METAPHORS PILGRIMS LIVE BY:

METAPHOR SYSTEMS OF THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE

by

Todd N. Valdini

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of

The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

Florida Atlantic University

Boca Raton, Florida

May 2007

Copyright by Todd N. Valdini 2007

ii

METAPHORS PILGRIMS LIVE BY: METAPHOR SYSTEMS OF THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE

by

Todd N. Valdini

This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate’s thesis advisor, Dr. Prisca Augustyn, Department of Languages and Linguistics, and has been approved by the members of his supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE: ______________________________ Thesis Advisor

______________________________ ______________________________ ____________________________________ Chairperson, Department of Languages and Linguistics ____________________________________ Interim Dean, The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts & Letters ____________________________________ __________________ Interim Dean, Graduate Studies and Programs Date

iii

Acknowledgements

I would like to extend my gratitude to my thesis committee for their thoughtful

and comprehensive reflections in the writing of this work: Dr. John Childrey for his

proficiency in metaphor in literature; Dr. Martha Mendoza for her expertise in metaphor

theory; and Dr. Prisca Augustyn who chaired this committee and put in additional hours

to help me put all the pieces together.

I am also deeply indebted to the unofficial fourth member of this committee and

personal political advisor Dr. Benjamin Goldman of the University of Syracuse: My first

and final line of defense.

Finally, I am truly grateful to Dr. Myriam Ruthenberg for her encouragement and

sage conversation over the past four years. Thank you for helping me navigate the

labyrinth.

This pilgrimage would not have been possible without all of your kind assistance.

Ultreya!

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ABSTRACT

Author: Todd N. Valdini

Title: METAPHORS PILGRIMS LIVE BY: METAPHOR SYSTEMS OF THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE

Institution: Florida Atlantic University

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Prisca Augustyn

Degree: Masters of Arts

Year: 2007

Pilgrimages have produced volumes of textual reflections by pilgrims and

outside observers. These writers represent a wide variety of disciplines from travel

theorists to travel bloggers, medieval historians to modern anthropologists and

sociologists. The findings of this study reveal two major complex metaphor systems:

one based on a series of interlaced existential metaphors orbiting the nuclear LIFE IS A

JOURNEY and the other stemming from a network of economic metaphors of MORAL

ACCOUNTING. The symbolic exchange embedded in these metaphorical systems

reflects the human desire for a meaningful and worthy life. These mutually

supporting complex systems of metaphor reveal an existential connection between the

medieval pilgrim and the contemporary tourist.

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This labor is dedicated to

Marcie and Al, my parents, who saw me off on the right path,

Jessica, my wife, who walks at my side always, and

Sarah, my friend, whom I’ll met again at journey’s end.

Table of Contents

Page

Epigraph ……………………………………………………………………………… ix

Author’s Note ………………………………………………………………………… 1

Limitations and Further Research ………………………………………………... 2

Chapter One: The Why of Saint James ………………………………………………. 4

The Way of Saint James …………………………………………………………. 5

The Way Yesterday …………………………………………………………... 7

Symbolism …………………………………………………………………… 9

The Way Today ………………………………………………………………. 11

The Great Age of Pilgrimage …………………………………………………….. 14

The Literary Tradition of Pilgrimage …………………………………………….. 16

Pilgrim: Universal Traveler ……………………………………………………… 18

Chapter Two: Life is a Pilgrimage …………………………………………………… 21

LIFE IS A JOURNEY ………………………………………………………………… 23

(Re)Birth ……………………………………………………………………… 28

Death and Afterlife …………………………………………………………… 31

LIFE IS A PLAY ……………………………………………………………………. 33

PILGRIMAGE IS NURTURE …………………………………………………………. 39

The Pilgrim’s Decision …………………………………………………………... 44

Pilgrimage as Hero’s Quest ……………………………………………………… 49

Implications and Conclusions …………………………………………….……… 53

Chapter Three: The Economics of Pilgrimage ………………………………….….... 54

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MORAL ACCOUNTING …………………………………………………………….. 55

The Corporate Structure of the Catholic Church ………………………………… 59

Sin and Penance ………………………………………………………………….. 61

Symbolic Exchange ……………………………………………………………… 63

Pilgrimage as Penance …………………………………………………………… 65

The Medieval Pilgrimage Business ……………………………………………… 71

The Contemporary Pilgrimage Business ………………………………………… 72

PILGRIMAGE IS A COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE …….. ……………………………… 75

A PILGRIMAGE IS A JOB …………………….………………………………… 76

A PILGRIM IS A LABORER …………………………………………………….. 78

A PILGRIMAGE IS WORK PRODUCT …………………………………………… 81

A PILGRIMAGE IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY ………………………………… 85

Implications and Conclusions ……………………………………………………. 89

Chapter 4: Pilgrims and Tourists …………………………………………………….. 92

The Turning Point in Pilgrimage ………………………………………………… 93

Touri-grinos …………………………………………………………………….... 94

Rites of Passage ………………………………………………………………….. 96

Liminality …………………………………………………………………… . 96

Communitas: the Other-hood of Pilgrimage …………………………………. 98

Tourism as a Rite of Passage ………………………………………………… 99

Pilgrim’s Return and Symbolic Exchange ……………………………………….. 100

Pilgrim or Tourist? ……………………………………………………………….. 102

Destinations ………………………………………………………………………. 103

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Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………. 104

Appendixes …………………………………………………………………………… 115

Appendix A: The French Routes of the Way of Saint James ……………………. 115

Appendix B: The Spanish Route of the Way of Saint James ……………………. 116

Appendix C: The Scallop Shell and the Way of Saint James ……………………. 117

Appendix D: Composite History of the Cult of Santiago de Compostela ……….. 119

Appendix E: Numbers of Pilgrims Gaining their Compostelas (1986-2006) ……. 121

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“The Road to Compostela is nothing but a metaphor.”

William Melczer, medievalist and Santiago pilgrim (1993, p. 23)

ix

Author’s Note

The pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela—also known in English as The Way

of Saint James—is one of many Christian pilgrimages. Its appropriateness to the current

linguistic study is due to its evolution from a religious ritual to a secular one, which is in

and of itself a metaphor for the secularization of life as such. Currently, the wealth of

professional and non-professional writing about the experience provides a deep pool of

linguistic evidence suitable for a scholarly evaluation of its metaphoric structures.

Because of the nature of this Christian pilgrimage, many of the writing samples available

are of a religious disposition. This study is based on the techniques of cognitive science

as developed by Lakoff (1994, 1995), Lakoff & Johnson (1980, 1999), Lakoff & Turner

(1989), Johnson (1987), and Turner (1991, 1997) to provide a better understanding of the

conceptual framework that lies beneath the thinking of contemporary pilgrims on the

Road to Santiago. Specifically, I have described the mental concepts that constitute the

writings produced by, for, and about the modern English-speaking pilgrims who

voluntarily take part in this thousand mile journey in the traditionally accepted modes

(i.e. by foot, bicycle, or horseback).

For the purposes of this discussion and to avoid confusion I will primarily be

looking at evidence from modern English speaking pilgrims on the Road to Santiago,

pilgrims who write from a non-religious—but often spiritual—point of view. The nature

of this particular pilgrimage has changed over time, from primarily religious to largely

secular. As such, the language used by these pilgrims lends itself to a diachronic

examination of a fundamental metaphorical system.

1

Additionally, the proliferation of web logs or “blogs” and online message boards

on the Internet has also increased the amount of material from which to cull linguistic

evidence. This material, which is frequently produced by inexperienced writers, has been

extremely helpful in identifying the most recent reflections on Camino experiences and

provides an up-to-date record of the metaphors by which English-speaking pilgrims

structure their experiences.

Different motivations for partaking in pilgrimage will reveal different underlying

metaphors. Because of the myriad interpretations of pilgrimage, we will have just as

many metaphors. Kittay (1987, p. 20) reminds us that “… metaphors are always relative

to a set of beliefs and to linguistic usage which may change through time and place – they

are relative to a given linguistic community.” While modes and motivations attached to

the journey may change slightly on the surface, the saliency of these English metaphors

remains fairly well intact. The overt or novel usages of pilgrimage metaphors has shifted

over time to become far more implicit and embedded in the language.

Limitations and Further Research

The institution of Christian pilgrimage has produced a tremendous amount of

linguistic material from which I might have chosen myriad additional examples of the

metaphors discussed herein. The material studied and represented here—although not

nearly exhaustive—paints a generally accurate picture of the major metaphors that

support the pilgrimage concept.

Additionally, not having a multi-language repertoire is a major limitation but not

a detrimental one. The Way is an international phenomenon—indeed it would seem to

predate the very idea of nations—and as such it has been interpreted and discussed in

2

various linguistic/cultural permutations. In the Holy Year of 2004, Spanish pilgrims

represented 75.8% of all pilgrims while the next three highest nation groups comprised

less than 5% each (Italy 4.2%; Germany 3.7%, France 3.6%) (Archbishop of Santiago de

Compostela, 2005, Peregrinos distribuidos según…). This suggests that there is

undoubtedly a deeper resource pool from which to draw for a more complete picture of

the pilgrimage. I think comparing the various other metaphor systems used in other

languages to describe the Western institution of pilgrimage would be another direction

that the current study could take. But that would exceed by far the limitations of this

study.

The sources in this study are therefore limited to those of the English language.

This is not a detriment to the current study because I am only discussing the cultural

phenomenon of pilgrimage as interpreted by an English-speaking culture which has been

profoundly impacted in its own right by the Way: “There are roughly four hundred

churches in England consecrated to St James and of these three-quarters were built before

the seventeenth century and would therefore have connections with the cult of St James at

Compostela” (Layton, 1976, p. 20).

Finally, I have at times used non-English material where appropriate, not to

expand the argument cross-culturally per se, but rather as a supplement to the themes. I

have tried to use the original texts when available and tendered professional translations

in footnotes. When unavailable, I have made my best effort to translate the material on

my own. Any mistakes to this end are my own.

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Chapter One: The Why of Saint James

“What is not a journey?”

Tzvetan Todorov, philosopher (1996, p. 287)

In the summer of 2006, my wife Jessica and I spent our honeymoon walking from

Le Puy-en-Velay, France to Finisterre, Spain1, an expedition of over a thousand miles.

We followed the same route traveled by countless pilgrims since the Bishop of Le Puy set

out on that same road in 950: The Way of Saint James. Like many modern day pilgrims,

our reasons for pursuing such an undertaking were numerous. We saw the pilgrimage at

once as an epic challenge to overcome together as a team, a relatively cheap holiday in

Europe, a long distance church crawl, a living history book, a strenuous physical

adventure, a chance to commune with nature, and a promise of spiritual fulfillment. Our

journey was each of these things to some degree and much more. The experience has

affected the way we look at the world and inspired us to apply our pilgrimage lessons to

it.

A refrain often heard by pilgrims of the Way is “it is not the destination, but the

journey that matters most”. The focal point of importance for other Christian pilgrimages

like Fátima or Lourdes is the shrine of devotion, the end point. The Way, by comparison,

unfolds its rewards over the course of the pilgrimage and beyond. Fellow veteran

pilgrims told us that the full purport of our endeavor would not be immediately apparent

upon our arrival at Santiago. Not until we had returned to our lives back home, they

informed, would the impact of our accomplishment have real significance. Indeed, over

1 Officially, the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela ends in that city, but many sojourners who have come that far will travel the additional 100 kilometers, usually by bus, to the coast at Cape Finisterre for symbolic reasons (explained below). We continued on foot for the extra three days to complete the journey the way we had begun it.

4

the distance of time and space a gestalt of our feat has emerged from storytelling and

reflection. Consequently, we continue to develop a deeper understanding of the

magnitude of this endeavor and of the impact it has had on the rest of our lives. We are

changed people for having made the pilgrimage to Santiago and yet we did not

necessarily seek this outcome.

It was as evident then as it is now that a pilgrimage is a de facto investment as

well as a metaphorical one. As with any other significant financial investment, I

wondered, “What has been our return on this pilgrimage?” Naturally, the boons of the

Way must come from the lessons learned and experiences gained from it. These rewards,

though, were not earned without paying the tolls of the road: the route requires an

extended span of time to complete (Jessica and I took seventy five days to reach the coast

of Spain); the constant, daily walking takes a tremendous physical toll on the pilgrim’s

body (aside from the horrendous blisters endured by us both, Jessica suffered tendonitis

in both feet twice and I lost nearly eighteen percent of my normal body weight); and for

the pilgrim of modest means, the financial strain can be more burden than one can bear

(we twice had money wired from family members in order to finish the arduous journey).

We are now returned pilgrims; our wounds have since healed, our inner clocks have

syncopated again with the rest of the world, and our families have been repaid. Since our

return we have gradually realized the return on our investment. The gift of the Way is the

discovery that you are not alone on this journey.

The Way of Saint James

The Way of Saint James—hereafter referred to as ‘the Way’—is known variously

throughout Europe as O Camiño de Santiago (Galician), Donejakue Bidea (Basque),

5

Camí de Sant Jaume de Galícia (Catalan), Der Jakobsweg (German), O Caminho de

Santiago (Portuguese), Slí Naomh Shéamais (Irish); most commonly, it is referred to as

Le Chemin de Saint Jacques (French) and El Camino de Santiago (Spanish) since its

main footpaths converge in these latter countries. This linguistic variation is testament to

the route’s diverse popularity and reflective of the reverence held by Europeans, who

have preserved it as a continental treasure. The United Nations Educational, Scientific

and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Centre (2007) added the Way to

its World Heritage List first in 1993 with the Spanish side and later included the French

routes in 1998. UNESCO (2007) identifies four major historical origination points in

France—Paris, Vézelay, Le Puy, and Arles—each fed by a number of subsidiary routes

all converging on the southern side of the Pyrenees and eventually terminating at

Santiago de Compostela in the northwest corner of the Iberian peninsula (see Appendixes

A and B).

Though the Way can claim noteworthy Santiago pilgrims of old—including

Charlemagne2, Saint Francis of Assisi, Isabella of Castile and, more recently, Pope John

Paul XXIII in 1989—the pilgrimage owes its enduring charm to its democratic appeal to

all travelers, not just those with Christian beliefs or the financial means to make the trek.

The accessibility of the Way is described by Roddis, et al. (1999): “Medieval pilgrims

simply left home and picked up the closest and safest route to Santiago de Compostela”

(p. 380). Though non-European pilgrims typically have to fly to their embarkation point,

pilgrims living on the continent still travel in the same mode as their medieval

predecessors.

2 Though apocryphal, since he would have been impossibly old by the time this Christian pilgrimage had been established proper, Charlemagne’s supposed pilgrimage to Santiago has become so much a part of pilgrim lore that his inclusion here and elsewhere is almost obligatory.

6

The Way Yesterday

The medieval Christian pilgrim had three main destination choices for his or her

peregrination: Jerusalem, Rome and Compostela, Spain. Each of the pilgrim roads

offered a series of blessings and indulgences to those who traveled their length: the

pilgrim who reached Santiago de Compostela, for instance, could reduce his or her time

in Purgatory by half. Those brave souls who endeavored to travel to the Holy Sepulcher

of Christ in Jerusalem were referred to as ‘palmers’ since they carried palm branches to

identify themselves as pilgrims. Those who traveled to Rome to visit the tomb of Saint

Peter were referred to as ‘wanderers’ or ‘romeos’ and identified themselves iconically

with the Cross. Pilgrims to Compostela wore scallop shells (see Appendix C) as their

signifying mark but were not referred to as anything other than ‘pilgrims’. Dante

Alighieri (ca. 1293) is thought to have been the first to define a pilgrim, doing so—it

appears—based on an assessment of quantity over quality: “[…] chiamansi peregrini in

quanto vanno a la casa di Galizia, però che la sepultura di sa' Iacopo fue più lontana de la

sua patria che d'alcuno altro apostolo3”. Dante’s insinuation that the Saint James pilgrim

is a sort of archetype of the practice may be an early indication of the mass popularity

and democratic appeal of the Way given that the title bestowed on this particular traveler

(simply pilgrim) is unmarked and linguistically paradigmatic.

Of the three pilgrimages, the first was—and still is arguably—the most important

in the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish traditions: “The Jerusalem pilgrimage was the

pilgrimage of pilgrimages; others were types and shadows of it, for Jerusalem was at the

center of the world (it is regularly pictured there in maps of the period) […] and it was a

3 […] they are called pilgrims if they go to the shrine of Saint James in Galicia, since the sepulchre of Saint James was further away from his country than any other apostle […] (Kline (Trans.), 2001)

7

symbol of the Heavenly City” (Howard, 1980, p. 12). However, outside historical

forces affected the popularity of the Jerusalem pilgrimage for would-be Christian

pilgrims setting out from Northern Europe. Principal among these was Muslim

occupation of the Holy Land. The overland route to the East was long, arduous and

controlled by Islamic empires that had long been at violent odds with the Europeans.

After the collapse of the Mongolian Empire and the rise of the aggressive and

expansionist Ottoman Empire, land trade routes which pilgrim roads often followed were

un-policed and became treacherous, limiting the possibilities for Europeans wanting to

participate in the popular pilgrimage.

Ironically, like the land eastward to Jerusalem, the Iberian Peninsula was also the

location of territorial disputes between Muslim and Christian forces. But the Catholic

Church was able to turn this to their advantage, stoking the popularity of the Way by

propagandizing the road as a crucial aspect of the Reconquest of Spain. Mullins (1974)

indicates that the Church was indebted to none other than their “infidel” enemy for the

idea behind this successful public relations campaign: “It was Islam that taught European

rulers the notion of a ‘holy war’, and taught European churchmen the binding power of

moral propaganda. Both were central to the spirit of pilgrimage” (p. 32). The

implementation of this campaign involved several historical revisions. Despite Saint

James’s legacy of peace—he was Christ’s apostle and is believed later to have

evangelized in Iberia4—the Church used the Saint as a rallying symbol for their ongoing

4 Though there does not seem to be any debate over the fact that Saint James the Greater did actually evangelize Christ’s teachings in the years after his mentor’s crucifixion (an avocation for which James himself was martyred later), the evidence supporting whether or not he did his missionary work in the area now known as Spain is murky at best: “Incredulous historians over the past centuries have doubted that it was physically possible for St James ever to have got to Spain, and what is surprising is that the learned St Isidore of Seville (seventh century) twice makes mention of the Apostle without commenting that he had any particular affinity with Spain” (Layton, 1976, pp. 28-9).

8

war with the Muslim interlopers. Even today in Spain there remains statuary of Santiago

Matamoros (Saint James as ‘Moor Slayer’), usually mounted upon a charger, wielding a

sword, and often trampling dark-skinned figures. The Archbishops who ruled

Compostela used the pilgrimage as a tool to raise arms and money to help fight the

Muslims as well as to promote their own interests. Their disinformation crusade was

hugely successful, resulting in the arrival of millions of devoted pilgrims—and more

importantly their money—from every corner of Christian Europe.

Symbolism

The Way is characterized by its wealth of natural symbols. The physical

symbolism of the Way invokes a mythological aura that certainly made it of particular

interest to its pagan purveyors. The sheer age of this archaic road alone lends itself to the

sphere of epic mythology. The road pre-dates the Christian inception of the pilgrimage;

some have suggested that it was in use even before Roman rule had spread to the

peninsula:

The kings of Spain had built a highway to assist pilgrims in the twelfth century:

but the road was there already. The Romans had built a military road as a sign

and condition of their domination: but the road was there already. Paleolithic man

had moved along it, and the stations of a living devotion today, he had frequented;

there he made his magic, and felt vague awe before the abyss of an antiquity

unfathomed (King, 1920, p. 22).

The conjecture concerning the road’s ancient existence—even Paleolithic existence, as

the author proposes—suggests that the Way is a suitable backdrop for the symbolic

associations between a pilgrimage journey and a life journey. The Way, according to

9

King (1920), appears to have been a source of existential meditation even before the

Church appropriated it for its own ritual.

