Day 39: Santiago de Compostela! Rituals, modern religion, and cathedrals

The marble steps to hug the altar statue of St James, grooved by millions of pilgrims

On reaching Santiago!  The approach turned quite cheerful about 10 km out.  There's a town beside a stream, called 'Lavacolla', which supposedly means 'wash private parts', where pilgrims traditionally bathed the month's stench away to enter Santiago clean.  The shrubbery was quite thick.  I could indeed have imagined myself washing private parts there, in privacy. 

 (Very private stream being pointed at by walking stick.)

I also passed several more stone cruceiros on the way:

These crosses are everywhere.  They're either stone or concrete, depending on the age; they're in plazas and alongside country lanes and in the middle of forests; and they usually have Jesus hung on the front, and Mary with face downcast on the back.  Usually there's a sitting bench on Mary's side.  It's like... this interesting duality of  male and female.  Like Jesus is the public face, that watches the cars pass, that gets photographed.  But Mary is the quietly-waiting female with the bench to sit on, the one looking not out at the audience but down at you, the one the old women of the town actually pray to. The female.  The mother, who comforts.  

Very interesting.  

The 'Monte de Gozo', or mount of joy, now has a gargantuan statue marking the point where you can first view the cathedral 5 km away.  

It's fairly hideous.  I mean, you can't even interact with the thing, and its like fifty feet tall.  It's not like pilgrims could climb on it to get a better view.

Despite the touristy loudness and obvious proclamation of arrival, it still didn't seem quite real, to be seeing Santiago through the haze:  

The view from Monte del Gozo - ahead and to the right! Santiago! 5 km away

  I took a photo of those two black horses picketed under a tree, to the left... then realized they were the same two horses I photographed weeks ago, as they passed me with their rider on the long stretch near Leon:

(I didn't approve of the rider.  He used spurs unnecessarily, and kept shouting at his horses, and didn't seem very confident, as they were doing nothing wrong.  Luckily they made it to Santiago in one piece despite him, and were happily munching grass.)

A cafe on the way into Santiago had delicious mini cheesecakes for a euro, which fueled me all the way to the huge Seminario albergue, where I promptly finished eating my cheesecake while unpacking on the tile floor: 

 (That's the mini cheesecake.  Oh, wow.  Also, the longest toe on my left foot has been black and blue under the nail since the second day of walking; I have no idea why.  But it doesn't hurt.  More like single-nail purple nail polish, a sort of hiking decor.  And that wrap is for the tendon on my left foot, bought at a friendly farmacia before Samos 100 km ago; it's helping.)

The Seminario albergue is in an old, echoing monastery.  It's huge.  It's spartan.  The walls and hallways are simple, but there are massive windows everywhere, and a peaceful hush - the perfect place for contemplation at the end of the trail.  I got a bed beside giant windows:

Let me tell you, there's nothing better than worrying about finding a bed, then not only getting a bed... but having it be a bed next to giant windows that open for fresh air.  (Mine is the second on the left.  Not the first one with the tidy blue sleeping bag.  That was a German man.  I am not a tidy nester.) 

 Perhaps I should have gone out exploring immediately, because instead I laid down and didn't move for three hours.  

Luckily, when I finally reached the cathedral they were having another late mass for pilgrims at 7 pm (since I sure as heck didn't make the noon one.)  The cathedral itself was grungy and crowded and musty and old, but the golden altar sure did glimmer:

 I've seen men on high scaffolds polishing the goldwork in a few churches; clearly the Spanish take altar-polishing very seriously.   

 I sat, and surreptitiously sketched, and admired the huge jutting pipe organ.  I'd heard that part of the pilgrim's ritual - upon arrival in Santiago - was to enter the cathedral by a side door, and hug a particular golden statue of Saint James from behind, to thank him for a safe journey.  Now, I thought this statue would be in a side nave, some secluded spot.  But while sitting there waiting, as the pews filled around me, I realized there were people filing behind the gleaming golden altar - climbing steps up, then climbing steps down again.  They were taking turns - patiently, one after the other - to put their arms around the neck of the altar from behind.  It was the golden statue of the main altar. In the front of the church, in view of all the pews, raised on a dais.  And an endless line of people kept climbing up to hug it. 

Then the priest started talking, and the arms just kept reaching around to hug the golden statue from behind.  I thought surely they'd stop soon.  Surely church security would cut off the flow of pilgrims, because holy mass was starting, and surely one couldn't have holy mass while the holy altar was being hugged from behind by one pilgrim every three seconds, occasionally peering around the statue to peer at the priest and the audience. 

But they didn't stop it.  All through the mass, that constant procession of people just kept shuffling up the stairs and hugging the statue in gratitude and shuffling down the other side.  

At first I thought (as I'd thought earlier, with so many people photographing the altar) isn't this all sort of... desecration?

And then, I realized: no.  This is just a place of very active rituals.  

Maybe this is how all rituals are meant to be.  Maybe this is how all rituals used to be, repeated 10,000 times a day, in constant renewal.  Maybe all churches wish they had an altar so popular, that the priest is forced to give mass while a never-ending stream of well-wishers hug it from behind.  (There's also the crypt of Saint James below, and a statue of Santiago Peregrino elsewhere, a famous pilgrim himself.  Is he a saint too?  Perhaps the patron saint of pilgrims.  I have no idea.  There are so many saints.  And the Spanish love them all.) 

The priest made a lovely inclusion in the sermon that day, calling up the leaders of all the pilgrim groups who had arrived that day.  There was a guide from Poland leading over one hundred Polish pilgrims.  A priest from Hong Kong, leading pilgrims.  A priest from Korea, leading pilgrims... and then one of the Polish women got up and read a long Bible passage in her language, and the foreign priests were up alongside the altar, each making statements in their languages, and when the time came to recite the Lord's Prayer it rang out from the audience in at least a dozen different languages.  It was lovely. 

Rather than trying to have a traditional mass despite the pilgrims, they altered the mass to include the pilgrims.  

I left the church feeling satisfied and satiated and warmed by all the communal contentment, but also slightly weary.  I haven't hugged the statue yet.  I will when I return.  For now the Cathedral didn't really feel like an endpoint, more just a highlight along the way.  I'm looking forward to making my ritual offering when I reach the bones of the sea.

Buen camino,

-mlj