The Cross and the Camino: the Crucifix of Santo Domingo de la Calzada

Crucifix in the cathedral of Santo Domingo de la Calzada (La Rioja). Image by Anxo Regueira López, La Vanguardia (Logroño edition) (17/01/2020)

Apologies to the sculptor and commissioners, but the newly installed crucifix of the cathedral of Santo Domingo de la Calzada in La Rioja (a town I really like and featured previously) – it looks like it was made of Playmobil (a Lego-like product, manufactured in Spain).  It did get me thinking about what a crucifix should look like though, and of course you’ll see many styles from many eras along the Camino.

The earliest Christians did not possess crucifixes, partly because they came from a Jewish tradition of non-anthropomorphic art and partly because crucifixion was still a common method of capital punishment; it might have seemed somewhat shameful or at least distasteful (just as a hypothetical modern religion might not adopt as its symbol the electric chair in which its founder was executed).  It took time.

Early representations of Jesus on the cross depict Him wearing a long robe and leaning out toward the viewer, with bulging eyes.  The emphasis is clearly on His triumph over death.  As time went on, more ‘natural’ representations were developed, with the five wounds more visible and His head tilted to one side.  Of course none of these representations are strictly natural, and all have a message and tell us something of the world of the creators.  Certain liberties are taken, most specifically Jesus’ face is still visible.  Upon death, His head would most likely have flopped down and so the face would not have been visible in the upright manner we are used to seeing.  While dying, or immediately after death, His bowels and bladder would have voided, and a realistic representation would probably show a corpse soiled with faecal matter and urine.  Lastly, the loin cloth probably wasn’t present either.  It’s near-universal presence on crucifixes speaks to our (and not just Christianity’s) complex views on nudity, sexuality and the human body, while simultaneously obscuring the most obvious sign of Jesus’ Jewishness – His circumcised penis.[1]

Gothic crucifix in Iglesia del Crucifijo, Puenta la Reine (Navarra). Image author’s own.

Interesting crucifixes along the Camino Francés include the fourteenth-century Y-shaped cross brought by pilgrims from Germany to Puente la Reine (Navarra).  Crucifixes in the Gothic style from this period are characterised by an emphasis on human agony.  No obvious triumph over death here.  Instead a bruised, bloodied and tortured man.  But it would be a mistake to see this as solely an attempt at Gospel-based realism.  These are expressions of a bruised, bloodied and tortured world — the world of the Black Death/Bubonic Plague.

So where does that leave ‘Playmobil’ Jesus in Santo Domingo de la Calzada?  If art partly reflects the culture that produces it, what does it tell us about the world we live in?  And if its interpretation reflects the worldview of the viewer, what does that tell you about me?

[1] One of the great treatments of early Christianity’s developing views on the body and their social contexts is found in Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (1988; new edition 2008).  It is a work of immense learning, beautifully written.

Rattle and hum: the towers of the Obradoiro façade

The Obradoiro façade of the cathedral (Image by Yearofthedragon – Own work, CC BY 2.5).

Following on from my last post on the Obradoiro façade, where we looked at the central portion in particular, let’s now take a little closer look at the sides.  In fairness, as you face the façade, your eyes are drawn to the centre such that it’s sometimes hard to appreciate the two flanking towers that frame the central early modern baroque masterpiece.  Or rather perhaps it’s hard to appreciate them individually, because part of the beauty of Fernando de Casas Novoa’s design is the harmony with which the façade works as a unit. 

The north tower (to the left) and the south tower (right) now stand at 74m in height, and are taller than the central body of the cathedral is long; for most peregrinos they were probably the tallest manmade structures they ever saw in their lives.  The towers were parts of the original Romanesque design of the cathedral; sturdy monumental architecture that could also provide a place of refuge in times of trouble and were probably largely unchanged until the seventeenth century, when a series of interventions began that saw them heightened and altered in decoration.  Individual interventions are hard to spot at a glance, but what you might notice is that the bottom two-thirds of the towers look rather cubic, and then they begin to taper into a design that’s both ornate but quite ephemeral, with space for leaving light, wind and sound flow through.  Tip: If you draw a horizontal line to either side from the statue of Santiago in the centre of the façade, you will see a balustrade (stone railing) on both towers, and this marks the point of change, the point where the lower original Romanesque towers meet the early modern additions.  What are the towers’ functions?  Making noise!