Indeed, there is archeological information that suggests the Way was used

similarly by the Celts who settled the area5. The tradition, still followed by many, of

continuing the pilgrimage past Santiago and on to the westernmost tip of Cape Finisterre

is said to recreate a Celtic death journey. Finisterre translates roughly as “lands end” or

“end of the world”, which to the pagan and medieval mind, it most certainly was. The

nearby Costa de Morta (“Coast of Death”) also adds to the eschatological scenario. The

geographic actuality of the end of the road makes this mandatory termination of the

pilgrimage a more fitting resolve to the adventure.

The symbolism associated with the Way is not only the ground below the pilgrims’ feet,

but also in the sky above their heads. The nighttime sky is responsible for providing

orientation for the pilgrimage to Santiago. The Way is also often called “the Milky Way”

because the pilgrims’ course was supposedly plotted there (Bignami, 2004, p. 1979).

Other legends have suggested that the star configuration is the dust kicked up by the feet

of years of Santiago pilgrims. The Spanish refer to the Milky Way as “el camino de

Santiago”. This celestial corollary has inspired travelogue titles like Edward E. Stanton’s

(1994) Road of stars to Santiago. Also, incidentally, the directional orientation of the

Way, with its eastern originations and western destination, satisfies a symbolic aspect of

the pilgrimage. For all of its paths originating in Northern and Eastern Europe, the

direction of movement for the pilgrim road is an east-to-west orientation. Since this is

also the same physical progression of the path of the Sun–as we perceive it from Earth–

the parallels between this particular pilgrimage and the passage of time are quite strong. 5 The region of Galica most likely derives its name from ‘Gael’, someone from the Gaelic race, a Celt.

10

Further supporting the time symbolism associated with the Way is the fact that

European pilgrims, even today, initiate their journeys from the countries of their birth and

travel to Saint James’s final resting place, his tomb. The naturally occurring symbolism

of the Way provides the basis the pervasive conceptualization LIFE IS A JOURNEY, a

metaphor which I will explore in further detail in the following chapter.

Comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell (1986) suggests natural and

permanent metaphors of the kind associate with the Way can be particularly helpful in

sustaining the vitality of a tradition: “The life of a mythology derives from the vitality of

its symbols as metaphors delivering, not simply the idea, but a sense of actual

participation in such a realization of transcendence, infinity, and abundance …” (p. xx).

Pilgrim and novelist Paolo Coelho (1986) recalls his own meditation on the mythological

connection:

I was going to relive, here in the latter part of the twentieth century, something of

the greatest human adventure that brought Ulysses from Troy that had been a part

of Don Quixote’s experiences, that had led Dante and Orpheus into hell, and that

directed Columbus to the Americas: the adventure of traveling toward the

unknown” (p. 14).

Christianity has overlapped its own mythology surrounding the origins of the cult of

Saint James, providing an additional intrigue for travelers and compelling them to

participate in the legend (see Appendix D).

The Way Today

The popularity of the Way has survived into modern times. Though its numbers

waned greatly after the Middle Ages, the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela has

11

become increasingly popular in the last thirty years and promises to continue its upward

trend (See Appendix E). Indeed the Way is a time-tested venture with numbers reaching

into the six figure range during Holy Years6. In the most recent Holy Year of 2004,

nearly 180,000 pilgrims completed the trek (Rekve, 2005). Last year my wife and I were

two of 100,377 pilgrims who received their Compostelas7 (Confraternity of Saint James,

2007).

Since the mid-eighties, books by popular modern and diverse writers (e.g., Paulo

Coehlo, Tim Moore, Cees Nooteboom8) about the Santiago pilgrimage have provided

insight into the written mind of the modern pilgrim. As a result of its being featured by

admired authors, the Way has become something of a pop-culture travel destination,

attracting greater numbers of people wishing to recreate the footsteps of these

romanticized journeys. Consequently, non-professional writers too have partaken in

written reflection in the form of shared experiences on list serves, journal writing, and

web logs (“blogs”).

Additionally, with the increased popularity of the Way, a system of free or

donation-only hostels to shelter and feed pilgrims has been reimplemented in the tradition

6 A Holy Year is when July 25, the Festival of Saint James, occurs on a Sunday. It is on these years that the pilgrimage surges most with traffic. 7 The Compostela is the name given to the document awarded to pilgrims who have walked at least the last 100 kilometers into Santiago de Compostela (bicycalists and horseback riders must travel the final 200 kilometers). Essentially, they are the modern equivalent of the medieval indulgence issued to pilgrims of old. 8 Paolo Coelho (1947-) is a Brazilian lyricist and internationally best selling novelist. His novel The pilgrimage: A contemporary quest for ancient knowledge (1986) is a spiritual allegory based on his experiences along the Way. Tim Moore is a British humorist and travel writer who wrote Travels with my donkey: One man and his ass on a pilgrimage to Santiago (2004). The title of Moore’s travelogue—based on his journey down the Way—is fairly self-explanatory and indicative of the author’s lighthearted take on the pilgrimage. Cees Nooteboom (1933-) is a Dutch poet, travel writer, and novelist who is frequently mentioned as a candidate for the Novel Prize in literature. His book Roads to Santiago: A modern-day pilgrimage through Spain (1992) chronicles his pilgrimage made on foot.

12

of the medieval pilgrim hospices that grew up along the road. The refugios of Spain

continue to keep the pilgrimage’s much-desired authenticity intact.

The Way has in recent times adopted more secular associations, drawing

adventurers from all over the world for physical, spiritual, and purely pleasurable reasons.

Some guidebooks tend to suggest that the Road to Santiago has undergone a

transformation from being a religious pilgrimage to now being more of an outdoors

physical adventure: “The Camino de Santiago (Way of Saint James) originated as a

European medieval pilgrimage. Today it is a magnificent long-distance walk spanning

738km of Spain’s north from Roncesvalles on the border with France to Santiago de

Compostela in Galica” Further on the authors list the benefits of such an excursion: “For

a great physical challenge, an immersion in a stunning array of landscapes, a unique

perspective on rural and urban Spain, a chance to meet intriguing companions, as well as

the opportunity to participate in a 1000-year-old tradition through a continuous outdoor

museum, this is your walk.” (Roddis, Frey, Placer, Fletcher & Noble, p. 381).

Though indulgences are now a thing of the past and the Way seems to have

progressed in a less religiously-oriented direction, the statistics (Archbishop of Santiago

de Compostela 2005) for the last Holy Year in 2004 reveal that most modern pilgrims

still claim to take part religious reasons. Those who claimed that their pilgrimage was for

strictly non-religious motives represented only 9.04% of pilgrims in that year while those

claiming purely religious motives represented 37.75% of pilgrims surveyed. The

majority of 2004 pilgrims (53.21%) answered that their motivation for making their

pilgrimage was “religious and other,” suggesting that little has changed on the road since

the Middle Ages. This information appears have inherent flaws given that the statistics

13

are taken by a source of Catholic bias and do not give the pilgrim a choice of “spiritual”

rather than “religious”.

Of the major Christian pilgrimages, none are better candidates for investigating

the shift in attention from religious to secular than the example of the Way of Saint James.

The Way not only saddles the gap between the ancient and the modern, but its physical

and symbolic characteristics make it decidedly appropriate for the current discussion.

The Great Age of Pilgrimage

Pilgrimage had its greatest influence on the cultural mind of the West between

roughly 1000 and 1500. The ritual has been a devotional practice of the Christian faith

from its very beginnings when followers of Christ flocked to the site of his crucifixion

and resurrection (Addis & Arnold, 1957, p. 649). Christ’s model of suffering and

sacrifice are at the heart of the faith and could be enacted by believers through the

hardships of pilgrimage. Eventually, Christians made pilgrimages to various other holy

places sanctified by the Church. Officially these could be journeys of penance or

thanksgiving to a site associated with or containing the relics of a sainted figure of the

Church. In most cases, pilgrimages were spiritual exercises or quests as well as actual

journeys of salvation since one of the rewards brought back by pilgrims from those sites

were tangible, sanctioned documents awarded by the Church called indulgences

(remissions of the temporal punishment for sin).

Popular pilgrimages were also fueled by a medieval belief in the restorative

powers of the Church and its sanctified relics. A fervor generated by the so called “cult

of the saints” caused many medieval adventurers to go on far reaching expeditions with

the belief that physical contact with the relics of a saint would induce a miracle of

14

recovery, an idolatrous adulation encouraged by the papacy. Church-generated stories of

the healing powers of the pilgrimage destinations and the paraphernalia associated with

them also enticed believers to take to the road. Historian John Ure (2006) describes the

magnetic power of Church relics to draw pilgrims from afar, believing they might benefit

from their osmotic magic: “The inspiring power of physical association, relics and

miracles have often been inducements to tread the pilgrim road and it is equally true that

atonement for sins and punishment for crimes have also been factors in obliging unlikely

and often unwilling travelers to set out on far-flung quests” (p. 7). As pilgrimage became

more institutionalized by the Church, even some courts of law started to impose

pilgrimage as an alternative to execution or incarceration (Ure, 2006, p. 8).

Historically, pilgrimage assumed three forms: the actual or physical pilgrimage,

the labyrinthine pilgrimage, and the spiritual pilgrimage or ‘vision quest’. The latter two

versions were often seen as vicarious pilgrimages. In the medieval period pilgrims could

still satisfy a Church-sanctioned pilgrimage by labyrinthine means: “At its furthest

remove, it was possible to make a substitute pilgrimage by crawling about a cathedral

labyrinth” (Howard 1980, p. 12). The ‘vision quest’ required no physical movement at

all, but did call for sound mental discipline or psychotropic assistance and was often

found in an ascetic or shamanistic tradition. The current discussion, however, will focus

on those pilgrims who partook and continue to partake in the first of these modes yet, as

medievalist L. J. Bowman (1980) informs us, prototypical pilgrimages were not to be

casually undertaken: “the actual journeying was of no significance unless animated by the

spiritual quest of the viator9 seeking his heavenly home” (p. 12).

9 Latin for “a traveller [sic]” or “a wayfarer” (Simpson, 1989)

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Despite its religious and spiritual associations, motivations for making

pilgrimages often varied. In part, these journeys were also undergone for mere curiosity

and the sheer adventure of travel. Considering that medieval Europeans lived in

relatively insular isolation, the pilgrimage offered a more complete worldview than the

patch of land they called ‘home’. In this way—and in many others, as this study will

reveal—the medieval pilgrim was the archetypical tourist who leaves home for the

promise of adventure elsewhere and the chance to improve their overall quality of life.

Mullins (1974) observes, “the pilgrim in the Middle Ages shared with the modern tourist

a conviction that certain places and certain objects possess unusual spiritual power, and

that one was a better person for visiting them” (p. 1). And according to MacCannell

(1976), modern holiday destinations and tourist attractions are “precisely analogous to the

religious symbolism of primitive people” (p. 2). The linguistic evidence of pilgrim

writers deepens this connection, revealing a shared metaphor system supporting both the

historical pilgrimage—religious and spiritual in nature—and the more touristic and

secular one of today.

The Literary Tradition of Pilgrimage

The highly symbolic quality of pilgrimage easily lent itself to the imaginative

invention of medieval literature. The pilgrimage motif emanates strongly from this

period starting with Dante’s fourteenth century La Commedia Divina (The Divine

Comedy), a metaphysical journey into Hell, through Purgatory, and culminating in

Heaven. About seventy years later, the theme was popularized in English with Geoffery

Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, a story cycle depicting an assorted band of pilgrim

raconteurs headed for the shrine of Saint Thomas Beckett of Canterbury. Using the

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pilgrimage frame allowed Chaucer to assemble a wide array of characters of varied stock

and social standing, thereby painting a detailed picture of English life in the Middle Ages,

a novel invention praised by scholars including Chaucer’s translator Neville Coghill

(1951): “In all literature there is nothing that touches or resembles the Prologue. It is the

concise portrait of an entire nation, high and low, old and young, male and female, lay

and clerical, learned and ignorant, rogue and righteous, land and sea, town and country,

but without extremes” (Coghill, p. 17). Chaucer’s cross-sectional portrait is also

reflective of the egalitarian appeal of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages. Furthermore, his

characters do not embody the typical image of the suffering pilgrim; in fact, they are

enjoying themselves: “they assembled at an inn, they all had mounts, and they entertained

each other with storytelling of a highly secular—and on occasion ribald—nature” (Ure,

2006, p. 14). Most of Chaucer’s pilgrims were atypical for the religious pilgrimage,

reflecting the historical reality of this changing tradition: motivations behind pilgrimage

had shifted or were shifting from pious devotion to secular tourism.

Contrary to common beliefs, great poets like Chaucer and Dante do not hold a

monopoly on the use of metaphoric conceit: the tools of the language trade are used by

every one of us. Metaphor in particular “is a tool so ordinary that we use it

unconsciously and automatically” (Lakoff & Turner, 1989, p. xi). The language used to

describe and to discuss the concept of pilgrimage is metaphoric, not only because we

conceive of all activities—extraordinary and ordinary—in this way, but fundamentally

because the act itself is a metaphor for human life. Pilgrimage is a living metaphor, an

act set upon the stage of a tangible world.

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Medieval biographers of pilgrimage recognized the saliency of this metaphor as

one for life and their depiction of it would create reverberations felt far beyond its literary

popularization. Howard (1980) informs us: “The pilgrimage itself, dead as an institution

in England by the end of the sixteenth century, lived on as an idea preserved in books.

There was never a time when the words pilgrim and pilgrimage didn’t have force […]” (p.

6). The extended life of pilgrimage as a literary concept testifies to its legacy as a

powerful metaphor. However, the pilgrimage metaphor would change as different ideas

of travel developed over time. For medieval travelers, the pilgrimage was symbolic of

the unidirectional journey from birth to death:

From early times it had the metaphorical significance of a one-way journey to the

Heavenly Jerusalem: the actual trip was a symbol of human life, and the corollary,

that life is a pilgrimage, was a commonplace. The pilgrim enacted the passage

from birth to salvation; at his destination he adored relics of a saint or, at

Jerusalem, the places where the Lord had lived and died in his earthly body […]

(Howard, 1980, p. 11).

Pilgrimage steadily became secularized with the help of the corpus of literature that

celebrated it; and as early as the seventeenth century this notion of a one-way journey

grew to include the return trip. The notion of the return changed the way people

conceived of travel and it is here that the mythology of the modern tourist is germinated.

Pilgrim: Universal Traveler

Pilgrimage is not exclusive to one culture, religion, or social grouping. In fact,

ritualized pilgrimages have been a part of cultures around the world for centuries. The

phenomenon can be found in all of the world’s major religions (the Islamic flight to

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Mecca, the Christian sojourn to Vatican City, the Buddhist journey to Kapilavastu10, the

Jewish visitation of Jerusalem). The meaning of pilgrimage has evolved to include any

journey that starts at home and ends at a particular site held sacred by the pilgrim. Non-

religious pilgrimages include protests such as Dr. Martin Luther King’s Selma-to-

Montgomery marches of 1965, charity fun runs like the American Heart Association’s

annual “Heart Walk”, even family vacations like those to Disneyworld can be considered

modern pilgrimages. One of the essential criteria for pilgrimage include a definite

purpose for—and worth of the journey to—the participants. The concept is such a

fundamental form of the journey schema that it has the metaphoric versatility to be

applied to events whose movement may only be implied. In this way, the current study is

a pilgrimage itself: it sets off from an initial idea, or starting point; it follows progressive

steps as it proceeds; the author—as tour guide—directs the reader’s attention to various

landmarks along the way, occasionally suggesting sites of interest; and eventually the

travelers arrive at the ultimate point of the paper, the sacred destination of the journey.

The highly flexible character and adaptability of pilgrimage is an indication of its

lasting influence on Western culture. The Oxford English Dictionary’s primary

definition of pilgrim is “a person on a journey, a person who travels from place to place;

a traveler, a wanderer, an itinerant. Also in early use: a foreigner, an alien, a stranger”

(Simpson, 2006). Not until the secondary definition does the modern inquirer discover

the word’s more germane legacy as “a person who makes a journey (usually of a long

distance) to a sacred place as an act of religious devotion” (ibid. [emphasis mine]).

Historically, pilgrims were only those people who fit the latter definition. However,

10 According to Turner (1973), Buddhist traditions of this kind are also shared with—and ultimately derived from—those found in the Hindu tradition (p. 204).

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because of the saliency of the institution of pilgrimage in the history of Western thought,

the word has drifted from the particular to the generalized in the English language. This

potential universality of what it means to be a pilgrim begets another question echoic of

Todorov’s: “Who is not a pilgrim?”

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Chapter Two: Life Is a Pilgrimage

“And what’s a life? – a weary pilgrimage,

Whose glory in one day doth fill the stage,

With childhood, manhood, and decrepit age.”

– Francis Quarles, Elizabethan poet (1634, 1808, p. 127)

The verse above by Francis Quarles (1592-1644) reflects a literary sensibility

flavored by the institution of pilgrimage and is indicative of the rich metaphoric

properties which made the concept such fertile material for English poets and dramatists.

In these three lines of verse, the author employs several concepts which are lynchpins in

the understanding of life and its metaphoric relationship with pilgrimage in the English

tradition. Though Quarles penned these lines nearly four hundred years ago, pilgrim

writers today rely on these same conceptual metaphors to craft their own musings on the

subject.

Two main metaphors are at work here which furnish much of our

conceptualization of pilgrimage today: LIFE IS A JOURNEY and LIFE IS A PLAY. These

metaphors will be explained herein using the imaginative language of poetry written in

the tradition English pilgrimage. These conceptual metaphors of existence are supported

by the PILGRIMAGE IS NURTURE metaphor establishing the core metaphors of modern

pilgrim writing on the Way. Pilgrimage is saturated with metaphor at many levels: from

the overall structure and shape of the activity down to the everyday language used to

describe it. The language of pilgrimage can often be a confounding subject to engage in

because of its metaphor-heavy properties since the line between symbolism and reality

easily becomes blurred: “Pilgrimage is often described both in terms of literal journey

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and as a lifelong spiritual experience but it is by no means always immediately clear

which is considered to be the metaphor and which the reality” (Dyas, 2001, p. 2). In the

following Coelho (1986) passage for instance, it is not certain whether the author means

his real ‘first step’ or his metaphoric one: “I was actually in Spain and there was no

going back. In spite of the knowledge that there were many ways in which I could fail, I

had taken the first step” (p. 10). Essentially, it does not matter which sense Coelho

intends because both effectively convey the meanings of pilgrimage and life as

significant journeys. For non-literary writers like pilgrim Louise Gehman (2006, April

30) the use of potentially metaphoric language in written reflection of the pilgrimage is

meant as literal: “[The ‘cuckoo’ birds] were particularly vocal when we walked about 2

km out of our way, thinking we were on the right path.”

The poetic examples here provide a historical reference to the importance of

pilgrimage in the literary tradition as well as demonstrate the foregrounding use of these

metaphors. The connections drawn between source and target domains1 therein have

become so engrained in the Judeo-Christian conceptualization of human existence that

they are largely taken for granted by the present-day language user. As a result, where

the poets’ use of the metaphors will have been explicitly metaphoric, the modern pilgrim

writings referenced here will demonstrate them as embedded metaphors. This is an

indication of the metaphors’ saliency and durable usefulness in the language. What some

would call ‘dead metaphors’ are really the bedrock of the language itself; as Deutscher

(2005) so metaphorically puts it, language is a river on which metaphors flow from

concrete to abstract concepts:

1 Cognitive linguists use these terms to explain the structure of metaphor as a transfer from one conceptual field of conventionalized information (source) to another more abstract one (target). This is called mapping from source to target.

