is not
the end of the life-year. The ending of the final season simply marks a new beginning, a
new spring in the life of the pilgrim. This is a priceless lesson of the pilgrimage cycle.
…
The stages of life are linguistically linked to the stages of a journey. The Codex
Calixtinus is a twelfth century anthology said to have been compiled by French scholar
Aymeric Picaud, detailing the history, culture, sermons, and travel guidance of the Way.
Book V - “A Guide for the Traveller” is thought to be one of the first travel guides of the
Western world (Layton, 1976, p. 196). In it, the author provides advice on how to
properly make the pilgrimage, separating the journey into twelve navigable stages. The
segments of a life are also described in the same manner (“The child is still in a
developmental stage of her life.” “He is in the recovery stage of his illness.”). The
convention of partitioning lengths of space and time into stages is yet another indication
of the link between a life and a journey. The word evolves from the Latin verb stāre
meaning “to stand” and it is from this source that we also derive its use as a platform for
theatrical production (Simpson, 1989). While speakers regularly use the former sense of
the word to organize their journeys, the performance aspect of pilgrimage suggested by
the second sense is manifest in other linguistic mappings from the domain of theatre.
LIFE IS A PLAY
In the eighteenth century the metaphor of pilgrimage was “supplanted or
augmented by other images, especially that of life as theater: this image allowed the
author to be not a returned traveler and omniscient narrator but a privileged spectator,
exploring personages in relation to one another and to the world, uncovering their masks
33
and roles—an important step in the history of fiction” (Howard 1980, p. 7). In the case of
the Quarles verse, we see that the poet has indeed augmented the pilgrimage metaphor of
life with that of the play representing the course of a life as a drama playing out on a
‘stage’. The theatre metaphor figures into the body of pilgrimage language by virtue of
the metaphor of life as a pilgrimage. As we have seen, the metaphor LIFE IS A
PILGRIMAGE was a recognized poetic formula from the fourteenth to the eighteenth
century and the commingling of this and the LIFE IS A PLAY metaphor in the Quarles
poem is indicative of how well the allegory of pilgrimage transitions into the language of
theatre. The notion of life as a performance was championed in the twentieth century by
sociologist Erving Goffman (1959) who observed that our everyday interactions are
analogous to “dramaturgical performances”. The pilgrims of today can be seen to
engage in this theatrical behavior.
Ritual—like theatre—often makes use of special accessories peculiar to the
tradition. The connection between the activity and its associated costume is such that the
agent of the activity is not considered authentic without the costume. In medieval times
the outward signs endowed the pilgrim with a certain amount of social privilege and
exemption: “The pilgrim signs worn by travelers, in addition to their attire, marked them
as pilgrims and separate from society, and therefore immune from political-military
conflicts between countries wherever they traveled” (Garcia, 2002, pp. 7-8). The
component signs of the pilgrim costume became synonymous with the pilgrimage itself,
representing role, purpose, and destination at a glance. Sir Walter Raleigh’s (1604, 1681)
“His Pilgrimage” itemizes the trappings of a pilgrim to Santiago:
Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,
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My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
My bottle of salvation,
My gown of glory, hope’s true gage,
And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage (Lns. 1-6)
The pilgrim accessories are essential to the person enacting the pilgrimage: the ritualized
garb identifying one as a proper pilgrim. The vestments described by Raleigh remain
indispensable components of the pilgrimage today: scallop-shell, staff or walking stick,
water bottle, rucksack (scrip), and rain cloak (gown). Not only do these items serve the
practical purpose of facilitating a nomadic existence, but they help to identify the pilgrim
as such to outsiders and to each other. The make up of pilgrim signs creates a “front”
which Goffman (1959) defines as, “the expressive equipment of a standard kind
intentionally or unwittingly employed by the individual during his performance” (p. 91).
The front is at once inclusive and exclusive, representing the connection and camaraderie
between fellow pilgrims and distinguishing the wearer from the common tourist—a
distinction that could also have its practical merits: “It is much more advantageous to be
considered a pilgrim than a tourist. The pilgrim, especially in Spain, is often treated with
generous hospitality for simply being a pilgrim. It is not uncommon for those who go
alone or in very small groups to be offered a fresh beverage or a snack by someone who
recognizes the shell or the staff” (Frey, 1998, p. 63). Taken together, the symbols of the
Way become the pilgrim’s costume for they are essentially acting out the part of the
pilgrims of old. What is more is that in their undertaking they are reenacting—as their
35
medieval counterparts did—the suffering of the Christian martyrs of bygone days with
Christ as their archetype.
Along with the cosmetic symbolism of the pilgrim costume, pilgrim writing also
reflects the conceptualization of life as a play. Pilgrimage writing makes use of only
some of the components of the schema for a play on which the LIFE IS A PLAY metaphor
is based. Specifically, writers today employ the metaphor to discuss the pilgrimage as a
stage and its component parts as actors upon it. Scores of examples exist in the corpus of
pilgrimage writing to support the notion that pilgrims see themselves and others
associated with the Way as actors in roles within a play.
Some pilgrim writers are often self-consciously aware of their new roles as
pilgrims. In the case of Neillands (1985), he makes several hedged claims qualifying
himself as an authentic pilgrim, which makes this reader slightly suspicious. Here he
talks about ‘getting into his part’—as it were—by trying out his pilgrim paraphernalia:
“As I soon discovered in my role as a true pilgrim, the scallop-shell is a useful item in its
own right” (p. 25 [emphasis mine]). A caption beneath an image on one pilgrim’s online
photo archive reads, “Henry takes on his pilgrim persona next to the famous pilgrim
statue …” (Maloney, 2005, p. 1 [emphasis mine]). In the photo, the pilgrim is pictured
before a larger-than-life bronze statue, posing in the same ‘man-in-motion’ manner as the
sculpture. While these pilgrims seem to jump right into their parts, Spanish historian and
Santiago pilgrim George Greenia (2005) has to adjust to the prospect of his new identity:
“The role of the guy handling his midlife crisis was starting to look a lot more
manageable” (p. 5 [emphasis mine]). Pilgrim and former Confraternity of Saint James
Chairperson Laurie Dennett (1997) suggests that the role of pilgrim requires the agent to
36
act a certain way: “But may I be so bold as to suggest that everyone who sets foot on the
Camino has the personal responsibility to reinforce, through the way they enact their
pilgrimage, its character of simplicity, self-sacrifice, openness to encounter” [emphasis
mine]. And pilgrim John O’Henley (2001) shares his advice with his fellow actor-
pilgrims: “There are certainly more vehicles on the roads, and in the towns, calling for
caution on the part of walkers” (p. 1 [emphasis mine]).
Pilgrims are not the only ‘actors’ on the Way. In fact, all people associated with
the pilgrimage in some official or semi-official capacity are also part of the cast—we
might call them the supporting cast of the pilgrimage. Travel writer and Santiago pilgrim
Bettina Selby (1994) describes one of the representatives of Le Amis de St Jacques de
Compostelle in St Jean-Pied-de-Port: “[Madame Debril] had become a victim of the
popularity of the Santiago pilgrimage and her own part in it” (p. 61 [emphasis mine]).
But, she continues, “She is reluctant to lay down her role or to compromise the execution
of it” (ibid. p. 62 [emphasis mine]). Locals of the villages along the Way are included in
the role call: “[…] I think it no exaggeration to say that generations of local people,
living along the Camino and extending hospitality to pilgrims as the natural expression of
devout religious beliefs and their own open and generous characters, played a major part
in keeping the pilgrimage alive …” (Dennett, 2003 [emphasis mine]).
Pilgrim-actors do not even have to be actual people. Inanimate objects of the
pilgrimage are also personified as actors. The cities that dot the Way are metonymic
players in the pilgrimage drama: “Astorga owes much of its past and present prosperity
to its role as a road junction” (Neillands. 1985, p. 141 [emphasis mine]); “[La Réole, a
provincial French town] played host to me too in a small grassy ‘campement’ beside the
37
broad brown Garonne […]” (Selby, 1994, p. 34 [emphasis mine]). Churches, too, share
the honor: “If the church in Oviedo had a heightened awareness of its own role as
custodian of doctrinal purity, the court of King Alfonso II was imbued with a
corresponding sense of territorial mission …” (Dennett, 2005 [emphasis mine]).
Places—as might be expected—provide the proper background to the unfolding pilgrim
drama: “No tributaries from other pilgrim routes met at Astorga, but it was the scene on
31 December 1808 of another and much less happy meeting of the ways […]” (Layton,
1976, p. 145). These locative, inanimate players of the pilgrimage provide a sort of set
dressing with which the starring actor-pilgrims interact and on which they perform their
roles.
The implications of LIFE IS A PLAY suggest that modern pilgrims are somehow
more than just themselves when engaged in the Way. Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgical
theory suggests that a person's identity is not stable, but subject to re-creation as the
person interacts with others: “when the individual presents himself before others, his
performance will tend to incorporate and exemplify the officially accredited values of the
society” (p. 95). The perception is that these pilgrims are cognizant—perhaps only
subconsciously so in some cases—that they are involved in a grand ritual which is in
many ways a spectacle and their authentic performance in that role is determined by the
conventionalized front of the Way. They are players in a highly symbolic, simplified
version of the allegory of human life. In support of this is the fact that pilgrimage must
be participated in by leaving home–almost as if when they are removed from the familiar
environs of their home life, they become different people, inhabiting different personas.
This would seem to be a form of escape as Howard (1980) recognizes, “It was among
38
other things a fine way to escape duty, debt, or the law …” (p. 15). Escapism, indeed,
has an especially strong tradition in Christian heritage: the idea of escaping one’s
earthbound self, one’s ego, becoming an ascetic through self-imposed exile in remote
mountain wildernesses, outside of society. By casting off the excesses of life and casting
oneself in the part of the pilgrim-exile, the modern pilgrim unintentionally—or perhaps
intentionally—participates in this tradition.
PILGRIMAGE IS NURTURE
Recall that, LIFE IS A JOURNEY provides a metaphoric understanding of the
beginning and ending of a pilgrimage. But what of the stages in-between these defining
poles of the pilgrimage? Like their metaphoric birth and death on the Way, pilgrims also
experience progressive ‘growth’. Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress is an example of how
this development plays out spiritually, using the poetic language of allegory. Similarly—
but less explicitly—many pilgrim writers have expressed their expectations of some sort
of spiritual growth to develop as a result of their journey. Accordingly, their written
output makes use of a complex metaphor of growth expressed as PILGRIMAGE IS
NURTURE. This metaphor entails several other related metaphoric properties of the Way:
(1) PILGRIMAGE IS NATURE
(2) PILGRIMAGE IS A PARENT/CAREGIVER
(3) PEOPLE ARE PLANTS
Each of these metaphors is systematically coherent within the structure of PILGRIMAGE IS
A NURTURE. It suggests the desire on the part of many pilgrims to alleviate some
perceived ‘sickness’ or ‘under-development’ through the act of pilgrimage.
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The Way is often described as having a ‘spirit’ or an ‘aura’, suggesting that it
embodies some living presence. The metaphor PILGRIMAGE IS NATURE is perhaps a
result of the fact that pilgrimage is animated by the people who travel it, but as Neillands
(1986) suggests here, it may also have to do with the flora of the Way: “Every summer,
as the green leaf turns and the heat starts to shimmer across the vineyards of France or the
grain fields of Navarre, the Road to Compostela comes alive again (p. 18 [emphasis
mine]). The reality of these vibrant images clearly takes on metaphoric significance as
reflected poetically in Chaucer’s Introduction above. Like the descriptions of flora above,
the Way itself exhibits some characteristics of vegetable life in some writing: “It
stretches along more than 700 km of northern Spain, nearly 2,000 km if its four stems in
France are to be included […]. It crosses many rural communities, villages and,
especially, cities that flourished during the Middle Ages” (González & Medina, 2003, p.
447 [emphasis mine]). Note here that it is not only the Way that grows plant-like, the
cities along its stalk also share the same features of a budding plant. In other works cities
are said to “spring up” along the pilgrim road (Selby, 1994, p. 99).
The conceptualization of the pilgrimage as an organism that is born, lives, and
dies emerges in guidebook writer and Santiago pilgrim Miles Roddis’s (1999)
observations:
… the fact that [the story behind how Saint James’s remains were delivered to
Galicia] was believed led to … the birth of the Camino …” (p. 383, [emphasis
mine]).
And later:
40
After its medieval heyday the pilgrimage suffered during the Reformation and
nearly died out altogether by the 19th century before its late 20th century
secularized reanimation (ibid. [emphasis mine]).
The pilgrimage is personified by Roddis here in such a way that it is given characteristics
of the prototype in Christian martyrdom: Jesus of Nazareth. Like the pilgrims who act
out their roles as sufferers along the Way, modeling themselves after the martyred saints
of Christianity, the road itself is seen as taking on these same features. The metaphoric
life of the Way takes on further aspects of personification in Selby’s (1994) relief to
rejoin the pilgrimage after a day of sightseeing in an urban center: “[…] to be back on the
Camino Francés again after the swirl and bustle of the town was like rejoining an old and
much-loved friend” (p. 125). Neillands (1985) exercises his poetic voice in describing
one medieval hamlet on the Way: “Today the little village [of Larressingle] dreams in the
sun, the warm golden walls draped with madly drooling hollyhocks” (p. 67 [emphasis
mine]).
The character of the Way as a person is often conceived of in the same way as
Selby has described it above. Nearly always pilgrim writers will describe their
pilgrimage-person as someone friendly and nurturing. On one online discussion board, a
pilgrim advised others, “If you trust the camino you have never an [sic] problem”
(Markus, 2006, February 22). Pilgrim Lynette Torres (2004 July 8) writes her family
about her impressions of the Way: “[…] the distance has become meaningless in a
way...you just pack in the morning your mochila, have some cafe con leche y pan and
walk as far as you can for the day, open to what the path brings, which always nurtures
and provides […]” [emphasis mine]. In keeping with this particular personification, the
41
Way is often given the human qualities of a mother. Santiago pilgrim and art historian T.
