One of the prayer cards I collected along the Camino path at the Iglesia de Santa Maria in Los Arcos, calls for God to watch over and guide the steps of each pilgrim so that they might not only complete their journey to Santiago but be ‘strengthened with gratitude and power’ to return home safely. Getting home was a big deal for medieval pilgrims, who often adopted temporary poverty as a penitential practice during their long journey. Forsaking familiar comforts, they adopted the distinctive pilgrim cloak, staff and bag, and exposed themselves to the charity of strangers for shelter, sustenance and health care. Seeking alms and accepting hardship and inconveniences on the road fostered humility in the pilgrim and also created reciprocal relationships with local donors and providers of hospitality. Often supported by religious orders or aristocracy, hospitallers placed high spiritual value on sacred travel and works of mercy. ‘Hospitals’ or hostels were established along major routes, providing lodging and sustenance for travellers and the local poor and infirm. They also employed the services of doctors, surgeons, pharmacists and undertakers, as each hostel invariably contained a pilgrim graveyard.
Even if your health was sturdy, there was still politics to worry about. Free passage during a long-distance pilgrimage could be severely interrupted by the outbreak of war, or by conflicts associated with the Protestant Reformation, which included the sacking and confiscation of ecclesiastical property. Violence and insecurity greatly impacted numbers on the Camino Frances route in the sixteenth century, especially in areas controlled by Protestants in both Southern France and the Navarre district of Spain. Protestants believed that forgiveness for sins could be freely obtained at home. They also thought that respectable (ie sedentary) Christians would contribute to local faith congregations through good works and enlightened devotions, rather than undertaking the pilgrimage. Most Protestants of the time discredited the Catholic focus on material connections to Christ through the visitation of physical sites that housed relics. They especially objected to the sale of indulgences and the expiation of sin through proxy pilgrimages. The ‘pilgrim’s progress’ became interiorised, a personal journey from sin to grace that didn’t require physically touching a distant shrine. Even those dispensing God’s hospitality in the hostels, who had often taken vows of poverty themselves, came to suspect the motives of some pilgrims. As social attitudes to charity and the poor shifted, clerics began to observe an abundance of ‘false pilgrims’ including vagabonds, idlers and wastrels amongst those seeking support. To prevent this, travel to holy places was controlled by legislation and credentialling, and hostels began to charge service fees. Credentialed or not, few souls were brave enough to walk the Camino Frances during the French Revolution, Spain’s Carlist wars (between 1833 and 1876, with a few decades of peace interspersed), or the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), not to mention the world wars of the twentieth century. When the numbers of pilgrims began to increase in the 1970s, and then boom after Catholic Priest Alias Valina began researching the historic path and painting yellow arrows to guide walkers in 1984, commentators were surprised to find that many pilgrims were Protestant, secular and non-Christian.
These new cohorts of pilgrims discovered that the materiality of the path is integral to its spiritual impact. Scholars suggest that the growth in pilgrim numbers reflects a contemporary desire to make authentic connections with nature, with others, and to a collective past. Snezana Brumec notes that many pilgrims report personal transformation after completing a Camino, including an increased appreciation of life, a deeper sense of spirituality, a heightened quest for meaning and purpose, more concern for others, and greater self-acceptance.
I set out with much of this knowledge of the Camino trail and an intention to explore the transcendent dimensions of human life. But somehow I didn’t expect the experience of hardship and the receipt of care to serve as the conduit for my learning. Pilgrims still rely on the charity of others, whether provided by Spanish communities en route or through bonds formed and sustained with other pilgrims. Charity is multidimensional and by the time we finished walking, just over two months ago now, I had tested all the versions of it, available from my sisters. As the weeks passed and kilometres accumulated my digestive health worsened considerably. I was sleeping badly, losing weight and not recuperating after exertion. I made some decisions that impacted the happiness of my companions. To try and address the situation, in the last two weeks, I began excluding the foods I shouldn’t have been eating. But it wasn’t always possible to find replacement carbohydrates. I was feeling pretty sick and fatigued. While I had sufficient physical resources to complete the pilgrimage, my emotional state was increasingly fragile.
The last week of our walk and trip home was seriously testing, so getting home came as an enormous relief. I collapsed on the lounge and spent the remainder of my long service leave trying to reconcile the outcomes of my Camino with ideas I had previously held about myself. Just like the pilgrims of old, I found that spiritual poverty and vulnerability were central challenges on the Camino trail. If I were able to choose the lessons the Camino had to offer, I would have picked different ones – perhaps less excruciating.
Since then I have been meditating on the wisdom of another prayer card I collected on the path, from a little Romanesque church set atop a steep hill on an alternative route. The card, from Saint Stephen’s church at Zabaldika in the Navarre region, explains that El Camino is both a parable and a reality:
“The Camino calls us to contemplate, to be amazed, to welcome, to interiorize, to stop, to be quiet, to listen, to admire, to bless… nature, our companions on the journey, our own selves, God”.
This is the work of a pilgrim. This is my task and the reason that my Camino will take a lifetime.
Kyrie eleison.
Christe eleison.
Kyrie eleison.
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