Translated material
The path of pilgrims
This article was published in the new issue of the Slon Magazine mobile magazine on December 29, 2014.All numbers of our magazine can be downloaded for free in the AppStore
In 1177, during the war with Navarra, the king of Aquitaine Richard Lion Heart (he was better known as the English king, although he appeared very rarely in England) destroyed to the ground the city of Saint-Jan-Le-Wi-that controls the main pass through the Pyrenees. In addition to the military, this city was also very important as the last settlement before a difficult crossing through the Pyrenees for pilgrims going from all over Europe to the grave of St. Jacob in Santyago de Compostel. Therefore, right away, a little closer to the pass, a new city was founded, Saint-Jan-Pie-de-Por. And since then it has become an important transshipment point for pilgrims, and today this French city with the Bask population turned out to be a point where many pilgrims begin their way to Santiago. Complex Camino de Francés 800 kilometers long.
Actually, today, in order to get to Santiago de Complicity and bow to St. Jacob’s relics, you do not need to go anywhere at all. Airplanes fly in Santiago, high -speed trains from Madrid go, buses from Porto drive. To the same Saint-Jan-Pie-de-Por, it is much more difficult to get-for example, I flew by plane to Paris through Stockholm (it turned out cheaper), then five hours by train to Ortez, and from there on two buses with a transplant. If the medieval pilgrim heard about this, he would be very surprised. He went to the relics of St. James for several months, because there were no other ways to touch them, having received the remission of sins or blessings. The path for him was a problem, a difficult obstacle, but not a goal. And the point of departure was most often its own house, where after pilgrimage it was still to be returned - just as on foot, undergoing the same hardships.
Watching how, at the Santiago bus station, the pilgrims fill the bus to Paris, I acutely felt that even this not the most comfortable way to move at a distance of one and a half thousand kilometers is strikingly different from what was coming after reaching the goal of the Middle Ages. At the same time, from time to time, the people who are going in the opposite direction - pilgrims returning on foot, caused mixed feelings.
By the end of the way, you begin to realize that one of the main dangers for a modern pilgrim is not to end the path. No, not in the sense of throwing everything and sitting on the nearest bus in the nearest city or using taxi services (taxi calls are unobtrusively hung in the most difficult places in the journey). The much greater temptation for the modern pilgrim is to continue the path to infinity. To stay on it for as long as possible or not to leave it at all. Many go back and forth, then some, then by others, or remain to work as volunteers in Albergo (shelters for pilgrims, something like hostels).
At the same time, the goal is the relics of St. James and even more so the grace or the remission of sins - for pilgrims, thousands of people walking today with backpacks along the roads of Spain, is resolutely secondary. Many are not religious at all, but also believers, in fact, in any miracles of the relics of St. James, do not believe in any magical remission of sins. For them, a religious act is the path, a change in the usual course of life, overcoming oneself, cognition of the world, but not the apostle Jacob, not a power. The average pilgrim is just much less located in the miraculous power of relics and shrines than the layman remaining at home.
Milky Way
The relics of St. James were acquired in the first half of the 9th century, somewhere between 812 and 842 (legend indicates 813 years). Thanks to the energy of the local bishop Theodemar, the relics found in the area of the old Roman cemetery were recognized as a pope, and the king of Asturia Alfonso II ordered the Church of Santiago at the site of gaining the relics (the city formed around the city was called Santiago de Compostel). However, it was not only the energy of Theodemar. Asturia is the first Christian kingdom on the territory of the Mavles of Spain, and the relics were found just at a time when Papa and Karl the Great recognized this kingdom and full rights of his king Alfonso II. The reconquist began - the conquest of the Christian lands of Spain from the Moors, and the relics of one of the most revered apostles in Asturia were obviously not superfluous.
As a fixing of the status of the relics and their significance, a legend appears that Karl Great dreamed of St. James and ordered to follow the Milky Way, cleansing him of the Moors (in the night sky, the Milky Way indicates the road to the compotel). Karl did so, cleaned the road to the grave of Jacob (and at the same time endowed the city that appeared around it with great powers), after which he began to free the rest of Spain. In all these campaigns, the miracles of heroism was the knight Roland, who at the very end of the campaign was killed by the Moor in the Ronsevalsky Gorge due to the vile betrayal of the envious Count of Gwenelon.
In reality, there was no one at all. Karl did not clean the path to Santiago. His campaign in Spain the goal had to help Emir Saragos in his war against Emir Cordoba and generally occurred long before gaining the relics of St. James. The Battle of Ronseval was the truth, but the local residents - Basque attacked the returning army of Karl in the gorge in front of the Pyrenees.