A. Layton’s (1976) description of towns along the road gives readers the notion that the
pilgrimage has the life-giving properties of a mother: “All hamlets and towns we now
come to before reaching lovely León are decrepit and ugly, but all the churches and
monasteries were built for the pilgrimage; indeed, the places came into existence solely
because of the St James” (p. 125 [emphasis mine]). It is a fact that many—if not most—
of the cities found along the road owe their presence to the sustained popularity of the
Way and, thus, metaphorically the pilgrimage functions as a creator as Layton indicates.
As such, other language users personify the Camino as a mother-creator more explicitly
as seen here: “On the route you follow scenic country roads, fields and forest tracks as
well as crossing countless villages and cities born of the Camino” (Roddis et al., 1999, p.
381 [emphasis mine]). Inherent in this quote is the metaphoric entailment that CITIES
ARE CHILDREN, a metaphor that occurs throughout the literature. Cities along the Way
are overtly referred to as offspring of the pilgrimage as in these passages:
As the name indicates, Villafranca, the ‘French town’ was created by the pilgrim
trade. Even [Aymeric Picaud’s] guide describes Villafranca as the hija de la
peregrinacion jacobea6 (Neillands, 1985, p. 147); “in 997, the little town of
Santiago which had grown up around the Field of the Star […]” (Selby, 1994, p.
42 [emphasis mine]).
6 “daughter of James’s pilgrimage” (Spanish [my translation])
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Additionally, way-marks7 along the pilgrim road also take on human characteristics as
products/offspring of their mother-road: “The waymarks grew strangely neurotic,
zigzagging furiously and disappearing” (Fainberg, 2004).
The nurturing aspect of the Way is one of its biggest attractions for potential
pilgrims. There is a perceived belief in many pilgrim writings that making a pilgrimage
will help a person to grow spiritually or that their lives will be reenergized in the
undertaking. This motivation is symbolized in these writers’ use of the PEOPLE ARE
PLANTS metaphor. Lakoff and Turner (1989) describe the conceptualization thusly: “In
this metaphor, people are viewed as plants with respect to the life cycle—more precisely,
they are viewed as that part of the plant that burgeons and then withers or declines, such
as leaves, flowers, and fruit […]” (p. 6). Pilgrim writers tend only to highlight the growth
aspect of PEOPLE ARE PLANTS since one of the driving forces of making a pilgrimage is
to celebrate or seek the fertile, nurturing spirit that it symbolizes.
Though Selby (1994) claims not to seek this sort of nurturing, she does recognize
its reality: “[…] whereas I believed that all journeys were a form of pilgrimage in the
sense that they offered time and space for reflection and for looking at life from a fresh
angle, I had no expectation of any particular reward of enhanced spiritual growth at the
end of it” (p. 24 [emphasis mine]). One pilgrim writer expresses her belief that the Way
will facilitate her spiritual nurturing to an online community of fellow and would-be
pilgrims: “It's been a difficult year this year but one that has presented much opportunity
for change. As I grow and extend outwardly, I want to do so inwardly, hence this
7 Way-marks are blazes placed along the road by the local municipalities which pilgrims follow in order to stay on the proper path; they are identified variously with red and white lateral stripes (the French GR65), yellow arrows (Spanish side), and a scallop shell emblem (intermittently and between Santiago and Finistera).
43
impending journey” (Mungobeanie, 2006, November 3 [emphasis mine]). Here, the
writer expresses her desire not only to ‘grow’ but to ‘extend outwardly’ in the same way
that a plant extends outward (and upward) from its germinating seed. The pilgrimage as
nurture has the added effect of also fostering growth vocationally: “However, the
experience itself [i.e. the pilgrimage] was amazing and definitely helped me grow as a
person and a writer, which is why I [am] doing it all again in Sept 2006, starting from
SJPP this time” (Mifsud, J., 2006, August 20). The spirit of the Way is perceived as a
sort of Petri dish in which its internal environment provides the appropriate conditions for
the pilgrim-plant to develop:
Perhaps it really comes down to whether one accepts what certain kinds of
experience -the accommodation to silence, solitude, sharing, trials of one sort or
another - invite personal growth on the pilgrim's part, beyond that usually
required by the circumstances of everyday life (Dennett, 1997 [emphasis mine]).
The Pilgrim’s Decision
The existential metaphors described above are given their full import when we
also look at the motivations driving pilgrims to make their journeys. Howard (1980)
suggests, “[…] the ‘pilgrimage of life’ is marked off by moral crises and choices; its goal
is growth in character” (p. 7). Indeed, many pilgrim writers express their coming to the
Way at some ‘cross-roads’ in their lives or amidst some personal life ‘crisis’. I use these
particular terms because of their relevance to LIFE IS A JOURNEY. A cross-road is a literal
location where two roads cross each other and the point at which the literal traveler must
make a decision as to which road to take on his or her journey. Since we also conceive of
our lives as journeys, a cross-road is a metaphorical point in one’s life path where a
44
decision must be made which will determine the course of the life traveler’s future. We
also often hear of people experiencing ‘mid-life crises’ or being at ‘critical’ points in their
lives. ‘Crisis’ comes from the Greek verb meaning ‘to decide’ (Simpson, 1989). People
who find themselves at these points in their life journeys are at a cross-road, a place at
which one must make a life-altering decision. The LIFE IS A JOURNEY metaphor is
apparent in these terms and in the motivations behind the modern pilgrimage to Santiago.
Pilgrim writers describe that their reasons for making their pilgrimages are related to life
changing events which force them to reevaluate their current directions in life.
Pilgrim Robin Neillands (1985) describes the state of his life at the time of his
decision to make his pilgrimage:
“In my case I went to get away from the life that seemed increasingly sterile, in
which I could not find a reason to be happy. I left for Compostela because I had
slowly but completely run out of the ability to tolerate my life as it was. The
world seemed to have run dry and lost its colour. Living in it had become a
pointless exercise. I suppose I was simply depressed. The Road seemed to offer
a little chink of light, and I got up wearily and followed it” (p. 22)
At the time, Neillands found his life without purpose, without direction. So many pilgrim
writers echo his sentiment. They too are at cross-roads in their lives, experiencing
spiritual crises of their own. Selby8 (1994) describes some of her fellow pilgrims in
much the same way:
8 Though she does not go into a great detail about her own troubles, Selby (1994) does inform her readers that the difficulties of the road had caused her some of her own crises de coeur [‘heartaches’] (p. 104 [my translation]).
45
[Harrie, a pilgrim from the Netherlands] was walking to Santiago, he said,
because he had come to a point in his life where he needed ‘space to think, to
work things out’; a time away from everyday problems (p. 144);
It was the death of [Kurt’s] wife the year before, coinciding wit his retirement that
had given him the jolt he needed to finally fulfill the debt he felt he owed his
father (p. 103);
[A student pilgrim] was fed up with his courses and wasn’t sure anymore if
engineering was really what he wanted to do. He hoped the journey would give
him time to think things out, but even if he found no answers, he thought the
experience would have been worth it (p. 102 [emphasis mine]).
The italicized terms above are part of a metaphorical system called MORAL ACCOUNTING.
Though I will discuss this system at length elsewhere, its introduction here will be helpful
to better understand pilgrim motivations and to establish its coherency with LIFE IS A
PILGRIMAGE.
In brief, the language of MORAL ACCOUNTING borrows from the terminological
field of business and finance, illustrating our conceptualization of morality as currency.
The pilgrim, Kurt, has undergone the pilgrimage as part of a promise to his father. This
is not a real financial debt that he owes, it is a moral one. Likewise, the student pilgrim
conceives of the activity as having money-like value. In MORAL ACCOUNTING, making
the pilgrimage is worthy of repaying moral debts. By discussing participation in the Way
using this metaphor system, the writer reveals an unconscious understanding behind the
pilgrims’ decision: that the pilgrimage road can remedy one’s moral life road.
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This assumption has precedence regarding the Way. A peccadillo is “a minor
fault or sin; a trivial offence” (Simpson, 2005); its root reveals something of the nature of
the pilgrimage as an instrument of moral reparation. The word comes from the Latin
verb peccāre meaning “to do wrong” which is believed to have derived from the
components ped-, pēs meaning “foot” + cus, a suffix forming adjectives (Simpson, 2005).
Rather than the simple annoying personality flaw that it is now, a peccadillo was
conceived in the past as a misstep on life’s path, a moral lapse. Pilgrimage then—as an
attempt to rectify these sins—is a way to get “back on the right track”, to make right by
the rest of the world. Similarly, committing moral error was “to be led astray” (Simpson,
1989). In practice, the preferred pilgrimage was one void of any outside distractions,
usually involving the pilgrim keeping his or her eyes constantly on the ground before
them so as to avoid wandering: “Against curiosity the Fathers and preachers always
warned pilgrims; it was the natural antithesis in medieval thought to the religious
conception of pilgrimage” (Howard 1980, p. 24).
Moral deeds are conceived as directional choices (“How could his life have gone
so wrong? I hope he gets back on the right path soon.”). Immoral choices along life’s
road lead the life-traveler astray of the “straight and narrow” path. This concept was
particularly prevalent in the medieval era of the religious pilgrimage: “The way of St.
James is fine but narrow, as narrow as the path of salvation itself. That path is the
shunning of vice, the mortification of the flesh, and the increasing of virtue” (Sumption,
1975, p. 124). Here the author quotes the opening lines of a twelfth century sermon
intended to be read to pilgrims of the Way and attributed to Pope Calixtus II. One of the
intended purposes of the sermon, known as the Veneranda Dies, was to instill in pilgrims
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an understanding that their pilgrimage required their sincere devotion in order for it to
have value. Though the pilgrims today rarely seek the same penitential rewards as their
antecedents, they still highlight the value of the pilgrimage as moral currency that will
give their lives greater worth.
Morality relies greatly on the ability to make the appropriate life decisions;
righteous choices punctuate a purposeful life journey. The Confraternity of Saint James
(2007) recognizes the tendency in modern pilgrims to take to the road at moments in their
lives when they most need moral fiber: “It is noticeable, however, that many people make
the pilgrimage at a turning point in their lives, and that many are helped to come to terms
with personal crisis by a period of separation from all that is familiar, and the shared
hardship of the road.” My wife and I became well acquainted with many recent retirees,
disgruntled students, and divorcees from all over Europe. Our fellow pilgrim Ken had
recently retired his architecture firm in Sussex Downs and was seeking a new direction in
life via the Way. Gianni from Genoa was trying to decide whether to stay married to his
wife with whom he had three children or leave her for his pregnant paramour in Venice.
Before he decided to devote his life full-time to the Way as a hospitalero voluntario9,
Lorenzo from Florence had been bedridden for months after a skiing accident and had
become disillusioned with the superficiality of urban life. We, ourselves, were
celebrating a pivotal moment in our new life together as a newlywed couple. The Way is
an established venue to mark these critical life-defining passages because it simplifies
things; the goal, destination, and purpose are all one in the same. On a pilgrimage like
this one, the dross of the outside world is shed and discarded, leaving the pilgrim in a
9 A volunteer attendant of the pilgrim hostels in Spain.
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vacuum where the journey is the most important thing and the traveler is allowed to sift
out for him or herself that which really matters.
Pilgrimage as Hero’s Quest
Though the linguistic discussion thus far has offered some thought-provoking
insight as to the conceptual organization of the pilgrimage phenomenon, the
psychological study of comparative mythology provides an organizing principle by which
this system of existential metaphors is given a far more fundamental meaning. The
external and internal metaphoric properties of pilgrimage make it a didactic instrument of
participatory mythology. Mythology is our way of making sense of the fundamental
questions of life: Who are we? Where did we come from? How did we get here? Where
are we going? My emphases here are meant to highlight the fact that these questions
themselves reflect a sense of our existential journey. They are questions about the life
journey and it is mythology’s job to try to provide answers for them. Those answers are
meant to help us cope with our mystifying passage from birth, through life, and to death.
Pilgrimage acts as experiential mythology. The stages of pilgrimage correlate
with the stages of the standard mythological adventure. Comparative mythologist Joseph
Campbell (1949) pinpoints the formula of what he calls the monomyth10: separation—
initiation—return (p. 30). Pilgrims on the Way enact this mythological passage in what
Campbell has called a “hero’s quest.” The monomyth is found in the Greek story of
Prometheus who stole fire from the gods; in stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the
Round Table who seek the Holy Grail in a fallen world; and in countless other myths,
fables, and legends from around the world. Campbell (1986) claims, “Throughout the
10 Campbell uses this term taken from James Joyce’s (1939) Finnegans Wake to describe what he sees as the archetypical mythological adventure found universally in mythologies the world over.
49
inhabited world, in all times and under every circumstance, the myths of man have
flourished; and they have been the living inspiration of whatever else may have appeared
out of the activities of the human body and mind” (p. 3). The myths of the Western mind
provide a primordial blueprint for pilgrimage and though its rewards do not have the
same magical connotations that the heroes’ prizes do, the returned boon of the pilgrim-
hero has the same import for the betterment of the society that they left and to which they
eventually return.
We have seen how the magnetism of certain medieval destinations with their
sacred relics and artifacts has drawn droves of pilgrims through the ages to places like
Santiago. We have also seen how many modern pilgrims are likewise drawn to the Way
for deficiencies in their own lives and the belief that their lives might be replenished and
their efforts somehow rewarded in making the pilgrimage. Because of this belief, these
men and women voluntarily separate themselves from the comforts of their social circles
to travel out into the unknown toward the promise of something mysterious. The trials of
the Way have changed over time yet they are still ordeals of initiation. Though the
medieval pilgrim faced many more dangers than today’s, the modern pilgrim road is still
wrought with difficulties (blisters, pulled muscles, sunburn, dehydration, tendonitis,
being side-swiped by cars or bicycles, etc.) and every year, pilgrims do, in fact, die before
reaching their destination. Most important in this recreation of the monomyth is the
return and reintegration with society. Recall that the ideal pilgrimage in the medieval
mind was a one-way passage, representing a linear ascension from birth to death to
heaven. For the mythological hero, as for the modern pilgrim, the shape of the journey
becomes circular with the pilgrim-hero returning once again to the social group from
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whence they came, bearing the intangible rewards of new knowledge about things long
forgotten by society.
Humans are social beings and as such we define ourselves by the social
definitions of our incidental realities: sex, age, occupation, religion, nationality, etc. We
have little control over such things because of chance and fate and yet we put great stock
into these as defining who we are. Campbell (1949) warns, “[…] such designations do
not tell what it is to be man, they denote only the accidents of geography, birth-date, and
income” (p. 385). These labels do not answer for us the basic questions of our existence.