Image: by Fernando – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=108259683

A question for you: what’s the loudest thing you’ve ever heard in your life?  Maybe it was the sound of a jet engine taking off?  Maybe you were at a high-intensity sporting event, like Irish boxer Katie Taylor’s 2012 Olympic gold medal campaign in London, when the decibel level at her first bout reached 113.7  ― above the average human pain threshold![1]  Or maybe you were at a concert by a band whose amps ‘go up to 11’ (you know who I’m talking about).  For most of us, the loudest things we hear are artificial sounds or electronically enhanced.  In the medieval and early modern world, unless you had been in battle, the loudest sounds you ever heard were probably thunder and church bells ― both of which could be signs of disaster.  The bell was the ‘background sound to life in the middle ages’, marking times of day, beckoning worshipers, announcing celebrations, deaths, and invasions (for example, in Britain, church bells were temporarily silenced in 1940 and only to be rung in the event of a German invasion), while as George Greenia and Xosé M. Sánchez Sánchez discuss in the journal Ad Limina, the Camino had its own particular soundscape.

The ratchet (carraca) of the left/north tower of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Image from La Voz de Galicia (20 March 2015).

In the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, the right/south tower is the ‘bell tower’ and the left/north tower the ‘ratchet’ tower.  The ratchet (carraca), pictured above, is a giant wooden noise maker, shaped like a cross, that is used in particular during Semana Santa (Holy Week, leading up to Easter).  Ratchets for religious ceremonies come in a huge variety of designs, and here’s an example of a cross-shaped ratchet in action.  Its grating and eerie sound is used on Good Friday to mark the death of Jesus – a solemn and disquieting reminder to the medieval ear that even God had to die.

[1] Laura Bleakley, ‘Ireland’s most successful Olympics for almost 60 years’, BBC News  11 August 2012 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-19205892.  See this table of noise levels and effects, from the Department of Chemistry, Purdue University https://www.chem.purdue.edu/chemsafety/Training/PPETrain/dblevels.htm.

The front of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela – the Obradoiro façade

The Obradoiro façade of the cathedral (Image by Yearofthedragon – Own work, CC BY 2.5).

It’s the one in all the postcards and selfies, and anyone who has walked/cycled that far has almost certainly had their moment immortalized in pixels and probably taken a few photos for others too. Everybody say ‘Quesoooooo’!

The western façade of the cathedral was the brainchild of Fernando de Casas Novoa, who began construction in 1738 – yes, it’s only two-hundred-and-something years old. Casas Novoa was presented with a particular challenge. The two towers were already in situ, as was the double staircase leading up to the Pórtico de la Gloria, which had suffered over a half a millennium of weathering. Many an architect would have torn down and reshaped what didn’t suit them (St Peter’s anyone?), but Casas Novoa showed his genius by protecting, uniting and enhancing what he found. For those of us not trained in architecture or historic buildings, there is nothing to make the Obradoiro facade seem disjointed or the result of multiple periods of work.

Casas Novoa began at the bottom with a Roman triumphal arch, within which the structure of the double doorway evokes the sword-cross of Santiago. As we move upward we see a large window. Nothing too spectacular, right? Wrong! Remember this was the 1730s, and this window was one of the largest glass structures built prior to the industrial revolution. It allowed the light to penetrate the Romanesque rose window behind it and light up the interior of the cathedral.

Onward and upward! And that’s the point. Casas Novoa created a symmetrical and pyramidal structure that draws our eyes upwards. Above the window is a wreathed sculpture of Santiago’s tomb, flanked by statues of his disciples, Athanasius and Theodore, and crowned by a statue of the man himself, in pilgrim garb and two Spanish kings at his feet.

