THE PILGRIM ROAD TO COMPOSTELLA

15th - 24th September 2008 with Simon Monckton

From Canterbury via London in England ; Vezelay, Le Puy & Arles in France, the pilgrim routes gradually converged on northern Spain all heading towards the shrine of St James at Compostella.

The wild area of the northern coast was the only part of Iberia which the Moors had not quite mastered after the invasions of 732. The Visigothic aristocracy, with its memory of  a Roman style Empire, took refuge in the remote safe haven of the Asturias amongst the dramatic peaks of the Picos d’Europa. The first victory against the Moors was supposed to have taken place near Covadonga and the Reconquista (or reconquest of Iberia by the Christians) is traditionally dated from that time. The legends surrounding the discovery of the body of St James shortly afterwards and the belief that he was seen fighting alongside the Christian forces was a great fillip to the Christian cause and a powerful symbol and inspiration to all. The Pope encouraged Christians to visit the shrine, and he encouraged the religious orders to build churches, abbeys and hostals to welcome them; and while some came as simple pilgrims, others came as warriors and knights to join the Christian effort push back the frontiers of Islam. As they did so the Christians were often astonished at the sophistication of the civilisation they came up against, which the Islamic empire had inherited from Rome via Byzantium but which during the dark ages had largely been forgotten in the west. The wiser of the Kings spared civic populations (instead of the usual Christian policy of slaughter) and tried to learn from them their skills.  The rediscovery of ancient literature and learning along with Arab science, medicine and philosophy translated into Latin by Jewish scholars, boosted learning in the monasteries and the rediscovery of aspects of the Roman world (such as hardened metals) allowed a dramatic improvement in the quality of buildings and their decoration. Thus the pilgrim road, (but this time flowing away from Compostella), became the vector of transmission of much of this knowledge, technology and art to South West France and the rest of northern Europe. The renaissance really has its roots here.

We pick up the pilgrim road at Sto Domingo della Calzada and follow it (by comfortable coach!) to Santiago. As we follow the steps of countless pilgrims of old we trace the development of architecture and sculpture from the early Visigothic and Mozarabic styles through the varieties of Romanesque of the smaller churches and greater abbeys.
We make a short but welcome detour through the wilderness of the Picos d’Europa mountains to the places where the ‘modern’ kingdom of Spain was re-born and see the early monuments of its first true capital, Oviedo. These were constructed in the 8th & 9th centuries yet were still built and, even more remarkably, decorated in a recognisably ‘Pompeiian’ style.

We return to the Pilgrim road & the pure French gothic style of Leon Cathedral, with its stained glass windows which rival Chartres, before arriving at the goal of the pilgrimage and full blown Romanesque splendour of Santiago (cunningly concealed behind its’ extravagant baroque exterior).