The relative asceticism of the Way, then, is a technique of releasing ourselves from the
trappings of our former lives. The Way is a location and activity that have become
collapsed into one interactive drama of participatory myth. The simplicity of the cause
allows the pilgrim to open up to their fellow pilgrim, to appreciate nature, to experience
the spirit of the Way. In the words of Santiago pilgrim Selby (1994) “[…] one of the best
things about the walk for [me] so far had been finding how little you really needed” (p.
144). All distraction of society and duties drops away and the pilgrim is left with the
spirit of communitas11 which, upon their return to society is their charge to perpetuate.
We have seen how many modern pilgrims seek illumination and reaffirmation of
life’s worth on the Way. Campbell (1986) suggests that our modern separation from
myth may result in this quest for meaning: “It has always been the prime function of
mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in
counteraction to those other constant human fantasies that tend to tie it back. In fact, it
may well be that the very high incidence of neuroticism among ourselves follows from
11 Term used by anthropologist Victor Turner (1986) to describe the spirit of community based on equality and interactive harmony.
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the decline among us of such effective spiritual aid” (p. 11). Modern participation in the
archaic act of pilgrimage may be an attempt on the individual’s part to reconnect with
that driving force of the universe which is missing in an alienating world without
performance mythology.
Unlike the mythological heroes of lore, the hero of the Way is not a muscle-bound
character out of childhood bedtime fables or a magical demigod battling monsters in the
dark corners of the world. The hero is the pilgrim and the pilgrim is just an everyday
man or woman. Whereas the mythological hero sought a tangible prize for his efforts,
the modern hero quest of the pilgrimage is a journey of self-discovery. The Way gives
the pilgrim-voyager the ability to control that which is uncontrollable: the savage reality
of life and human nature within us. According to Campbell (1949), “[…] myth is the
secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human
cultural manifestations” (p. 3). And since culture so inextricably entwined with language,
the themes of a culture’s myths will be evident in the language used to describe them. As
such, it is not only in the imaginative uses of the poet, but also in the everyday language
of the everyday pilgrim that we discover the conceptual underpinnings that guide and
motivate their pilgrim mythology. It would seem then that linguistics—like anthropology,
archeology, mythology, sociology—has just as much to do with helping to solve the
deep-seated questions of human existence. And to this end the linguist can do his or her
most worthwhile investigations by exploring the metaphors buried beneath the surface of
our language system.
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Implications and Conclusions
This chapter has displayed how the institution of pilgrimage found its way into
Western literature as a trope by which poets and playwrights crafted their works. The
structure of pilgrimage has provided a sturdy framework by which artists can recreate
notions about the meaning of human existence. Because of the implied circular
perfection of a pilgrimage’s anatomy, these writers have found it a suitable mode by
which to fashion a discussion on the cyclical nature of life. We have also seen in this
chapter how the structure of pilgrimage is such that the pilgrim is motivated by the
promise of reward in some form of spiritual or emotional reparation. The metaphorical
evidence for this system of progress-and-reward is found explicitly in many pilgrim
writing samples and more prolifically in the embedded metaphors of their language. The
evidence has further implications regarding the LIFE IS A JOURNEY metaphor in that one
of the watermarks by which Westerners determine whether a life is purposeful or not is
their economic stability—a state frequently informed by an individuals’ progress in and
reward from their employment. The notion of reward, as revealed by the MORAL
ACCOUNTING metaphor, also carries over into the language of pilgrimage and provides
much of the structure for a conceptual metaphor that I will refer to as THE ECONOMY OF
PILGRIMAGE.
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Chapter Three: The Economics of Pilgrimage
“… I remembered reading in Aimery Picaud’s1 guide that medieval pilgrims had taken
large stones from near Tricastela and carried them five leagues to where they were made
into lime for the building of the new cathedral at Santiago. After that, the nuisance of the
trucks [sharing the pilgrim road with me] was tempered by the thought that I might be
witnessing the continuation of one of the longest running businesses in history.”
– Bettina Selby, Santiago pilgrim and travel writer (1994, p. 191)
The marriage between pilgrimage and commerce is evident physically, spiritually,
and linguistically. In physical space, the roads traveled by medieval pilgrims were also
those used by overland traders; these were ancient trade routes. In a sense, the commerce
of pilgrimage compliments the actual commerce of the trade industry. The spirit and
drive behind both are at least partly responsible for the period of oceanic trade and
exploration which followed the Middle Ages. During this Age of Discovery (roughly
from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century), European trade ships sailed the uncharted
seas in search of less circuitous trading routes and additional trading partners to slake the
thirst of their burgeoning capitalist economies. While technological advancements in
shipbuilding, first developed in the Middle Ages, helped this period of exploration to set
sail physically, the scholars of the time were looking at the imagery of the writers of the
medieval pilgrimage for the literary inspiration that would energize the movement
outward.
Curiosity and commercial interest have always been motivating factors in
exploration. As the Age of Discovery was generally winding down, the earth was not yet
1 Aimery Picaud is twelfth century French scholar thought to be the author of the Codex Calixtinus, a composite manuscript about the Way including sermons, travel advice, music, and pilgrim prayers.
54
wholly mapped (Howard, 1980, p. 2). Parts of our world were still hidden by the dark
clouds of insular ignorance. Western travelers and explorers who ventured into the
unknown sent home tales of their exploits like pieces which were fitted into the
developing cartographical puzzle of the world. Travel literature forerunners like Richard
Hakluyt and Samuel Purchas had the vocation of recreating a constitutive metaphor of the
new world view as it started to come into focus (ibid). Purchas and his contemporaries
looked back to the writings of the medieval pilgrim, not only as a source of professional
knowledge but more for the “wonder and imagery” that their stories offered (ibid, p. 3).
In other words, the tales of the medieval writers were inspirational in development of the
Age of Discovery, providing a blueprint for the adventuring profiteers of the high seas.
It is no coincidence that pilgrimage is partly understood as a commercial
enterprise. An investigation of the language used to describe the pilgrim experience
reveals that it borrows heavily from the conceptual systems of business and employment.
The early association with business may be due, in part, to the Catholic system of
penance established in the third century, several hundred years before the peak of the
medieval pilgrimage. It would appear that the Catholic system of penance is a socially
constructed manifestation of a preexisting conceptual metaphor of MORAL ACCOUNTING.
The virtual materialization of this mental construct provides the supporting context for
the act of pilgrimage as a business.
MORAL ACCOUNTING
Lakoff and Johnson (1999) identify the conceptual metaphor MORAL
ACCOUNTING2 as one by which we organize our lives. The Catholic system of penance is
2 This original notion of MORAL ACCOUNTING as embedded in the English language has been credited to Sarah Taub, a student of Lakoff’s, whose work on the subject is yet unpublished but can be found variously
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evidence of an institutionally organized version of this fundamental metaphor of Western
principles. MORAL ACCOUNTING relies on the suggestion submitted by Lakoff and
Johnson (1999) that we conceptualize WELL-BEING as WEALTH:
[This particular metaphor] is not our only metaphorical conception of well-being,
but it is a component of one of the most important moral concepts we have. It is
the basis for a massive metaphor system by which we understand our moral
interactions, obligations, and responsibilities” (p. 292).
Under this metaphorical concept, increases in our well-being are understood as “gains”
and decreases as “losses”. This is combined with the general metaphor of causation under
which causes are objectified as things given to an affected party. In the CAUSES ARE
OBJECTS metaphor, when an emotion is caused by some external stimulus, we conceive
of that emotion as an object that has been given to us (“The ominous clouds on the
horizon give me a bad feeling.” “I get good vibes from the happy people with whom I
work.”). Given our implied understanding that causation is a material transaction, human
interaction is conceptualized as a transaction in which two or more people engage in an
exchange of effects, transferring them from one to another. Coupled with the
understanding that WELL-BEING IS WEALTH, a beneficial effect is seen as a gain and a
harmful effect as a loss.
It follows from these mutually supporting metaphors that moral actions are seen
as objects of exchange similar to financial transactions. Lakoff (1995) explains the
relationship between literal and moral accounting: “Just as literal bookkeeping is vital to
economic functioning, so moral bookkeeping is vital to social functioning. And just as it
in Lakoff (1995) and Lakoff & Johnson (1999), the former regarding the logic and morality in Liberal and Conservative politics.
56
is important that the financial books be balanced, so it is important that the moral books
be balanced” (p. 2). People who are ‘morally bankrupt’ are not likely to contribute
positively to the well-being of their society but it is possible for someone who has had
lapses in moral reasoning to be given a ‘clean slate’ (a balanced record of one’s moral
conduct) by society if they make the proper repayment.
MORAL ACCOUNTING draws from a source domain of financial accounting with a
linguistic frame containing “debt”, “credit”, “accounting”, and “balance”. The target
domain is one involving our social conduct and uses a linguistic frame composed of
“morals”, “morality”, “immorality”, and related terminology. The metaphorical system is
comprised of the following six metaphorical concepts according to Lakoff (1994):
DOING MORAL DEEDS IS ACCUMULATING CREDIT
(“I deserve a reward for being such a humble person”, “We worked long and hard
on our exams, we should get A’s”, “It’s to your credit to hand in your work on
time”, “I feel cheated by the Society”)
DOING IMMORAL DEEDS IS ACCUMULATING DEBT
(“He’s paying his debt to society”, “You will pay dearly for your mistakes,
buddy”, “I’ll pay her back for cheating me on that deal”, “You get what you
deserve”)
BENEFITING IS ACCUMULATING DEBT
(“I owe you big time”, “How can I ever repay your generosity”, “You really saved
me back there”, “I am deeply indebted to you for being so kind”)
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MORAL DEBT IS REPAID WITH MORAL DEEDS
(“I’ll make it up to you for how awful I’ve been this week”, “I feel I need to give
back to society what I’ve taken from it”)
MORAL DEBT REPAID WITH PUNISHMENT
(“After serving his sentence he reentered society with a clean slate”, “Haven’t I
paid enough for my mistakes?” “The debt was exacted from her hide”)
A MORAL ACCOUNT IS A RECORD OF TRANSACTIONS
(“Before we demonize our President, let’s spend a moment to take into account
all the good things he’s done for us …”, “That man needs to be held accountable
for his deeds”, “Lying is a big ‘no-no’ in my book”)
The language of MORAL ACCOUNTING evidences the belief that the constituent members
of a social group are obligated to remain accountable to one another for the interest and
survival of the group as a whole. A community’s standards are determined by the
dominant members of it; Lakoff and Johnson (1999) suggest that this is by virtue of “[…]
a metaphorical model in which the logic of moral authority makes use of the logic of
physical dominance” (p. 301). Western cultures have a long history of patriarchal
dominance through timocracy. As such, the metaphorical community-fathers have
dictated the organizing rules of morality to the community-family. Traditionally, it has
been religion that has championed these moral standards. The pillar of Christianity—as
interpreted by the Catholic belief system—extends the patriarchal social structure by
recognizing God as “Our Father” whose moral messages are channeled through a ruling
body composed entirely of men.
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The Corporate Structure of the Catholic Church
In the prehistoric world, religion was experiential. At some point, presumably, a
group of individuals established itself as a medium for that religious experience thus
creating the hierarchal structure of religion that we witness today (McKenna, 1991, p.
242). The Catholic Church (hereafter “the Church”) is one of the more strictly structured
of the major established religions with a complex hierarchy headed by the Pope and
composed of an ordained clergy divided into bishops, priests, and deacons. The
organization of the Church can essentially be seen as a complex chain of command that
has the same basic ordering and metaphoric capacity of a large corporation: deacons as
shift managers, priests as general store managers, bishops as regional managers, and the
Pope as the chief executive officer. The congregation of Catholic worshipers—in this
analogy—are the stockholders investing in the Church literally with their weekly tithe.
They are also the Church’s labor force, investing in their own employee benefit package
that will include a ‘retirement plan’ of their eternal salvation. For the faithful Catholic,
the end of one’s corporeal existence is only the end of one’s earthly life; the ‘company
man’ is rewarded for his faithful service to the corporation with a severance package
consisting of eternal life in Heaven. Church members can be employed by the
corporation in several capacities that promote the strength of the Church including
missionary work, acting as community volunteers, even going on pilgrimages.
The dualism inherent in the Catholic faith acknowledges only two companies in
the business of eternity: God’s and Satan’s. In this worldview of binary opposites,
followers of Satan are those who adhere to a moral code defined by what Christianity is
not: “The children of God and the children of the devil are revealed in this way: all who
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do not do what is right are not from God, nor are those who do not love their brothers and
sisters” (1 John 3:10). Notice that the metaphorical organization of the society at large as
children remains intact. Though it is not explicit here, Satan is also rendered with
masculine pronouns, thereby reflecting the patriarchal nature of the society that invented
these concepts.
The MORAL ACCOUNTING of the corporate Church emerges quite plainly in this
famous passage: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in
Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23 [emphasis mine]). Altruistic exchange may define
the relationship between God and Man, but not when the Church acts as the interpreter.
Christianity is a sociological religion. Its dogma is based on social rules like the “ethic of
reciprocity” also known as “the Golden Rule”. Implied in this axiom is the notion that
members of society must invest good deeds into it if they expect to be treated in kind.
One belongs to others and not to one’s self—one’s ambitions are subordinated to the
interests of the common good. Eternal life, therefore, requires reciprocity. In fact,
Catholics are expected to contribute to their eternal reward by ‘working’ for the Church
by living sin-free lives. Morality—as defined by the Church—turns on the organizing
concept of sin. Acts of sin are disruptions in the moral fabric of the Catholic community
and a threat to the lawful harmony of the society: “Everyone who commits sin is guilty of
lawlessness; sin is lawlessness” (1 John, 3:4).