All in all, harmonious baroque architecture at its best – if you want proof, dig into your pocket. If you find a Spanish 1c, 2c or 5c coin, what do you see on the national side? Not a king, but a crowning piece of architecture.

The four façades of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela

Praza do Obradoiro – the western square of the Cathedral de Compostela (image author’s own)

The cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, built over the supposed resting place of the Apostle James/Santiago, is one of the most incredible medieval buildings on earth.  I, quite frankly, love it.  The first time I entered it was on a late evening in August 2016, after a friend from America and another from Germany and I had walked 52km that day.  I experienced the kind of nerdgasm that only an exhausted medievalist could know.  It was not as good for them.

Loaded with symbolism and steeped in history, it is still a place of intense worship, even when many other cathedrals like those of Burgos and León have increasingly become more like museums, and regular cultic practice has been confined to particular chapels.  If indeed no one stone is to be left upon another, hopefully these will be among the last to fall.  In the next four posts, I want to take you on a tour around the four facades of the cathedral, each unique and worthy of note, beginning with the most famous — the western Obradoiro façade, or ‘front’, as many of us consider it.

Christian churches are usually orientated east-west, with the main altar at the east and principal doorway at the west, and so too this cathedral.  Although it is primarily a twelfth-century Romanesque masterpiece, its ‘front’ is occluded by an eighteenth-century façade.  Plonking a new façade in front of an older building was a something of a habit of that period, and at least it meant that the older architecture wasn’t torn down, even if it meant that you could occasionally end up with a disproportionate chubby mess, like that which squats like a caganer in front of the otherwise attractive austere French gothic of Pamplona’s cathedral of Santa María de la Asunción. 

The four façades each have a square (Gallego praza, Spanish plaza), and each have their own particular feel.  The first side of the cathedral we will look at will be the façade facing the Praza do Obradoiro (‘Square of the Craftsmen’), one of the happiest places on earth.

The Camino and the Spanish Civil War (part 6 – Santiago de Compostela)

At the east end of the cathedral (the ‘back’, so to speak) the square known as Praza da Quintana is divided into two levels, the lower Quintana de Mortos (‘Square of the Dead’) used to be a cemetery until the end of the eighteenth century, and above the steps lies the Quintana de Vivos (‘Square of the Living’). It’s a good place to meet old and new friends, and those who are not necessarily friends. I caught up with one of the latter there – José Antonio Primo de Rivera.

The Third of May 1808, by Francisco de Goya, from Prado in Google Earth (2022, July 1), via Wikimedia Commons

At the east end of the Praza da Quintana (directly facing the cathedral) is a former monastery, now a museum, the Mosteiro de San Paio de Antealtares. It was a forerunner of the University of Santiago de Compostela, and high on the wall is a plaque dedicated to scholars of the university who formed the Literary Battalion and fought against Napoleon’s army in the Peninsular War/Spanish War of Independence (1807-14). To non-Spanish audiences that war is probably most famous from Goya’s paintings, most notably the groundbreaking The Third of May 1808 (above), the first western painting to depict the horrors of war from the victims’ point of view.

The inscription on the monastery wall reads:

A LOS HEROES DEL BATALLON LITERARIO DE 1808 LOS ESCOLARES COMPOSTELANOS DE 1896 Y LOS AYUNTAMIENTOS DE 1822 1865 Y 1896

To the heroes of the Literary Battalion of 1808, [from] the Compostela scholars of 1896 and the city councils of 1822, 1865, and 1896

Plaque to the Batallon Literaio and inscription to José Antonio de Primavera in the Quintana de Mortos (‘Square of the Dead’), Santiago de Compostela (image: author’s own)

Directly above it, carved into the monastery wall (also in capitals), is the name ‘Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera’. The desire to associate him with the Batallon Literario and to present the fascist struggle as a new Spanish War of Independence is pretty obvious. Both are located in the Quintana de Mortos, but as I hope to show in future posts, the ideology is still quite alive in the territories of the Camino.

