"Travelling is peculiar to the human race. Every day, nomads and emigrants, pioneers and explorers, astronauts and pilgrims, tourists and commuters are the actors of this experience (…) For every journey is first and foremost an internal journey."
Claudio Widmann
The devotion to St. James and other saints is written into Man's relationship with the sacred. Faced with the fundamental questions of existence, people have elaborated philosophical and religious beliefs.
The pilgrimage to Compostela belongs to the Christian tradition, but its renewal over the past thirty years stands as a reaction to the excesses of our individualist, hyper-technological and ultra-consumerist Western society.
This reaction, above and beyond religious dogmas and the mistrust which they engender, reflects a need to be rooted in a tradition, and shows that spiritual questioning is alive and well. It also expresses the need to be part of a community with others, and to test oneself at a slower pace.
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Whilst our society is largely sedentary, mobility remains a constant : Homo Viator has set off to explore the planet. He travels for business, to interact with others, and to conquer…. Pilgrimage is the spiritual form of this need for Elsewhere.
By making us more mobile, modern rapid travel facilities have turned walking into a leisure and well-being pursuit. The success of the St. James itinerary is an example of this : long-distance walking gains a meaning by being part of a tradition, following routes laden with collective memories, in a spirit of openness to others and of finding oneself.
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| Sunset in Fisterra©Santiago Lopez |
Pilgrimage is a virtually universal aspect of Man's spirituality. It is the religious form of travel.
An expression of the essence of human nature and common to virtually every religion, pilgrimage is an individual or collective journey made by a believer to a holy place, for religious reasons and in a spirit of devotion. It constitutes an initiatory quest, an abandonment of self in the hope of rebirth. It can be seen as a parenthesis in life, during which Time is put on hold and social rôles melt away.
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In Christianity, the concept of setting off to walk in search of salvation grew out of the founding myth : the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. This afflicted the human race with the status of "foreigner". Man is an exile on the Earth and in consequence a pilgrim in search of the lost Paradise. Thus, pilgrimage takes on a profound cathartic value.
In Hinduism, pilgrimage is a privileged way to make contact with the divine, but also a powerful factor of social cohesion. It makes the relaxing of segregation due to the caste system acceptable here.
In Buddhism, it enables the practitioner to make a radical transformation of "self" and to attain a more advanced stage of spiritual evolution.
In the Islamic world, it forms one of the five pillars of the Islamic faith.
"We dream of travelling across the universe, but is the universe not within ourselves? The depths of our spirit are unknown to us. It is within us, or nowhere at all, that lies eternity with its worlds, the past and the future. The mysterious path leads towards the interior."
The poet Novalis
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| The Seven Sleepers |
The pilgrimage to the Galician sanctuary is intertwined with European history. Right from the finding of St. James' tomb, in the 9th C., it developed rapidly, welcoming both humble and illustrious pilgrims. It reached its apogee between the 12th and 14th C. ; indeed, it became the third major Christian pilgrimage, along with Rome and Jerusalem. The practice of pilgrimage was intensive at this time. People visited the remains of saints, those "friends of God", hoping for healing, for pardon, for salvation…or as a punishment imposed by a tribunal, with the consequence that the heretic or miscreant was exiled far from his/her community.
From the 16th C. onwards, the way that the poor, beggars, vagabonds and pilgrims were seen changed radically. Previously respected as personifications of Christ, they were from then on accused of responsibility for disorder and of spreading epidemics. The Church itself wanted to found a Christian faith founded on better controlled and more localised practices : pilgrimages to nearby shrines were favoured, involving a host of saints and sanctuaries.
In addition, the authorities did not like these "vagabonds of God". The pilgrim is also a taxpayer and a soldier. Without a home, he may be a spy or a brigand. From the 17th C. onwards, rules and regulations multiplied in Europe. In France, as of 1665, edicts and decrees followed one another requiring any person desirous of making a pilgrimage beyond the kingdom's borders to complete dissuasive formalities. In 1717, France was plunged into a poisonous conflict with Spain, the Regent going as far as to forbid anyone from leaving the country for the purposes of a pilgrimage.
In the 19th C., the pilgrimage to Compostela was but a shadow of its former self. The Revolution, the Napoleonic invasion of Spain and growing lack of religious belief put its practice into perspective. The discovery of relics around 1880, followed by the papal bull Deus Omnipotens (1884) which authenticated them, coincided with the appearance of other pilgrimage sanctuaries (Lourdes, Lisieux, Fatima). However, the two World Wars and the Spanish Civil War saw to it that it was only from 1950 onwards that the Galician sanctuary progressively regained its former glory.
Nowadays, travelled by thousands of people of over 150 different nationalities, the ways to Compostela have become a universal heritage. They symbolise what pilgrims have been doing for several centuries. Something that was once a religious phenomenon founded on the expression of Christianity now resonates with the contemporary world : a cultural and spiritual journey.
People from diverse backgrounds, believers or not, Christians or not, lovers of Romanesque art, individuals seeking their true selves or communion with others, young and not-so-young… they all share the same adventure. They make their way with the desire to meet others, and escape for a while from the conditioning and artificiality of modern life and rampant consumerism. They test themselves physically, and in their relations with others. With each step, they spin the invisible threads which link the major sites of mediaeval religious art with modest country churches.
The material reality of the road enables everyone to anchor their own history within History. "Walking in their footsteps"…whilst following itineraries seen as having real meaning, authenticity and sacredness. This unique itinerancy transfigures these paths into a living heritage.
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| A moment of reflection©jjgelbart_acir |
Going to places which have been collectively ritualised and consecrated by history is the source of this phenomenon of society : itinerancy on the St. James Ways.
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| On the road©François Lepère | Slowly |
"To follow the Ways is to serve the apprenticeship to the "strait gate". Divest yourself of the unnecessary, go, leave your family, friends, possessions, business card, and take only the essential, six to eight kilos of necessities for living from day to day. Here and now. But, to have the full experience, you have to go for at least three weeks. It's the time needed to get rid of your fears, and to be alone with yourself."
Jean-Louis in Faycelles (Lot), quoted by Jean-Claude Bourlès in his book “ Passants de Compostelle ”