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In this constant surge, the simplest and sturdiest of words are swept along, one

after the other, and carried towards abstract meanings. As these words drift

downstream, they are bleached of their original vitality and turn into pale lifeless

terms for abstract concepts – the substance from which the structure of language

is formed. And when at last the river sinks into the sea, these spent metaphors are

deposited, layer after layer, and so the structure of language grows, as a reef of

dead metaphors (p. 118).

The calcified metaphors embedded in this substratum of language provide evidence of the

mental framework of its users in much the same way that the fossilized remains of plants

and animals inform an archeologist about our prehistory. The coherency of the

metaphors of pilgrimage provides a barometer of Western culture’s consciousness. This

data can be extrapolated to discuss some of the fundamental questions about how we

conceptualize our existence. Consequently, the linguistic survey of the modern

pilgrimage also provides an insightful investigation of mythology’s role in this human

ritual.

LIFE IS A JOURNEY

The word journey, by definition, is connected wit the passage of time. It is a

twelfth century lexical borrowing from French journée meaning variously a day, a day’s

space, a day’s travel, work, employment, etc. (Simpson, 1989). The basic structure of a

typical journey provides an analogical comparison with the span of a lifetime. It has an

embarkation point (a birth), a series of stopping points along a distance (the stages of

aging), and a final destination (eventual death). And though life does not actually follow

a linear path—the way this analogy suggests—a journey and all of its entailed

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components provide experiential source material for discussing a human life in this way.

Accordingly, one of the ways in which English speakers conceptualize their own lives is

through the complex metaphor LIFE IS A JOURNEY. Lakoff and Johnson (1999) dissect

this pervasive metaphor, revealing that it is in fact composed of elemental or primary

metaphors through which we conceive our day-to-day experiences. Metaphors are based

on cultural assumptions and agreed-upon expectations. In the case of the LIFE IS A

JOURNEY, one assumption is the seemingly self-evident notion that actions are motions;

this gives metaphoric movement to the accomplishment of a task which may not require

any actual travel. Additionally, Westerners believe that in order to have purpose in their

life, they must have goals for which they strive. They conceive of these goals as

destinations in time and space which they must arrive at as one might arrive at an actual,

physical location in order to achieve some purposeful task (“I want a book about

pilgrimage, so I must go to the library.”) Similarly, more abstract purposes and goals are

also conceived of in this way (“I want to be rich and famous, but I still have a long way

to go.”). A pilgrimage offers its participants a definite purposeful destination and—as I

will discuss further on—can provide the successful pilgrim with renewed meaning in

their post-pilgrimage lives.

Implicit in these fundamental metaphors is an understanding that goals are

tangible things. Santiago pilgrims look at their final destination not as an elusive dream,

but as a real object that they will eventually acquire: “I still had two weeks in which to

reach Santiago […]” (Selby, 1994, p. 89); “[…] I pressed on and by the time I reached

the monastery at Irache, barely two miles outside the town, I was again flagging under

the appalling heat” (Neillands, 1985, p. 103). Not only is the purposeful destination

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metaphorically graspable, the latter example also suggests that the physical difficulty

involved with the pilgrimage can be pushed against like an actual negative force. This is

all to suggest that our metaphorical understanding of a journey with a purposeful

destination is interactive. What is more is that in the case of the pilgrim writers, the

destination is not conceived as an object that might be reached in the future; its

acquisition is only a matter of time.

These primary metaphors animate the basic structure of a physical journey

(ACTIONS ARE MOTIONS and GOALS ARE DESTINATIONS). These three conceptions

provide the blueprint for the complex metaphor A PURPOSEFUL LIFE IS A JOURNEY which

entails the following metaphoric notions:

(1) A PURPOSEFUL LIFE IS A JOURNEY

(2) A PERSON IS A TRAVELER

(3) LIFE GOALS ARE DESTINATIONS

(4) A LIFE PLAN IS AN ITINERARY

Quarles’ somewhat pessimistic verse falls directly in line with this metaphorical

concept, casting Man as a weary traveler whose only real destinations and goals are the

biological realities of life’s progression (birth, adulthood, death), hardly the only goals

that modern man and woman are likely to strive for. To be sure, Quarles does not

explicitly refer to life as a ‘journey’, but pilgrimage is, as has been shown, a special type

of journey—it is one of the fundamental forms a journey can take: it is one which has a

purposeful destination in the form of a sacred site that is only arrived at after undergoing

a series of struggles over great distance.

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For these reasons, pilgrimage assumes greater significance as a fundamental

version of LIFE IS A JOURNEY—we might even say LIFE IS A PILGRIMAGE. And since

geographical journeys were frequently understood as representing moral or spiritual

progress, pilgrims of the Middle Ages did just that, believing their journeys took on

symbolic significance: “… pilgrimage was a metaphor for human life: life is a one-way

passage to the Heavenly Jerusalem and we are pilgrims on it” (Howard, 1980, pp. 6-7).

Pilgrimage was indeed idealized as a unidirectional, upward journey from earthly reality

to heavenly perfection by many medieval pilgrims. Clearly, the numerous perils along

the way made the journey’s successful conclusion questionable—even doubtful—but to

arrive at the final destination and to actually die there was the ultimate ideal of

pilgrimage, “the return voyage was a mere contingency, an anticlimax” (Howard, 1980, p.

48). It was considered desirable to die at the destination because embodied in that act

was the perfect union of symbol and reality. Today—as we shall discuss in detail

below—the pilgrimage is not really complete until the pilgrim returns home for the final

stage of the journey takes place there.

One of the more famous, novel uses of the LIFE IS A JOURNEY metaphor in English

pilgrimage literature is John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678, 1957) in which

pilgrimage and its trappings take on allegorical significance. By the time Bunyan was

writing in the seventeenth century, the great age of pilgrimage had already passed in

Europe and its presence had become well established in English literature. Bunyan’s

Christian allegory relies heavily upon the use of character and place names which

symbolize moral qualities and refer to biblical passages, essentially having double

signification in- and outside of the narrative itself. For example, the main character and

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primary pilgrim is called Christian; he travels through locations with names like the

Slough of Despair and the Valley of the Shadow of Death on his journey to the Celestial

City, meeting along the way characters named Evangelist, Hypocrisy, Faithful, and

Hopeful.

Bunyan’s allegory is an extended parable that uses metaphor, not as a simple

embellishment of the language, but as a basic tool of reasoning. One of the central

purposes of a parable is to teach a lesson. Bunyan’s didactic use of metaphor is an

example of the literary sensibility of human cognition. Turner’s (1996) theory amends

the generally accepted notion in the field of linguistics that the human mind has a genetic

predisposition to the application of grammar, proposing instead that the human capacity

for story telling precedes grammar: “the linguistic mind is a consequence and

subcategory of the literary mind” (p. 141). His theory suggests that, “Narrative

imagining—story—is the fundamental instrument of thought. Rational capacities depend

upon it. It is our chief means of looking into the future, of predicting, of planning, and of

explaining” (pp. 4-5). A key ingredient of the literary mind is the ability to map one

story schema onto another, using a narrative that is already culturally established to

illuminate aspects of a less familiar one. In The Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan maps the

universally understood story of a journey onto the story of a righteous life in order to

teach the virtues of Christian doctrine.

Bunyan self-consciously makes his case for the appropriateness of his use of the

extended metaphor in the Author’s Apology, preceding Part I imploring:

But must I needs want solidness, because

By metaphors I speak? Were not God’s laws,

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His gospel laws, in olden time held forth

By types, shadows, and metaphors? (p. 4)

Here Bunyan defends his use of metaphor in his discussion of weighty religious issues (in

this case the soul’s spiritual salvation), presaging Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980, 2003)

insistence that human cognition is developed from an imaginative rationality that is based

on metaphoric reasoning.

The linguistic evidence appears to be in Bunyan’s favor on this account given that

Christian teachings have—from their inception—been steeped in metaphoric language.

The New Testament gives us the believed word of God through Jesus’ message: “I am

the way2, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me” (John 14:6

[my emphasis]). Not only is this message metaphoric but it fits perfectly into the A

PURPOSEFUL LIFE IS A JOURNEY Metaphor. It is reasonable that the Christian belief

system would conceptualize the course of a life from birth to death to an afterlife in terms

of a path on which ultimate harmony is achieved through struggle and effort given Lakoff

and Turner’s (1989, p. 61) observation that conventional knowledge of journeys dictates

that “to understand life as a journey is to have in mind, consciously or more likely

unconsciously, a correspondence between traveler and a person living a life, the road

traveled and the ‘course’ of a lifetime, a starting point and the time of birth, and so on.”

(Re)Birth

In some ways, the highly symbolic make-up of the Christian pilgrimage is still

intact in the structure of the Way today and is fundamentally consistent with the

2 Just as Christianity is not the only religion to employ pilgrimage as a ritual of devotion, it is also not alone in using the A PURPOSEFUL LIFE IS A JOURNEY METAPHOR. The biblical verse above is echoic of the famous Taoist teaching in which tao translates as “way” or “path” and is literally the path to enlightenment (Tzu, 1963).

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overarching conceptual metaphor A PURPOSEFUL LIFE IS A JOURNEY. With this in mind,

typically one’s literal home is the staging platform from which a pilgrimage to Santiago

is embarked upon. While non-European pilgrims will typically make use of other means

of vehicular transportation (airplane, automobile, etc.) in order to arrive at their official

starting points, the first steps of the pilgrimage begin by studying the pilgrimage course,

reading returned pilgrims’ testimonials, researching guidebooks, making inquiries at

confraternities associated with the Way, etc. The point being that even today’s pilgrim

literally begins their pilgrimage at home.

While modern conveniences of transportation give today’s pilgrim the luxury of

choosing the actual location from where they will embark, pilgrims living in the Middle

Ages had no choice but to set out from their front door. Even today, many Europeans

leave from the very place in which they were born—if not their hometowns then the

countries of their births (their mother- or fatherlands). The association of a journey’s

beginning with birth is represented in Geoffery Chaucer’s3 (1957) description of spring

as the appropriate season for making a pilgrimage in his General Prologue to The

Canterbury Tales:

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

3 Susan Alcorn’s 2006 travelogue Camino chronicle: Walking to Santiago suggests that Chaucer may have actually walked the road to Compostela in his lifetime. What is more certain is that Chaucer probably took many insights from actual returned Santiago pilgrims from England (Mullins, 1974, p. 61)

29

The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne,

And smale foweles maken melodye,

That slepen al the nyght with open ye

(So priketh hem nature in hir corages);

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, […]4 (p. 17).

This passage relies on the metaphor A LIFETIME IS A YEAR, by which time is condensed

within the scope of the solar calendar and the spring season is one that teems with new

life at its beginning. This metaphor derives from the natural phenomenon of the

changing seasons which are a constant physical reminder of the passage of time.

Speakers use this metaphor to highlight only the most symbolic seasons, specifically

winter and spring since the natural characteristics of these months provide cognitive

associations with the beginning and ending stages of a life (“He’s a man of sixty winters”,

“She is in the springtime of her youth”). The metaphor is consistent within the general

scope of LIFE IS A JOURNEY in that the journey in A LIFETIME IS A YEAR is that of the

Earth around the Sun. In addition to the practical basis for starting in spring—the

lengthening days and the entire summer to finish the round trip before winter—the

imagery of birth and rebirth symbolized in springtime fits well into the idea of a

4 When in April the sweet showers fall And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all The veins are bathed in liquor of such power As brings about the engendering of the flower, When also Zephyrus with his sweet breath Exhales an air in every grove and heath Upon the tender shoots, and the young sun His half-course in the sign of the Ram has run, And the small fowl are making melody That sleep away the night with open eye (So nature pricks them and their heart engages) Then people long to go on pilgrimages (Coghill (Trans.), 1951, p. 19)

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pilgrimage as a life, making it clear why the metaphor LIFE IS A PILGRIMAGE developed in

the medieval mind, persisting today with the Way as its proof. Accordingly, the

beginning of a pilgrimage, just as in a life, is a place of birth. As we shall explore later,

the promise of a spiritual rebirth is also a motivating factor in the pilgrim’s decision to

participate in the ritual.

Death and Afterlife

By comparison, then, the final destination of a pilgrimage is a representation of

death with the reward of afterlife. Again, we can look to Chaucer (1957) for a fitting

example of this metaphorical connection:

This world nys but a thurghfare ful of wo,

And we been pilgrymes, passynge to and fro.

Deeth is the ende of every worldly soore5 (p. 44).

These lines from Part IV of The Knights Tale are in keeping with the medieval

conceptualization of life as a pilgrimage (line one), people living as pilgrims (line two)

and death as the end to the pilgrimage and deliverance for the pilgrim’s efforts (line

three). The participation in a pilgrimage was a suitable method of doing so. Suitable

insofar as the Catholic Church was concerned as the medium between the human world

and God’s.Contributing to that metaphor today in the Way, is the notion that the

endpoint—Santiago—is literally the final destination of the pilgrimage and thus—

metaphorically—death. Symbolic support of the idea of death in Santiago is the fact that

the main attraction in the Cathedral is the alleged relics of the long expired apostle Saint

James the Greater. Here the symbolism of a final resting place marking the final stopping

5 This world is but a thoroughfare of woe And we are pilgrims passing to and fro. Death is the end of every worldly sore (Coghill (Trans.), 1951, p. 95)

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point of a journey is apparent. Additionally, pilgrims just outside of the gates of Santiago

would wash their bodies in the stream at the nearby village of Labacolla in preparation

for their arrival (Mullins, 1974, p. 196). The symbolic aura of Santiago as tomb brings

added significance to these ablutions as ritualistic preparations of the corpse before its

ceremonial reunion with the hereafter.

Pilgrims seeking the radiating powers of holy relics sought a personal contact

with the eternal, with the afterlife. The word relic derives from the Latin verb relinquere

meaning “to leave behind” (Simpson, 1989). The underlying significance of coming into

contact with these relics was to encounter that which was left behind by some saint or

other holy person, usually, literally, the corporal remains either in part or in whole.

Implicit here is that these holy men and women, like Saint James, whose relics have lured

pilgrims from the far corners of Europe for centuries were here once but have now left to

travel the ultimate pilgrimage to the world beyond: Heaven. Not only is the notion of

journeying contained in the etymology of this word but also is the idea of a separation

between body and spirit. It is the spirit of a person that continues beyond this material life

journey and into the ethereal world. The earthly pilgrim sought the promise of their

eternal life with God.

The Church supported the idea of eternal splendor through the symbolic

garishness of their cathedrals. The grandeur of the Santiago Cathedral is a physical

representation of that heavenly reward for which pilgrimage has been traditionally

undertaken. This heavenly reward was represented materially in indulgences which were

essentially shortcuts to the afterlife, reducing the time a traveler spent in Purgatory.

Today this is represented symbolically in the form of the Compostela (See Chapter One).

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Furthermore, the end of the pilgrimage is not the end at all just as the winter season is not

the end of the life-year. The ending of the final season simply marks a new beginning, a

new spring in the life of the pilgrim. This is a priceless lesson of the pilgrimage cycle.

…

The stages of life are linguistically linked to the stages of a journey. The Codex

Calixtinus is a twelfth century anthology said to have been compiled by French scholar

Aymeric Picaud, detailing the history, culture, sermons, and travel guidance of the Way.

Book V - “A Guide for the Traveller” is thought to be one of the first travel guides of the

Western world (Layton, 1976, p. 196). In it, the author provides advice on how to

properly make the pilgrimage, separating the journey into twelve navigable stages. The

segments of a life are also described in the same manner (“The child is still in a

developmental stage of her life.” “He is in the recovery stage of his illness.”). The

convention of partitioning lengths of space and time into stages is yet another indication

of the link between a life and a journey. The word evolves from the Latin verb stāre

meaning “to stand” and it is from this source that we also derive its use as a platform for

theatrical production (Simpson, 1989). While speakers regularly use the former sense of

the word to organize their journeys, the performance aspect of pilgrimage suggested by

the second sense is manifest in other linguistic mappings from the domain of theatre.

LIFE IS A PLAY

In the eighteenth century the metaphor of pilgrimage was “supplanted or

augmented by other images, especially that of life as theater: this image allowed the

author to be not a returned traveler and omniscient narrator but a privileged spectator,

exploring personages in relation to one another and to the world, uncovering their masks

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and roles—an important step in the history of fiction” (Howard 1980, p. 7). In the case of

the Quarles verse, we see that the poet has indeed augmented the pilgrimage metaphor of

life with that of the play representing the course of a life as a drama playing out on a

‘stage’. The theatre metaphor figures into the body of pilgrimage language by virtue of

the metaphor of life as a pilgrimage. As we have seen, the metaphor LIFE IS A

PILGRIMAGE was a recognized poetic formula from the fourteenth to the eighteenth

century and the commingling of this and the LIFE IS A PLAY metaphor in the Quarles

poem is indicative of how well the allegory of pilgrimage transitions into the language of

theatre. The notion of life as a performance was championed in the twentieth century by

sociologist Erving Goffman (1959) who observed that our everyday interactions are

analogous to “dramaturgical performances”. The pilgrims of today can be seen to

engage in this theatrical behavior.

Ritual—like theatre—often makes use of special accessories peculiar to the

tradition. The connection between the activity and its associated costume is such that the

agent of the activity is not considered authentic without the costume. In medieval times

the outward signs endowed the pilgrim with a certain amount of social privilege and

exemption: “The pilgrim signs worn by travelers, in addition to their attire, marked them

as pilgrims and separate from society, and therefore immune from political-military

conflicts between countries wherever they traveled” (Garcia, 2002, pp. 7-8). The

component signs of the pilgrim costume became synonymous with the pilgrimage itself,

representing role, purpose, and destination at a glance. Sir Walter Raleigh’s (1604, 1681)

“His Pilgrimage” itemizes the trappings of a pilgrim to Santiago:

Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,

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My staff of faith to walk upon,

My scrip of joy, immortal diet,

My bottle of salvation,

My gown of glory, hope’s true gage,

And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage (Lns. 1-6)

The pilgrim accessories are essential to the person enacting the pilgrimage: the ritualized

garb identifying one as a proper pilgrim. The vestments described by Raleigh remain

indispensable components of the pilgrimage today: scallop-shell, staff or walking stick,

water bottle, rucksack (scrip), and rain cloak (gown). Not only do these items serve the

practical purpose of facilitating a nomadic existence, but they help to identify the pilgrim

as such to outsiders and to each other. The make up of pilgrim signs creates a “front”

which Goffman (1959) defines as, “the expressive equipment of a standard kind

intentionally or unwittingly employed by the individual during his performance” (p. 91).

The front is at once inclusive and exclusive, representing the connection and camaraderie

between fellow pilgrims and distinguishing the wearer from the common tourist—a

distinction that could also have its practical merits: “It is much more advantageous to be

considered a pilgrim than a tourist. The pilgrim, especially in Spain, is often treated with

generous hospitality for simply being a pilgrim. It is not uncommon for those who go

alone or in very small groups to be offered a fresh beverage or a snack by someone who

recognizes the shell or the staff” (Frey, 1998, p. 63). Taken together, the symbols of the

Way become the pilgrim’s costume for they are essentially acting out the part of the

pilgrims of old. What is more is that in their undertaking they are reenacting—as their

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medieval counterparts did—the suffering of the Christian martyrs of bygone days with

Christ as their archetype.

Along with the cosmetic symbolism of the pilgrim costume, pilgrim writing also

reflects the conceptualization of life as a play. Pilgrimage writing makes use of only

some of the components of the schema for a play on which the LIFE IS A PLAY metaphor

is based. Specifically, writers today employ the metaphor to discuss the pilgrimage as a

stage and its component parts as actors upon it. Scores of examples exist in the corpus of

pilgrimage writing to support the notion that pilgrims see themselves and others

associated with the Way as actors in roles within a play.

