MEDIEVAL PILGRIMAGES: THE CAMINO DE SANTIAGO (SEVENTH RIVER CRUISE MISSIVE)

“Let us, since we are travelers and pilgrims in this world, keep the end of our road always in our minds—for the road is our life, and its end is our home.”

                                                   Columbanus, Sermons 8.2[1]

I told my sister Debbie that one day I really wanted to return to the old, scenic medieval town of Miltenberg, Germany. We exchanged the thought as we walked through the town’s cobblestone streets after leaving our boat, the Viking Lofn, docked nearby.

The town still looks like someplace straight out of a fairy tale: from the narrow streets and crooked buildings that crowded out the sunlight in the Schwarzviertel (black quarter), a section of the town dating back to the 12thcentury; the Faust brewery (oldest in the region); the brooding Miltenberg castle overlooking the town and which can be seen from the streets below; and the picturesque Gasthaus zum Reisen, Germany’s oldest inn that has had guests over the years including two Holy Roman emperors, Napoleon and Elvis Presley (during his military service years). Unfortunately, the inn was closed on Sunday—the day of our visit—and so we missed the opportunity to sample the wiener schnitzel, traditional bratwurst and sauerkraut with potato purée.

Miltenberg sits on the Main River—a tributary of the Rhine River—a river that derives its name from an ancient word for “crooked river,” an apt description. The river itself is an important German cultural and spiritual divide: north of the river, the people speak a form of “Low German,” whereas south of the river the people speak a Middle High German, the forerunner of today’s modern German language (thanks to Martin Luther, who used his native tongue to translate the Bible from Latin—thereby creating the linguistic rules for today’s German); north of the river would become mostly Protestant areas whereas south of the river would remain staunchly Roman Catholic.

Among the many sites in Miltenberg was a small shrine on the street near the large church with two towers. It was a simple statue of a pilgrim with an interesting emblem of a seashell behind it. Totally unexpected, we had stumbled upon one of many starting points for the ancient pilgrimage path—the Camino de Santiago (in English, the Way of St. James)—a trek of over 2,000 km (from that spot) which ended at the grand cathedral at Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain.

The first time I had read about the Camino pilgrimage route and the cathedral was during graduate school where one of our required readings was the classic book Iberia, by James Michener (thank you Dr. Maurice Boyd). The book’s final chapter, written in 1968, recounts Michener’s third pilgrimage trek—following the author’s heart attack—and waxes eloquent about the Portico de la Gloria of the Santiago Cathedral, the area’s gastronomic delights, landscapes, as well as the people he encountered along the way.                  

Assuming the typical pilgrim would average between 20 to 25 km per day, such a trek would take at least three months and perhaps much longer depending on the pilgrim’s physical condition, weather and terrain. Then, of course, they would have to make their way back home. Traveling in either direction, the pilgrims would face additional delays due to preying thugs, rogues and thieves along the way.

In the days when generations of Catholic faithful made the long walk to the cathedral there was a network of some 281 separate routes across Europe, encompassing more than 50,000 miles through 29 different countries (today’s boundaries). In the Middle Ages, of course, there was no unified Germany (usually dated at 1871), and the path crossed through a patchwork of different regions, principalities, cultures, dialects, and landscapes.[2]

The Camino is not just one path or road but rather a network of routes. As such, there was no official starting point for medieval pilgrims, but because it was safer for the pilgrims to walk together, they created common roads and paths.[3]

Including at the church in Miltenberg.

Indeed, in today’s world, it is hard for us to imagine the motivations and circumstances prompting large numbers of individuals from all classes of society to undertake these long journeys—usually on foot.

Why am I so interested in the topic?

In my upcoming book—tentatively titled The Kaiser’s Brooch and due to be published late this summer—one of my storylines includes a broken-hearted Russian Orthodox presbyter who undertakes a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the late 1890s. During my research on the topic (to make it as realistic as possible), I studied the world, and psychology, of pilgrimages.

By the fourth century A.D., pilgrimage had become a recognized expression of Christian piety. Before departing, the pilgrim normally received a blessing from the local bishop and made a full confession if the pilgrimage was to serve as a penance. To signal his special status, the pilgrim donned a long, coarse garment, and carried a staff and small purse (Saint James is often portrayed with this distinctive gear), and a broad-brimmed hat. The more serious-minded pilgrims engaged in constant devotions while on the Camino, and some carried prayer books or portable altars. In the later Middle Ages, pilgrims would often travel in order to obtain indulgences (the Church’s promise to intercede with God for the remission of the temporal punishment for sins confessed and forgiven).[4]

Since the fourth century, the faithful of the then two largest branches of Christianity (the “Latin” or Roman Catholic Church, and the Eastern or Orthodox Church in Constantinople) have undertaken pilgrimages primarily to three destinations: Jerusalem, (pilgrims called “Palmers” for the palm leaves they carried back home), Rome, (pilgrims wore crossed keys of St. Peter and called “Romers”), and the Camino de Santiago (pilgrims brought back scallop shells known as “Jacquets”—the French name for St. James. These shells, in many cases, were gathered by pilgrims walking another 85 km/50 miles to the Atlantic Ocean at Finisterre, which the Romans called “the edge of the known world”).