Medieval Mapping – a superior technique for a modern pilgrim?

A hodological map from John Brierley’s Pilgrim’s Guide
available to purchase here.

When chatting about guides and maps to the Camino, John Brierley’s A Pilgrim’s Guide is often spoken of approvingly, particularly for its maps.  Indeed, a separate smaller maps-only versions of his guide to the Camino Francés and Camino Portugués are also available.  Part of the reason they are so successful is that they follow a design principle found in many medieval maps – they are hodological, rather than cartographic.

What do I mean?  Well let’s start with cartographic maps, which we take as a default.  These have three common characteristics.  Firstly, they are usually orientated with north at the top of the page, second they are usually to a fixed scale (e.g. 1cm = 1km), and third they are comprehensive (e.g. they include every road).  Although we take these characteristics as a given, they are simply inventions and conventions, and measured by these standards, Brierley’s maps fare poorly.  Let’s take the example of his Map No 2 (covering 21.9km between Roncesvalles and Zubiri) and No. 25 (covering 30.6km between Molinaseca and Villafranca).  Firstly, the exact same size page, without a scale, is used for covering distances that differ by 8.7km.  Secondly, the orientation differs – north in No.2 is at 4 o’clock, but it is at 2 o’clock in No. 25.  Thirdly, both maps are blank where a number of small settlements should be inserted.  But for a peregrino Brierley’s maps are superior.  Why?  Because they follow a common medieval principle, they were not conceived of in cartographic terms but rather in hodological terms.

Hodos is Greek for a ‘path’ and that’s what his maps do, they outline the route that one would take in a day.  Many medieval maps do likewise, especially pilgrim maps.  The aim was to help you get from A to B, not to inform you about C to Z on your right or left.  As many of you who have used Camino maps that are simply overlays onto cartographic maps will know, they quickly become confusing.  Maps, like the pioneer of graphic design Edward Tufte suggested of charts, should give the maximum amount of information for the minimum amount of ink.  The average medieval pilgrim map, like that of thirteenth-century Matthew Paris, gave you the route in daily sections – the English word ‘journey’ is from medieval French meaning a day’s travel.  You will already be familiar with the hodological mapping principle if you have ever used an underground rail map (like the Tube in London, or Metro in Madrid or Paris).  You will know that it bears a limited resemblance to the surface, but is perfectly useful and indeed superior to a cartographic map for getting you from A to B.

All we need to do now is stop focusing on the maps – paper or Google – and take a look at what’s around us.

The Camino and the Spanish Civil War (part 5 – Burgos)

Juan Yagüe (1891–1952) 
By unknown author; public domain: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57463719

I’ve been to the village of Tardajos three times (10km west of the centre of Burgos), in 2016, 2018 and 2022, and if you’ve walked the Camino Francés, you’ve certainly passed through it too.  When I was there in 2018 I noticed something that surprised me; the name of the principal street was Calle General Yagüe.   If you want to know what kind of person Juan Yagüe was (1891–1952), let’s just say it’s never heartening to hear ‘Butcher of…’ put in front of a name, and in the Spanish Civil War the ‘Butcher of Badajoz’ was one of the Francoists’ most competent field commanders, and one of their most brutal too.  When I returned to Tardajos in 2022, the name had been changed to Avenida de España (Google Maps still has its old name, although the street view images have been updated).

This time around I had enough Spanish to inquire about the change, and it was a pattern that I found replicated in subsequent small villages and towns, where (I’m told) the names of places that commemorated Francoists had been changed by regional or central government.  Another 40km west, outside of Itero de la Vega, an old man told me that three streets in the village named for Generals Franco, Mola and Calderón had all been renamed (Itero de la Vega is so small I doubted if there were even three streets in it).  When I asked him his opinion on the changes, he was opposed saying that there had been no local consultation and it felt like someone had come into his house and told him they didn’t like where he had put the bed and that he had to move it.  Anger at lack of consultation was a sentiment repeated elsewhere, but none of the people I talked to seemed to have questioned whether locals were asked if they wanted their street names changed in the 1940s!  I suspect that many were quite comfortable with their Francoist past.