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Sin and Penance
Orthodox Catholics recognize two types of personal sin: mortal and venial3. The
former is defined as, “a moral offense of sufficient seriousness to separate man
permanently from union with God—in popular language, it is a sin which renders one fit
for hell4” (McKenzie 1969, 156). A venial sin is a sin of a lesser degree yet still “indeed a
moral fault, but not of the same seriousness; one remains united with God, but not
perfectly” (ibid.). There is some debate as to which sins fall under which category—
some purists consider blasphemy a mortal sin as it is an offense against one of God’s Ten
Commandments—but the distinction for the current discussion is not essential. What is
important is that sin is looked at as a spiritual demerit which becomes a debt to God if the
sinner disobeys His word. On the other hand, a dedicated believer can improve their
spiritual finances with faith and good works which are merits—one could say the
‘earnings’ of a good Catholic. A sinner can also gain moral credit through the system of
penance established by the Church sacraments. The etymology of the word ‘penance’
provides some insight into what type of recompense the Church has in mind from sinners.
‘Penance’ as well as words like ‘penalty’ and ‘punishment’ are all related to the word
‘pain’ (Partridge, 1958, p. 463). Accordingly, the lengths to which penance was applied
by the Church ranged from slight mental discomfort (private confession) to physical
mutilation (public flagellation). Because of its physical demands, pilgrimage became a
suitable component of the penitential system. 3 In actuality, the Catholic Church also recognizes Original Sin which is the belief that all men and women are genetically marked by the sin of disobedience passed down through the ages by our metaphoric original mother and father: Adam and Eve. It is believed that Original Sin is washed away upon one’s Baptism, which the Catholics believe must be done very soon after the baby’s birth. For the purposes of this discussion, the types of sins in question will be those committed by fully-developed humans who have had the benefit of experience to assist in decision-making. 4 “Christianity is the only religion that has the idea of a permanent condition called Hell. A mortal sin is regarded as an offense that condemns a person to Hell” (Campbell, 1986, p. 100 [emphasis mine]).
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Sacramental penance is the method by which men and women can be absolved of
their sin-debt through an act of reconciliation or confession. The sacramental rite of
confession involves the morally deficient Church member in a moral transaction with a
priest. The sinner ‘offers5’ his or her misgivings—as if they were tangible tokens of
trade—in private in the form of a confession to God through an ordained priest as His
mediating moral accountant. The sinner is usually ordered to recite a series of prayers or
Rosary cycles. The result is that the moral ‘debt’ is essentially settled by the ‘receipt’ of
forgiveness thereby ‘balancing the moral books’ of the sinner and allowing him or her to
eventually be accepted into Heaven. At this point, the confessor can now receive God’s
full grace and forgiveness. Grace and forgiveness are both noteworthy terms in the
context of this system of moral transaction given their etymological significances. Grace
shares its roots with grateful, both of which are morphologically rooted in the Latin grāt-
us which is ultimately derived from the Greek γέρας meaning “reward” (Simpson, 1989).
The verb forgive is endowed with the notion of transaction. It comes from the Old
English word forgiefan, which is comprised of the verb-forming prefix for- and giefan
meaning “give” (Partridge, 1958, p. 255). The further metaphorical implication of an act
of penance is that a sinner is engaged in a financial transaction with God where ‘reward’
is ‘given’ for the ‘offering up’ of one’s sins. Sin, then, fits into the notion of MORAL
ACCOUNTING as a MORAL DEBT and forgiveness as a MORAL CREDIT.
5 Note, here, that the Germanic term offer was chiefly only used in a religious context in the past as in “an offering to God” (Simpson, 2005). The meaning has obviously spilled over into the secular domain of business and contractual law where offers are made and accepted: the very essence of a Capitalist business relationship.
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Symbolic Exchange
Implicit in this spiritual give-and-take is the conception of society as an
interwoven community that can be disrupted by any of the member’s misgivings.
Foundations for this spiritual commerce are rooted in the social development of gift-
giving. Our modern system of sale and purchase replaced an ancient one of gifts and
return gifts as sociologist Marcel Mauss (1967) suggests: “[Gift-giving societies] […] are
a step in the development of our own economic forms, and serve as a historical
explanation of features of our own society” (p. 46). Exchange involves the elaborate
presentation of a gift of some value provided under the pretense that the giver is simply
exhibiting generosity. This is followed by a formal act of gift refusal by the recipient.
The motions of the ritual are deceptive on both parties’ parts because the gift is
obligatorily given and received.
The system of exchange has metaphysical import since the objects of currency
retain some radioactive property of the people involved. The formal procedure of gift-
giving imbues human qualities onto objects in currency and vice versa: “[…] bonds
between things which are to some extent parts of persons, and persons and groups […]
behave in some measure as if the were things” (Mauss, 1967, p. 11). In this way, gifts
are actually extensions of the community’s spirit and are respected accordingly. Mauss
(1967) describes three obligatory stages in the gift-giving cycle: giving—receiving—
repaying (p. 37). The final obligation is itself a form of giving and thus the circular shape
of exchange is completed. Society members are expected to perpetuate the cycle of
exchange for the survival of the community. Any break in the gift-giving pattern is
damaging to the communal harmony, bringing misfortune not only to the transgressor,
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but to the entire group. The act of gift exchange which binds a community to one another,
also binds the gift-giver as representative of the community to the cosmic order of the
universe: “[…] another theme appears which does not require this human support, […]:
the belief that one has to buy [their fortune] from the gods and that the gods know how to
repay the price […]” (Mauss, 1967, p. 14). Members of these societies could, in effect,
make business deals with God for things like a high yielding harvest, a male child,
clement weather, etc.
The Church, too, has established an economy of reciprocity in its system of
penance. It is likely that the blueprint of the system predates the Catholic implementation
of it. The items of exchange are the moral deeds of the community members and the
social harmony relies on their continued reciprocity: “One good turn deserves another.”
The sacrament of penance corresponds with the cycle of gift exchange in that the
confessor, who is at a moral deficit, appeals to God by offering his or her sins. God
absorbs these moral faults and forgives the sinner. This would seem fairly
straightforward and in accordance with the cycle, but Catholic dogma interprets the ritual
differently. A properly functioning gift exchange involves items of value to both parties.
Indeed, the shedding of the guilt of immorality is of value to the confessor, but what have
God and the Church received? Catholic doctrine requires that the penitent give
something back that will balance the books, as it were:
In order to have [one’s ledger of sins] cancelled here, the penitent receives from
his confessor what is usually called his ‘penance’, usually in the form of certain
prayers which he is to say, or of certain actions which he is to perform, such as
visits to a church, the Stations of the Cross, etc. Alms, deeds, fasting, and prayer
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are the chief means of satisfaction, but other penitential works may also be
enjoined (Hanna, 1911).
Pilgrimage as Penance
In the Middle Ages, pilgrimage became an alternative form of public penance for
sins: “The teaching of the church and the penalties for sin, in this world and the next,
were never far from the medieval consciousness. So it followed from this, that to go on
pilgrimage was a unique way of assuaging the consequences of sin” (Ure, 2006, p. 6).
Some Church doctrines went so far as to suggest specific pilgrimage destinations
acceptable as a means of penance:
In the registers of the Inquisition at Carcassone […] we find the four following
places noted as being the centres of the greater pilgrimages to be imposed as
penances for the graver crimes, the tomb of the Apostles at Rome, the shrine of St.
James at Compostella [sic], St. Thomas's body at Canterbury, and the relics of the
Three Kings at Cologne (Jarrett, 1911).
The Way’s inclusion here is due in part to the great distance—the Church deeming that it
would cause sufficient enough pain and discomfort to satisfy their moral deficit. Mullins
(1974) affirms that, “One of the early attractions of the journey to Compostela in the
early days was that it was difficult, difficulty being intimately related to spirituality” (p.
52).
The first penitential pilgrims appear to have marched forth from Ireland where
mandatory pilgrimage for certain sinners was introduced as early as the sixth century.
The idea was fairly revolutionary at the time given that “the whole notion of penance was
transformed by Irish missionaries. The Irish confessor imposed penances, which varied
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with the gravity of the sin, in accordance with a penitential ‘tariff’[…]” (Sumption 1975,
98 [my emphasis]). These particular ‘tariffs’ were extensive lists of sins and their
appropriate absolving penitential acts. In its contemporary meaning ‘tariff’ is an official
schedule establishing the customs duties and rates to be imposed on imports and exports
(Simpson, 1989). Historically—at least insofar as these Irish missionaries were
concerned— the absolving of sin through pilgrimage was seen as the paying of a moral
tax in order to gain admittance into Heaven, just as goods are taxed before they are
allowed to cross the borders of a country.
Pilgrimage was seen as an acceptable moral repayment for a variety of sins—
mortal and venial. Among them, the sin of fornication (presumably the out-of-wedlock
or other spiritually offensive varieties) appears to have been a frequent reason for the
sentence. Of the early Irish penitential doctrines, The Penitential Cummean’s (ca. 650)
section titled “Of Fornication” mandates, “He who defiles his mother shall do penance
for three years, with perpetual pilgrimage” (McNeill & Games, 1938, 1990, p. 103). The
Road to Santiago figured largely into this penitential system by the twelfth century.
Mullins (1974) relates the stories of English fornicators sentenced to make a pilgrimage
to Santiago. One woman, Mabel de Boclande, was ordered to make the journey to avoid
being beaten with rods six times around various churches (pp. 61-2).
The more obvious examples of this system are found in those penitential
pilgrimages in which the pilgrim was forced to undergo the journey as either a form of
punishment or requisite for achieving some monetary reward. Weightier sins like
homicide were dealt with by municipal law which was often replaced with Church law.
These penitents typically made their journeys burdened by iron collars and fettered
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extremities; it was also normal—in the case of convicted murderers—to attach the
weapon of their atrocity to their fetters “as a permanent advertisement of the crime”
(Sumption, 1975. p. 109). Santiago-bound indeed! Upon journey’s end, these penitents
would usually cast off their chains as a symbolic act of offering up the weight of the sin
for God’s forgiveness. Those pilgrimages imposed by judicial decree are said to have
occurred primarily during the time of the Inquisition, when penalties for sin were much
higher (ibid., p. 104). This was seen, literally, as a way of paying one’s debt to society.
Pilgrimages of this sort “were little more than the traditional penalty of banishment
renamed” (ibid., p. 105). Ure (2006) suggests additional blatant examples of the
transactional nature of pilgrimage in the compulsory requirements for some inheritances:
“Though not strictly a penalty, the pilgrimage would also be often imposed as the
condition of an inheritance or other provision of a will” (p. 80).
According to Sumption (1975), “Pilgrimage, like banishment, was a particularly
suitable punishment for those enormities which threatened the tight-knit urban
communities of the late middle ages” (p. 105). In former times, violators of the
communal harmony were simply exiled indefinitely to assure the survival of the group.
Pilgrimage seems to have changed the face of this punishment by offering the penitent a
chance to redeem themselves and eventually reintegrate with their society. These
pilgrims would return home, presumably, cleansed of their sins and thus able to
contribute appropriately to the benefit of their community. This type of pilgrimage, then,
not only provided the penitential pilgrim with a clean moral slate, but it was also a boon
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to the community from whence they came; the sinner might now contribute to the overall
wellness of that society they had formally threatened6.
Not everyone made the penitential journey by force, however, and by the
thirteenth century the voluntary penitential pilgrimage was en vogue. The main attraction
was, indeed, to receive remittance for one’s sins but some repenting pilgrims found that
they could receive material privileges. Genuine pilgrims—who could prove their
legitimacy—were afforded some material benefits for their efforts along the way, as
Layton (1976) catalogs:
[…] though the monks were generous and allowed poor pilgrims a daily ration of
20 ounces of bread and 12 ounces of meat with bone, or 10 ounces of it off the
bone, and 16 ounces of red wine along with some chickpeas, bacon and potatoes,
only two days’ stay was permitted and pilgrims had to show their certificates on
their way out and the Compostelan certificate proving they had made the journey
(p. 123-4).
Many priests were permitted to draw their full salary for three years while taking a leave
of absence to walk to Santiago and back (Mullins, 1974, p. 62). French free men—and
later English—were allowed to leave their homes and families without forfeiting their
property or legacy rights (ibid. p. 53).
Voluntary medieval pilgrims were attracted to pilgrimage for the genuine belief in
“the automatic remission of sins by the formal visits to particular shrines” (Sumption
1975, 103). This confidence was capitalized on by the Church in the form of plenary
6 Frey (1998) reports that this type of penitential pilgrimage has been reemployed by the Dutch and Belgian juvenile penal systems. Since 1982, a non-profit organization called Oikoten in conjunction with the Belgian Ministry of Justice has sponsored the Santiago pilgrimage of a number of juvenile delinquents every year as a means of reforming the troubled youths.
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indulgences. In order to better appreciate the concept of indulgences, it is necessary at
this point to explain the Catholic understanding of judgment in the afterlife. Catholics
believe that when their bodies expire, their souls will still be held accountable to divine
justice for earthly sins even though they have already been forgiven through the
sacrament of confession; payment is still expected for sins in the hereafter. This
reconciliation with God is not at all unlike the process in accounting of reconciling an
expense account. The double-entry bookkeeping system provides a suitable analogy for
this process. In this form of record-keeping, a ledger is split into two columns of figures:
the account’s debits and credits. The columns are totaled and their sums are reconciled
with one another to determine if the account is at a deficit or surplus; this is how an
accountant balances a book of financial records. Similarly, in Church doctrine, a
person’s sins are weighed against their good deeds and the resulting balance or imbalance
establishes the fate of their soul. Specifically, this divine reconciliation determines the
amount of additional time the soul will remain separate from God; temporal punishment
is spent in the holding pattern of Purgatory. A writ of indulgence, however, could allow
the soul to dispense with the temporal punishment bit and go directly to heaven.
There is a general misconception that the Catholic indulgence is a “get-out-of-jail-
free” or “license to sin” card. In fact, a writ of indulgence is “a remission of the
punishment which is still due to sin after sacramental absolution, this remission being
valid in the court of conscience and before God, and being made by an application of the
treasure of the Church on the part of a lawful superior” (Addis & Arnold, p. 442 [my
emphasis]). The indulgence is only awarded after the sinner has completed the other
necessary sacramental acts, particularly confession. The language of the Church
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dogma—assuming it is believed to be metaphoric by Catholics—reveals an intricate
banking system supported by MORAL ACCOUNTING by which a sinner essentially borrows
moral credit from the Church in the form of the indulgence: “[…] an indulgence places
at the penitent’s disposal the merits of Christ and of the saints, which form the ‘Treasury’
of the Church.” (Kent, 1910 [my emphasis]). An indulgence, then, is a loan that balances
the sinner’s moral account with the creator: “[…] it means a more complete payment of
the debt which the sinner owes to God” (ibid. [my emphasis])
The act of pilgrimage was often not enough to receive an indulgence. Church
authorities often required some sort of monetary payment for penitential absolution to
help fund the imposing cathedrals that housed their relics. Accordingly, “a pilgrim was
expected to be as generous as his means would allow, and there were some who asserted
that without an offering a pilgrimage was of no value” (Sumption, 1975, p. 158).