Some pilgrim writers are often self-consciously aware of their new roles as

pilgrims. In the case of Neillands (1985), he makes several hedged claims qualifying

himself as an authentic pilgrim, which makes this reader slightly suspicious. Here he

talks about ‘getting into his part’—as it were—by trying out his pilgrim paraphernalia:

“As I soon discovered in my role as a true pilgrim, the scallop-shell is a useful item in its

own right” (p. 25 [emphasis mine]). A caption beneath an image on one pilgrim’s online

photo archive reads, “Henry takes on his pilgrim persona next to the famous pilgrim

statue …” (Maloney, 2005, p. 1 [emphasis mine]). In the photo, the pilgrim is pictured

before a larger-than-life bronze statue, posing in the same ‘man-in-motion’ manner as the

sculpture. While these pilgrims seem to jump right into their parts, Spanish historian and

Santiago pilgrim George Greenia (2005) has to adjust to the prospect of his new identity:

“The role of the guy handling his midlife crisis was starting to look a lot more

manageable” (p. 5 [emphasis mine]). Pilgrim and former Confraternity of Saint James

Chairperson Laurie Dennett (1997) suggests that the role of pilgrim requires the agent to

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act a certain way: “But may I be so bold as to suggest that everyone who sets foot on the

Camino has the personal responsibility to reinforce, through the way they enact their

pilgrimage, its character of simplicity, self-sacrifice, openness to encounter” [emphasis

mine]. And pilgrim John O’Henley (2001) shares his advice with his fellow actor-

pilgrims: “There are certainly more vehicles on the roads, and in the towns, calling for

caution on the part of walkers” (p. 1 [emphasis mine]).

Pilgrims are not the only ‘actors’ on the Way. In fact, all people associated with

the pilgrimage in some official or semi-official capacity are also part of the cast—we

might call them the supporting cast of the pilgrimage. Travel writer and Santiago pilgrim

Bettina Selby (1994) describes one of the representatives of Le Amis de St Jacques de

Compostelle in St Jean-Pied-de-Port: “[Madame Debril] had become a victim of the

popularity of the Santiago pilgrimage and her own part in it” (p. 61 [emphasis mine]).

But, she continues, “She is reluctant to lay down her role or to compromise the execution

of it” (ibid. p. 62 [emphasis mine]). Locals of the villages along the Way are included in

the role call: “[…] I think it no exaggeration to say that generations of local people,

living along the Camino and extending hospitality to pilgrims as the natural expression of

devout religious beliefs and their own open and generous characters, played a major part

in keeping the pilgrimage alive …” (Dennett, 2003 [emphasis mine]).

Pilgrim-actors do not even have to be actual people. Inanimate objects of the

pilgrimage are also personified as actors. The cities that dot the Way are metonymic

players in the pilgrimage drama: “Astorga owes much of its past and present prosperity

to its role as a road junction” (Neillands. 1985, p. 141 [emphasis mine]); “[La Réole, a

provincial French town] played host to me too in a small grassy ‘campement’ beside the

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broad brown Garonne […]” (Selby, 1994, p. 34 [emphasis mine]). Churches, too, share

the honor: “If the church in Oviedo had a heightened awareness of its own role as

custodian of doctrinal purity, the court of King Alfonso II was imbued with a

corresponding sense of territorial mission …” (Dennett, 2005 [emphasis mine]).

Places—as might be expected—provide the proper background to the unfolding pilgrim

drama: “No tributaries from other pilgrim routes met at Astorga, but it was the scene on

31 December 1808 of another and much less happy meeting of the ways […]” (Layton,

1976, p. 145). These locative, inanimate players of the pilgrimage provide a sort of set

dressing with which the starring actor-pilgrims interact and on which they perform their

roles.

The implications of LIFE IS A PLAY suggest that modern pilgrims are somehow

more than just themselves when engaged in the Way. Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgical

theory suggests that a person's identity is not stable, but subject to re-creation as the

person interacts with others: “when the individual presents himself before others, his

performance will tend to incorporate and exemplify the officially accredited values of the

society” (p. 95). The perception is that these pilgrims are cognizant—perhaps only

subconsciously so in some cases—that they are involved in a grand ritual which is in

many ways a spectacle and their authentic performance in that role is determined by the

conventionalized front of the Way. They are players in a highly symbolic, simplified

version of the allegory of human life. In support of this is the fact that pilgrimage must

be participated in by leaving home–almost as if when they are removed from the familiar

environs of their home life, they become different people, inhabiting different personas.

This would seem to be a form of escape as Howard (1980) recognizes, “It was among

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other things a fine way to escape duty, debt, or the law …” (p. 15). Escapism, indeed,

has an especially strong tradition in Christian heritage: the idea of escaping one’s

earthbound self, one’s ego, becoming an ascetic through self-imposed exile in remote

mountain wildernesses, outside of society. By casting off the excesses of life and casting

oneself in the part of the pilgrim-exile, the modern pilgrim unintentionally—or perhaps

intentionally—participates in this tradition.

PILGRIMAGE IS NURTURE

Recall that, LIFE IS A JOURNEY provides a metaphoric understanding of the

beginning and ending of a pilgrimage. But what of the stages in-between these defining

poles of the pilgrimage? Like their metaphoric birth and death on the Way, pilgrims also

experience progressive ‘growth’. Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress is an example of how

this development plays out spiritually, using the poetic language of allegory. Similarly—

but less explicitly—many pilgrim writers have expressed their expectations of some sort

of spiritual growth to develop as a result of their journey. Accordingly, their written

output makes use of a complex metaphor of growth expressed as PILGRIMAGE IS

NURTURE. This metaphor entails several other related metaphoric properties of the Way:

(1) PILGRIMAGE IS NATURE

(2) PILGRIMAGE IS A PARENT/CAREGIVER

(3) PEOPLE ARE PLANTS

Each of these metaphors is systematically coherent within the structure of PILGRIMAGE IS

A NURTURE. It suggests the desire on the part of many pilgrims to alleviate some

perceived ‘sickness’ or ‘under-development’ through the act of pilgrimage.

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The Way is often described as having a ‘spirit’ or an ‘aura’, suggesting that it

embodies some living presence. The metaphor PILGRIMAGE IS NATURE is perhaps a

result of the fact that pilgrimage is animated by the people who travel it, but as Neillands

(1986) suggests here, it may also have to do with the flora of the Way: “Every summer,

as the green leaf turns and the heat starts to shimmer across the vineyards of France or the

grain fields of Navarre, the Road to Compostela comes alive again (p. 18 [emphasis

mine]). The reality of these vibrant images clearly takes on metaphoric significance as

reflected poetically in Chaucer’s Introduction above. Like the descriptions of flora above,

the Way itself exhibits some characteristics of vegetable life in some writing: “It

stretches along more than 700 km of northern Spain, nearly 2,000 km if its four stems in

France are to be included […]. It crosses many rural communities, villages and,

especially, cities that flourished during the Middle Ages” (González & Medina, 2003, p.

447 [emphasis mine]). Note here that it is not only the Way that grows plant-like, the

cities along its stalk also share the same features of a budding plant. In other works cities

are said to “spring up” along the pilgrim road (Selby, 1994, p. 99).

The conceptualization of the pilgrimage as an organism that is born, lives, and

dies emerges in guidebook writer and Santiago pilgrim Miles Roddis’s (1999)

observations:

… the fact that [the story behind how Saint James’s remains were delivered to

Galicia] was believed led to … the birth of the Camino …” (p. 383, [emphasis

mine]).

And later:

40

After its medieval heyday the pilgrimage suffered during the Reformation and

nearly died out altogether by the 19th century before its late 20th century

secularized reanimation (ibid. [emphasis mine]).

The pilgrimage is personified by Roddis here in such a way that it is given characteristics

of the prototype in Christian martyrdom: Jesus of Nazareth. Like the pilgrims who act

out their roles as sufferers along the Way, modeling themselves after the martyred saints

of Christianity, the road itself is seen as taking on these same features. The metaphoric

life of the Way takes on further aspects of personification in Selby’s (1994) relief to

rejoin the pilgrimage after a day of sightseeing in an urban center: “[…] to be back on the

Camino Francés again after the swirl and bustle of the town was like rejoining an old and

much-loved friend” (p. 125). Neillands (1985) exercises his poetic voice in describing

one medieval hamlet on the Way: “Today the little village [of Larressingle] dreams in the

sun, the warm golden walls draped with madly drooling hollyhocks” (p. 67 [emphasis

mine]).

The character of the Way as a person is often conceived of in the same way as

Selby has described it above. Nearly always pilgrim writers will describe their

pilgrimage-person as someone friendly and nurturing. On one online discussion board, a

pilgrim advised others, “If you trust the camino you have never an [sic] problem”

(Markus, 2006, February 22). Pilgrim Lynette Torres (2004 July 8) writes her family

about her impressions of the Way: “[…] the distance has become meaningless in a

way...you just pack in the morning your mochila, have some cafe con leche y pan and

walk as far as you can for the day, open to what the path brings, which always nurtures

and provides […]” [emphasis mine]. In keeping with this particular personification, the

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Way is often given the human qualities of a mother. Santiago pilgrim and art historian T.

A. Layton’s (1976) description of towns along the road gives readers the notion that the

pilgrimage has the life-giving properties of a mother: “All hamlets and towns we now

come to before reaching lovely León are decrepit and ugly, but all the churches and

monasteries were built for the pilgrimage; indeed, the places came into existence solely

because of the St James” (p. 125 [emphasis mine]). It is a fact that many—if not most—

of the cities found along the road owe their presence to the sustained popularity of the

Way and, thus, metaphorically the pilgrimage functions as a creator as Layton indicates.

As such, other language users personify the Camino as a mother-creator more explicitly

as seen here: “On the route you follow scenic country roads, fields and forest tracks as

well as crossing countless villages and cities born of the Camino” (Roddis et al., 1999, p.

381 [emphasis mine]). Inherent in this quote is the metaphoric entailment that CITIES

ARE CHILDREN, a metaphor that occurs throughout the literature. Cities along the Way

are overtly referred to as offspring of the pilgrimage as in these passages:

As the name indicates, Villafranca, the ‘French town’ was created by the pilgrim

trade. Even [Aymeric Picaud’s] guide describes Villafranca as the hija de la

peregrinacion jacobea6 (Neillands, 1985, p. 147); “in 997, the little town of

Santiago which had grown up around the Field of the Star […]” (Selby, 1994, p.

42 [emphasis mine]).

6 “daughter of James’s pilgrimage” (Spanish [my translation])

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Additionally, way-marks7 along the pilgrim road also take on human characteristics as

products/offspring of their mother-road: “The waymarks grew strangely neurotic,

zigzagging furiously and disappearing” (Fainberg, 2004).

The nurturing aspect of the Way is one of its biggest attractions for potential

pilgrims. There is a perceived belief in many pilgrim writings that making a pilgrimage

will help a person to grow spiritually or that their lives will be reenergized in the

undertaking. This motivation is symbolized in these writers’ use of the PEOPLE ARE

PLANTS metaphor. Lakoff and Turner (1989) describe the conceptualization thusly: “In

this metaphor, people are viewed as plants with respect to the life cycle—more precisely,

they are viewed as that part of the plant that burgeons and then withers or declines, such

as leaves, flowers, and fruit […]” (p. 6). Pilgrim writers tend only to highlight the growth

aspect of PEOPLE ARE PLANTS since one of the driving forces of making a pilgrimage is

to celebrate or seek the fertile, nurturing spirit that it symbolizes.

Though Selby (1994) claims not to seek this sort of nurturing, she does recognize

its reality: “[…] whereas I believed that all journeys were a form of pilgrimage in the

sense that they offered time and space for reflection and for looking at life from a fresh

angle, I had no expectation of any particular reward of enhanced spiritual growth at the

end of it” (p. 24 [emphasis mine]). One pilgrim writer expresses her belief that the Way

will facilitate her spiritual nurturing to an online community of fellow and would-be

pilgrims: “It's been a difficult year this year but one that has presented much opportunity

for change. As I grow and extend outwardly, I want to do so inwardly, hence this

7 Way-marks are blazes placed along the road by the local municipalities which pilgrims follow in order to stay on the proper path; they are identified variously with red and white lateral stripes (the French GR65), yellow arrows (Spanish side), and a scallop shell emblem (intermittently and between Santiago and Finistera).

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impending journey” (Mungobeanie, 2006, November 3 [emphasis mine]). Here, the

writer expresses her desire not only to ‘grow’ but to ‘extend outwardly’ in the same way

that a plant extends outward (and upward) from its germinating seed. The pilgrimage as

nurture has the added effect of also fostering growth vocationally: “However, the

experience itself [i.e. the pilgrimage] was amazing and definitely helped me grow as a

person and a writer, which is why I [am] doing it all again in Sept 2006, starting from

SJPP this time” (Mifsud, J., 2006, August 20). The spirit of the Way is perceived as a

sort of Petri dish in which its internal environment provides the appropriate conditions for

the pilgrim-plant to develop:

Perhaps it really comes down to whether one accepts what certain kinds of

experience -the accommodation to silence, solitude, sharing, trials of one sort or

another - invite personal growth on the pilgrim's part, beyond that usually

required by the circumstances of everyday life (Dennett, 1997 [emphasis mine]).

The Pilgrim’s Decision

The existential metaphors described above are given their full import when we

also look at the motivations driving pilgrims to make their journeys. Howard (1980)

suggests, “[…] the ‘pilgrimage of life’ is marked off by moral crises and choices; its goal

is growth in character” (p. 7). Indeed, many pilgrim writers express their coming to the

Way at some ‘cross-roads’ in their lives or amidst some personal life ‘crisis’. I use these

particular terms because of their relevance to LIFE IS A JOURNEY. A cross-road is a literal

location where two roads cross each other and the point at which the literal traveler must

make a decision as to which road to take on his or her journey. Since we also conceive of

our lives as journeys, a cross-road is a metaphorical point in one’s life path where a

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decision must be made which will determine the course of the life traveler’s future. We

also often hear of people experiencing ‘mid-life crises’ or being at ‘critical’ points in their

lives. ‘Crisis’ comes from the Greek verb meaning ‘to decide’ (Simpson, 1989). People

who find themselves at these points in their life journeys are at a cross-road, a place at

which one must make a life-altering decision. The LIFE IS A JOURNEY metaphor is

apparent in these terms and in the motivations behind the modern pilgrimage to Santiago.

Pilgrim writers describe that their reasons for making their pilgrimages are related to life

changing events which force them to reevaluate their current directions in life.

Pilgrim Robin Neillands (1985) describes the state of his life at the time of his

decision to make his pilgrimage:

“In my case I went to get away from the life that seemed increasingly sterile, in

which I could not find a reason to be happy. I left for Compostela because I had

slowly but completely run out of the ability to tolerate my life as it was. The

world seemed to have run dry and lost its colour. Living in it had become a

pointless exercise. I suppose I was simply depressed. The Road seemed to offer

a little chink of light, and I got up wearily and followed it” (p. 22)

At the time, Neillands found his life without purpose, without direction. So many pilgrim

writers echo his sentiment. They too are at cross-roads in their lives, experiencing

spiritual crises of their own. Selby8 (1994) describes some of her fellow pilgrims in

much the same way:

8 Though she does not go into a great detail about her own troubles, Selby (1994) does inform her readers that the difficulties of the road had caused her some of her own crises de coeur [‘heartaches’] (p. 104 [my translation]).

45

[Harrie, a pilgrim from the Netherlands] was walking to Santiago, he said,

because he had come to a point in his life where he needed ‘space to think, to

work things out’; a time away from everyday problems (p. 144);

It was the death of [Kurt’s] wife the year before, coinciding wit his retirement that

had given him the jolt he needed to finally fulfill the debt he felt he owed his

father (p. 103);

[A student pilgrim] was fed up with his courses and wasn’t sure anymore if

engineering was really what he wanted to do. He hoped the journey would give

him time to think things out, but even if he found no answers, he thought the

experience would have been worth it (p. 102 [emphasis mine]).

The italicized terms above are part of a metaphorical system called MORAL ACCOUNTING.

Though I will discuss this system at length elsewhere, its introduction here will be helpful

to better understand pilgrim motivations and to establish its coherency with LIFE IS A

PILGRIMAGE.

In brief, the language of MORAL ACCOUNTING borrows from the terminological

field of business and finance, illustrating our conceptualization of morality as currency.

The pilgrim, Kurt, has undergone the pilgrimage as part of a promise to his father. This

is not a real financial debt that he owes, it is a moral one. Likewise, the student pilgrim

conceives of the activity as having money-like value. In MORAL ACCOUNTING, making

the pilgrimage is worthy of repaying moral debts. By discussing participation in the Way

using this metaphor system, the writer reveals an unconscious understanding behind the

pilgrims’ decision: that the pilgrimage road can remedy one’s moral life road.

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This assumption has precedence regarding the Way. A peccadillo is “a minor

fault or sin; a trivial offence” (Simpson, 2005); its root reveals something of the nature of

the pilgrimage as an instrument of moral reparation. The word comes from the Latin

verb peccāre meaning “to do wrong” which is believed to have derived from the

components ped-, pēs meaning “foot” + cus, a suffix forming adjectives (Simpson, 2005).

Rather than the simple annoying personality flaw that it is now, a peccadillo was

conceived in the past as a misstep on life’s path, a moral lapse. Pilgrimage then—as an

attempt to rectify these sins—is a way to get “back on the right track”, to make right by

the rest of the world. Similarly, committing moral error was “to be led astray” (Simpson,

1989). In practice, the preferred pilgrimage was one void of any outside distractions,

usually involving the pilgrim keeping his or her eyes constantly on the ground before

them so as to avoid wandering: “Against curiosity the Fathers and preachers always

warned pilgrims; it was the natural antithesis in medieval thought to the religious

conception of pilgrimage” (Howard 1980, p. 24).

Moral deeds are conceived as directional choices (“How could his life have gone

so wrong? I hope he gets back on the right path soon.”). Immoral choices along life’s

road lead the life-traveler astray of the “straight and narrow” path. This concept was

particularly prevalent in the medieval era of the religious pilgrimage: “The way of St.

James is fine but narrow, as narrow as the path of salvation itself. That path is the

shunning of vice, the mortification of the flesh, and the increasing of virtue” (Sumption,

1975, p. 124). Here the author quotes the opening lines of a twelfth century sermon

intended to be read to pilgrims of the Way and attributed to Pope Calixtus II. One of the

intended purposes of the sermon, known as the Veneranda Dies, was to instill in pilgrims

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an understanding that their pilgrimage required their sincere devotion in order for it to

have value. Though the pilgrims today rarely seek the same penitential rewards as their

antecedents, they still highlight the value of the pilgrimage as moral currency that will

give their lives greater worth.

Morality relies greatly on the ability to make the appropriate life decisions;

righteous choices punctuate a purposeful life journey. The Confraternity of Saint James

(2007) recognizes the tendency in modern pilgrims to take to the road at moments in their

lives when they most need moral fiber: “It is noticeable, however, that many people make

the pilgrimage at a turning point in their lives, and that many are helped to come to terms

with personal crisis by a period of separation from all that is familiar, and the shared

hardship of the road.” My wife and I became well acquainted with many recent retirees,

disgruntled students, and divorcees from all over Europe. Our fellow pilgrim Ken had

recently retired his architecture firm in Sussex Downs and was seeking a new direction in

life via the Way. Gianni from Genoa was trying to decide whether to stay married to his

wife with whom he had three children or leave her for his pregnant paramour in Venice.

Before he decided to devote his life full-time to the Way as a hospitalero voluntario9,

Lorenzo from Florence had been bedridden for months after a skiing accident and had

become disillusioned with the superficiality of urban life. We, ourselves, were

celebrating a pivotal moment in our new life together as a newlywed couple. The Way is

an established venue to mark these critical life-defining passages because it simplifies

things; the goal, destination, and purpose are all one in the same. On a pilgrimage like

this one, the dross of the outside world is shed and discarded, leaving the pilgrim in a

9 A volunteer attendant of the pilgrim hostels in Spain.

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vacuum where the journey is the most important thing and the traveler is allowed to sift

out for him or herself that which really matters.