While all this has much to tell us about the politics of remembering and forgetting in post-Franco Spain, it also touches on something deeper – the power of names.  The right to name is a precious privilege, guarded jealously and intimately associated with ownership and control, for example in western societies your parents’ right to name you or your right to name your children is considered almost sacrosanct.  The ability to name places is an exercise in control and also controls the social, communal and historical narrative that goes with them. Keith Basso in his famous book on places and placenames of the Western Apache in Arizona, brilliantly summed this up in its title – Wisdom sits in Places.

Given the number of small towns that have a ‘Calle Camino de Santiago’ (or some such), most of which are certainly modern coinings, I can’t help but wonder how many of them obliterate Francoist names that no longer suit the ecumenical image that the Camino is intended to portray?

The Camino and the Spanish Civil War (part 4 – La Rioja)

Santo Domingo de la Calzada, La Rioja (image author’s own)

There’s one person you’re bound to meet on your Camino, and if you don’t find him at first, keep looking and like Where’s Wally? (or Where’s Waldo? in the USA), he’ll eventually pop up — he’s José Antonio Primo de Rivera, and I first spotted him in La Rioja.

You enter the famous winemaking region at its capital, Logroño, a city renowned for tourists doing the ‘Elephant Walk’, as they lumber from one tapas bar to another, and possibly stumbling past its largest church, dedicated to the Virgin Mary.  With an inscription from July 1936 on the wall facing the large square declaring Spain’s victory in its crusade against Communism, it offers thanks to El Caudillo ‘The Leader’, Franco.  The inscription is too high up to be effectively mutilated by a passer-by, but when I was there in March 2022 some Bugsy Malone with a blue paintball splurge gun had recently given it a shot for each year of the civil war.  Not so the inscription to José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Falange Española, the Spanish fascist party which became Franco’s political organ.  It remains high on the wall around the corner, safer than José Antonio himself who was executed by the government in 1936.

But José Antonio isn’t gone, on the contrary, you’ll find him presente (‘present’) everywhere you go.  Just like those pilgrims you lose for a few days and then bump into at a random café, likewise, two days later, I caught up with him on a church wall in Azofra, a small town where the only sign of life was a municipal worker with a leaf-blower attempting to remove signs of life.  There, proudly presente on the church porch wall, José Antonio led twelve disciples who had ‘died for God and for Spain in this holy crusade against communism’.  And on my last day in La Rioja, I found him playing peek-a-boo on the Calle de la Alameda in Santo Domingo de la Calzada.  The cast-iron street sign riveted onto the wall only half-obscured the older painted name Calle José Antonio Primo de Rivera.  Perhaps no better metaphor for modern Spain; a hasty attempt at a durable change failing to obliterate an uncomfortable past still close to the surface.  As I took a photo of it, I asked a passing old man about the name change.  In the 1980s he said (and on this basis you could twin Calle de la Alameda with the Gran Vía in the heart of Madrid).  ‘And what’s more, you’re taking your photo from Calle Pinar, which used to be Calle Mola!’  I really like Santo Domingo de la Calzada and the people there are among the friendliest I have met on the Camino, but for God and for Spain it was time to leave.

Jacques de Molay – last Grand Master of the Knights Templar

Templars burning,Chroniques de France ou de St Denis
British Library Royal MS 20 C vii (late 14th century)
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=267371

There’s an awful lot of junk written about the Order of the Knights Templar, and it’s not just the fault of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code – it stretches back at least as far back as the eighteenth century founding of the Freemasons, and ultimately has it roots in the events of the Order’s demise.  The Templars were members of an order of crusader knights that was founded in the early twelfth century, entrusted with protecting pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land.  From very small beginnings (their seal shows two knights on the same horse to show how poor they were), they quickly became one of the most important military orders in Christendom, accumulating substantial property and wealth across Europe and beyond (with castles from Krak des Chevaliers to Clontarf).  Essentially they were fighting men (noble knights and non-noble soldiers) who took vows similar to those of monastic orders (e.g. poverty, obedience etc.).  But if individual members were vowed to poverty, the order itself was much less so.  In fact, its wealth was part of its undoing.  Philip IV (the Fair) of France (1268-1314) was so indebted to them he figured the best way to deal with his financial problem was to have their leaders arrested on trumped up charges and confiscate their property – if you owe the bank money, execute the board of directors and help yourself to the vault.