Sumption (1975) relates the rather bizarre ceremony at which indulgences were presented
to incoming pilgrims—as stipulated by the statutes of Santiago cathedral:
After the morning mass the sacristan and another priest stood behind the shrine
with rods in their hands and with these they would tap each pilgrim in his own
language. Pilgrims were then asked whether their offering was for St. James, i.e.
for alms and general purposes, in which case it was placed on a side-table. […]
Only cash or jewellery [sic] was accepted (p. 160).
The issuance of indulgences, then, was transactional on several levels. It had an
intangible, spiritual side as well as a material, business-like one, both of which were
rendered at a linguistic level metaphorically and concretely.
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The Medieval Pilgrimage Business
Besides the metaphoric economy associated with the Way, the pilgrimage was a
genuine financial boon to many groups connected with it. Some private businesses made
pilgrim traffic a supplement to their existing trades. Mullins (1974) describes Santiago
pilgrims who chartered trade ships to take them to closer embarkation points: “It was
regular trade for the ships’ captains: they carried a cargo of wine from Bordeaux one way,
and a cargo of pilgrims to Bordeaux the other. Good business” (p. 30). Some pilgrims
could actually make an occupation of venture since, “it was possible to make a
pilgrimage by proxy, hiring a pilgrim to travel in one’s place” (Howard 1980, p. 12).
Though this practice was frowned upon by the Church it appears to have happened quite
regularly. Isabel of Bavaria, fifteenth century queen of France, dispatched pilgrims in her
name regularly: “Her accounts are full of entries recording payments made to
professional pilgrims […]” for this service (Sumption, 1975, p. 299).
The promise of some small fortune—tangible or intangible—reached all walks of
life, creating a colorful pastiche of characters who were making a living while they were
making a pilgrimage: “[…] along with [the pilgrims] would go the rogues, the cut-purses,
the sellers of fake relics, women of easy virtue, acrobats, jugglers, troubadours, and a
bevy of itinerant workers—stone masons, carpenters and others—who thronged the
medieval roads of Europe trying to make a living by one means or another” (Selby, 1994,
p. 6). Indeed, this motley band of travelers was partially comprised of questionable folks
of ill intent and honest pilgrims were often easy targets for these disreputable
opportunists: “Bandits preyed on them in wooded country; crooked ferrymen demanded
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extortionate charges; dishonest innkeepers fleeced them and sometimes murdered them in
their beds for the sake of their possessions” (Ure, 2006, pp. 80-81).
Recall, finally, that the Way was used by the Church as a means of generating
support for its Reconquest of Spain. They sought religious fervor on one hand and the
money that it brought in on the other: “[…] in an age when men could combine piety
with practicality, the Cult [of the Saints] prospered, to the benefit of pilgrim souls and the
great advantage of the Church” (Neillands, 1985, p. 44). The Church was a great
opportunist, making profitable use of the medieval inclination to believe in miracles: “To
the medieval mind, relics were not merely objects of veneration but possessed power in
themselves, particularly powers of healing and intercession, which were commensurate
with the saint’s position in the heavenly hierarchy” (Selby, 1994, p. 8). The interest in
relic worship was stoked by the Church and resulted in the creation of another successful
side business: “In that age, saintly relics were highly valued, traded as commodities and
even manufactured with great vigor to further ecclesiastical and monarchical interests.”
(Roddis, Frey, Placer, Fletcher, & Noble, 1999, p. 382). The Church’s successful
promotion of the Way resulted in a booming business of pilgrimage that survives today:
“The monks of Cluny ran the pilgrim traffic to Compostela as a business and saw to it
that any investment in relics paid off in practical terms, and as far as [the church in]
Conques is concerned it still does” (ibid., p. 46).
The Contemporary Pilgrimage Business
Since its resurgence in popularity, the Way has, once again, become a booming
business for those associated with it—not so much as a religious attraction, but a site of
secular tourism. For the Holy Year of 1993, the Galician government began a major
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publicity campaign to promote the Way called Xacobeo 93. The project resulted in the
preservation of sections of the path that had fallen into disrepair, organizing cultural
events, and establishing a network of permanent free pilgrim hostels in the tradition of
the medieval hospitales. Its great success and the periodic recurrence of the Holy Year
have called for its continued reinstatement. With the infrastructure in place, the Way has
become a more accommodating tourist activity shifting from Catholic to catholic.
The result has been an increased number of business (hotels, restaurants, shops,
baggage services) thriving from the new wave of pilgrims. Even the so-called “career
pilgrims” are apparently making a comeback. One enterprising Portuguese man who
calls himself the “Payer of Promises” continues this tradition today. Carlos Gil charges
$2,500 for two weeks worth of walking to several choices of sacred destinations—
Santiago de Compostela among them. According to an article (Tremlett, 2006,
November 24) in the Guardian, “Mr. Gil says he does not make a profit on his trips, and
the money just covers his costs. He also denies that the people who pay for him to go on
the pilgrimage are cheating on their own pledges”.
On our pilgrimage, we were warned by hospitaleros and fellow pilgrims to
beware of the same sort of opportunist criminal element that had drifted along with the
medieval pilgrim tide. Pilgrim Claus Kerryman (2005, September 1) informs fellow
travelers to stay informed of these negative aspects of the Way:
By the way, as the [S]panish authorities do statistics on the Camino, they will
probably also have numbers and locations of Camino crime. It would be
understandable if they have no interest to see them splashed about on the WWW,
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bad for business, but they should still be asked to make them known. Informed
pilgrims are safer” [my emphasis].
The figure of speech emphasized here is evidence of this pilgrim’s recognition of the
Way as a commercial industry. Kerryman’s warning also contains an undercurrent of
scorn toward the Spanish municipalities who withhold safety information for the sake of
protecting their financial interests at the expense of the pilgrim. The propagandizing of
the Way has become subtler but it is, nonetheless, still vital to its survival.
Kerryman (2005, September 1) and other pilgrims acknowledge the business
aspect of pilgrimage—often cynically—in their discussions about the Way. One pilgrim-
hopeful—whose name was withheld—expressed apprehension about his/her upcoming
pilgrimage on an online forum: “I worry about finding a crowded, commercialized,
tourist burdened route since the Camino has received so much publicity in the past few
years. Lot's [sic] of unique and special things in the world get ruined by overexposure. I
leave with high hopes but no expectations. All journeys are what one makes them....”
(Why I did the Camino). Modern guidebooks like Trekking and climbing in northern
Spain (Thomson, Schroder, Thompson, & Saunders, 2003) support this characteristic of
the Way, touting the business side of it as one of its defining qualities: “The route is not
only one of the world’s longest walking routes, but historically it is also the world’s first
commercial trek” (p. 131).
As we have seen, the commercialization of the Way has been an integral part of
the pilgrimage since its Catholic inception, yet over time its association with the business
end of the spectrum has grown stronger than its original religious connotations. In a
global economy defined by capitalist ideology, the Way has survived because its
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purveyors have highlighted its marketable aspects as a tourist destination—a sort of
institutional natural selection. The language of the pilgrimage has—understandably—
followed suit, incorporating a metaphoric conceptual system that takes out terminological
loans from the linguistic coffers of the business world.
PILGRIMAGE IS A COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE
Medieval pilgrims used an actual system of material exchange with the
Compostelas and the scallop shells which all represented a network of symbolic social
exchange. Over centuries these symbols have been drained of their full import as
symbols of this exchange. Instead the value system tied to pilgrimage has been retained
in the metaphoric language used by its participants today. The original religiously
inspired pilgrimage—by definition—was prompted by a great moral rationale and is thus
systematically encoded with the language of morality as organized by MORAL
ACCOUNTING. MORAL ACCOUNTING essentially establishes a metaphoric economy in
which a currency of good and bad deeds is exchanged for spiritual favor. In this
economy one can accumulate moral wealth, pay off a moral debt, or otherwise balance
their moral ledger by being actively employed in moral acts. Pilgrimage, thus, becomes a
means of making one’s moral ends meet—gainful employment—insofar as the Church’s
sacramental system of penance was concerned. Since the organizing conceptualization of
MORAL ACCOUNTING—as manifested in the language and structure of the Church—
allows for the act of pilgrimage to be redeemable, as a unit of commerce—for the
absolution of one’s sins—an inherited complex metaphorical system surfaces which I
will call PILGRIMAGE IS A COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE. This system entails several
supporting metaphors:
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(1) A PILGRIMAGE IS A JOB
(2) A PILGRIM IS A LABORER
(3) A PILGRIMAGE IS A WORK PRODUCT
(4) A PILGRIMAGE IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY
Though the days of the penitential pilgrimage and the issuance of indulgences are bygone,
morality continues to play a role in the journey of the modern pilgrim, if only
linguistically. Even if today’s pilgrim claims his or her motivations are secular, non-
spiritual, or non-religious, the metaphoric language they use reveals that pilgrimage
continues to be conceived of in the same terms of spiritual commerce of their medieval
forerunners.
A PILGRIMAGE IS A JOB
For the voluntary and involuntary penitent of old, pilgrimage—as a job—offered
many of the same perks as a modern employee benefit package provided by an employer
corporation: vertical movement in the company, a retirement fund that you pay into,
health benefits, even bonuses7. Modern writers recognize their medieval counterparts as
being a part of the same industry: “The various requirements of the pilgrim trade were
met by a series of hospices along the way […]” (Hayes, 2005), an infrastructure that has
been reestablished to accommodate the contemporary “pilgrim trade”. In the tradition of
this industry, pilgrims today often structure their days similarly to the way they would a
work day: “Long-distance walkers in Britain usually operate on a ‘nine-to-five’ basis,
leaving their accommodation shortly after breakfast and returning in time for an early
evening meal” (Raju, 2003, p. 32). The job of pilgrimage is deceptively simple: get to
7 One example of this was when a medieval pilgrim stopped at Monte de Gozo in a Jubilee Year they would see additional gains: “A hundred days of indulgence added to that remission of half time in Purgatory due to any Compostela pilgrim is a bonus worth having” (Neillands, 1985, p. 154).
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Santiago. However, the business-like nature of the Way can complicate pilgrim
motivations. Selby (1994) relates a significant encounter with an elderly Frenchman in a
rural village who recognizes her as a pilgrim to Santiago. The local man attempts to foist
a ten franc piece upon Selby who politely fends off his mysterious donation; she is only
partially successful, however, finally accepting a cup of coffee at a nearby café instead.
It is only further down the road after puzzling over the event that she realizes what the
man’s motivation had been: “His alms I realized were a sort of sponsorship endorsing the
pilgrimage in general. He considered I was doing something worthwhile, and by staking
me to a coffee he had a share in the venture. It was a touching and kindly gesture, but it
had its serious side too, dispelling the notion that I was an entirely free agent on this
journey […]” (p. 51 [emphasis mine]). The vocation of pilgrimage is typically a humble
one, where the pilgrim is without his or her normal support system and must rely on the
kindness of others. In this case, though, the extension of kindness is interpreted as a
business transaction that recalls the days of patronage where outside parties would
contribute to the career of their charge. Selby (1994) recognizes here that she is part of a
larger corporate ‘venture’ of which she can not exist independently: the success of her
vocation as pilgrim is dependant on the support of the ad hoc corporate arrangement of
the Way.
Like other vocations, pilgrims admit to being ‘called’ to make their pilgrimage to
Santiago. During an online discussion about the relationship of ‘ley lines’8 to the Way,
one pilgrim (2006, June 3) acknowledges her metaphysical charge: “I'm new to the
Camino ritual—I got the calling out of the blue in 2004—never heard of it before then—
8 Dismissed as a pseudoscientific theory, ley lines are supposedly the geometrically perfect alignments of several ancient monuments and megaliths (e.g. the Nazca lines, the straight lines that connect the Yucatan pyramids, etc.).
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and now I must complete it”. English pilgrim, Rioja Routard (2007, February 22), also
expresses having experienced this intangible motivation after overcoming adversity in her
life: “I had such a profound recovery from a serious mental breakdown purely by faith
and the courage to walk that I felt a calling to return and to spiritually give thanks”.
Vocation derives from the Latin verb vocāre meaning “to call” or “summon”; and,
incidentally, it is often used to describe the divine influence behind choosing a particular
career—especially a religious one (Simpson, 1989).
A PILGRIM IS A LABORER
Whereas some of today’s pilgrims answer a call to a higher power, others are
obliged to follow the orders of the Way itself. Selby (1994) describes her pilgrimage
almost as she might a superior or boss: “The pilgrimage, I was discovering, imposed its
own disciplines, together with its rewards, and turning aside to make visits did not really
fit in with its demands” (p. 54 [emphasis mine]). The personification of the Way as an
administrator implies that this pilgrim sees herself as a subordinate, subject to her boss’s
biddings. This is not at all an uncommon way for pilgrims to conceptualize their
pilgrimage lot. The notion of a pilgrim-employee is reinforced with their recognizable
‘uniform’ and accessories donned by the journey-makers. Beyond these material
symbols, linguistic evidence shows that pilgrims expect to be defined by this role as
laborer.
The pilgrim as laborer is engaged in the employment of pilgrimage which is
actualized by the mechanical activity of walking. Though the conveniences of modern
technology offer many means of transportation that can easily decrease the amount of
time today’s pilgrim remains on the road, the hard-working pilgrim is one who travels in
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the tradition of the original pilgrims: on foot. In this way the activity of walking serves a
purposeful and practical end: it allows the pilgrim to connect physically with the act of
pilgrimage enough to appropriately suffer—a requirement of penance—thereby serving
as suitable labor in the Christian morality market. Pilgrim as laborer recalls the notion
explored previously under the LIFE IS A PLAY metaphor that pilgrims are playing parts in
the ritual of pilgrimage drama. This connection is evidence of a metaphoric coherency
between the two systems.