Pilgrimage as Hero’s Quest

Though the linguistic discussion thus far has offered some thought-provoking

insight as to the conceptual organization of the pilgrimage phenomenon, the

psychological study of comparative mythology provides an organizing principle by which

this system of existential metaphors is given a far more fundamental meaning. The

external and internal metaphoric properties of pilgrimage make it a didactic instrument of

participatory mythology. Mythology is our way of making sense of the fundamental

questions of life: Who are we? Where did we come from? How did we get here? Where

are we going? My emphases here are meant to highlight the fact that these questions

themselves reflect a sense of our existential journey. They are questions about the life

journey and it is mythology’s job to try to provide answers for them. Those answers are

meant to help us cope with our mystifying passage from birth, through life, and to death.

Pilgrimage acts as experiential mythology. The stages of pilgrimage correlate

with the stages of the standard mythological adventure. Comparative mythologist Joseph

Campbell (1949) pinpoints the formula of what he calls the monomyth10: separation—

initiation—return (p. 30). Pilgrims on the Way enact this mythological passage in what

Campbell has called a “hero’s quest.” The monomyth is found in the Greek story of

Prometheus who stole fire from the gods; in stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the

Round Table who seek the Holy Grail in a fallen world; and in countless other myths,

fables, and legends from around the world. Campbell (1986) claims, “Throughout the

10 Campbell uses this term taken from James Joyce’s (1939) Finnegans Wake to describe what he sees as the archetypical mythological adventure found universally in mythologies the world over.

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inhabited world, in all times and under every circumstance, the myths of man have

flourished; and they have been the living inspiration of whatever else may have appeared

out of the activities of the human body and mind” (p. 3). The myths of the Western mind

provide a primordial blueprint for pilgrimage and though its rewards do not have the

same magical connotations that the heroes’ prizes do, the returned boon of the pilgrim-

hero has the same import for the betterment of the society that they left and to which they

eventually return.

We have seen how the magnetism of certain medieval destinations with their

sacred relics and artifacts has drawn droves of pilgrims through the ages to places like

Santiago. We have also seen how many modern pilgrims are likewise drawn to the Way

for deficiencies in their own lives and the belief that their lives might be replenished and

their efforts somehow rewarded in making the pilgrimage. Because of this belief, these

men and women voluntarily separate themselves from the comforts of their social circles

to travel out into the unknown toward the promise of something mysterious. The trials of

the Way have changed over time yet they are still ordeals of initiation. Though the

medieval pilgrim faced many more dangers than today’s, the modern pilgrim road is still

wrought with difficulties (blisters, pulled muscles, sunburn, dehydration, tendonitis,

being side-swiped by cars or bicycles, etc.) and every year, pilgrims do, in fact, die before

reaching their destination. Most important in this recreation of the monomyth is the

return and reintegration with society. Recall that the ideal pilgrimage in the medieval

mind was a one-way passage, representing a linear ascension from birth to death to

heaven. For the mythological hero, as for the modern pilgrim, the shape of the journey

becomes circular with the pilgrim-hero returning once again to the social group from

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whence they came, bearing the intangible rewards of new knowledge about things long

forgotten by society.

Humans are social beings and as such we define ourselves by the social

definitions of our incidental realities: sex, age, occupation, religion, nationality, etc. We

have little control over such things because of chance and fate and yet we put great stock

into these as defining who we are. Campbell (1949) warns, “[…] such designations do

not tell what it is to be man, they denote only the accidents of geography, birth-date, and

income” (p. 385). These labels do not answer for us the basic questions of our existence.

The relative asceticism of the Way, then, is a technique of releasing ourselves from the

trappings of our former lives. The Way is a location and activity that have become

collapsed into one interactive drama of participatory myth. The simplicity of the cause

allows the pilgrim to open up to their fellow pilgrim, to appreciate nature, to experience

the spirit of the Way. In the words of Santiago pilgrim Selby (1994) “[…] one of the best

things about the walk for [me] so far had been finding how little you really needed” (p.

144). All distraction of society and duties drops away and the pilgrim is left with the

spirit of communitas11 which, upon their return to society is their charge to perpetuate.

We have seen how many modern pilgrims seek illumination and reaffirmation of

life’s worth on the Way. Campbell (1986) suggests that our modern separation from

myth may result in this quest for meaning: “It has always been the prime function of

mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in

counteraction to those other constant human fantasies that tend to tie it back. In fact, it

may well be that the very high incidence of neuroticism among ourselves follows from

11 Term used by anthropologist Victor Turner (1986) to describe the spirit of community based on equality and interactive harmony.

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the decline among us of such effective spiritual aid” (p. 11). Modern participation in the

archaic act of pilgrimage may be an attempt on the individual’s part to reconnect with

that driving force of the universe which is missing in an alienating world without

performance mythology.

Unlike the mythological heroes of lore, the hero of the Way is not a muscle-bound

character out of childhood bedtime fables or a magical demigod battling monsters in the

dark corners of the world. The hero is the pilgrim and the pilgrim is just an everyday

man or woman. Whereas the mythological hero sought a tangible prize for his efforts,

the modern hero quest of the pilgrimage is a journey of self-discovery. The Way gives

the pilgrim-voyager the ability to control that which is uncontrollable: the savage reality

of life and human nature within us. According to Campbell (1949), “[…] myth is the

secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human

cultural manifestations” (p. 3). And since culture so inextricably entwined with language,

the themes of a culture’s myths will be evident in the language used to describe them. As

such, it is not only in the imaginative uses of the poet, but also in the everyday language

of the everyday pilgrim that we discover the conceptual underpinnings that guide and

motivate their pilgrim mythology. It would seem then that linguistics—like anthropology,

archeology, mythology, sociology—has just as much to do with helping to solve the

deep-seated questions of human existence. And to this end the linguist can do his or her

most worthwhile investigations by exploring the metaphors buried beneath the surface of

our language system.

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Implications and Conclusions

This chapter has displayed how the institution of pilgrimage found its way into

Western literature as a trope by which poets and playwrights crafted their works. The

structure of pilgrimage has provided a sturdy framework by which artists can recreate

notions about the meaning of human existence. Because of the implied circular

perfection of a pilgrimage’s anatomy, these writers have found it a suitable mode by

which to fashion a discussion on the cyclical nature of life. We have also seen in this

chapter how the structure of pilgrimage is such that the pilgrim is motivated by the

promise of reward in some form of spiritual or emotional reparation. The metaphorical

evidence for this system of progress-and-reward is found explicitly in many pilgrim

writing samples and more prolifically in the embedded metaphors of their language. The

evidence has further implications regarding the LIFE IS A JOURNEY metaphor in that one

of the watermarks by which Westerners determine whether a life is purposeful or not is

their economic stability—a state frequently informed by an individuals’ progress in and

reward from their employment. The notion of reward, as revealed by the MORAL

ACCOUNTING metaphor, also carries over into the language of pilgrimage and provides

much of the structure for a conceptual metaphor that I will refer to as THE ECONOMY OF

PILGRIMAGE.

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Chapter Three: The Economics of Pilgrimage

“… I remembered reading in Aimery Picaud’s1 guide that medieval pilgrims had taken

large stones from near Tricastela and carried them five leagues to where they were made

into lime for the building of the new cathedral at Santiago. After that, the nuisance of the

trucks [sharing the pilgrim road with me] was tempered by the thought that I might be

witnessing the continuation of one of the longest running businesses in history.”

– Bettina Selby, Santiago pilgrim and travel writer (1994, p. 191)

The marriage between pilgrimage and commerce is evident physically, spiritually,

and linguistically. In physical space, the roads traveled by medieval pilgrims were also

those used by overland traders; these were ancient trade routes. In a sense, the commerce

of pilgrimage compliments the actual commerce of the trade industry. The spirit and

drive behind both are at least partly responsible for the period of oceanic trade and

exploration which followed the Middle Ages. During this Age of Discovery (roughly

from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century), European trade ships sailed the uncharted

seas in search of less circuitous trading routes and additional trading partners to slake the

thirst of their burgeoning capitalist economies. While technological advancements in

shipbuilding, first developed in the Middle Ages, helped this period of exploration to set

sail physically, the scholars of the time were looking at the imagery of the writers of the

medieval pilgrimage for the literary inspiration that would energize the movement

outward.

Curiosity and commercial interest have always been motivating factors in

exploration. As the Age of Discovery was generally winding down, the earth was not yet

1 Aimery Picaud is twelfth century French scholar thought to be the author of the Codex Calixtinus, a composite manuscript about the Way including sermons, travel advice, music, and pilgrim prayers.

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wholly mapped (Howard, 1980, p. 2). Parts of our world were still hidden by the dark

clouds of insular ignorance. Western travelers and explorers who ventured into the

unknown sent home tales of their exploits like pieces which were fitted into the

developing cartographical puzzle of the world. Travel literature forerunners like Richard

Hakluyt and Samuel Purchas had the vocation of recreating a constitutive metaphor of the

new world view as it started to come into focus (ibid). Purchas and his contemporaries

looked back to the writings of the medieval pilgrim, not only as a source of professional

knowledge but more for the “wonder and imagery” that their stories offered (ibid, p. 3).

In other words, the tales of the medieval writers were inspirational in development of the

Age of Discovery, providing a blueprint for the adventuring profiteers of the high seas.

It is no coincidence that pilgrimage is partly understood as a commercial

enterprise. An investigation of the language used to describe the pilgrim experience

reveals that it borrows heavily from the conceptual systems of business and employment.

The early association with business may be due, in part, to the Catholic system of

penance established in the third century, several hundred years before the peak of the

medieval pilgrimage. It would appear that the Catholic system of penance is a socially

constructed manifestation of a preexisting conceptual metaphor of MORAL ACCOUNTING.

The virtual materialization of this mental construct provides the supporting context for

the act of pilgrimage as a business.

MORAL ACCOUNTING

Lakoff and Johnson (1999) identify the conceptual metaphor MORAL

ACCOUNTING2 as one by which we organize our lives. The Catholic system of penance is

2 This original notion of MORAL ACCOUNTING as embedded in the English language has been credited to Sarah Taub, a student of Lakoff’s, whose work on the subject is yet unpublished but can be found variously

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evidence of an institutionally organized version of this fundamental metaphor of Western

principles. MORAL ACCOUNTING relies on the suggestion submitted by Lakoff and

Johnson (1999) that we conceptualize WELL-BEING as WEALTH:

[This particular metaphor] is not our only metaphorical conception of well-being,

but it is a component of one of the most important moral concepts we have. It is

the basis for a massive metaphor system by which we understand our moral

interactions, obligations, and responsibilities” (p. 292).

Under this metaphorical concept, increases in our well-being are understood as “gains”

and decreases as “losses”. This is combined with the general metaphor of causation under

which causes are objectified as things given to an affected party. In the CAUSES ARE

OBJECTS metaphor, when an emotion is caused by some external stimulus, we conceive

of that emotion as an object that has been given to us (“The ominous clouds on the

horizon give me a bad feeling.” “I get good vibes from the happy people with whom I

work.”). Given our implied understanding that causation is a material transaction, human

interaction is conceptualized as a transaction in which two or more people engage in an

exchange of effects, transferring them from one to another. Coupled with the

understanding that WELL-BEING IS WEALTH, a beneficial effect is seen as a gain and a

harmful effect as a loss.

It follows from these mutually supporting metaphors that moral actions are seen

as objects of exchange similar to financial transactions. Lakoff (1995) explains the

relationship between literal and moral accounting: “Just as literal bookkeeping is vital to

economic functioning, so moral bookkeeping is vital to social functioning. And just as it

in Lakoff (1995) and Lakoff & Johnson (1999), the former regarding the logic and morality in Liberal and Conservative politics.

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is important that the financial books be balanced, so it is important that the moral books

be balanced” (p. 2). People who are ‘morally bankrupt’ are not likely to contribute

positively to the well-being of their society but it is possible for someone who has had

lapses in moral reasoning to be given a ‘clean slate’ (a balanced record of one’s moral

conduct) by society if they make the proper repayment.

MORAL ACCOUNTING draws from a source domain of financial accounting with a

linguistic frame containing “debt”, “credit”, “accounting”, and “balance”. The target

domain is one involving our social conduct and uses a linguistic frame composed of

“morals”, “morality”, “immorality”, and related terminology. The metaphorical system is

comprised of the following six metaphorical concepts according to Lakoff (1994):

DOING MORAL DEEDS IS ACCUMULATING CREDIT

(“I deserve a reward for being such a humble person”, “We worked long and hard

on our exams, we should get A’s”, “It’s to your credit to hand in your work on

time”, “I feel cheated by the Society”)

DOING IMMORAL DEEDS IS ACCUMULATING DEBT

(“He’s paying his debt to society”, “You will pay dearly for your mistakes,

buddy”, “I’ll pay her back for cheating me on that deal”, “You get what you

deserve”)

BENEFITING IS ACCUMULATING DEBT

(“I owe you big time”, “How can I ever repay your generosity”, “You really saved

me back there”, “I am deeply indebted to you for being so kind”)

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MORAL DEBT IS REPAID WITH MORAL DEEDS

(“I’ll make it up to you for how awful I’ve been this week”, “I feel I need to give

back to society what I’ve taken from it”)

MORAL DEBT REPAID WITH PUNISHMENT

(“After serving his sentence he reentered society with a clean slate”, “Haven’t I

paid enough for my mistakes?” “The debt was exacted from her hide”)

A MORAL ACCOUNT IS A RECORD OF TRANSACTIONS

(“Before we demonize our President, let’s spend a moment to take into account

all the good things he’s done for us …”, “That man needs to be held accountable

for his deeds”, “Lying is a big ‘no-no’ in my book”)

The language of MORAL ACCOUNTING evidences the belief that the constituent members

of a social group are obligated to remain accountable to one another for the interest and

survival of the group as a whole. A community’s standards are determined by the

dominant members of it; Lakoff and Johnson (1999) suggest that this is by virtue of “[…]

a metaphorical model in which the logic of moral authority makes use of the logic of

physical dominance” (p. 301). Western cultures have a long history of patriarchal

dominance through timocracy. As such, the metaphorical community-fathers have

dictated the organizing rules of morality to the community-family. Traditionally, it has

been religion that has championed these moral standards. The pillar of Christianity—as

interpreted by the Catholic belief system—extends the patriarchal social structure by

recognizing God as “Our Father” whose moral messages are channeled through a ruling

body composed entirely of men.

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The Corporate Structure of the Catholic Church

In the prehistoric world, religion was experiential. At some point, presumably, a

group of individuals established itself as a medium for that religious experience thus

creating the hierarchal structure of religion that we witness today (McKenna, 1991, p.

242). The Catholic Church (hereafter “the Church”) is one of the more strictly structured

of the major established religions with a complex hierarchy headed by the Pope and

composed of an ordained clergy divided into bishops, priests, and deacons. The

organization of the Church can essentially be seen as a complex chain of command that

has the same basic ordering and metaphoric capacity of a large corporation: deacons as

shift managers, priests as general store managers, bishops as regional managers, and the

Pope as the chief executive officer. The congregation of Catholic worshipers—in this

analogy—are the stockholders investing in the Church literally with their weekly tithe.

They are also the Church’s labor force, investing in their own employee benefit package

that will include a ‘retirement plan’ of their eternal salvation. For the faithful Catholic,

the end of one’s corporeal existence is only the end of one’s earthly life; the ‘company

man’ is rewarded for his faithful service to the corporation with a severance package

consisting of eternal life in Heaven. Church members can be employed by the

corporation in several capacities that promote the strength of the Church including

missionary work, acting as community volunteers, even going on pilgrimages.

The dualism inherent in the Catholic faith acknowledges only two companies in

the business of eternity: God’s and Satan’s. In this worldview of binary opposites,

followers of Satan are those who adhere to a moral code defined by what Christianity is

not: “The children of God and the children of the devil are revealed in this way: all who

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do not do what is right are not from God, nor are those who do not love their brothers and

sisters” (1 John 3:10). Notice that the metaphorical organization of the society at large as

children remains intact. Though it is not explicit here, Satan is also rendered with

masculine pronouns, thereby reflecting the patriarchal nature of the society that invented

these concepts.

The MORAL ACCOUNTING of the corporate Church emerges quite plainly in this

famous passage: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in

Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23 [emphasis mine]). Altruistic exchange may define

the relationship between God and Man, but not when the Church acts as the interpreter.

Christianity is a sociological religion. Its dogma is based on social rules like the “ethic of

reciprocity” also known as “the Golden Rule”. Implied in this axiom is the notion that

members of society must invest good deeds into it if they expect to be treated in kind.

One belongs to others and not to one’s self—one’s ambitions are subordinated to the

interests of the common good. Eternal life, therefore, requires reciprocity. In fact,

Catholics are expected to contribute to their eternal reward by ‘working’ for the Church

by living sin-free lives. Morality—as defined by the Church—turns on the organizing

concept of sin. Acts of sin are disruptions in the moral fabric of the Catholic community

and a threat to the lawful harmony of the society: “Everyone who commits sin is guilty of

lawlessness; sin is lawlessness” (1 John, 3:4).

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Sin and Penance

Orthodox Catholics recognize two types of personal sin: mortal and venial3. The

former is defined as, “a moral offense of sufficient seriousness to separate man

permanently from union with God—in popular language, it is a sin which renders one fit

for hell4” (McKenzie 1969, 156). A venial sin is a sin of a lesser degree yet still “indeed a

moral fault, but not of the same seriousness; one remains united with God, but not

perfectly” (ibid.). There is some debate as to which sins fall under which category—

some purists consider blasphemy a mortal sin as it is an offense against one of God’s Ten

Commandments—but the distinction for the current discussion is not essential. What is

important is that sin is looked at as a spiritual demerit which becomes a debt to God if the

sinner disobeys His word. On the other hand, a dedicated believer can improve their

spiritual finances with faith and good works which are merits—one could say the

‘earnings’ of a good Catholic. A sinner can also gain moral credit through the system of

penance established by the Church sacraments. The etymology of the word ‘penance’

provides some insight into what type of recompense the Church has in mind from sinners.

‘Penance’ as well as words like ‘penalty’ and ‘punishment’ are all related to the word

‘pain’ (Partridge, 1958, p. 463). Accordingly, the lengths to which penance was applied

by the Church ranged from slight mental discomfort (private confession) to physical

mutilation (public flagellation). Because of its physical demands, pilgrimage became a

suitable component of the penitential system. 3 In actuality, the Catholic Church also recognizes Original Sin which is the belief that all men and women are genetically marked by the sin of disobedience passed down through the ages by our metaphoric original mother and father: Adam and Eve. It is believed that Original Sin is washed away upon one’s Baptism, which the Catholics believe must be done very soon after the baby’s birth. For the purposes of this discussion, the types of sins in question will be those committed by fully-developed humans who have had the benefit of experience to assist in decision-making. 4 “Christianity is the only religion that has the idea of a permanent condition called Hell. A mortal sin is regarded as an offense that condemns a person to Hell” (Campbell, 1986, p. 100 [emphasis mine]).

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Sacramental penance is the method by which men and women can be absolved of

their sin-debt through an act of reconciliation or confession. The sacramental rite of

confession involves the morally deficient Church member in a moral transaction with a

priest. The sinner ‘offers5’ his or her misgivings—as if they were tangible tokens of

trade—in private in the form of a confession to God through an ordained priest as His

mediating moral accountant. The sinner is usually ordered to recite a series of prayers or

Rosary cycles. The result is that the moral ‘debt’ is essentially settled by the ‘receipt’ of

forgiveness thereby ‘balancing the moral books’ of the sinner and allowing him or her to

eventually be accepted into Heaven. At this point, the confessor can now receive God’s

full grace and forgiveness. Grace and forgiveness are both noteworthy terms in the

context of this system of moral transaction given their etymological significances. Grace

shares its roots with grateful, both of which are morphologically rooted in the Latin grāt-

us which is ultimately derived from the Greek γέρας meaning “reward” (Simpson, 1989).

