Following the Sun (13 page)

Shortly after the death of Christ, the Apostle St. James traveled to Iberia to spread the gospel. In the beginning he did not have much success, in fact he had only eight converts, all told. But one night in Zaragoza he was aided by the miraculous appearance of no less a figure than that of the Virgin Mary, who was still living in Jerusalem at the time, but was transported to Zaragoza by the phenomenon of bilocation, in which an individual can be seen in two places at once. James gained many converts after this appearance, and after six years returned to Jerusalem, where he was captured by Herod and beheaded. According to the histories (or the legends, depending on which source you choose) his followers stole his body and brought him back to Iberia, landing on the coast of Finisterre, the End of the Earth, the westernmost point in Europe and a region not yet converted to Christianity. The followers of St. James buried him inland at a place under the control of a pagan queen named Lupa, the Queen of the Wolves. Over the next few generations the site was forgotten and overgrown with forest.

Some eight hundred years later, a pious hermit named Pelayo took up residence near this isolated territory. One night his solitude was shattered by a chorus of angelic voices soaring in the upper airs and the world around him began to brighten. He looked up and beheld a brilliant light, shining over the land like a night sun and illuminating especially a single spot in the lonely, wooded region where Pelayo was dwelling. The good hermit surmised that there was some powerful spiritual being at its source and went off to notify the local Christian bishop at Padrón. Recognizing the signs, the bishop ordered the trees and rocks removed and had the area excavated. Here, beneath the earth, the workers discovered two graves and an underground crypt. The bishop pushed the stone lid aside and there lay the body of St. James the Apostle himself, fully clothed, his head miraculously reattached, his ancient raiments unsullied, and his body fresh and uncorrupted after his eight-hundred-year sleep.

Soon after the discovery, the bishop had a new chapel built over the crypt and within a few decades the site became a destination for pious Christians. Legend holds that Charlemagne came here to pay homage during his wars against the infidels, and in some versions it was he himself who had the chapel constructed. Over the next two centuries, as the reconquest of Spain progressed, the burial place of St. James became established as a shrine, and by the eleventh century it ranked with Jerusalem and Rome as a pilgrimage site. At the height of its popularity during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, more than half a million travelers a year followed the difficult high roads out through Galicia to the shrine. A grand cathedral was constructed there in the thirteenth century to honor the site.

Because it was first identified by a star fall, or at least an extraordinarily bright object shining in the night, the place became known as
Campo Stellae
, in Latin. St. James, Santo Iago in old Spanish, was shortened to Santiago, and the name of the place became Santiago de Compostela. The route that led to this shrine was known in English as the Way of St. James. But it had other names. Some who followed the route called it the Way of the Stars, or
la voie lactée
, the Milky Way. If you crossed the Pyrénées at Roncesvalles and followed the setting sun, or by night, the Milky Way, eventually you would arrive at Compostela. Although the shrine was a burial site, the legend was clearly related to celestial events.

Santiago emerged at a crucial time in Spanish history and soon became a patron saint in the effort to evict the Moors. Sometimes he even personally joined in the battle. At Clavijo, during one conflict, in which the Christians had been driven back from the field by the Moors, he appeared out of the clouds on a white horse, his sword raised, and entered into the battle with his fellow Christians, beheading infidels left and right. He appeared at other battles after that, always charging into the fray in a fiery form, out of the sky, his flashing sword raised, and inspiring the Christian soldiers to fight on. The Spanish would shout out his name when they entered in the field to encourage his appearance, and because of his aid he was sometimes known as Santiago Matamoros—St. James the Moor Killer. He always came down from the sky on a white horse, and was often associated with lightning and thunder. Santiago joined the Spanish at many other encounters, even as far afield as the Americas. Soldiers of Cortés invoked his name when they laid waste to Tenochtitlán in 1519.

There is much discussion in church history and the literature of Santiago as to who, exactly, James the Apostle was. In some stories he is the son of a Galilee fisherman named Zebedee and a woman named Salome, who was a sister of the Virgin Mary. His brother, John, was also an Apostle, and the two of them were favorites of their cousin, Jesus, who bestowed upon them an honorific name, Boanerges, which means “Sons of Thunder.” The choice of epithet is pointed. So is the image of the white horse that Santiago always rode.