There is a common theme of pride in pilgrim writing that sometimes borders on a
self-conscious preoccupation with being a ‘true pilgrim’. A so-called ‘true pilgrim’ is
defined roughly as one who has appropriately suffered, or in other words, one who has
really worked for their pilgrimage. Neillands (1985) seems almost distracted at times by
having to explain and qualify himself as a true pilgrim. His occasionally preachy
digressions are typical of many of the pilgrims I met in the summer of 2006: “After all,
those who go by cycle or on foot are ‘true pilgrims’; they experience the heat, the dust,
even the danger of the pilgrimage, they share the full experience and enjoy the fellowship
of other pilgrims on the Road” (p. 9). Along with his prescription for the miserable
affairs one must experience to be considered a ‘true pilgrim’, Neillands (2006) also
stipulates that the mode of transportation must also require one to exert oneself
sufficiently: “I use [the term ‘pilgrim’] here to describe someone who, as is proper,
makes a journey to Compostela at the expense of some little effort by foot, on horseback
or, as in my case, on bicycle” (p. 21 [emphasis mine]). Here Neillands evokes the
MORAL ACCOUNTING metaphor, recasting the physical “effort” applied by the pilgrim-
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laborer as an “expense” incurred in the activity. The pilgrim-laborer, then, essentially
becomes invested in his or her work.
There is no shortage of writers who prescribe the necessary characteristics of a
genuine pilgrim. In addition to physical exertion, most pilgrims who consider themselves
authentic also have opinions on the requisite length of time a legitimate pilgrimage
should last: “I think that length of journey does matter (and that the 100km minimum is
much too low) and I'd also suggest that the pilgrimage should be hard work and involve
such things as suffering, pain or deprivation from our normal comforts in daily life”
(spursfan, 2006, October 20 [emphasis mine]). This pilgrim qualifies that the labor of the
pilgrim be difficult in order for it to really be ‘worthy’ or ‘count for something’. The
systematized distribution of the Compostela by the Archbishop of Santiago supports the
sentiments of these pilgrims by carefully qualifying one’s credentials before awarding the
certification of completion. The entire process is akin to having one’s work performance
reviewed before receiving a lump sum paycheck. These prescriptions are consistent not
only with the language of MORAL ACCOUNTING but also with the penitential doctrines of
the Catholic Church9.
Pilgrims’ memoirs frequently describe the progress of their journeys as ‘toiling’.
My own experience taught me that the Way was variously a long slog, a hump, utter
drudgery, pain, a daily grind, a workout, a constant struggle. Much of this has to do with
outside stimuli: weather conditions, which could often be inclement in either extreme,
roaming packs of nasty, stray dogs, sharing busy highways with steady streams of
vehicular traffic, etc. The language—here and elsewhere above—implies that the
9 It should be noted here that in neither of these individuals’ writing samples do they self-identify as belonging to any particular religious faith. Neillands (1985) particularly claims agnosticism.
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pilgrim’s physical expenditure and tangible interaction with the discomforts of the Way is
requisite for an authentic or ‘true’ pilgrimage. Laborer, then is an aptly chosen role for
the pilgrim given its roots; the word comes from the Latin labōrem meaning “toil,
distress, trouble” (Simpson, 1989).
A PILGRIMAGE IS A WORK PRODUCT
Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 2003) argue that the non-metaphoric concept A PATH
IS A SURFACE is understood to be self-evident (p. 90). Since an over-ground journey
defines its path over a distance then it is also understood as a surface, leading to phrases
like, “I only stopped at Melide because I could not continue without a meal, having
covered forty-eight miles once striking camp that morning” (Selby, 1994, p. 196
[emphasis mine]). The distance here is metaphorically ‘covered’ in the same way that an
unrolling carpet actually covers the ground surface it travels over. Another important
detail embedded in the Selby (1994) citation is that the driving force of this ‘covering’ is
the pilgrim herself. Since, when a person moves forward in a physical, linear journey
across the surface of the Earth, more of that surface is created, then it stands to reason—
by coherence—that as we continue on a journey more of the path of that journey is also
created. In fact, one might say that the path of the journey is created in the journeying
itself, that until it has been experienced actively by the agent of the journey, then it has
yet to come into existence. This philosophical notion of the journeyer creating his or her
own journey is articulated by Spanish poet Antonio Machado (1978):
Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino, y nada más;
caminante, no hay camino,
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se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante, no hay camino,
[…] (“Proverbios y cantares, XXIX”, pp. 82-4). 10
Machado’s poem precisely expresses the creative and transformative nature of a
pilgrimage. The poet relies on the seemingly self-evident notion that a traveler is the
creator of his or her own journey. Extrapolating the logic of Machado’s verse, one can
say that the pilgrim makes his or her own pilgrimage. The word pilgrim-age, like the act
itself, is lexically lifeless without its root pilgrim, the agent of the act. The morphologies
of these very words reinforce the same message: The act is defined by its agent.
The conception of pilgrimage as a job whose agent-laborer is the pilgrim, and
Machado’s (1978) implication that the pilgrimage road is created by the pilgrim reflects
the metaphor A PILGRIMAGE IS A WORK PRODUCT. This entails that the physical length
of the path of a pilgrimage is objectified and quantifiable. In this metaphor a pilgrimage
is quantified in terms of work output in which the constitutive miles—created one step
forward at a time—are the product of the walking work. The creative character of
10 Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. By walking one makes the road, and upon glancing behind one sees the path that never will be trod again. Wanderer, there is no road-- […] (Craige (Trans.), 1978, pp. 83-5)
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pilgrimage is the most commonly represented embedded metaphor of the pilgrim
repertoire; here are some examples:
“As far as I was concerned I was making this journey from the same motives as I
made all my journeys, in a spirit of inquiry and interest” (Selby, 1994, p. 24
[emphasis mine])
“Just as the Muslim tradition requires that all members of the faith, at least once
in their life, make the same pilgrimage that Muhammad made from Mecca to
Medina, so Christians in the first millennium considered three routes to be sacred”
(Coelho, 1986, p. 7 [emphasis mine]).
Most pilgrim writers employ this metaphor when discussing their pilgrimage. My
writing is no exception as evidenced in the current work.
The Way is also an extended journey over time, lasting for many weeks or months
depending on the pilgrim’s starting point. Since this entails that the journey be split up
into manageable stages, the pilgrim-maker is also known to ‘create’ segments of their
journey and refer to them metonymically by the name of the destination city. Selby
(1994) takes this linguistic angle: “[…] and if I could not make Roncesvalles in the day I
had my tent and would enjoy camping up in the mountains” (p. 59 [my emphasis]). And
later in the trip: “I had a further thirty-five [kilometers] to do if I was to make Santiago
that day” (p. 196 [my emphasis]).
Additionally, because of the spatial-temporal reality of the pilgrimage, time
becomes a substance from which miles emerge. Pilgrim-laborers also metaphorically
create the time it takes to travel their daily distances: “At Pommavic I crossed the
Garonne and wandered south on some very minor roads to St Antoine, making very good
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time over flat country and looking forward to another fast and easy day” (Neillands, 1985,
p.64). This nuance of the metaphor suggests that the pilgrim’s labor is quantified by time,
a particularly Western notion of work: “LABOR IS A RESOURCE and TIME IS A RESOURCE
are by no means universal. They emerged naturally in our culture because of the way we
view work, our passion for quantification and our obsession with purposeful ends”
(Lakoff & Johnson 1980, 2003, p. 67). This aspect of A PILGRIM IS A LABORER suggests
that the metaphor is most likely culturally coded for the pilgrim originating from a
society whose economic platform is capitalist.
The pilgrimage to Santiago is an undertaking in which pilgrims feel they are
indeed creating something special and personal. Pilgrims I encountered along the Way
repeatedly remarked that “each pilgrimage was as unique as the person making it”.
Pilgrimages are constantly referred to in the possessive as in “my pilgrimage” implying a
point of pride in the speaker’s personal creation. This has resulted in books with titles
like Sue Kenney's My Camino (2004). Likewise, the Web is replete with pilgrim blogs
with titles like Evan Low’s (2007), My Camino de Santiago, and entry titles like “On my
way to my Camino” (Straydog, 2006, April 26). The possessiveness becomes embedded
in the body of these writings: “For a myriad of ancient and modern reasons, peregrinos
[author’s emphasis] continue to be drawn to Santiago de Compostela, choosing to tread
their own piece [my emphasis] of the Camino paved with the colorful characters and
good intentions of its rich history” (Alison Gardner, 2005). Here the author implies that
the Way is something tangible like a quilt or belt of fabric that each pilgrim contributes to
while still retaining the sense that it is “their own”. Ownership of the created road is
expressed time and again, and sometimes reveals a protective pride in the pilgrimage as a
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personal creation: “Studying the map over my coffee, I realized that I must be very close
to a house where I was expected to call. The friendly Rigauds, who had entertained me
in Cluis, had telephoned friends of theirs who had recently moved to a village on my
route” (Selby, 1994, p. 52). This a mentionable quote because, in reality, the pilgrim is
an outsider trekking through a foreign land yet the phrasing here suggests that these
people whom she is expected to contact are actually in her territory.
English speaking pilgrims make their pilgrimages to sacred places in much the
same way that they make their way through life. The pilgrimage is given life by the
pilgrim just as a mother gives life to her child: as a product of labor. Following the
metaphor of MORAL ACCOUNTING, the pilgrimage—as the product of pilgrim labor—is
redeemable for things like forgiveness in the Christian economy just as money is
redeemable in the economy of business and Capitalism. The Compostela, again, provides
a material symbol supporting this notion, the presentation of which does not occur unless
a certain mileage has been validated. Beyond this tangible reward for making a
pilgrimage, the pilgrim-laborer is duly rewarded for their efforts with the satisfaction of
having created their own pilgrimage.
A PILGRIMAGE IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY
As with the world of employment, an employee is expected to receive some sort
of compensation for his or her efforts, usually in the form of currency. The pilgrimage-
job reaps great rewards for the pilgrim-laborer—concretely and abstractly. In the
PILGRIMAGE IS A BUSINESS/SPIRITUAL COMMERCE metaphor, compensation is conceived
by A PILGRIMAGE IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY, where the pilgrimage and its composite
parts constitute an end reward. Simply put: the job is the reward. This is mutually
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concurrent with elements of the sister metaphors A PILGRIM IS A LABORER and A
PILGRIMAGE IS A WORK PRODUCT. Recall the honor conveyed by pilgrims who had
traveled in the traditional pedestrian mode, considering themselves ‘true’ pilgrims.
Recall too the gratified sentiment of some of the pilgrims above, who expressed such
artisan pride in their achievement. These details suggest an understanding in these
pilgrims that active engagement in the Way is worthy and valuable.
As we have seen, the production of a pilgrimage is redeemable in the system of
Catholic commerce for a sort of eternal “reward”. English court poet and explorer Sir
Walter Raleigh (1604, 1681) gives the following figurative description of the heavenly
consideration for the Santiago pilgrims’ pains:
The Holy Pathes of Heav’n we’ll Travel,
With Rubies strew’d as thick as Gravel,
Ceilings of Di’monds, Saphire-Floors,
High Walls of Corral, Pearly-Bow’rs (Lns. 26-29).
Raleigh, here, creates a parallel between the earthly path of the pilgrimage and the
heavenly expectation for traveling on it. The promise of the pilgrim’s reward was
supported by the Church’s symbolic display of their own wealth as Catholic authorities
commissioned that “the greatest treasures and most popular relics were … put on public
display” for the witness of incoming pilgrims (Ure 2006, 54). The symbolic nature of the
medieval Church’s garish façade supported the expectation for the pilgrims’ labor, the
rewards of which were seen as moral assets for eternal speculation: “The church
cultivated the value of relics by offering the faithful who made pilgrimages to holy places
an indulgence – a remittance of some or all sins committed in this life. A pilgrimage was
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thus partly an investment for one’s future permanent retirement” (Roddis, Frey, Placer,
Fletcher, & Noble, 1999, p. 382).
The modern pilgrim also finds value in these material artifacts and the Way is
understood as a container full of them. A road is conceived of as an object, as these
pilgrim quotes deomonstrate: “I had been eight days on the Road, and the Road was
empty” (Neillands, 1985, p. 71 [emphasis mine]); “Being immediately identifiable as a
pilgrim conferred important benefits at the time when the roads were full of people”
(Selby, 1994, p. 20 [emphasis mine]). As such, the Way is seen as a treasure chest of
sorts, full of relics of great historical, cultural, artistic, and religious value: “Clearly the
Road to Santiago possessed an embarrassment of riches and I could not possibly hope to
see them all” (Selby, 1994, p. 92 [emphasis mine]); and “Finally the Road to St James
was, and is, well supplied with other sights and shrines, each worth a visit, each luring the
pilgrim on a little further so that whatever the difficulties, a little faith would take him on
to the next shrine, or ‘place of obligation’, gaining a place in Heaven even if he died on
the Way” (Neillands, 1985, p. 13 [emphasis mine]). Neilands (1985) reminds us here of
the transactional nature of the pilgrimage alongside his description of the elements of the
Way as valuable in their own right. The pomp of this display of the Church is reflective
of the value the pilgrim places on his or her pilgrimage.
Along with the material worth of the sites offered along the Way are those
components without physical boundary. This often arises from the incidental aura of
surrounding nature: “The solitude and the absence of the reek and roar of motor traffic
would be reward enough […] (Selby, 1994, p. 59 [emphasis mine]). Pilgrim Denise
Fainberg (2005) confides that the spirit of giving on the road is another precious
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immaterial reward: “And hospitality became one of its great gifts, as couples opened
their homes to complete strangers, overwhelming us with food and drink, beds with
linens, even sometimes washing our clothes” [emphasis mine]. This pilgrim attributes
one of her rewards of the pilgrimage the spirit of the people along it, other writers cite
specific people enriching the experience: “[…] I thought the world, as well as the
pilgrimage, would be the poorer without this irascible but passionately involved woman”
(Selby, 1994, p. 63 [emphasis mine]).
All in all, pilgrims generally assume that what they are doing is of some value.