The verb forgive is endowed with the notion of transaction. It comes from the Old

English word forgiefan, which is comprised of the verb-forming prefix for- and giefan

meaning “give” (Partridge, 1958, p. 255). The further metaphorical implication of an act

of penance is that a sinner is engaged in a financial transaction with God where ‘reward’

is ‘given’ for the ‘offering up’ of one’s sins. Sin, then, fits into the notion of MORAL

ACCOUNTING as a MORAL DEBT and forgiveness as a MORAL CREDIT.

5 Note, here, that the Germanic term offer was chiefly only used in a religious context in the past as in “an offering to God” (Simpson, 2005). The meaning has obviously spilled over into the secular domain of business and contractual law where offers are made and accepted: the very essence of a Capitalist business relationship.

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Symbolic Exchange

Implicit in this spiritual give-and-take is the conception of society as an

interwoven community that can be disrupted by any of the member’s misgivings.

Foundations for this spiritual commerce are rooted in the social development of gift-

giving. Our modern system of sale and purchase replaced an ancient one of gifts and

return gifts as sociologist Marcel Mauss (1967) suggests: “[Gift-giving societies] […] are

a step in the development of our own economic forms, and serve as a historical

explanation of features of our own society” (p. 46). Exchange involves the elaborate

presentation of a gift of some value provided under the pretense that the giver is simply

exhibiting generosity. This is followed by a formal act of gift refusal by the recipient.

The motions of the ritual are deceptive on both parties’ parts because the gift is

obligatorily given and received.

The system of exchange has metaphysical import since the objects of currency

retain some radioactive property of the people involved. The formal procedure of gift-

giving imbues human qualities onto objects in currency and vice versa: “[…] bonds

between things which are to some extent parts of persons, and persons and groups […]

behave in some measure as if the were things” (Mauss, 1967, p. 11). In this way, gifts

are actually extensions of the community’s spirit and are respected accordingly. Mauss

(1967) describes three obligatory stages in the gift-giving cycle: giving—receiving—

repaying (p. 37). The final obligation is itself a form of giving and thus the circular shape

of exchange is completed. Society members are expected to perpetuate the cycle of

exchange for the survival of the community. Any break in the gift-giving pattern is

damaging to the communal harmony, bringing misfortune not only to the transgressor,

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but to the entire group. The act of gift exchange which binds a community to one another,

also binds the gift-giver as representative of the community to the cosmic order of the

universe: “[…] another theme appears which does not require this human support, […]:

the belief that one has to buy [their fortune] from the gods and that the gods know how to

repay the price […]” (Mauss, 1967, p. 14). Members of these societies could, in effect,

make business deals with God for things like a high yielding harvest, a male child,

clement weather, etc.

The Church, too, has established an economy of reciprocity in its system of

penance. It is likely that the blueprint of the system predates the Catholic implementation

of it. The items of exchange are the moral deeds of the community members and the

social harmony relies on their continued reciprocity: “One good turn deserves another.”

The sacrament of penance corresponds with the cycle of gift exchange in that the

confessor, who is at a moral deficit, appeals to God by offering his or her sins. God

absorbs these moral faults and forgives the sinner. This would seem fairly

straightforward and in accordance with the cycle, but Catholic dogma interprets the ritual

differently. A properly functioning gift exchange involves items of value to both parties.

Indeed, the shedding of the guilt of immorality is of value to the confessor, but what have

God and the Church received? Catholic doctrine requires that the penitent give

something back that will balance the books, as it were:

In order to have [one’s ledger of sins] cancelled here, the penitent receives from

his confessor what is usually called his ‘penance’, usually in the form of certain

prayers which he is to say, or of certain actions which he is to perform, such as

visits to a church, the Stations of the Cross, etc. Alms, deeds, fasting, and prayer

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are the chief means of satisfaction, but other penitential works may also be

enjoined (Hanna, 1911).

Pilgrimage as Penance

In the Middle Ages, pilgrimage became an alternative form of public penance for

sins: “The teaching of the church and the penalties for sin, in this world and the next,

were never far from the medieval consciousness. So it followed from this, that to go on

pilgrimage was a unique way of assuaging the consequences of sin” (Ure, 2006, p. 6).

Some Church doctrines went so far as to suggest specific pilgrimage destinations

acceptable as a means of penance:

In the registers of the Inquisition at Carcassone […] we find the four following

places noted as being the centres of the greater pilgrimages to be imposed as

penances for the graver crimes, the tomb of the Apostles at Rome, the shrine of St.

James at Compostella [sic], St. Thomas's body at Canterbury, and the relics of the

Three Kings at Cologne (Jarrett, 1911).

The Way’s inclusion here is due in part to the great distance—the Church deeming that it

would cause sufficient enough pain and discomfort to satisfy their moral deficit. Mullins

(1974) affirms that, “One of the early attractions of the journey to Compostela in the

early days was that it was difficult, difficulty being intimately related to spirituality” (p.

52).

The first penitential pilgrims appear to have marched forth from Ireland where

mandatory pilgrimage for certain sinners was introduced as early as the sixth century.

The idea was fairly revolutionary at the time given that “the whole notion of penance was

transformed by Irish missionaries. The Irish confessor imposed penances, which varied

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with the gravity of the sin, in accordance with a penitential ‘tariff’[…]” (Sumption 1975,

98 [my emphasis]). These particular ‘tariffs’ were extensive lists of sins and their

appropriate absolving penitential acts. In its contemporary meaning ‘tariff’ is an official

schedule establishing the customs duties and rates to be imposed on imports and exports

(Simpson, 1989). Historically—at least insofar as these Irish missionaries were

concerned— the absolving of sin through pilgrimage was seen as the paying of a moral

tax in order to gain admittance into Heaven, just as goods are taxed before they are

allowed to cross the borders of a country.

Pilgrimage was seen as an acceptable moral repayment for a variety of sins—

mortal and venial. Among them, the sin of fornication (presumably the out-of-wedlock

or other spiritually offensive varieties) appears to have been a frequent reason for the

sentence. Of the early Irish penitential doctrines, The Penitential Cummean’s (ca. 650)

section titled “Of Fornication” mandates, “He who defiles his mother shall do penance

for three years, with perpetual pilgrimage” (McNeill & Games, 1938, 1990, p. 103). The

Road to Santiago figured largely into this penitential system by the twelfth century.

Mullins (1974) relates the stories of English fornicators sentenced to make a pilgrimage

to Santiago. One woman, Mabel de Boclande, was ordered to make the journey to avoid

being beaten with rods six times around various churches (pp. 61-2).

The more obvious examples of this system are found in those penitential

pilgrimages in which the pilgrim was forced to undergo the journey as either a form of

punishment or requisite for achieving some monetary reward. Weightier sins like

homicide were dealt with by municipal law which was often replaced with Church law.

These penitents typically made their journeys burdened by iron collars and fettered

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extremities; it was also normal—in the case of convicted murderers—to attach the

weapon of their atrocity to their fetters “as a permanent advertisement of the crime”

(Sumption, 1975. p. 109). Santiago-bound indeed! Upon journey’s end, these penitents

would usually cast off their chains as a symbolic act of offering up the weight of the sin

for God’s forgiveness. Those pilgrimages imposed by judicial decree are said to have

occurred primarily during the time of the Inquisition, when penalties for sin were much

higher (ibid., p. 104). This was seen, literally, as a way of paying one’s debt to society.

Pilgrimages of this sort “were little more than the traditional penalty of banishment

renamed” (ibid., p. 105). Ure (2006) suggests additional blatant examples of the

transactional nature of pilgrimage in the compulsory requirements for some inheritances:

“Though not strictly a penalty, the pilgrimage would also be often imposed as the

condition of an inheritance or other provision of a will” (p. 80).

According to Sumption (1975), “Pilgrimage, like banishment, was a particularly

suitable punishment for those enormities which threatened the tight-knit urban

communities of the late middle ages” (p. 105). In former times, violators of the

communal harmony were simply exiled indefinitely to assure the survival of the group.

Pilgrimage seems to have changed the face of this punishment by offering the penitent a

chance to redeem themselves and eventually reintegrate with their society. These

pilgrims would return home, presumably, cleansed of their sins and thus able to

contribute appropriately to the benefit of their community. This type of pilgrimage, then,

not only provided the penitential pilgrim with a clean moral slate, but it was also a boon

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to the community from whence they came; the sinner might now contribute to the overall

wellness of that society they had formally threatened6.

Not everyone made the penitential journey by force, however, and by the

thirteenth century the voluntary penitential pilgrimage was en vogue. The main attraction

was, indeed, to receive remittance for one’s sins but some repenting pilgrims found that

they could receive material privileges. Genuine pilgrims—who could prove their

legitimacy—were afforded some material benefits for their efforts along the way, as

Layton (1976) catalogs:

[…] though the monks were generous and allowed poor pilgrims a daily ration of

20 ounces of bread and 12 ounces of meat with bone, or 10 ounces of it off the

bone, and 16 ounces of red wine along with some chickpeas, bacon and potatoes,

only two days’ stay was permitted and pilgrims had to show their certificates on

their way out and the Compostelan certificate proving they had made the journey

(p. 123-4).

Many priests were permitted to draw their full salary for three years while taking a leave

of absence to walk to Santiago and back (Mullins, 1974, p. 62). French free men—and

later English—were allowed to leave their homes and families without forfeiting their

property or legacy rights (ibid. p. 53).

Voluntary medieval pilgrims were attracted to pilgrimage for the genuine belief in

“the automatic remission of sins by the formal visits to particular shrines” (Sumption

1975, 103). This confidence was capitalized on by the Church in the form of plenary

6 Frey (1998) reports that this type of penitential pilgrimage has been reemployed by the Dutch and Belgian juvenile penal systems. Since 1982, a non-profit organization called Oikoten in conjunction with the Belgian Ministry of Justice has sponsored the Santiago pilgrimage of a number of juvenile delinquents every year as a means of reforming the troubled youths.

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indulgences. In order to better appreciate the concept of indulgences, it is necessary at

this point to explain the Catholic understanding of judgment in the afterlife. Catholics

believe that when their bodies expire, their souls will still be held accountable to divine

justice for earthly sins even though they have already been forgiven through the

sacrament of confession; payment is still expected for sins in the hereafter. This

reconciliation with God is not at all unlike the process in accounting of reconciling an

expense account. The double-entry bookkeeping system provides a suitable analogy for

this process. In this form of record-keeping, a ledger is split into two columns of figures:

the account’s debits and credits. The columns are totaled and their sums are reconciled

with one another to determine if the account is at a deficit or surplus; this is how an

accountant balances a book of financial records. Similarly, in Church doctrine, a

person’s sins are weighed against their good deeds and the resulting balance or imbalance

establishes the fate of their soul. Specifically, this divine reconciliation determines the

amount of additional time the soul will remain separate from God; temporal punishment

is spent in the holding pattern of Purgatory. A writ of indulgence, however, could allow

the soul to dispense with the temporal punishment bit and go directly to heaven.

There is a general misconception that the Catholic indulgence is a “get-out-of-jail-

free” or “license to sin” card. In fact, a writ of indulgence is “a remission of the

punishment which is still due to sin after sacramental absolution, this remission being

valid in the court of conscience and before God, and being made by an application of the

treasure of the Church on the part of a lawful superior” (Addis & Arnold, p. 442 [my

emphasis]). The indulgence is only awarded after the sinner has completed the other

necessary sacramental acts, particularly confession. The language of the Church

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dogma—assuming it is believed to be metaphoric by Catholics—reveals an intricate

banking system supported by MORAL ACCOUNTING by which a sinner essentially borrows

moral credit from the Church in the form of the indulgence: “[…] an indulgence places

at the penitent’s disposal the merits of Christ and of the saints, which form the ‘Treasury’

of the Church.” (Kent, 1910 [my emphasis]). An indulgence, then, is a loan that balances

the sinner’s moral account with the creator: “[…] it means a more complete payment of

the debt which the sinner owes to God” (ibid. [my emphasis])

The act of pilgrimage was often not enough to receive an indulgence. Church

authorities often required some sort of monetary payment for penitential absolution to

help fund the imposing cathedrals that housed their relics. Accordingly, “a pilgrim was

expected to be as generous as his means would allow, and there were some who asserted

that without an offering a pilgrimage was of no value” (Sumption, 1975, p. 158).

Sumption (1975) relates the rather bizarre ceremony at which indulgences were presented

to incoming pilgrims—as stipulated by the statutes of Santiago cathedral:

After the morning mass the sacristan and another priest stood behind the shrine

with rods in their hands and with these they would tap each pilgrim in his own

language. Pilgrims were then asked whether their offering was for St. James, i.e.

for alms and general purposes, in which case it was placed on a side-table. […]

Only cash or jewellery [sic] was accepted (p. 160).

The issuance of indulgences, then, was transactional on several levels. It had an

intangible, spiritual side as well as a material, business-like one, both of which were

rendered at a linguistic level metaphorically and concretely.

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The Medieval Pilgrimage Business

Besides the metaphoric economy associated with the Way, the pilgrimage was a

genuine financial boon to many groups connected with it. Some private businesses made

pilgrim traffic a supplement to their existing trades. Mullins (1974) describes Santiago

pilgrims who chartered trade ships to take them to closer embarkation points: “It was

regular trade for the ships’ captains: they carried a cargo of wine from Bordeaux one way,

and a cargo of pilgrims to Bordeaux the other. Good business” (p. 30). Some pilgrims

could actually make an occupation of venture since, “it was possible to make a

pilgrimage by proxy, hiring a pilgrim to travel in one’s place” (Howard 1980, p. 12).

Though this practice was frowned upon by the Church it appears to have happened quite

regularly. Isabel of Bavaria, fifteenth century queen of France, dispatched pilgrims in her

name regularly: “Her accounts are full of entries recording payments made to

professional pilgrims […]” for this service (Sumption, 1975, p. 299).

The promise of some small fortune—tangible or intangible—reached all walks of

life, creating a colorful pastiche of characters who were making a living while they were

making a pilgrimage: “[…] along with [the pilgrims] would go the rogues, the cut-purses,

the sellers of fake relics, women of easy virtue, acrobats, jugglers, troubadours, and a

bevy of itinerant workers—stone masons, carpenters and others—who thronged the

medieval roads of Europe trying to make a living by one means or another” (Selby, 1994,

p. 6). Indeed, this motley band of travelers was partially comprised of questionable folks

of ill intent and honest pilgrims were often easy targets for these disreputable

opportunists: “Bandits preyed on them in wooded country; crooked ferrymen demanded

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extortionate charges; dishonest innkeepers fleeced them and sometimes murdered them in

their beds for the sake of their possessions” (Ure, 2006, pp. 80-81).

Recall, finally, that the Way was used by the Church as a means of generating

support for its Reconquest of Spain. They sought religious fervor on one hand and the

money that it brought in on the other: “[…] in an age when men could combine piety

with practicality, the Cult [of the Saints] prospered, to the benefit of pilgrim souls and the

great advantage of the Church” (Neillands, 1985, p. 44). The Church was a great

opportunist, making profitable use of the medieval inclination to believe in miracles: “To

the medieval mind, relics were not merely objects of veneration but possessed power in

themselves, particularly powers of healing and intercession, which were commensurate

with the saint’s position in the heavenly hierarchy” (Selby, 1994, p. 8). The interest in

relic worship was stoked by the Church and resulted in the creation of another successful

side business: “In that age, saintly relics were highly valued, traded as commodities and

even manufactured with great vigor to further ecclesiastical and monarchical interests.”

(Roddis, Frey, Placer, Fletcher, & Noble, 1999, p. 382). The Church’s successful

promotion of the Way resulted in a booming business of pilgrimage that survives today:

“The monks of Cluny ran the pilgrim traffic to Compostela as a business and saw to it

that any investment in relics paid off in practical terms, and as far as [the church in]

Conques is concerned it still does” (ibid., p. 46).

The Contemporary Pilgrimage Business

Since its resurgence in popularity, the Way has, once again, become a booming

business for those associated with it—not so much as a religious attraction, but a site of

secular tourism. For the Holy Year of 1993, the Galician government began a major

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publicity campaign to promote the Way called Xacobeo 93. The project resulted in the

preservation of sections of the path that had fallen into disrepair, organizing cultural

events, and establishing a network of permanent free pilgrim hostels in the tradition of

the medieval hospitales. Its great success and the periodic recurrence of the Holy Year

have called for its continued reinstatement. With the infrastructure in place, the Way has

become a more accommodating tourist activity shifting from Catholic to catholic.

The result has been an increased number of business (hotels, restaurants, shops,

baggage services) thriving from the new wave of pilgrims. Even the so-called “career

pilgrims” are apparently making a comeback. One enterprising Portuguese man who

calls himself the “Payer of Promises” continues this tradition today. Carlos Gil charges

$2,500 for two weeks worth of walking to several choices of sacred destinations—

Santiago de Compostela among them. According to an article (Tremlett, 2006,

November 24) in the Guardian, “Mr. Gil says he does not make a profit on his trips, and

the money just covers his costs. He also denies that the people who pay for him to go on

the pilgrimage are cheating on their own pledges”.

On our pilgrimage, we were warned by hospitaleros and fellow pilgrims to

beware of the same sort of opportunist criminal element that had drifted along with the

medieval pilgrim tide. Pilgrim Claus Kerryman (2005, September 1) informs fellow

travelers to stay informed of these negative aspects of the Way:

By the way, as the [S]panish authorities do statistics on the Camino, they will

probably also have numbers and locations of Camino crime. It would be

understandable if they have no interest to see them splashed about on the WWW,

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bad for business, but they should still be asked to make them known. Informed

pilgrims are safer” [my emphasis].

The figure of speech emphasized here is evidence of this pilgrim’s recognition of the

Way as a commercial industry. Kerryman’s warning also contains an undercurrent of

scorn toward the Spanish municipalities who withhold safety information for the sake of

protecting their financial interests at the expense of the pilgrim. The propagandizing of

the Way has become subtler but it is, nonetheless, still vital to its survival.

Kerryman (2005, September 1) and other pilgrims acknowledge the business

aspect of pilgrimage—often cynically—in their discussions about the Way. One pilgrim-

hopeful—whose name was withheld—expressed apprehension about his/her upcoming

pilgrimage on an online forum: “I worry about finding a crowded, commercialized,

tourist burdened route since the Camino has received so much publicity in the past few

years. Lot's [sic] of unique and special things in the world get ruined by overexposure. I

leave with high hopes but no expectations. All journeys are what one makes them....”

(Why I did the Camino). Modern guidebooks like Trekking and climbing in northern

Spain (Thomson, Schroder, Thompson, & Saunders, 2003) support this characteristic of

the Way, touting the business side of it as one of its defining qualities: “The route is not

only one of the world’s longest walking routes, but historically it is also the world’s first

commercial trek” (p. 131).

As we have seen, the commercialization of the Way has been an integral part of

the pilgrimage since its Catholic inception, yet over time its association with the business

end of the spectrum has grown stronger than its original religious connotations. In a

global economy defined by capitalist ideology, the Way has survived because its

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purveyors have highlighted its marketable aspects as a tourist destination—a sort of

institutional natural selection. The language of the pilgrimage has—understandably—

followed suit, incorporating a metaphoric conceptual system that takes out terminological

loans from the linguistic coffers of the business world.

