sillydoll
Veteran Member
- Time of past OR future Camino
- 2002 CF: 2004 from Paris: 2006 VF: 2007 CF: 2009 Aragones, Ingles, Finisterre: 2011 X 2 on CF: 2013 'Caracoles': 2014 CF and Ingles 'Caracoles":2015 Logrono-Burgos (Hospitalero San Anton): 2016 La Douay to Aosta/San Gimignano to Rome:
Some people wistfully lament that the Camino is changing from what they perceived it to be in the old days (a pure, religious experience for holy pilgrims), to a cheap holiday for some, and a commercial venture for others. “These are the people who are denigrating the tradition of the pilgrimage’. This really is an airy-fairy view – a million miles from what the pilgrimage really was like 1000 years ago.
El Camino de Santiago might have started out as a ‘pathway to heaven’ 1200 years ago but the rot set in a long, long time ago (not in this century). Actually, it had already been denigrated around the beginning of the 1500’s. If you read enough history about the Camino you soon learn that the majority of those who walked it through the ages were far from pious, religious people with love in their hearts and heaven on their minds. Besides the thousands of wrong-doers and criminals who were sent to Santiago, the roads were choked with hoards of beggars and unemployed vagabonds. “Falsos peregrines" (false pilgrims – unemployed, those who owed taxes, fugitives etc) walked the roads to Santiago and made use of the charitable facilities along the way. So much so that all along the pilgrim routes people began to mistrust and scorn pilgrims.
Robert Plotz tells us that, “in 1523 the city council of Bern, which lay on the pilgrim route from Einsiedeln to France, decided to direct away all beggars, be they from the country, returning from the wars or pilgrims on the road to St. James, and not to house them or give them shelter. Local by-laws throughout Europe, e.g. in Douai and in Compostela itself or in Tyrol province in 1532 reflected the same tendency.” (Imagine if you were turned away today because you you were considered a risk to society!)
Not all pilgrims took a year or more to walk to Santiago and back home. It was not uncommon in the Middle Ages for the pilgrimage to be combined with business or made purely for the joy of travelling and adventure, or an escape from a wretched life of servitude back home. From the end of the 15th century, anyone in a hurry, who could afford it, could travel with the postal service – a service with horses and carts that were changed at regular staging posts – and by the 17th century it was possible to travel in comfort with some of the many ‘carters’ who acted as travel agents and provided transport, accommodation and food on the road to Santiago. The pilgrimage has always been a commercial venture with taxes collected to maintain roads and bridges, vendors providing goods and souvenirs, locals offering accommodation, ‘tour guides’ offering safe passage to groups. Nothing of this is new in the 20th century!
Robert Plotz also writes: “In far greater numbers than before a new type of ‘noble pilgrim’ for who pilgrimage was an agreeable way of passing the time and a last courtly adventure made its appearance.”
A von Harff: “The Saxon Duke, Henry - later called Henry the Devout - was certainly not attending to his religious needs on his journey to Santiago. Two of his companions reported that “gourmandising was our best prayer and indulgence on such a journey. And how are we to judge or condemn the pilgrim who artlessly tells us how to say ‘pretty maid, come sleep with me’ in the Basque language.
There has always been a melting pot of pilgrim people on the road to Santiago: the good, the bad, and the evil, self-righteous and impious, intolerant and indulgent, mendicant and wealthy, peripatetic travellers and ‘carters’.
There is no ‘one right way’ to do a pilgrimage and nobody is a better pilgrim than the next.
El Camino de Santiago might have started out as a ‘pathway to heaven’ 1200 years ago but the rot set in a long, long time ago (not in this century). Actually, it had already been denigrated around the beginning of the 1500’s. If you read enough history about the Camino you soon learn that the majority of those who walked it through the ages were far from pious, religious people with love in their hearts and heaven on their minds. Besides the thousands of wrong-doers and criminals who were sent to Santiago, the roads were choked with hoards of beggars and unemployed vagabonds. “Falsos peregrines" (false pilgrims – unemployed, those who owed taxes, fugitives etc) walked the roads to Santiago and made use of the charitable facilities along the way. So much so that all along the pilgrim routes people began to mistrust and scorn pilgrims.
Robert Plotz tells us that, “in 1523 the city council of Bern, which lay on the pilgrim route from Einsiedeln to France, decided to direct away all beggars, be they from the country, returning from the wars or pilgrims on the road to St. James, and not to house them or give them shelter. Local by-laws throughout Europe, e.g. in Douai and in Compostela itself or in Tyrol province in 1532 reflected the same tendency.” (Imagine if you were turned away today because you you were considered a risk to society!)
Not all pilgrims took a year or more to walk to Santiago and back home. It was not uncommon in the Middle Ages for the pilgrimage to be combined with business or made purely for the joy of travelling and adventure, or an escape from a wretched life of servitude back home. From the end of the 15th century, anyone in a hurry, who could afford it, could travel with the postal service – a service with horses and carts that were changed at regular staging posts – and by the 17th century it was possible to travel in comfort with some of the many ‘carters’ who acted as travel agents and provided transport, accommodation and food on the road to Santiago. The pilgrimage has always been a commercial venture with taxes collected to maintain roads and bridges, vendors providing goods and souvenirs, locals offering accommodation, ‘tour guides’ offering safe passage to groups. Nothing of this is new in the 20th century!
Robert Plotz also writes: “In far greater numbers than before a new type of ‘noble pilgrim’ for who pilgrimage was an agreeable way of passing the time and a last courtly adventure made its appearance.”
A von Harff: “The Saxon Duke, Henry - later called Henry the Devout - was certainly not attending to his religious needs on his journey to Santiago. Two of his companions reported that “gourmandising was our best prayer and indulgence on such a journey. And how are we to judge or condemn the pilgrim who artlessly tells us how to say ‘pretty maid, come sleep with me’ in the Basque language.
There has always been a melting pot of pilgrim people on the road to Santiago: the good, the bad, and the evil, self-righteous and impious, intolerant and indulgent, mendicant and wealthy, peripatetic travellers and ‘carters’.
There is no ‘one right way’ to do a pilgrimage and nobody is a better pilgrim than the next.