They speak of the benefits of the road: residual and immediate. Elderly pilgrim Henry B.
Maloney (2005) describes his pilgrimage in a testimonial posted on a packaged tour
website: “Not quite perfect perhaps, but nonetheless so rewarding a walk that I would
never choose to repeat it” [emphasis mine]. On the same site, pilgrim Alison Gardner
(2005) metonymically places value in her completion of the pilgrimage: “Santiago de
Compostela was indeed worthy of the modest effort required of this pilgrim” [emphasis
mine]. Gardner, here, reiterates the notion of a pilgrimage as a business of exchange and
compensation. Though many pilgrims do not know what the result of the pilgrimage will
be, they express a certain intuition of the worthiness of their cause: “Sheer determination
is all that keeps one going on these occasions [when the going is difficult], together with
the belief […] that it will prove worth it in the end” (Selby, 1994, p. 96). Even after
pilgrims reach their final destination in Santiago, the realization of their accomplishment
may still not be felt: “I feel sorry the journey is over, but glad that I came. I got
something out of the pilgrimage; just what, I haven’t decided, but I feel good about it”
(Neillands, 1985, p. 168). The author here recalls the understanding of the Way as a
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container. His reward, though, is something intangible and undetermined; nonetheless
this pilgrim ascribes positive value to whatever it is he has experienced.
The metaphoric understanding of worth evoked by pilgrims is consistent with the
PILGRIMAGE IS A COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE system because it completes the loop of the
commercial contract: the terms of a business deal are struck; the parties involved are
given mutual consideration for their items of exchange; and these items are things of
value. Furthermore, this metaphor extends the notions expressed previously in
PILGRIMAGE IS NURTURE, conveying the intuition that the rewards of pilgrimage are inner
growth and spiritual cultivation. This is further strengthens the coherence between the
two metaphoric systems of pilgrimage.
…
Essentially little has changed in this circle of commercial exchange in the last
millennium of pilgrimage. In the Middle Ages, the religiously motivated pilgrim
contracted with God through the Church; today, some pilgrims establish an agreement
with themselves to overcome the physical adversity of walking, others are fulfilling
obligations to loved ones, and, yes, some still do continue to establish contracts with God
as a form of thanksgiving. No matter how one looks at it, walking and completing the
pilgrimage to Santiago is an amazing feat that delivers in kind. The Way is more than a
treasure chest; it is a cornucopia teeming with benefits.
Implications and Conclusions
The great zeal that once drove Christian pilgrimage abated greatly over time.
Oddly, the fanatic popularity of the Way led directly to its downfall. By the thirteenth
century, the former hazards and dangers that had made the Way a fitting pilgrimage for
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penitents had been removed, making the route much easier to navigate (Mullins, 1974, p.
54). The greater accessibility of the Way resulted in the institution gaining a bad
reputation for attracting ne’er-do-wells and criminal types, which sounded a death knell
for the pilgrimage as a credible activity in Christian culture. As Mullins (1974) indicates,
“Only when this sense of moral urgency weakened did the habit of pilgrimage grow
superficial or decadent […]” (p. 60).
The credibility of pilgrimage was further cheapened by the growing sense that the
business-like conduct of the clergy was out of step with accepted Church doctrine and
promoted greediness. Ure (2006) describes a particularly grotesque scene that apparently
took place in Rome during one busy Holy Year: “[…] there were reports of priests
literally raking in money with forks at St Peter’s as if it were a casino […]” (p. 55). It
would be difficult to justify this sort of behavior given that Christ himself preached “[…]
it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to
enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24). Mullins (1974) tells us that one of the
cardinal sins of medieval Europe was avarice: “[…] there was not yet any sanctity in
capitalism, and hoarding and investing money was not the practice of a wise and
provident man but of a miser. Poverty was not shameful, as it would become, but a virtue
[…]” (Mullins, 1974, p. 53). Somewhere along the line, some clever person discovered
that the real medieval belief in the metaphors behind pilgrimage could be cashed in for
real wealth.
The contemporary language of modern pilgrims shows vestiges of the original
objectives of pilgrimage remaining fairly well intact in these metaphors. The fact that
modern pilgrims use a language of commerce to relate their experiences on the Road to
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Santiago says a great deal about how deeply valued pilgrimage was in Christian culture.
It also attests to the power of the business sphere, then and now. The tangibility of
transactional business makes its lexical field a particularly well-suited source domain to
conceptualize the abstract. However, as the historical evidence indicates, pilgrimage was
treated as if it were a business—and in many cases, at least for a time, it was just that.
What all of this suggests, ultimately, is that there is a perceived value to making
pilgrimages.
The medieval pilgrim knew exactly what he or she would be receiving when they
took to the road toward Santiago. For these people—especially the poor and uneducated,
who represented the overwhelming majority of the pilgrim masses—miracles, the
inherent power of relics, tickets to an early entrance to heaven, the mark of sin, the
existence of Evil, these things were very real and pilgrim rewards for braving the Way
were just as real. So what of today’s travelers on his and her way to Santiago? What do
they expect to find when they reach the holy city of Santiago de Compostela? The
reciprocity that shapes the metaphoric economy of pilgrimage may provide an answer, or
the start of one.
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Chapter Four: Pilgrims and Tourists
“The pilgrim they laid in a large upper chamber, whose window opened toward the sun-rising;
the name of the chamber was Peace.”
- John Bunyan (1678, 1957, p. 51)
The history of the Way is one of appropriation. The Celtic death march in Galicia was
usurped by the Christian pilgrimage a thousand years ago and now it enters its most recent phase
of appropriation: Tourism. Modern tourism would not be considered a part of pilgrimage in the
medieval conception of the idea, but indeed the two concepts pilgrimage and tourism have
become conflated as the Way has experienced its recent reanimation. Since the mid-eighties
cities along the Road to Santiago have improved their marketability as vacation spots, using the
Way as their raison d’être. Pamplona, Lagroño, León, and Burgos have promoted their
historical heritages, their cuisine, and their peaceful, less-industrialized images as being ideal
tourist destinations for an authentic Spanish experience (Gonzalez & Medinoa, 2003 p. 448).
We have already seen how the Galician tourist industry has made significant investments in the
maintenance of the pilgrim road, making it more navigable and accessible. Mullins (1974)
observes:
Certainly the journey today presents few of the problems Aymery Picaud was at pains to
point out eight hundred years ago: pilgrimages can be booked as packaged holidays, and
organized trips have been made by car, train, aeroplane, car, horse, mule, bicycle,
motorcycle, in fact by just about every means of transport known to man save—to my
knowledge—stilts and a one-wheeled cycle (p. 55).
With the broadening popularity of the Way since Mullin’s time this accessibility has increased.
In the past, greater convenience led to a greater number of non-pilgrim elements, eventually
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sullying the ‘true’ meaning of the Way. The same could be said—and is, by many—of the
features of modern tourism. Where the value of the pilgrimage was once spiritually conceived as
a personal product, the Way has now become a product of tourism. The changing character of
the Way from religious to touristic has effected a change in its participants too. So what are they:
pilgrims or tourists?
The Turning Point in Pilgrimage
The evolution from pilgrimage to tourism has been a slow process that has involved
redefining the shape of the journey. The conception of the medieval pilgrim’s one-way journey
does not fit the schema of the typical travel itinerary today. For today’s sightseer, the aspects of
homecoming—sharing the lessons learned and memories made—are essential to the
contemporary idea of travel. Over time, perhaps because the path became better maintained, the
pilgrimage took on a more complex shape, altering the unidirectional and linear movement of the
journey: “Between medieval and modern times the image of the pilgrimage underwent a change
that easily escapes notice: it came to have turning points and crossroads, and a return” (Howard
1980, p. 7).
The element of the return is most significant in the development of the tourist. The root
of tourist attests to this, coming from the Greek word τόρυος meaning “circle” (Simpson, 1989).
Today the pilgrimage does not have meaning without the return—the definitive aspect of
Campbell’s composite proto-hero. In order to have gone, we must prove that we have gone: we
share our experiences in blogs and through online photo archives (pictures we have taken); we
disperse gift shop trinkets to our friends; we send postcards of our destinations. Despite the
criticism leveled at them as being inauthentic, the modern tourist is, in fact, a character in an
impressive social and universal narrative, participating in social rites of passage and
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mythological recreation. MacCannell (1976) describes the evolution of tourism as one that
springs from the heroic adventures of history:
What begins as the proper activity of a hero (Alexander the Great) develops into the goal
of a socially organized group (the Crusades), into the mark of status of an entire social
class (the Grand Tour of the British ‘gentleman’), eventually becoming universal
experience (the tourist) (p. 5 [author’s emphasis]).
The tourists of today are similar to those medieval adventurers who set out to experience the
unknown and returned with mysterious stories from beyond.
Touri-grinos
In spite of the basic similarities between the two, modern travelers of the Way identify a
significant gulf between their definitions of ‘tourist’ and ‘pilgrim’. The tourists’ critique of
tourism “is based on a desire to go beyond the other ‘mere’ tourists to a more profound
appreciation of society and culture […]. All tourists desire this deeper involvement with society
and culture to some degree; it is a basic component of their motivation to travel” (MacCannell,
1976, p. 10). We witnessed this imposed separation on our own pilgrimage.
The latter days of our journey brought an increase in the amount of foot traffic on the
road—at some refugios it was nearly impossible to secure proper bedding for the night. In the
village of Arca, ten kilometers outside of Santiago, we heard the Spanish pilgrims snickering at
the influx of new pilgrims, calling these travelers “touri-grinos” (a cross between a tourist and a
pelegrino or ‘pilgrim’ in Spanish). These were pilgrims who had only joined on for the final one
hundred kilometers—the minimum amount required to receive the Compostela. They were
typically families with youngsters, groups of students, or elder couples. The stereotypical
behavior associated with the ‘ugly tourist’ (loud, pushy, imposing, rude, etc.) was consistent with
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the conduct of the touri-grinos and as a result they were not respected on the road. This was the
type of tourist ‘true’ pilgrims tried to distance themselves from.
The issue of authenticity is a point of contention between the so-called ‘tourist’ and the
so-called ‘pilgrim’. We have seen how pilgrims have expressed a desire to define what the
authentic pilgrim should reflect. The criteria include having the proper attire and accoutrements,
walking an appropriate length of the road, enduring the elements, suffering the physical pain,
doing without creature comforts; the list is endlessly nuanced by each traveler’s definition—he
or she believing they embody the requisite qualities of the ‘true’ pilgrim. Goffman (1959) would
propose that this individual is “sincerely convinced that the impression of reality which he [or
she] stages is the real reality” (p. 89). Locals, too, are wary of this distinction and will often
favor the traveler whom they deem to be authentic. Galicia, however, where the volume of
tourist traffic reaches a crescendo, villagers express their concern that the modern Way is just a
fashionable tourist attraction: “[…] pilgrims before the 1993 Holy Year were, according to them,
more authentic. Now it is just de moda, in style, to do the Camino” (Frey, 1998, p. 148). To
these villagers, the true pilgrim is a relic of the past and in its place are spurious tourists going
through the motions.
Coelho (1986) describes a humorous scene of the hybrid pilgrim-tourist: “There I stood,
dressed in Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt that read ‘I love NY’, covered in the medieval garb of
the pilgrimage to Compostela” (p. 18). The image of Coelho draped in both the trappings of a
stereotypical tourist and that of the stereotypical pilgrim raises the question of whether or not
there is any basic difference between the two. This dichotomy is remarkable, for despite the
proclaimed difference between the two groups, they are fundamentally engaged in the same
social ritual: the sacred journey.
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Rites of Passage
One enduring aspect of pilgrimage that has attracted and continues to draw people to the
Way is its quintessence as a rite of passage. A rite of passage is an elementary feature of
religious behavior in all societies. This category of ritual, first identified and named by
anthropologist Arnold van Gennep, accompanies special events in a culture (i.e. changes of age,
place, state, social position, etc.). Birth, high school graduation, marriage, death are just some
examples in Western society of these momentous occasions. Rites of passage are observed as a
three-part process undergone by the ritual participant: separation, limen, and re-aggregation
(Turner & Turner, 1978, p. 249). The first stage is the removal of the individual from their
society and the last is their return to it, transformed. The transitional phase of a rite of passage,
liminality, is one of ambiguity where the participant is in metamorphic alteration. In pre-
industrialized communities, these rituals were often mandatory and severe; they were, “exercises
of severance, whereby the mind is radically cut away from the attitudes, attachments, and life
patterns of the stage being left behind.” (Campbell, 1986, p. 10) In the Christian tradition,
however—though rigorously encouraged in medieval Europe—the pilgrimage is entirely
voluntary and the extent of the severity of the act was usually determined by the pilgrim. A
pilgrimage meets the criteria as a rite of passage with its period of prolonged physical suffering
and spiritual ‘growth’ book-ended by a departure from society and a reintegration with it.
Pilgrimage is a fundamental rite of passage since it is an actual passage, requiring movement
over time and space.
Liminality
The mid-transitional state of pilgrimage, between embarkation and debarkation, is called
a liminal period (limen meaning “threshold”). It is marked by the ambiguity of non-status since
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the limen (ritual participant) is outside of his or her defining social role and in a state of
development—not unlike a cocooned moth. Pilgrims were considered special and many of the
social conventions normally applicable were not levied on them because of this ‘non-status’.
Mullins (1974) describes their enviable condition: “the pilgrim, after all, was something of a
privileged citizen of the world: the legal protection and exemption from dues accorded him was a
bait for many who wanted to travel for quite other motives and who felt able to do so now that
the worst dangers were past” (p. 54). The normal rules of society were not applicable during
pilgrimage. This is illustrated by pilgrims renouncing their possessions of and living on charity,
an activity usually discouraged by mainstream modern society (Garcia, 2002, pp. 7-8).
The purpose of these rituals was “to conduct people across those difficult thresholds of
transformation that demand a change in the patterns not only of conscious but also of
unconscious life” (Campbell, 1986, p. 10). There is a sense here that the constrictions of
conventional society can not exist for that transformation to take effect. Pilgrimage is rooted in
the metaphor of the journey and so there is a sense of “being on the way” toward a
transformative (in)sight (Carr, 2002, p. 76). Individual transformation is gradual on a pilgrimage.