PILGRIMAGE IS A COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE

Medieval pilgrims used an actual system of material exchange with the

Compostelas and the scallop shells which all represented a network of symbolic social

exchange. Over centuries these symbols have been drained of their full import as

symbols of this exchange. Instead the value system tied to pilgrimage has been retained

in the metaphoric language used by its participants today. The original religiously

inspired pilgrimage—by definition—was prompted by a great moral rationale and is thus

systematically encoded with the language of morality as organized by MORAL

ACCOUNTING. MORAL ACCOUNTING essentially establishes a metaphoric economy in

which a currency of good and bad deeds is exchanged for spiritual favor. In this

economy one can accumulate moral wealth, pay off a moral debt, or otherwise balance

their moral ledger by being actively employed in moral acts. Pilgrimage, thus, becomes a

means of making one’s moral ends meet—gainful employment—insofar as the Church’s

sacramental system of penance was concerned. Since the organizing conceptualization of

MORAL ACCOUNTING—as manifested in the language and structure of the Church—

allows for the act of pilgrimage to be redeemable, as a unit of commerce—for the

absolution of one’s sins—an inherited complex metaphorical system surfaces which I

will call PILGRIMAGE IS A COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE. This system entails several

supporting metaphors:

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(1) A PILGRIMAGE IS A JOB

(2) A PILGRIM IS A LABORER

(3) A PILGRIMAGE IS A WORK PRODUCT

(4) A PILGRIMAGE IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY

Though the days of the penitential pilgrimage and the issuance of indulgences are bygone,

morality continues to play a role in the journey of the modern pilgrim, if only

linguistically. Even if today’s pilgrim claims his or her motivations are secular, non-

spiritual, or non-religious, the metaphoric language they use reveals that pilgrimage

continues to be conceived of in the same terms of spiritual commerce of their medieval

forerunners.

A PILGRIMAGE IS A JOB

For the voluntary and involuntary penitent of old, pilgrimage—as a job—offered

many of the same perks as a modern employee benefit package provided by an employer

corporation: vertical movement in the company, a retirement fund that you pay into,

health benefits, even bonuses7. Modern writers recognize their medieval counterparts as

being a part of the same industry: “The various requirements of the pilgrim trade were

met by a series of hospices along the way […]” (Hayes, 2005), an infrastructure that has

been reestablished to accommodate the contemporary “pilgrim trade”. In the tradition of

this industry, pilgrims today often structure their days similarly to the way they would a

work day: “Long-distance walkers in Britain usually operate on a ‘nine-to-five’ basis,

leaving their accommodation shortly after breakfast and returning in time for an early

evening meal” (Raju, 2003, p. 32). The job of pilgrimage is deceptively simple: get to

7 One example of this was when a medieval pilgrim stopped at Monte de Gozo in a Jubilee Year they would see additional gains: “A hundred days of indulgence added to that remission of half time in Purgatory due to any Compostela pilgrim is a bonus worth having” (Neillands, 1985, p. 154).

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Santiago. However, the business-like nature of the Way can complicate pilgrim

motivations. Selby (1994) relates a significant encounter with an elderly Frenchman in a

rural village who recognizes her as a pilgrim to Santiago. The local man attempts to foist

a ten franc piece upon Selby who politely fends off his mysterious donation; she is only

partially successful, however, finally accepting a cup of coffee at a nearby café instead.

It is only further down the road after puzzling over the event that she realizes what the

man’s motivation had been: “His alms I realized were a sort of sponsorship endorsing the

pilgrimage in general. He considered I was doing something worthwhile, and by staking

me to a coffee he had a share in the venture. It was a touching and kindly gesture, but it

had its serious side too, dispelling the notion that I was an entirely free agent on this

journey […]” (p. 51 [emphasis mine]). The vocation of pilgrimage is typically a humble

one, where the pilgrim is without his or her normal support system and must rely on the

kindness of others. In this case, though, the extension of kindness is interpreted as a

business transaction that recalls the days of patronage where outside parties would

contribute to the career of their charge. Selby (1994) recognizes here that she is part of a

larger corporate ‘venture’ of which she can not exist independently: the success of her

vocation as pilgrim is dependant on the support of the ad hoc corporate arrangement of

the Way.

Like other vocations, pilgrims admit to being ‘called’ to make their pilgrimage to

Santiago. During an online discussion about the relationship of ‘ley lines’8 to the Way,

one pilgrim (2006, June 3) acknowledges her metaphysical charge: “I'm new to the

Camino ritual—I got the calling out of the blue in 2004—never heard of it before then—

8 Dismissed as a pseudoscientific theory, ley lines are supposedly the geometrically perfect alignments of several ancient monuments and megaliths (e.g. the Nazca lines, the straight lines that connect the Yucatan pyramids, etc.).

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and now I must complete it”. English pilgrim, Rioja Routard (2007, February 22), also

expresses having experienced this intangible motivation after overcoming adversity in her

life: “I had such a profound recovery from a serious mental breakdown purely by faith

and the courage to walk that I felt a calling to return and to spiritually give thanks”.

Vocation derives from the Latin verb vocāre meaning “to call” or “summon”; and,

incidentally, it is often used to describe the divine influence behind choosing a particular

career—especially a religious one (Simpson, 1989).

A PILGRIM IS A LABORER

Whereas some of today’s pilgrims answer a call to a higher power, others are

obliged to follow the orders of the Way itself. Selby (1994) describes her pilgrimage

almost as she might a superior or boss: “The pilgrimage, I was discovering, imposed its

own disciplines, together with its rewards, and turning aside to make visits did not really

fit in with its demands” (p. 54 [emphasis mine]). The personification of the Way as an

administrator implies that this pilgrim sees herself as a subordinate, subject to her boss’s

biddings. This is not at all an uncommon way for pilgrims to conceptualize their

pilgrimage lot. The notion of a pilgrim-employee is reinforced with their recognizable

‘uniform’ and accessories donned by the journey-makers. Beyond these material

symbols, linguistic evidence shows that pilgrims expect to be defined by this role as

laborer.

The pilgrim as laborer is engaged in the employment of pilgrimage which is

actualized by the mechanical activity of walking. Though the conveniences of modern

technology offer many means of transportation that can easily decrease the amount of

time today’s pilgrim remains on the road, the hard-working pilgrim is one who travels in

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the tradition of the original pilgrims: on foot. In this way the activity of walking serves a

purposeful and practical end: it allows the pilgrim to connect physically with the act of

pilgrimage enough to appropriately suffer—a requirement of penance—thereby serving

as suitable labor in the Christian morality market. Pilgrim as laborer recalls the notion

explored previously under the LIFE IS A PLAY metaphor that pilgrims are playing parts in

the ritual of pilgrimage drama. This connection is evidence of a metaphoric coherency

between the two systems.

There is a common theme of pride in pilgrim writing that sometimes borders on a

self-conscious preoccupation with being a ‘true pilgrim’. A so-called ‘true pilgrim’ is

defined roughly as one who has appropriately suffered, or in other words, one who has

really worked for their pilgrimage. Neillands (1985) seems almost distracted at times by

having to explain and qualify himself as a true pilgrim. His occasionally preachy

digressions are typical of many of the pilgrims I met in the summer of 2006: “After all,

those who go by cycle or on foot are ‘true pilgrims’; they experience the heat, the dust,

even the danger of the pilgrimage, they share the full experience and enjoy the fellowship

of other pilgrims on the Road” (p. 9). Along with his prescription for the miserable

affairs one must experience to be considered a ‘true pilgrim’, Neillands (2006) also

stipulates that the mode of transportation must also require one to exert oneself

sufficiently: “I use [the term ‘pilgrim’] here to describe someone who, as is proper,

makes a journey to Compostela at the expense of some little effort by foot, on horseback

or, as in my case, on bicycle” (p. 21 [emphasis mine]). Here Neillands evokes the

MORAL ACCOUNTING metaphor, recasting the physical “effort” applied by the pilgrim-

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laborer as an “expense” incurred in the activity. The pilgrim-laborer, then, essentially

becomes invested in his or her work.

There is no shortage of writers who prescribe the necessary characteristics of a

genuine pilgrim. In addition to physical exertion, most pilgrims who consider themselves

authentic also have opinions on the requisite length of time a legitimate pilgrimage

should last: “I think that length of journey does matter (and that the 100km minimum is

much too low) and I'd also suggest that the pilgrimage should be hard work and involve

such things as suffering, pain or deprivation from our normal comforts in daily life”

(spursfan, 2006, October 20 [emphasis mine]). This pilgrim qualifies that the labor of the

pilgrim be difficult in order for it to really be ‘worthy’ or ‘count for something’. The

systematized distribution of the Compostela by the Archbishop of Santiago supports the

sentiments of these pilgrims by carefully qualifying one’s credentials before awarding the

certification of completion. The entire process is akin to having one’s work performance

reviewed before receiving a lump sum paycheck. These prescriptions are consistent not

only with the language of MORAL ACCOUNTING but also with the penitential doctrines of

the Catholic Church9.

Pilgrims’ memoirs frequently describe the progress of their journeys as ‘toiling’.

My own experience taught me that the Way was variously a long slog, a hump, utter

drudgery, pain, a daily grind, a workout, a constant struggle. Much of this has to do with

outside stimuli: weather conditions, which could often be inclement in either extreme,

roaming packs of nasty, stray dogs, sharing busy highways with steady streams of

vehicular traffic, etc. The language—here and elsewhere above—implies that the

9 It should be noted here that in neither of these individuals’ writing samples do they self-identify as belonging to any particular religious faith. Neillands (1985) particularly claims agnosticism.

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pilgrim’s physical expenditure and tangible interaction with the discomforts of the Way is

requisite for an authentic or ‘true’ pilgrimage. Laborer, then is an aptly chosen role for

the pilgrim given its roots; the word comes from the Latin labōrem meaning “toil,

distress, trouble” (Simpson, 1989).

A PILGRIMAGE IS A WORK PRODUCT

Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 2003) argue that the non-metaphoric concept A PATH

IS A SURFACE is understood to be self-evident (p. 90). Since an over-ground journey

defines its path over a distance then it is also understood as a surface, leading to phrases

like, “I only stopped at Melide because I could not continue without a meal, having

covered forty-eight miles once striking camp that morning” (Selby, 1994, p. 196

[emphasis mine]). The distance here is metaphorically ‘covered’ in the same way that an

unrolling carpet actually covers the ground surface it travels over. Another important

detail embedded in the Selby (1994) citation is that the driving force of this ‘covering’ is

the pilgrim herself. Since, when a person moves forward in a physical, linear journey

across the surface of the Earth, more of that surface is created, then it stands to reason—

by coherence—that as we continue on a journey more of the path of that journey is also

created. In fact, one might say that the path of the journey is created in the journeying

itself, that until it has been experienced actively by the agent of the journey, then it has

yet to come into existence. This philosophical notion of the journeyer creating his or her

own journey is articulated by Spanish poet Antonio Machado (1978):

Caminante, son tus huellas

el camino, y nada más;

caminante, no hay camino,

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se hace camino al andar.

Al andar se hace camino,

y al volver la vista atrás

se ve la senda que nunca

se ha de volver a pisar.

Caminante, no hay camino,

[…] (“Proverbios y cantares, XXIX”, pp. 82-4). 10

Machado’s poem precisely expresses the creative and transformative nature of a

pilgrimage. The poet relies on the seemingly self-evident notion that a traveler is the

creator of his or her own journey. Extrapolating the logic of Machado’s verse, one can

say that the pilgrim makes his or her own pilgrimage. The word pilgrim-age, like the act

itself, is lexically lifeless without its root pilgrim, the agent of the act. The morphologies

of these very words reinforce the same message: The act is defined by its agent.

The conception of pilgrimage as a job whose agent-laborer is the pilgrim, and

Machado’s (1978) implication that the pilgrimage road is created by the pilgrim reflects

the metaphor A PILGRIMAGE IS A WORK PRODUCT. This entails that the physical length

of the path of a pilgrimage is objectified and quantifiable. In this metaphor a pilgrimage

is quantified in terms of work output in which the constitutive miles—created one step

forward at a time—are the product of the walking work. The creative character of

10 Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. By walking one makes the road, and upon glancing behind one sees the path that never will be trod again. Wanderer, there is no road-- […] (Craige (Trans.), 1978, pp. 83-5)

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pilgrimage is the most commonly represented embedded metaphor of the pilgrim

repertoire; here are some examples:

“As far as I was concerned I was making this journey from the same motives as I

made all my journeys, in a spirit of inquiry and interest” (Selby, 1994, p. 24

[emphasis mine])

“Just as the Muslim tradition requires that all members of the faith, at least once

in their life, make the same pilgrimage that Muhammad made from Mecca to

Medina, so Christians in the first millennium considered three routes to be sacred”

(Coelho, 1986, p. 7 [emphasis mine]).

Most pilgrim writers employ this metaphor when discussing their pilgrimage. My

writing is no exception as evidenced in the current work.

The Way is also an extended journey over time, lasting for many weeks or months

depending on the pilgrim’s starting point. Since this entails that the journey be split up

into manageable stages, the pilgrim-maker is also known to ‘create’ segments of their

journey and refer to them metonymically by the name of the destination city. Selby

(1994) takes this linguistic angle: “[…] and if I could not make Roncesvalles in the day I

had my tent and would enjoy camping up in the mountains” (p. 59 [my emphasis]). And

later in the trip: “I had a further thirty-five [kilometers] to do if I was to make Santiago

that day” (p. 196 [my emphasis]).

Additionally, because of the spatial-temporal reality of the pilgrimage, time

becomes a substance from which miles emerge. Pilgrim-laborers also metaphorically

create the time it takes to travel their daily distances: “At Pommavic I crossed the

Garonne and wandered south on some very minor roads to St Antoine, making very good

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time over flat country and looking forward to another fast and easy day” (Neillands, 1985,

p.64). This nuance of the metaphor suggests that the pilgrim’s labor is quantified by time,

a particularly Western notion of work: “LABOR IS A RESOURCE and TIME IS A RESOURCE

are by no means universal. They emerged naturally in our culture because of the way we

view work, our passion for quantification and our obsession with purposeful ends”

(Lakoff & Johnson 1980, 2003, p. 67). This aspect of A PILGRIM IS A LABORER suggests

that the metaphor is most likely culturally coded for the pilgrim originating from a

society whose economic platform is capitalist.

The pilgrimage to Santiago is an undertaking in which pilgrims feel they are

indeed creating something special and personal. Pilgrims I encountered along the Way

repeatedly remarked that “each pilgrimage was as unique as the person making it”.

Pilgrimages are constantly referred to in the possessive as in “my pilgrimage” implying a

point of pride in the speaker’s personal creation. This has resulted in books with titles

like Sue Kenney's My Camino (2004). Likewise, the Web is replete with pilgrim blogs

with titles like Evan Low’s (2007), My Camino de Santiago, and entry titles like “On my

way to my Camino” (Straydog, 2006, April 26). The possessiveness becomes embedded

in the body of these writings: “For a myriad of ancient and modern reasons, peregrinos

[author’s emphasis] continue to be drawn to Santiago de Compostela, choosing to tread

their own piece [my emphasis] of the Camino paved with the colorful characters and

good intentions of its rich history” (Alison Gardner, 2005). Here the author implies that

the Way is something tangible like a quilt or belt of fabric that each pilgrim contributes to

while still retaining the sense that it is “their own”. Ownership of the created road is

expressed time and again, and sometimes reveals a protective pride in the pilgrimage as a

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personal creation: “Studying the map over my coffee, I realized that I must be very close

to a house where I was expected to call. The friendly Rigauds, who had entertained me

in Cluis, had telephoned friends of theirs who had recently moved to a village on my

route” (Selby, 1994, p. 52). This a mentionable quote because, in reality, the pilgrim is

an outsider trekking through a foreign land yet the phrasing here suggests that these

people whom she is expected to contact are actually in her territory.

English speaking pilgrims make their pilgrimages to sacred places in much the

same way that they make their way through life. The pilgrimage is given life by the

pilgrim just as a mother gives life to her child: as a product of labor. Following the

metaphor of MORAL ACCOUNTING, the pilgrimage—as the product of pilgrim labor—is

redeemable for things like forgiveness in the Christian economy just as money is

redeemable in the economy of business and Capitalism. The Compostela, again, provides

a material symbol supporting this notion, the presentation of which does not occur unless

a certain mileage has been validated. Beyond this tangible reward for making a

pilgrimage, the pilgrim-laborer is duly rewarded for their efforts with the satisfaction of

having created their own pilgrimage.

A PILGRIMAGE IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY

As with the world of employment, an employee is expected to receive some sort

of compensation for his or her efforts, usually in the form of currency. The pilgrimage-

job reaps great rewards for the pilgrim-laborer—concretely and abstractly. In the

PILGRIMAGE IS A BUSINESS/SPIRITUAL COMMERCE metaphor, compensation is conceived

by A PILGRIMAGE IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY, where the pilgrimage and its composite

parts constitute an end reward. Simply put: the job is the reward. This is mutually

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concurrent with elements of the sister metaphors A PILGRIM IS A LABORER and A

PILGRIMAGE IS A WORK PRODUCT. Recall the honor conveyed by pilgrims who had

traveled in the traditional pedestrian mode, considering themselves ‘true’ pilgrims.

Recall too the gratified sentiment of some of the pilgrims above, who expressed such

artisan pride in their achievement. These details suggest an understanding in these

pilgrims that active engagement in the Way is worthy and valuable.

As we have seen, the production of a pilgrimage is redeemable in the system of

Catholic commerce for a sort of eternal “reward”. English court poet and explorer Sir

Walter Raleigh (1604, 1681) gives the following figurative description of the heavenly

consideration for the Santiago pilgrims’ pains:

The Holy Pathes of Heav’n we’ll Travel,

With Rubies strew’d as thick as Gravel,

Ceilings of Di’monds, Saphire-Floors,

High Walls of Corral, Pearly-Bow’rs (Lns. 26-29).

Raleigh, here, creates a parallel between the earthly path of the pilgrimage and the

heavenly expectation for traveling on it. The promise of the pilgrim’s reward was

supported by the Church’s symbolic display of their own wealth as Catholic authorities

commissioned that “the greatest treasures and most popular relics were … put on public

display” for the witness of incoming pilgrims (Ure 2006, 54). The symbolic nature of the

medieval Church’s garish façade supported the expectation for the pilgrims’ labor, the

rewards of which were seen as moral assets for eternal speculation: “The church

cultivated the value of relics by offering the faithful who made pilgrimages to holy places

an indulgence – a remittance of some or all sins committed in this life. A pilgrimage was

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thus partly an investment for one’s future permanent retirement” (Roddis, Frey, Placer,

Fletcher, & Noble, 1999, p. 382).

The modern pilgrim also finds value in these material artifacts and the Way is

understood as a container full of them. A road is conceived of as an object, as these

pilgrim quotes deomonstrate: “I had been eight days on the Road, and the Road was

empty” (Neillands, 1985, p. 71 [emphasis mine]); “Being immediately identifiable as a

pilgrim conferred important benefits at the time when the roads were full of people”

(Selby, 1994, p. 20 [emphasis mine]). As such, the Way is seen as a treasure chest of

sorts, full of relics of great historical, cultural, artistic, and religious value: “Clearly the

Road to Santiago possessed an embarrassment of riches and I could not possibly hope to

see them all” (Selby, 1994, p. 92 [emphasis mine]); and “Finally the Road to St James

was, and is, well supplied with other sights and shrines, each worth a visit, each luring the

pilgrim on a little further so that whatever the difficulties, a little faith would take him on

to the next shrine, or ‘place of obligation’, gaining a place in Heaven even if he died on

the Way” (Neillands, 1985, p. 13 [emphasis mine]). Neilands (1985) reminds us here of

the transactional nature of the pilgrimage alongside his description of the elements of the

Way as valuable in their own right. The pomp of this display of the Church is reflective

of the value the pilgrim places on his or her pilgrimage.

