Historical Camino Routes

For 'recent' history of the Santiago de Compostela cathedral copy of the Codex see these Forum threads reporting in 2011 the Codex stolen and, fortuitously in 2012, the Codex recovered

Enjoy your research!

David Tallan said:

It is not a coincidence that the current routes just happen to pass through the same towns and villages as in the Codex. When Don Elias and his colleagues were reviving the route in the latter part of the 20th century they were well versed in the Codex and intentionally followed it as much as possible.

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Yes, the Camino Francés as we know it was traced in our time on the basis of Book V of the Codex Calixtinus - not only thanks to the initiative of Elias Valiña and members of Spanish Friends of the Camino associations but also thanks to pioneer Camino walkers starting after WWII and in the 1960s and 1970s. So it is no coincidence - it's by design that the current routes pass through the same towns and villages as mentioned in the Codex Calixtinus.

Book V - known today as Pilgrim's Guide - was unknown to medieval pilgrims and later pilgrims going to Compostela. Nobody in those centuries long ago has ever referred to it as a guidebook or used it as such. Book V was first published in the original Latin version in 1882 in Spain but even then hardly anybody outside of scholarly circles took notice. This changed in 1938 when the first translation was published - in French actually and in France.

The "4 Roads" are a modern myth but it is a myth that is well established now. There is no indication that the roads that we know as the Vezelay Road and the Le Puy Road were used by more pilgrims on the way to Santiago than any other possible combination of roads in France that lead eventually to Spain. Both are actually "defined" in Book V by only three towns: Le Puy, Conques and Moissac on the one hand and Vézelay, Saint Léonard and Périgueux on the other hand.

By contrast, the road from the western Pyrenees to Santiago, i.e. the Camino Francés, is defined in Book V by numerous towns and other locations, about 60 of them iirc.