IN MAY, my wife and I cycled the Camino Portugués from Lisbon to Santiago, having enjoyed the Camino Francés, from the Pyrenees to Santiago, three years ago. We have change into hooked on cycling pilgrimages — true “bicigrinos”. And, no, our bikes weren’t electric. . .
On the Camino Francés, which is about 500 miles, we calculated that we climbed a complete of 36,000 feet. The Portugués is barely shorter and far gentler, although we encountered many challenges, including aquatic and arboreal ones (see photos). Portugal could be very beautiful, and the sections of the route which cling to the coast are glorious.
We followed in a really long tradition. The first Christian buildings were martyria, built where martyrs had met their death. The word literally means “a spot that bears witness”. Christians visited these buildings on the anniversary of the saint’s martyrdom, and for prayer at other times. The earliest testimony that we have now to this practice is a letter from the community at Smyrna to that at Philomelium, describing the martyrdom of its bishop, Polycarp, c.160.
After the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, St Cyril of Jerusalem did greater than anyone else within the fourth century to ascertain pilgrimage to the Holy Land normally, and Jerusalem particularly, as being of central importance to Christian piety. Cyril enjoyed help from the Emperor himself, who encouraged pilgrimage to the holy sites, and used the holy city of Jerusalem as a symbolic focus of his recent Christian empire.
In the 12 months 326, Constantine’s mother, Helena, went on a celebrated pilgrimage; and, inside a brief time period, countless pilgrims had come to Jerusalem — including, in 333, a pilgrim from Bordeaux, whose diary gives an interesting view of those early years of Christian pilgrimage after 325.
GRADUALLY, centres of pilgrimage emerged throughout Europe. There were, amongst many others, shrines to St Martin in Tours, St Francis in Assisi, St Thomas Becket in Canterbury, and — one of the popular — St James in Compostela. Their multiplication was given an incredible boost within the eleventh and twelfth centuries by the lack of the Holy Land, making pilgrimage there not possible.
It is difficult to overestimate the importance that pilgrimage had in medieval Christianity. It has even been suggested that it constituted a collective phenomenon that structured the entire of Western Christianity. It is, on the very least, astonishing what distances so lots of our medieval forebears covered on pilgrimage at a time when travelling was in no way easy.
H-J Colston-IngeH-J Colston-Inge
Although pilgrimage fell out of favour on this country and others on the time of the Reformation, it has change into popular again as a fruitful metaphor for the Christian life. Pilgrimage combines the biblical themes of places and placelessness in an inspired fashion. This has led to an important resurgence in books of popular piety within the reformed tradition, encouraging us to consider our lives when it comes to pilgrimage.
Though they make much of the notion of journey as a model for understanding the Christian life, such books are likely to make little mention of the importance of the destination. To the medieval mind, the destination was crucial: it was intended to be a real foretaste of heaven. I really like to assume medieval pilgrims arriving on the cathedral in Santiago, and other shrines, from their wattle-and-daub dwellings, to be confronted with a veritable feast of stone carving and stained glass. What a vision!
The cathedral, with its famous Botafumeiro (an enormous thurible) stays hugely impressive, and the enjoyment of the big numbers attending the pilgrim masses there may be palpable. There are many tears. Those who complete the Camino may or might not be paid-up Christians, and even believers, but making and completing the journey is deeply affecting. Meeting fellow-pilgrims along the best way, and hearing their stories, is a memorable experience. I shall hold a few of those encounters with me all my life.
HAVING flown with our bikes to Lisbon (an exquisite city), we cycled for 40 or so miles daily, which meant that the entire journey took 11 days. We stopped at some glorious places on our journey. For me, probably the most memorable were Coimbra and Porto — and Fatima, to which we made a detour. The latter just isn’t aesthetically pleasing, however it has an important air of reverence about it; 470,000 pilgrims were making their way there for national pilgrimage on 12 and 13 May, the bulk from the north, while we were cycling in the wrong way.
Like myriad others, our journeys were guided by John Brierley’s Practical and Mystical Manuals for the Modern-day Pilgrim, that are stuffed with wisdom, each practical and spiritual. There is something spiritually in addition to physically liberating about travelling very light: we carried all our bags with us, and so had an important incentive to take little or no.
We booked accommodation only a day upfront, in order that life took on an important simplicity. We stayed in albergues — there are many them — sometimes in our own room, and sometimes in a dormitory. The largest of the latter slept 150 people. Accommodation is affordable, as are “pilgrim meals”, often including a bottle of wine, which makes the entire experience very inexpensive.
I experience pilgrimage as a form of “retreat on the move”, with loads of opportunity on the best way for prayer and reflection. In the Gospels, the Christian life is described as being “on the best way” with Jesus. When on pilgrimage, I feel very much that I’m exactly that: “on the best way” with Jesus.
Dr John Inge is a former Bishop of Worcester, and an honorary assistant bishop within the diocese of Salisbury.