By the end of the way, you begin to realize that one of the main dangers for a modern pilgrim is not to finish the path
However, the reality that pilgrims could observe in the XI century (just when all these legends became especially popular) did not contradict the fiction at all. The path to compostel by this time was really cleared of the Moors. Navarra, Rio, Castile, Leon were conquered from Saracens and became Christian kingdoms. And for the people of that time, events of two-century prescription and what happened 50–70 years ago merged into one vague, more notant past. People from all the surrounding Christian lands began to flock to the relics of Jacob, who returned Christianity to the Spanish land. And thanks to the active propaganda of the Kluni monks, with no less active support for the popes, the popularity of pilgrimage in Santiago went beyond the borders of Spain and has already covered all of Europe. People went to Santiago tens of thousands. And in the anniversary years (in the year when St. James Day falls on Sunday, pilgrims, who reached his grave in the compostel, promised the remission of all sins) - hundreds of thousands.
By the middle of the XII century, it was no longer just a mass, but an organized route of pilgrims. The Spanish kingdoms, as well as the king of France (through which all pilgrimage routes from the distant countries of Europe came), announced the freedom of movement for pilgrims and, no less important, their protection. On the main paths, hospitals and shelters for pilgrims began to appear, monasteries and churches were specially organized so as to provide them with shelter. Even the guidebook appeared - the Callist Code (1135), which includes a detailed practical guide for pilgrims with the designation of the main roads, places for overnight, relics and holy places mandatory for visiting, and even indicating the quality of food in certain regions through which pilgrims will go.
Atonement and miracle
Why did all these people go? What was the pilgrimage for them?
Firstly, after a miracle. Secondly, for redeeming. A medieval person believed directly and was directly afraid of eternal torment in hell. At the same time, in real life, he, of course, constantly did something that questioned his chances of getting into paradise and sharply increased the likelihood of hell. The pilgrimage, especially the great pilgrimage (which included the worship of the relics of St. Jacob) was one of the ways of active repentance and atonement. Many priests as an epithemy appointed a pilgrimage to Santiago. Moreover, the pilgrimage was also a very common verdict of civil judges. However, more often people appointed such repentance to themselves.
Atonement, like a miracle, required a radical step towards a person to meet God. A radical change in the usual life that led to sin. The pilgrimage was just such a radical step. A man of the Middle Ages lived in a very sparsely populated and poorly developed world. Cities, villages, castles and monasteries are small shreds of land, separated by forests. Only the space of the nearest district was understandable and relatively understandable - further a large, deserted and hostile world. Even the forest around the village or city was already alien and terrible, hung in a threat, far from always fictional. The cash turnover necessary for traveling was minimal, and the inhabitants of many villages did not even see any money into the eyes. The fear, incomprehensibility and separation of the world around him was what the pilgrim was supposed to overcome. And also - the path itself, long and difficult.
When today you go along Camino, you constantly stumble not only on ancient churches, but also on the same ancient hospitals (that is, the same churches, only with large extensions for placing patients). Any bad weather, water, teeming with bacteria, rotten unusual foods, random wounds and, as a result, severe diseases are constant satellites of the pilgrims. But there were also robbers, attacks of local residents and other dashing. Death on the way to Santiago (or back) was a common thing. They made a pilgrimage and returned home at best two -thirds from those who started it.
However, there is a path. A modern pilgrim has a first -aid kit with a bunch of medicines, special columns with clean water every 5-7 kilometers, high -quality (mostly tasty and cheap) foods in any race, but people still regularly break their feet on a stone that turned up from the mountain or erase the soles to meat, they are hard to catch up in the rain and cold wind (wind is always from the way from the way from the way from the way. West, and therefore always in the face). Only, unlike the people of the Middle Ages, the tragedy here is that they have to return home by transport, interrupting their journey.
But back to the people of the Middle Ages. Not only the possibility of atonement and fear of Hell pushed them to the path. The closed and limited world of everyday life gave birth to a thirst to find out what was behind the forest. For all the importance of the goal, the pilgrimage was also a way to open the world, see new lands, new people. That is, after all, not only the goal, but also the path.
The boundaries of the household comfort zone
A modern pilgrim, setting off, shifts the usual comfortable environment. Actually, after that, in many ways, it goes. However, it is changing, but does not fall out of it at all. Yes, spending the night in Albergo, wrapped in a sleeping bag not so much from the cold as for hygiene reasons - a significant change in the usual living conditions. But in all Albergo there is a soul, often made by the latest plumbing thought, almost always a kitchen with a microwave and a coffee maker, and, of course, Wi-Fi (in Spain no one understands the words “wi-fi”-only “vi-fi”).
This is not a tourist trip at all, not a tourist trip through wild deserted places. With rare exceptions at a distance of 3-5, a maximum of 10 kilometers will be some city in which there will be a cafe or bar with everything necessary for enjoying the rally. Actually, the halt of a pilgrim is not so much a bivouac under the shadow of trees as a table near a cafe in a small town. However, the concept of the city in the way also shifts greatly. The city is a settlement with a cafe, for the most part with a population of 50-200 inhabitants. Two or three thousand people are a big city with hundreds of houses, many cafes, bars and shops and a boiling life. Well, the hundreds of people (there are only five of them in the way) are huge megacities. And it doesn’t matter where the pilgrim came from-from Moscow, New York, Paris or from a small German town-quite quickly everyone begins to perceive the world like that.