There is a completely human fascination with seashells. I recall—fondly—how my two daughters and my grandchildren used to love to bring back seashells from the beach during our numerous vacation trips to the beach.

“Sigh.”

So, as you can imagine, the pilgrim’s statue in the middle of Miltenberg came as an unexpected surprise.

What was the destination for such pilgrims? The Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela. The city itself is named after one of the disciples of Jesus, James the Greater (Santiago in Spanish). The silver and gold-decorated cathedral built there—on top of an old Roman graveyard—contains (arguably) the remains of the apostle himself.

As with all stories of this type, the account of how the remains of St. James arrived in this barren patch of northwestern Spain is a fascinating study in-and-of-itself. According to church teaching, before he died on the cross and ascended to heaven, Jesus divided up the known world at the time for the disciples to evangelize. The Iberian Peninsula was assigned to Saint James. (At the time, the territory we know today as Spain and Portugal was controlled by Rome, having been conquered by Caesar Augustus in 19 B.C.).

According to Catholic tradition, James was having only limited success in this assignment and was encouraged by a vision from the Virgin Mary (still alive at the time) and a host of angels. In the vision, James was recalled to the Holy Land, where—four years later—he was martyred after being beheaded by King Herod. (This is the only part of the myth cycle around James—by the way—that appears in the Bible). 

So, if James was killed in Jerusalem how did his body get to Spain? Around the 7th century, “myths” began to appear explaining the mystery. According to these accounts, some Christian friends of James snuck his body out of Jerusalem and placed the apostle’s remains on a boat at Jaffa (with no sails, oars or sailors—in one version guided by an angel), that traveled across the Mediterranean Sea, through the Straits of Gibraltar, up the coast, and landing in Galicia in northwest Spain, where remaining disciples of James took the body from the boat and buried it on a hill some 50 miles from the ocean.

Move the story forward several decades. In 813 A.D., a man named Pelayo (in some accounts a hermit, in others a shepherd) heard supernatural music and followed a star to the burial site. After digging, he found bones and clothing and sent two others with him to tell the local bishop that the body of James had been discovered.

The bishop then approached the king of Asturias (Alfonso II) who walked to the site (the first pilgrimage which today follows the still popular Camino Primitivo), who confirmed the finding and ordered the building of a chapel on the site.

Interestingly enough, for a century prior to the discovery of the remains of James, Asturias was the last Spanish holdout from the kingdom of the Moors—Muslims who conquered the area and forced out the Visigoths starting in 711 A.D. and occupied the lands of the Iberian peninsula for 800 years. Only Asturias, situated along a thin line of territory along the Bay of Biscay, remained the last redoubt of Christianity. With the discovery of James’ remains and other associated relics, the Christians had “divine help” in their battle against the Muslim conquerors, one of the world’s largest empires.

That brings us to another key in understanding the Camino myth and why pilgrims were drawn to it—the legendary sequence of Santiago Matamoros. When the Asturian king (Ramiro) refused to pay the Muslims a tribute (100 virgins per year), it led to a clash at the Battle of Clavijo, where the tide of battle turned with the miraculous appearance of St. James on horseback, who slayed vast numbers of Muslim fighters—hence the title Santiago Matamoros (“Saint James the Moor-slayer”).

Such legends and accounts, in part, provided the spiritual motivation to launch out on such arduous pilgrimages. The Camino was, first and foremost, a Medieval institution. Some came because they thought the remains and the relics would provide healing or an answer to long-sought prayers, some came out of a genuine search for God’s will in their lives, some to attain indulgences from the church, some came out of a sense of adventure, some in lieu of serving jail time, and some because they could not join the Crusaders. (The popularity of the Camino peaked during the 12th and 13th centuries at a time when the Crusades reached their height as the faithful sought to rid the Holy Land of Muslim “infidels.”)[5]

Along the way were castles and churches built by the various Catholic orders and military orders such as the Knights Templar. Many of these churches were gilded in gold thanks to the donations provided by pilgrim travelers. The various pathways were also dotted by a system of pilgrim hostels (albergues in Spanish) and special hospitals.

Why did the spiritual-cultural phenomenon of such pilgrimages fade out? In the 14th century there was the Great Famine that knocked out food supply on the continent for a decade and then the flea-borne Black Plague which killed over 15 percent of the population.

And today? The various Camino routes have become a tourist fad of sorts for hikers and bikers from all over Europe (350,000 pilgrimage certificates were issued in 2019).    

[1] Columbanus (540-614), was an Irish monk who deliberately sought out wildernesses to dwell in spartan spiritual conditions and launched the Latin West on a new and momentous course. For the quote and more about Columbanus, see the extraordinary and powerful book—Holland, Tom, DOMINION: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, (2019: Basic Books, N.Y.); pp. 174-175.

[2] Steffgen, Zanny, “Germany’s Camino Trek rivals Spain’s famous pilgrimage—and is a lot less crowded,” National Geographic, Mar. 12, 2025.

[3] Birtles, Katie, “Camino de Santiago: the ancient pilgrimage route of Spain,” Trafalgar: Destination Guides, Aug. 25, 2023.

[4] Sorabella, Jean, “Pilgrimage in Mewdieval Europe,” The Met, Apr. 1, 2011.

[5] “The Mythical History of Camino de Santiago,” The Living Philosophy, Jul. 17, 2023.