Isolation on the road gives the pilgrim the opportunity to meditate, appreciate, reconsider, and
commune with his or her surroundings. Recall that the conceptual metaphor PILGRIMAGE IS
NURTURE implies a desire on the part of the pilgrim to undergo a transformative growth similar
to the healthful cultivation of a plant. The transformative effects of this growth are expressed by
many of these writers. Selby (1994) suggests that the Way as nature has had a transformative
effect on her: “Could it be that this pilgrimage was turning me into a pagan, a mere worshiper of
nature?” (p. 36 [emphasis mine]). Greenia (2005) relates his professional transformation: “I also
came back transformed as a medievalist and that may be worth recounting” (p. 5 [emphasis
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mine]). I have also noted here, Greenia’s sense of the value of his storytelling because it is
indicative of the one of the boons of the returned pilgrim.
Communitas: The Other-hood of Pilgrimage
In addition to the recalibrating solitude enjoyed by the individual, another cherished
element of the liminal period is spirited by a social connectivity that Turner & Turner (1978) call
communitas: a naturally arising kinship. The Way democratizes the pilgrim population so that
travelers see one another as equals and proudly identify with each other in a communal sense.
Additionally, pilgrims find themselves in a sort of playful comfort zone with one another. Many
of us began referring to the Way as a “summer camp for adults”. Pilgrims experience a
heightened sense of generosity among each other and from the surrounding support system along
the road. In the tiny village of Miradoux, Jessica and I found ourselves without proper
accommodations or provisions; several villagers recognizing our plight provided us with bread,
paté, wine, and a patch of ground on which to pitch our tent—three unrelated and unsolicited
encounters. The spirit of giving and sharing on the Way lies in stark contrast with typical
behavior in the outside world. Consequently, pilgrims as well as others associated with the Way
contribute to a spontaneous, temporary community existing physically as a part of the world at
large but ideally apart from it. It is a microcosmic utopia.
The communal exchange participated in by modern pilgrims may be an unconscious
attempt to reconnect with the authentic. The pilgrimage to Santiago is a reminder to the modern
man and woman of the humanity with which they may have lost touch in their lives outside of
the Way. By re-experiencing the archaic act of pilgrimage and the attendant communitas, the
contemporary pilgrim is making an attempt to reconnect with an authenticity they believe the
modern world has lost: a close association with the natural world around them and with their
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fellow life-travelers. The sense of reconnection and belonging provided by the communitas
experience is precisely the motivation of the modern pilgrim.
Tourism as a Rite of Passage
David Lodge’s (1991) Paradise News is a novel about of a group of English tourists who
participate in the modern ritual of the pre-packaged holiday tour. The book parodies the pursuit
of the tourist industry to sell salvation as a product: “Paradise stolen. Paradise raped. Paradise
infected. Paradise owned, developed, packaged, Paradise sold” (p. 143). One character observes,
“sightseeing is a substitute for religious ritual. The sightseeing tour as secular pilgrimage.
Accumulation of grace by visiting the shrines of high culture. Souvenirs as relics. Guidebooks
as devotional aids” (Lodge, 1991, p. 61). Anthropologists have studied this development of the
tourist trade and arrived at the striking observation that the average sightseeing expedition of the
modern tourist follows the same ritual components as a religious pilgrimage. The stages of the
rites of passage are reminiscent of the stages of the hero’s journey (discussed in Chapter Two)
and rightfully so, since Campbell (1949) recognized van Gennep’s model in adventure myths
from around the world. The basic rationale behind this is that the tourist vacation is a search for
a sacred or authentic experience similar to one formerly provided by religion and mythology.
For today’s pilgrim, the Way offers an authentic experience that the journeyer feels is
missing in his or her own middle class world. Authenticity is a cherished element frequently
desired by tourists visiting other cultures. MacCannell argues that the typical middle class man
and woman seek these authentic experiences elsewhere because they lack it in their own worlds:
“Modern man has been condemned to look elsewhere, everywhere, for his authenticity, to see if
he can catch a glimpse of it reflected in the simplicity, poverty, chastity or purity of others (p.
41). For the modern tourist, sacred sites are replaced by national landmarks, monuments, and
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other attractions. In order to experience this assumed authenticity, the tourist must be removed
from the comforts of his or her environs and coexist with the strange. This is the period of
separation of the rites of passage schema.
Today’s tourist seeks the same sense of transcendent awe as did the medieval pilgrim:
“The 20th-century visitor to the Parthenon or Persepolis, through the kick he receives from being
there, is attributing to these places a numinous and healing power which is not in essence
different from the power that the mediaeval pilgrim attributed to the relics of the Roman martyrs
or a fragment of the Holy Cross. We call that power Art, they called it God.” (Mullins, 1974, p.
1) The “kick” Mullins describes here is the transformative power of the liminal stage. The
moment is usually captured by the experiencer in photograph, on videotape, or through the
purchase of any number of local ‘relics’ sold to tourists as souvenirs of this significant life
moment.
Pilgrim’s Return and Symbolic Exchange
The modern pilgrimage to Santiago is a marriage of the medieval pilgrim’s spirit of travel
and the tourist’s sense of return. Pilgrims actively participate in the circle of pilgrimage when
they reintegrate with their society. Many of these pilgrims, in creating their own journey and
making it their own have returned home with a sort of work output which is often shared or
given to other members of the society who have not yet been indoctrinated in the ritual of
pilgrimage. Pilgrim Robin Neillands (1985) concluded by his journey’s end that his ultimate
object in writing and publishing his travel log was “[…] not so much to retell an old tale but to
encourage [his] readers to make the journey for themselves” (p. 9). In this way, pilgrimage
becomes a self-replicating machine with returned pilgrims working to keep it alive, bringing
tokens home with them to perpetuate the cycle.
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The gift of the returned pilgrim does not always take the form of a story. The material
exchange of relics from the journey is another way of continuing the spirit of the Way alive. For
the medieval pilgrim, these tokens were real, material items, often images embossed on an ingot
of the relic or sacred site. They were given—and often sold—by the Church in recognition of
the completed pilgrimage. The tokens were typically dispersed back home as charges for further
pilgrimage. Carr (2002) informs us that one of the roles of the pilgrim token was as a stimulus to
future pilgrimage: “Knowing through an image about a saint or an exceptional intervention
could prompt a pilgrimage.” (p. 83). These items of exchange themselves were seen as “[…]
avenues of contact with the divine.” (Carr, 2002, p. 84). This tradition lives on with the Way and
the exchange of the scallop shell. Today returned pilgrims from Santiago continue the tradition
by giving scallop shells from Finisterre to friends and loved ones so that they will have their
identifying pilgrim symbol for a future journey.
Often, medieval pilgrims would return home and cast their scallop shells into a local bay
or river—water symbolizing the purifying body and liminal boundary—as a sort of offering of
thanks for a safe return1 (Garcia, 2002, p. 6). Garcia (2002) suggests that the symbolic offering
encompasses the entire scope of the journey:
A journey is not complete until one has returned home. So depositing a pilgrim sign at
the end of a journey places the sign in the same location of the beginning of the journey.
The pilgrim sign ended up at the point from which the owner had set out on pilgrimage
Thus, the pilgrim sign deposited as thanks for safe return is found at the site of both the
beginning and end of a pilgrimage, and at the same time its imagery represents the goal
1A more prosaic version of the tradition is seen in the wishing well phenomenon, where people will toss a coin into a fountain or well for good fortune.
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of the journey. Therefore the start, climax, and conclusion of the pilgrimage are found in
the context and imagery of the sign (p. 7).
The pilgrim tokens represented the actual journey itself, the rite of passage with its period of
liminality, and the spiritual reward for accomplishing a pilgrimage. The symbolic exchange
exhibited in the returned token is an example of the gift-giving performance in archaic societies.
The effluvium of stories and souvenirs flow in an endless unbroken exchange; this circular
energy of the pilgrimage provides life to the Way itself which in turn revitalizes those who seek
its rewards.
Pilgrim or Tourist?
Though motivations of tourists and pilgrims converge on the fundamental level of
primitive ritual, there remains a functional difference between the two. In most cases, the real
interest of a sightseeing vacation is touring the destination, not the physical expedition to it. That
is where the pilgrim and the tourist diverge. The tourist has forgotten that the root of travel is
travail, meaning “to torment; to suffer affliction; to labor, toil; to suffer the pains of parturition”
(Simpson, 1989). The main difference between these two characters is their level of
participation in the ritual. A tourist is content to use any vehicular means at his or her disposal to
arrive at a destination and soak in its atmosphere, possibly even achieving some spiritual union
with the place. The physical nature of pilgrimage, however, does not allow for this passive
association. There are no osmotic benefits to pilgrimage today. The benefits sprout from the
self-created journey. The tourist will not experience the delightful aura of communitas, nor will
they return with a new appreciation for the power of community. Tourists and pilgrims are both
travelers at a common level, but for the tourist travel is secondary to the destination; for the
pilgrim, the true meaning behind the word is retained—at least unconsciously. For the pilgrim it
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is not a holiday but a holy day, it is not a just a trail it is a trial, and is not a simple vacation, it is
a serious vocation.
Destinations
The metaphor systems of pilgrimage imply a fundamental drive of the human spirit to
achieve a sense of belonging—a oneness with the world. This is accomplished by both the
believer and the non-believer because the drive is manifest socially and spiritually. The social
aspect of the pilgrimage reward is the (re)learning of communitas. The spiritual aspect of the
pilgrimage reward is the transactional participation in agape. Participation in the Way evokes
these feelings because it is a living reminder of a way of life focused on communion with each
other, and on communion with God.
Pilgrim writings are relics. They are the material products of those who have left the
circle of home, participated in the symbolic exchange of this special journey called pilgrimage
and returned home with their gift of experience, thereby satisfying the social obligation encoded
in the hero’s journey and in the fabric of moral exchange. This knowledge is part of the gift of
the Way, the relic taken back with the pilgrim when they reintegrate back home. In addition to
the social fulfillment achieved by participating in pilgrimage, the pilgrim’s journey also
completes an existential compass of all human experience by paralleling the archetypal hero
myths of old. The natural symbols of the Way provide a backdrop for a participatory mythology,
by which the participant can engage in a spiritual communion with a larger power. Call it Nature,
God, Cosmic Energy the words used to describe it vary, but pilgrimage enacts a fundamental
connection with the ‘big picture’, putting the individual’s existence into a more understandable
perspective, providing some comfort to the pilgrim with the peaceful knowledge that they are
welcome, home, and right in the world.
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Appendix A
Map 1.1 The French Routes of the Way of Saint James, Recognized by UNESCO
(International Council of Monuments and Sites 1998)
115
Appendix B
Map 1.2 The Spanish Route of the Way of Saint James, Recognized by UNESCO
(International Council of Monuments and Sites 1993)
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Appendix C
The Scallop Shell and the Way of Saint James
The scallop shell is one of the most easily recognizable symbols of those
associated with the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. It has consistently appeared
along the path to Santiago since the 12th century. Even today, pilgrims to the shrine of
Saint James can be seen with the shells around their necks or sewn onto their hats or their
backpacks, identifying them to others as pilgrims of the Way. A sermon called
“Veneranda dies” from the twelfth century manuscript known as Liber Sancti Jacobi
explains why the symbol of the shell is associated with the pilgrim: “[…] it reminds him
of the spread fingers of the back of the hand” (Melczer, 1993, p. 58). One can only
speculate as to whether this is a reference to the virtue of charity or reaching out to God,
or some other interpretation.
Figure 1.2 Scallop shell
Other origin myths include variations of the thalassic resurrection of a horse and
rider. One of the first miracles associated with Saint James in Galacia has to do with a
horseman who was drawn into the ocean—horse and all—just about the time James’
body was arriving ashore on the stone raft. Rather than drown, the horse and rider
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emerged unharmed from the sea, covered in scallop shells thus sparking an association
that would last for centuries (Frey, 1998 p. 9).
The scallop shell has further symbolic ties to the underlying themes of the
pilgrimage in that it is “etymologically linked to Venus [Sp. venera = ‘scallop’] and by
association, birth and regeneration” (Frey, 1998, p. 54). It is also true that the shells can
be found in great abundance on the beaches near Cape Finisterre; pilgrims often comb the
beaches at the end of their journeys, searching for the souvenirs of their experience.
118
Appendix D
Composite History of the Cult of Santiago de Compostela
As the story goes, in or around the year 800 AD, a hermit in Galacia saw a shaft
of light spilling from the heavens and as hermits (a.k.a. wise men) are want to do, he
followed the light beam to a gathering of thick underbrush and growth. Upon
investigating further, the hermit discovered an unmarked tomb which was later declared
to be that of Saint James the Greater martyred apostle of Jesus of Nazareth and witness to
his transfiguration and the Agony in the Garden.
Figure 1.1 Bas-relief of Saint James at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela
Though there seems to be evidence supporting the above recounting of the discovery of
the tomb of Saint James, the story behind how he came to be buried in Galacia seems to
be one of legend. Supposedly, after James was beheaded under the order of Herod in
Jerusalem for his heretic evangelism, a small band of the apostle’s supporters gathered up
his body (along with his head) and spirited it away on a stone raft which was able to stay
afloat by divine intervention. The raft came ashore in Galacia where his body (along
with two of its rescuers) was buried in an unmarked tomb where it would not be
discovered for another 750 years.
119
120
After the Catholic Church learned of the hermit’s discovery, a church was built
over the site and a proper tomb was constructed to contain the holy relics. Soon
thereafter, as news of the miraculous discovery spread, stories about other miracles
associated with the site began to spring up and with the help of the sanctioning and
promotion of the Church, the compostela or ‘star field’ became a popular destination
point for pilgrims from all over medieval Europe.
Appendix E
020,00040,00060,00080,000
100,000120,000140,000160,000180,000
1986
1987
1988
1989
- Pop
e's V
isit
1990
1991
1992
1993
- Holy
Year
19
9419
9519
9619
9719
98
1999
- Holy
Year
2000
- Jub
ilee Y
ear
2001
2002
2003
2004
- Holy
Year
20
0520
06
Table 1.1 Number of recorded pilgrims gaining their Compostelas from 1986 to 2006 (Confraternity of Saint James, 2007
121