For all the importance of the goal, the pilgrimage was also a way to open the world, see new lands, new people. That is, after all, not only the goal, but also the path
And you only have to fail in this albeit displaced, but still a system of familiar comfort-the pilgrim is experiencing a strong shock. Breakfast is much more cool not where you spend the night, but after you pass 3-5 kilometers. However, when once I could not find a cafe in a city planned for breakfast (it was another 7 kilometers until the next), I was covered by a real panic. And not only I was one frantically rushing along the streets, wandered between a couple of dozens of houses. It turned out that this is not the city, but the desired is very close, on the other side of the rivulet - it was simply not visible behind the houses, and there, of course, there was all that was needed: a bar with beautiful coffee, just prepared tortilla and fresh pastries, even a machine gun with cigarettes.
Well, the most difficult transition was not one of many mountain passes, with heavy ups and steep descents, but quite the opposite-a 17-kilometer passage from the town of Carrion de-Las Contains on a direct plain road among fields without a single settlement.
Walk with a backpack behind his back, in the rain or, even more difficult, under the unbearable Spanish sun; sleep in a sleeping bag on bunk beds; wash in a common soul; To experience physical fatigue - all this for a modern person is the permissible framework of narrowing of the household comfort zone. Often even the desired ones. But to be out of civilization, to be outside the economic model of everyday life is not at all what they go to the pilgrimage.
The pilgrimage is not a way beyond the boundaries of civilization, not a departure from it, it is the path of European Christian civilization, the path of awareness of it and itself in it.
Hence the desinghronization and striking. Over the past 15 years, I have never seen so many people who write a pen in notebooks or notebooks. The pilgrims conducted their diaries, made notes and notes - as people did for the past hundred years, and not at all as people of post -job civilization do. Over the past five years, I have not seen the accumulation of people with such a small number of gadgets. Even smartphones were not for everyone, but the tablets are literally for units.
Pilgrimage is not a way beyond the boundaries of civilization, not leaving it, it is the path of European Christian civilization, the path of realization of it and itself in it
At the same time, a modern backpack is an indispensable attribute of a pilgrim (now it’s even difficult to imagine what a pilgrim looked and walked 15 years ago, in an era until the mass production of modern backpacks). The same sleeping bags are light, turning into a small roll, and warm modern sleeping bags, over the past ten years, have radically facilitated the backpack and life of the pilgrim.
Grace
The Catholic Church is surprisingly unobtrusive. At first, this even causes some shock. Not that the pressure of the church, but even its presence in pilgrimage, almost does not feel. Even the night in monasteries or church shelters of Pilgrim (they are most often the most convenient, modern and cheap). No one perceives pilgrims as a church flock that must be directed and which can be controlled. No one imposes any church rules - even in the most natural and understandable situations (in Albergo, with an old convent in Leon, the rule of separate residence of men and women has long been canceled, they ask only not to sleep on the same bed, which no one would have done without special requests due to inconvenience). To learn about the time and place of the mass of pilgrims, you need to make special efforts, sometimes very serious. No prohibitions, no restrictions. Neither on clothes, nor thoughts, nor on actions. Pilgrims exist outside of church space. No one sent them to the pilgrimage to atone for sins, no one imposed an epithemy on them. The path is their personal choice, personal fan, personal trouble - they are responsible for themselves and in front of themselves.
However, having left, having left the second or third plan, the church, in fact, left Christianity itself in the foreground. Christian civilization, Christian culture, the Christian image of the world and life - that very grace.
The concentrated meaningfulness, a sense of significance and significance of what is happening is the same attribute of the pilgrim as the shell of St. James, dangling on the backpack. All this in combination with joyful openness to the world and other people and maximum goodwill is one of the most powerful impressions of the path. The story of observation of the Chinese couple, very tense, closed (including literally - they walked so much wrapped scarves and windbreakers is very indicative that people were almost not visible) and extremely wary at the beginning of the journey. The path literally changed them every day - as they move, they came to life, opened, and kilometers two hundred to Santiago (when I met them for the last time) they were not much different from the rest of the pilgrims. In their gaze, dignity and significance, lightness and good nature appeared. They joyfully welcomed the familiar pilgrims and shared the hardships of yesterday.
One way or another, but walking along the way to Santiago are not just one of the foot routes. They literally feel a connection with the centuries -old Christian civilization, with those pilgrims who went along the same route 500 or 800 years ago, with the power that created the beauty of the surrounding world - not only hills, valleys and a plateau, but also bridges, churches and even fascinating weaves of modern highways, emitting from mountain tunnels.
And they, too, are waiting for a miracle and atonement. Only unlike the people of the Middle Ages no one thinks that this will happen directly under the influence of external power - the relics of the saint, a special relic. A modern pilgrim does not believe in this-but he believes (or, better to say, hopes) that a possible reward for the difficulties of the path, his openness to the world and determination of something inside him will change. This will be redeeming and a miracle.