The last Grand Master of the order was Jacques de Molay, and at Terradillos de los Templarios (about the halfway point of the Camino Frances from St Jean Pied de Port) there’s an albergue named after him.  De Molay was born in what is now northern France in around 1240 or 1250 and had no association with Terradillos as far as I know, but it’s a nice albergue and he’s a prominent historical figure, not least because he was burnt at the stake in Paris, in 1314.  His alleged (and most likely fictitious) curse of the Capetian monarchs of France in his final moments forms the basis of Maurice Druon’s perennially popular historical novels Les Rois Maudits (‘The Accursed Kings’).

What would the Templars have been doing in Spain, as far away from the Holy Land as you can get?  Well, naturally they had property all over Europe, but don’t forget Spain was Crusader country too.  The wars against the Muslim forces in the south of Iberia and the capturing of their lands were seen as holy endeavors in Christian eyes too.  Fighters could gain indulgences for waging holy war in Spain just like in Jerusalem, while protection of pilgrims to Santiago (the third holiest city in Christendom) was a duty of military orders too (including the Order of Santiago).  You can find remnants and reminders of the Templars and their strongholds along the Camino, but treat with a fistful of salt (not just a pinch, a fistful) all that Holy Grail and Ley Line stuff.  If de Molay had seen all that in his final prophetic moment, he’d probably have gone to the stake willingly.

The Camino and the Spanish Civil War (part 3 – Navarra)

Pilgrim sculpture, Alto del Perdón, Pamplona (image author’s own)

Alto del Perdón, just south of Pamplona, features in almost every Camino guide thanks to a rust-coloured iron art installation of medieval pilgrims struggling into the wind, accompanied by the legend ‘Where the way of the wind meets that of the stars’ (Donde se cruza el camino del viento con el de las estrellas).  Alto del Perdón means ‘Hill of Forgiveness’, and in pre-modern times there was a pilgrim hostel located at the summit, now marked by a stone monument.  As you descend the other side, you might notice on your left a collection of standing stones that look like some sort of Stone Age construction, but which actually date from 2017.  They are the work of another artist, Peio Iraizoz, and are related to another struggle, the Civil War of 1936–9.

We might never know where Ramón Bengaray Zabalza’s body was dumped, but here — between 1936 and 1937 — 92 people were executed and buried in mass graves.  These were victims of the political cleansing that began in 1936 and continued long after the war was over.  In Navarra, which had gone substantially with the right-wing rebels from the start, there was little military resistance; these were not the victims of open warfare, but of systematic repression.  Since then, Alto del Perdón has been excavated a number of times, but it would be surprising if all of the bodies have been exhumed, and the death count is almost certainly higher than 92.  Having lived in Navarra for nearly a year, I know from the local papers that graves are still being found near Pamplona, and thanks to advances in DNA forensic science, some skeletons have even been identified for families to reclaim.  Generally these families are led by nieces/nephews or grandnieces/nephews of the dead, who do not remember them directly, but rather through the impact their disappearance had on the previous generation(s).

Mass grave memorial, Alto del Perdón (image author’s own)

The monument at Alto del Perdón consists of a large central stone, with a surrounding open spiral of 19 smaller stones, one to represent each of the 19 districts from which the known victims came.  According to an information board near the monument, a Navarrese law of 2018 has dedicated this space to ‘remembrance and the transmission of the values of liberty, peace, social justice and communal living’.  Forgiveness is a different matter.