The Romans had been living on the Iberian Peninsula for three centuries by the time of the events surrounding the arrival of Santiago at Finisterre, and quite naturally they brought their gods along with them. Although the local pagans were not entirely converted, nor for that matter conquered—especially in the wild highlands of Galicia—they did take on a few of the Roman gods as their own. Among them were the twins Castor and Pollux, the offspring of Leda and the god Jupiter, who was also known as the Thunderer and often associated with light. One of Jupiter's earlier names, Lucetius, means “the light bringer,” and this is connected to the word
diu
, or “bright.” One of his twin sons, Castor, descended from heaven to live on earth, and according to mythology he always rode down from the sky on a white horse. Once on earth he became the protector of humankind and would sometimes enter into battles on his white steed, accompanied periodically by his brother, Pollux.

As with so many of the Church legends, none of this was of concern to the half million devout Christians, who each spring during the Middle Ages took up their staffs, donned their traditional wide-brimmed pilgrim hats, affixed the scallop shell symbol of Santiago to the brim, and set out. But there was perhaps a deeper, more primordial logic to explain the overwhelming popularity of this site.

Except for the Spanish, who adopted him as their patron, St. James was not as charismatic nor important a Christian figure as Peter, Paul, or Jesus, so there's no really strong reason that St. James should have been so important in the Middle Ages. What has to be taken into account in the story of this pilgrimage is the geography of the site. Santiago de Compostela is located at the westernmost end of the wild mountains of Galicia, an area characterized by the emblems of a pre-Christian Europe, menhirs, megaliths, and stone circles. It is situated at the uttermost end of Europe, the end of the earth, or
finis terra
in Latin. Pilgrims setting out from Paris and sites north wound southward with the sun. At Puente la Reina they turned west and followed the path of the Milky Way out through a landscape reminiscent of the dark wood at the beginning of Dante's
Divine Comedy
, which marks the gateway to the afterlife and salvation. They walked on beneath the stars, and at the end of the journey, at world's end, they came to the place where the sun left the earth each evening.

The pilgrimage did not necessarily end at the cathedral at Santiago; there was one more stop. Pilgrims would carry on along a narrow finger of land to a little chapel at Finisterre. After struggling down through rural France, having crossed the Pyrénées, having fought off the wild dogs and bandits, and walked the rough terrain and hills, through rain and blistering heat, they followed the path of the sun to the west and arrived at the gateway to the next world. In short, the long journey was a remembrance of the ancient processions undertaken by pagan oblates and priests and even the Pharaoh himself in mimicry of the sun's path through the heavens.

There is some evidence for this in the iconography of the pilgrim route through France. In many medieval churches along the Santiago route, there is a carved stylized image of a flower, and scholars of the subject believe the floral symbol is no flower at all, but an image of the sun. More to the point is the scallop shell.

According to the legends, St. James is associated with the scallop shell because of an event that took place when his disciples were carrying his body to Galicia to be buried. As they were approaching the shore, they saw a wedding party on the coast. As they watched, the horse of the bridegroom bolted into the sea. All presumed the rider drowned. But he rose from the waters draped in scallop shells. In another version, a mysterious knight appeared on a cliff and rode into the sea for no apparent reason. He too rose festooned with shells. Santiago pilgrims adopted the scallop shell as their symbol as a result of these legends and began decorating themselves with the emblem. It also appears on churches, hostels, and road signs all along the route.

But there could be another explanation for this odd choice of a seashell as the symbol for a saint. Of all the shells in the sea, the pattern of the scallop matches perfectly the rays of the rising or setting sun.

