The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago: The Complete Cultural Handbook

The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago: The Complete Cultural Handbook

The road across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela in the northwest was one of the three major Christian pilgrimage routes during the Middle Ages, leading pilgrims to the resting place of the Apostle St. James. Today, the system of trails and roads that made up the old pilgrimage route is the most popular long-distance trail in Europe, winding from the heights of the Pyrenees to the gently rolling fields and woods of Galicia. Hundreds of thousands of modern-day pilgrims, art lovers, historians, and adventurers retrace the road today, traveling through a stunningly varied landscape which contains some of the most extraordinary art and architecture in the western world. For any visitor, the Road to Santiago is a treasure trove of historical sites, rustic Spanish villages, churches and cathedrals, and religious art. To fully appreciate the riches of this unique route, look no further than The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago , a fascinating step-by-step guide to the cultural history of the Road for pilgrims, hikers, and armchair travelers alike. Organized geographically, the book covers aspects of the terrain, places of interest, history, artistic monuments, and each town and village's historical relationship to the pilgrimage. The authors have led five student treks along the Road, studying the art, architecture, and cultural sites of the pilgrimage road from southern France to Compostela. Their lectures, based on twenty-five years of pilgrimage scholarship and fieldwork, were the starting point for this handbook. David Gitlitz and Linda Kay Davidson are professors at the University of Rhode Island. Each has written several books on Spanish culture, including Gitlitz's Secrecy and Deceit , an alternate selection of the History Book Club and winner of the 1996 National Jewish Book Award for Sephardic Studies and the 1997 Lucy B. Dawidowicz Prize for History. They are married and  A Drizzle of Honey  is the first book they have written together. They are also the authors of The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago . Linda Kay Davidson and David Gitlitz are professors at the University of Rhode Island. Each has written several books on Spanish culture. They are married and this is the first book they have written together. The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago The Complete Cultural Handbook By David M. Gitlitz St. Martin's Griffin Copyright © 2000 David M. Gitlitz All right reserved. ISBN: 9780312254162 The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago PART I The Road 1 . BORDER CANFRANC Route: Somport Candanchú Santa Cristina Canfranc Estación La Torreta CANFRANC    The central Pyrenees is a region of jutting peaks whose summits and upper slopes lie high above the tree lines. On the French side, north of the watershed axis, the valleys are wet, cold, and heavily forested. On the Spanish side, during the Pleistocene epoch massive glaciers scooped out U-shaped valleys perpendicular to the watershed divide, with lateral streams plummeting into the central valleys. The Spanish valleys drop rapidly into a much drier Mediterranean climate with markedly different vegetation: with each 200 m. of descent, 1 degree of mean annual temperature is gained, and several centimeters of annual precipitation are lost. The high valley walls all catch the winds and moisture and block the sunlight differentially, creating numerous microclimates. Overall, as you drop toward Jaca you will note a half dozen different ecosystems.Several types of oaks are found in the upper valleys. The slopes and edges of the valleys are dense with heath-type plants: gorse (spiny, low, evergreen shrubs with yellow flowers), bracken ferns, Spanish broom, and heather. Along the streambeds are willows and poplars, and in the lower valley are thick tangles of briar. From midvalley almost to Jaca are thickets of boxwood (boj; bojerales). You will also see increasing quantities of wild herbs, particularly lavender (lavanda) and thyme ( tomillo ) . Along most of the descent, agricultural villages, spaced at 3- or 4-km. intervals, cling to small promontories or terraces that both offer protection and free up valuable bottomland for agriculture. The violent history of this region at the time the villages were established meant that there were almost no dispersed farmsteads. Instead, peasants clustered their homes and barns for protection and walked daily out to their fields. Most of the isolated buildings you will see are modern. Somport The Somport pass ( Summus portus ; 1,640 m.) has been the preferred Roman route across the central Pyrenees ever since Cato conquered the Jacetania tribes around Jaca in 195 B.C.E. This relatively easy corridor from Oloron, France, to Jaca has been favored by merchants, pilgrims, and invading armies over the centuries. In the 4th c. the Vandals invaded through this pass. A century later the Visigoths swept through. In the 8th c. ragtag bands of Christians defended these heights against the Muslim invaders from the