After Griggs left on the train I decided to take a slight detour and follow an inland route back to St.-Jean-de-Luz. I picked up some cheese and bread along the way and around noon stopped at a pond to take a break. The cuckoos were calling from the woods on the south side of the pond, there were chaffinches along the roads, wagtails along the shore, and a few whispering little things up in the pines and oaks that I couldn't see to identify. I was just south of Les Landes at this point, one of the largest forested sections of France, a region characterized by dry, sandy soils, and covered with pines. Although there are still a few wild sections, and although the entire forest is protected, the coast in this section is more or less developed with many little seaside villas and small tourist towns, tucked behind the dunes. But inland, on the back roads, there is a certain quality of peace and tranquility, which, after my sojourn with Griggs, and the seeming impossibility of escape from Madrid, was more than welcome. I lay back on the bank of the pond, listening to the birds and eating my lunch and thinking about my upcoming journey into the mountains with Griggs, and the fact that I would have at my disposal a car, a means of actually getting higher up into the Pyrénées than I had intended.

The whole border of France and Spain in that section is a vast international park, with high roads and snowy peaks, and as long as we had the car, I thought I might try to persuade Griggs to take me up into the park. I was thinking in part of the quality of light one encounters in high places, especially in snowy regions, the almost blinding sun in such areas. This got me into a whole train of thought about light, and Santiago, and Jupiter, and how often the word light enters into the language in this region, as in the name St.-Jean-de-Luz, St. John of the Light, which brought me back to St. John's brother, James—aka Santiago—and halos, and star falls, and the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, and then I suddenly realized I was going to be late, and forced myself to leave.

Griggs was not at the hotel when I arrived, but I was told he had checked in and was somewhere around town. I knew just where to look and went down to the main harbor square in St.-Jean-de-Luz to find him. There he was sitting in front of the café with the zinc bar, nursing a
demi
of beer and looking at pretty tourist women, as I expected.

We left the next day for St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port and Roncesvalles. As soon as we cleared the coast, heavy clouds began rolling in from the mountains and a light rain began to fall. We drove up to Sare, via Col St. Ignace, and then began a long climb through wooded hills and green pastures dotted with white sheep, the famous
brebis
who gave their milk for the delicious cheese. The roads were black and slick with rain, and wound above the high banks of rushing streams with mists rising above them and drenched leaves of drooping herbaceous plants. At one point we came to a pulloff and walked back through the woods a short distance to a great rocky waterfall, where we ate some oranges. I wandered off to look at flowers while Griggs smoked his morning cigarette, and then we began climbing again, passing through high pastures and small stone towns with narrow streets. It began to rain hard and in the high peaks there were shreds of whipping gray clouds over the deep green higher pastures. Ever winding, we worked our way upward toward the pilgrim town of St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port. At one point we stopped for a coffee at the little town of Espellete, and like good tourists, guided by Mr. Griggs, who had been here before, went into the little galleried church, where, by tradition, men sat on one side and women on the other. From Espellete, at my insistence, we took a little side trip down to the Pas de Roland, where the gray, chattering river Nivelle ran between two rounded wooded hills. Around here somewhere, according to the Chanson de Roland, the retreating Christian armies were slaughtered by the infidels.

There was in fact a historic battle here, but apparently it was the Basques who killed Roland and not the Moors.

On the way back to the main road, I saw a wild band of small horses with thick manes come running out of the woods and cross a field.

“Pottocks,” Griggs said. “The local wild ponies. Hard to catch.”

After many more turns, some of them hair-raising, we came into the town of St.-Jean and pulled into the main square.

Griggs got out of the car and began sniffing the air.

“The good restaurant is around here someplace, can't remember which one it was though.”

The air smelled of rain and wet stones, woods, and woodsmoke, tinged with cooking fires and a touch of garlic.

Griggs insisted on finding just the right place so we agreed to meet later and I wandered off to find the welcome center for pilgrims that I knew existed in this town. It wasn't hard to find; there were little scallop shell symbols on walls and street corners and once you knew to look for them, they led to a small door on a back street. Inside I met a lean-faced old man whose job was to welcome the pilgrims, give them information, and direct them to free lodging and food. He told me that, for some unknown reason, the pilgrimage was regaining in popularity after a seven-hundred-year period of quiescence.