Along with the material worth of the sites offered along the Way are those

components without physical boundary. This often arises from the incidental aura of

surrounding nature: “The solitude and the absence of the reek and roar of motor traffic

would be reward enough […] (Selby, 1994, p. 59 [emphasis mine]). Pilgrim Denise

Fainberg (2005) confides that the spirit of giving on the road is another precious

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immaterial reward: “And hospitality became one of its great gifts, as couples opened

their homes to complete strangers, overwhelming us with food and drink, beds with

linens, even sometimes washing our clothes” [emphasis mine]. This pilgrim attributes

one of her rewards of the pilgrimage the spirit of the people along it, other writers cite

specific people enriching the experience: “[…] I thought the world, as well as the

pilgrimage, would be the poorer without this irascible but passionately involved woman”

(Selby, 1994, p. 63 [emphasis mine]).

All in all, pilgrims generally assume that what they are doing is of some value.

They speak of the benefits of the road: residual and immediate. Elderly pilgrim Henry B.

Maloney (2005) describes his pilgrimage in a testimonial posted on a packaged tour

website: “Not quite perfect perhaps, but nonetheless so rewarding a walk that I would

never choose to repeat it” [emphasis mine]. On the same site, pilgrim Alison Gardner

(2005) metonymically places value in her completion of the pilgrimage: “Santiago de

Compostela was indeed worthy of the modest effort required of this pilgrim” [emphasis

mine]. Gardner, here, reiterates the notion of a pilgrimage as a business of exchange and

compensation. Though many pilgrims do not know what the result of the pilgrimage will

be, they express a certain intuition of the worthiness of their cause: “Sheer determination

is all that keeps one going on these occasions [when the going is difficult], together with

the belief […] that it will prove worth it in the end” (Selby, 1994, p. 96). Even after

pilgrims reach their final destination in Santiago, the realization of their accomplishment

may still not be felt: “I feel sorry the journey is over, but glad that I came. I got

something out of the pilgrimage; just what, I haven’t decided, but I feel good about it”

(Neillands, 1985, p. 168). The author here recalls the understanding of the Way as a

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container. His reward, though, is something intangible and undetermined; nonetheless

this pilgrim ascribes positive value to whatever it is he has experienced.

The metaphoric understanding of worth evoked by pilgrims is consistent with the

PILGRIMAGE IS A COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE system because it completes the loop of the

commercial contract: the terms of a business deal are struck; the parties involved are

given mutual consideration for their items of exchange; and these items are things of

value. Furthermore, this metaphor extends the notions expressed previously in

PILGRIMAGE IS NURTURE, conveying the intuition that the rewards of pilgrimage are inner

growth and spiritual cultivation. This is further strengthens the coherence between the

two metaphoric systems of pilgrimage.

…

Essentially little has changed in this circle of commercial exchange in the last

millennium of pilgrimage. In the Middle Ages, the religiously motivated pilgrim

contracted with God through the Church; today, some pilgrims establish an agreement

with themselves to overcome the physical adversity of walking, others are fulfilling

obligations to loved ones, and, yes, some still do continue to establish contracts with God

as a form of thanksgiving. No matter how one looks at it, walking and completing the

pilgrimage to Santiago is an amazing feat that delivers in kind. The Way is more than a

treasure chest; it is a cornucopia teeming with benefits.

Implications and Conclusions

The great zeal that once drove Christian pilgrimage abated greatly over time.

Oddly, the fanatic popularity of the Way led directly to its downfall. By the thirteenth

century, the former hazards and dangers that had made the Way a fitting pilgrimage for

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penitents had been removed, making the route much easier to navigate (Mullins, 1974, p.

54). The greater accessibility of the Way resulted in the institution gaining a bad

reputation for attracting ne’er-do-wells and criminal types, which sounded a death knell

for the pilgrimage as a credible activity in Christian culture. As Mullins (1974) indicates,

“Only when this sense of moral urgency weakened did the habit of pilgrimage grow

superficial or decadent […]” (p. 60).

The credibility of pilgrimage was further cheapened by the growing sense that the

business-like conduct of the clergy was out of step with accepted Church doctrine and

promoted greediness. Ure (2006) describes a particularly grotesque scene that apparently

took place in Rome during one busy Holy Year: “[…] there were reports of priests

literally raking in money with forks at St Peter’s as if it were a casino […]” (p. 55). It

would be difficult to justify this sort of behavior given that Christ himself preached “[…]

it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to

enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24). Mullins (1974) tells us that one of the

cardinal sins of medieval Europe was avarice: “[…] there was not yet any sanctity in

capitalism, and hoarding and investing money was not the practice of a wise and

provident man but of a miser. Poverty was not shameful, as it would become, but a virtue

[…]” (Mullins, 1974, p. 53). Somewhere along the line, some clever person discovered

that the real medieval belief in the metaphors behind pilgrimage could be cashed in for

real wealth.

The contemporary language of modern pilgrims shows vestiges of the original

objectives of pilgrimage remaining fairly well intact in these metaphors. The fact that

modern pilgrims use a language of commerce to relate their experiences on the Road to

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Santiago says a great deal about how deeply valued pilgrimage was in Christian culture.

It also attests to the power of the business sphere, then and now. The tangibility of

transactional business makes its lexical field a particularly well-suited source domain to

conceptualize the abstract. However, as the historical evidence indicates, pilgrimage was

treated as if it were a business—and in many cases, at least for a time, it was just that.

What all of this suggests, ultimately, is that there is a perceived value to making

pilgrimages.

The medieval pilgrim knew exactly what he or she would be receiving when they

took to the road toward Santiago. For these people—especially the poor and uneducated,

who represented the overwhelming majority of the pilgrim masses—miracles, the

inherent power of relics, tickets to an early entrance to heaven, the mark of sin, the

existence of Evil, these things were very real and pilgrim rewards for braving the Way

were just as real. So what of today’s travelers on his and her way to Santiago? What do

they expect to find when they reach the holy city of Santiago de Compostela? The

reciprocity that shapes the metaphoric economy of pilgrimage may provide an answer, or

the start of one.

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Chapter Four: Pilgrims and Tourists

“The pilgrim they laid in a large upper chamber, whose window opened toward the sun-rising;

the name of the chamber was Peace.”

- John Bunyan (1678, 1957, p. 51)

The history of the Way is one of appropriation. The Celtic death march in Galicia was

usurped by the Christian pilgrimage a thousand years ago and now it enters its most recent phase

of appropriation: Tourism. Modern tourism would not be considered a part of pilgrimage in the

medieval conception of the idea, but indeed the two concepts pilgrimage and tourism have

become conflated as the Way has experienced its recent reanimation. Since the mid-eighties

cities along the Road to Santiago have improved their marketability as vacation spots, using the

Way as their raison d’être. Pamplona, Lagroño, León, and Burgos have promoted their

historical heritages, their cuisine, and their peaceful, less-industrialized images as being ideal

tourist destinations for an authentic Spanish experience (Gonzalez & Medinoa, 2003 p. 448).

We have already seen how the Galician tourist industry has made significant investments in the

maintenance of the pilgrim road, making it more navigable and accessible. Mullins (1974)

observes:

Certainly the journey today presents few of the problems Aymery Picaud was at pains to

point out eight hundred years ago: pilgrimages can be booked as packaged holidays, and

organized trips have been made by car, train, aeroplane, car, horse, mule, bicycle,

motorcycle, in fact by just about every means of transport known to man save—to my

knowledge—stilts and a one-wheeled cycle (p. 55).

With the broadening popularity of the Way since Mullin’s time this accessibility has increased.

In the past, greater convenience led to a greater number of non-pilgrim elements, eventually

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sullying the ‘true’ meaning of the Way. The same could be said—and is, by many—of the

features of modern tourism. Where the value of the pilgrimage was once spiritually conceived as

a personal product, the Way has now become a product of tourism. The changing character of

the Way from religious to touristic has effected a change in its participants too. So what are they:

pilgrims or tourists?

The Turning Point in Pilgrimage

The evolution from pilgrimage to tourism has been a slow process that has involved

redefining the shape of the journey. The conception of the medieval pilgrim’s one-way journey

does not fit the schema of the typical travel itinerary today. For today’s sightseer, the aspects of

homecoming—sharing the lessons learned and memories made—are essential to the

contemporary idea of travel. Over time, perhaps because the path became better maintained, the

pilgrimage took on a more complex shape, altering the unidirectional and linear movement of the

journey: “Between medieval and modern times the image of the pilgrimage underwent a change

that easily escapes notice: it came to have turning points and crossroads, and a return” (Howard

1980, p. 7).

The element of the return is most significant in the development of the tourist. The root

of tourist attests to this, coming from the Greek word τόρυος meaning “circle” (Simpson, 1989).

Today the pilgrimage does not have meaning without the return—the definitive aspect of

Campbell’s composite proto-hero. In order to have gone, we must prove that we have gone: we

share our experiences in blogs and through online photo archives (pictures we have taken); we

disperse gift shop trinkets to our friends; we send postcards of our destinations. Despite the

criticism leveled at them as being inauthentic, the modern tourist is, in fact, a character in an

impressive social and universal narrative, participating in social rites of passage and

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mythological recreation. MacCannell (1976) describes the evolution of tourism as one that

springs from the heroic adventures of history:

What begins as the proper activity of a hero (Alexander the Great) develops into the goal

of a socially organized group (the Crusades), into the mark of status of an entire social

class (the Grand Tour of the British ‘gentleman’), eventually becoming universal

experience (the tourist) (p. 5 [author’s emphasis]).

The tourists of today are similar to those medieval adventurers who set out to experience the

unknown and returned with mysterious stories from beyond.

Touri-grinos

In spite of the basic similarities between the two, modern travelers of the Way identify a

significant gulf between their definitions of ‘tourist’ and ‘pilgrim’. The tourists’ critique of

tourism “is based on a desire to go beyond the other ‘mere’ tourists to a more profound

appreciation of society and culture […]. All tourists desire this deeper involvement with society

and culture to some degree; it is a basic component of their motivation to travel” (MacCannell,

1976, p. 10). We witnessed this imposed separation on our own pilgrimage.

The latter days of our journey brought an increase in the amount of foot traffic on the

road—at some refugios it was nearly impossible to secure proper bedding for the night. In the

village of Arca, ten kilometers outside of Santiago, we heard the Spanish pilgrims snickering at

the influx of new pilgrims, calling these travelers “touri-grinos” (a cross between a tourist and a

pelegrino or ‘pilgrim’ in Spanish). These were pilgrims who had only joined on for the final one

hundred kilometers—the minimum amount required to receive the Compostela. They were

typically families with youngsters, groups of students, or elder couples. The stereotypical

behavior associated with the ‘ugly tourist’ (loud, pushy, imposing, rude, etc.) was consistent with

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the conduct of the touri-grinos and as a result they were not respected on the road. This was the

type of tourist ‘true’ pilgrims tried to distance themselves from.

The issue of authenticity is a point of contention between the so-called ‘tourist’ and the

so-called ‘pilgrim’. We have seen how pilgrims have expressed a desire to define what the

authentic pilgrim should reflect. The criteria include having the proper attire and accoutrements,

walking an appropriate length of the road, enduring the elements, suffering the physical pain,

doing without creature comforts; the list is endlessly nuanced by each traveler’s definition—he

or she believing they embody the requisite qualities of the ‘true’ pilgrim. Goffman (1959) would

propose that this individual is “sincerely convinced that the impression of reality which he [or

she] stages is the real reality” (p. 89). Locals, too, are wary of this distinction and will often

favor the traveler whom they deem to be authentic. Galicia, however, where the volume of

tourist traffic reaches a crescendo, villagers express their concern that the modern Way is just a

fashionable tourist attraction: “[…] pilgrims before the 1993 Holy Year were, according to them,

more authentic. Now it is just de moda, in style, to do the Camino” (Frey, 1998, p. 148). To

these villagers, the true pilgrim is a relic of the past and in its place are spurious tourists going

through the motions.

Coelho (1986) describes a humorous scene of the hybrid pilgrim-tourist: “There I stood,

dressed in Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt that read ‘I love NY’, covered in the medieval garb of

the pilgrimage to Compostela” (p. 18). The image of Coelho draped in both the trappings of a

stereotypical tourist and that of the stereotypical pilgrim raises the question of whether or not

there is any basic difference between the two. This dichotomy is remarkable, for despite the

proclaimed difference between the two groups, they are fundamentally engaged in the same

social ritual: the sacred journey.

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Rites of Passage

One enduring aspect of pilgrimage that has attracted and continues to draw people to the

Way is its quintessence as a rite of passage. A rite of passage is an elementary feature of

religious behavior in all societies. This category of ritual, first identified and named by

anthropologist Arnold van Gennep, accompanies special events in a culture (i.e. changes of age,

place, state, social position, etc.). Birth, high school graduation, marriage, death are just some

examples in Western society of these momentous occasions. Rites of passage are observed as a

three-part process undergone by the ritual participant: separation, limen, and re-aggregation

(Turner & Turner, 1978, p. 249). The first stage is the removal of the individual from their

society and the last is their return to it, transformed. The transitional phase of a rite of passage,

liminality, is one of ambiguity where the participant is in metamorphic alteration. In pre-

industrialized communities, these rituals were often mandatory and severe; they were, “exercises

of severance, whereby the mind is radically cut away from the attitudes, attachments, and life

patterns of the stage being left behind.” (Campbell, 1986, p. 10) In the Christian tradition,

however—though rigorously encouraged in medieval Europe—the pilgrimage is entirely

voluntary and the extent of the severity of the act was usually determined by the pilgrim. A

pilgrimage meets the criteria as a rite of passage with its period of prolonged physical suffering

and spiritual ‘growth’ book-ended by a departure from society and a reintegration with it.

Pilgrimage is a fundamental rite of passage since it is an actual passage, requiring movement

over time and space.

Liminality

The mid-transitional state of pilgrimage, between embarkation and debarkation, is called

a liminal period (limen meaning “threshold”). It is marked by the ambiguity of non-status since

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the limen (ritual participant) is outside of his or her defining social role and in a state of

development—not unlike a cocooned moth. Pilgrims were considered special and many of the

social conventions normally applicable were not levied on them because of this ‘non-status’.

Mullins (1974) describes their enviable condition: “the pilgrim, after all, was something of a

privileged citizen of the world: the legal protection and exemption from dues accorded him was a

bait for many who wanted to travel for quite other motives and who felt able to do so now that

the worst dangers were past” (p. 54). The normal rules of society were not applicable during

pilgrimage. This is illustrated by pilgrims renouncing their possessions of and living on charity,

an activity usually discouraged by mainstream modern society (Garcia, 2002, pp. 7-8).

The purpose of these rituals was “to conduct people across those difficult thresholds of

transformation that demand a change in the patterns not only of conscious but also of

unconscious life” (Campbell, 1986, p. 10). There is a sense here that the constrictions of

conventional society can not exist for that transformation to take effect. Pilgrimage is rooted in

the metaphor of the journey and so there is a sense of “being on the way” toward a

transformative (in)sight (Carr, 2002, p. 76). Individual transformation is gradual on a pilgrimage.

Isolation on the road gives the pilgrim the opportunity to meditate, appreciate, reconsider, and

commune with his or her surroundings. Recall that the conceptual metaphor PILGRIMAGE IS

NURTURE implies a desire on the part of the pilgrim to undergo a transformative growth similar

to the healthful cultivation of a plant. The transformative effects of this growth are expressed by

many of these writers. Selby (1994) suggests that the Way as nature has had a transformative

effect on her: “Could it be that this pilgrimage was turning me into a pagan, a mere worshiper of

nature?” (p. 36 [emphasis mine]). Greenia (2005) relates his professional transformation: “I also

came back transformed as a medievalist and that may be worth recounting” (p. 5 [emphasis

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mine]). I have also noted here, Greenia’s sense of the value of his storytelling because it is

indicative of the one of the boons of the returned pilgrim.

Communitas: The Other-hood of Pilgrimage

In addition to the recalibrating solitude enjoyed by the individual, another cherished

element of the liminal period is spirited by a social connectivity that Turner & Turner (1978) call

communitas: a naturally arising kinship. The Way democratizes the pilgrim population so that

travelers see one another as equals and proudly identify with each other in a communal sense.

Additionally, pilgrims find themselves in a sort of playful comfort zone with one another. Many

of us began referring to the Way as a “summer camp for adults”. Pilgrims experience a

heightened sense of generosity among each other and from the surrounding support system along

the road. In the tiny village of Miradoux, Jessica and I found ourselves without proper

accommodations or provisions; several villagers recognizing our plight provided us with bread,

paté, wine, and a patch of ground on which to pitch our tent—three unrelated and unsolicited

encounters. The spirit of giving and sharing on the Way lies in stark contrast with typical

behavior in the outside world. Consequently, pilgrims as well as others associated with the Way

contribute to a spontaneous, temporary community existing physically as a part of the world at

large but ideally apart from it. It is a microcosmic utopia.

The communal exchange participated in by modern pilgrims may be an unconscious

attempt to reconnect with the authentic. The pilgrimage to Santiago is a reminder to the modern

man and woman of the humanity with which they may have lost touch in their lives outside of

the Way. By re-experiencing the archaic act of pilgrimage and the attendant communitas, the

contemporary pilgrim is making an attempt to reconnect with an authenticity they believe the

modern world has lost: a close association with the natural world around them and with their

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fellow life-travelers. The sense of reconnection and belonging provided by the communitas

experience is precisely the motivation of the modern pilgrim.

Tourism as a Rite of Passage

David Lodge’s (1991) Paradise News is a novel about of a group of English tourists who

participate in the modern ritual of the pre-packaged holiday tour. The book parodies the pursuit

of the tourist industry to sell salvation as a product: “Paradise stolen. Paradise raped. Paradise

infected. Paradise owned, developed, packaged, Paradise sold” (p. 143). One character observes,

“sightseeing is a substitute for religious ritual. The sightseeing tour as secular pilgrimage.

Accumulation of grace by visiting the shrines of high culture. Souvenirs as relics. Guidebooks

as devotional aids” (Lodge, 1991, p. 61). Anthropologists have studied this development of the

tourist trade and arrived at the striking observation that the average sightseeing expedition of the

modern tourist follows the same ritual components as a religious pilgrimage. The stages of the

rites of passage are reminiscent of the stages of the hero’s journey (discussed in Chapter Two)

and rightfully so, since Campbell (1949) recognized van Gennep’s model in adventure myths

from around the world. The basic rationale behind this is that the tourist vacation is a search for

a sacred or authentic experience similar to one formerly provided by religion and mythology.

For today’s pilgrim, the Way offers an authentic experience that the journeyer feels is

missing in his or her own middle class world. Authenticity is a cherished element frequently

desired by tourists visiting other cultures. MacCannell argues that the typical middle class man

and woman seek these authentic experiences elsewhere because they lack it in their own worlds:

“Modern man has been condemned to look elsewhere, everywhere, for his authenticity, to see if

he can catch a glimpse of it reflected in the simplicity, poverty, chastity or purity of others (p.

41). For the modern tourist, sacred sites are replaced by national landmarks, monuments, and

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other attractions. In order to experience this assumed authenticity, the tourist must be removed

from the comforts of his or her environs and coexist with the strange. This is the period of

separation of the rites of passage schema.

Today’s tourist seeks the same sense of transcendent awe as did the medieval pilgrim:

“The 20th-century visitor to the Parthenon or Persepolis, through the kick he receives from being

there, is attributing to these places a numinous and healing power which is not in essence

different from the power that the mediaeval pilgrim attributed to the relics of the Roman martyrs

or a fragment of the Holy Cross. We call that power Art, they called it God.” (Mullins, 1974, p.

1) The “kick” Mullins describes here is the transformative power of the liminal stage. The

moment is usually captured by the experiencer in photograph, on videotape, or through the

purchase of any number of local ‘relics’ sold to tourists as souvenirs of this significant life

moment.

Pilgrim’s Return and Symbolic Exchange

The modern pilgrimage to Santiago is a marriage of the medieval pilgrim’s spirit of travel

and the tourist’s sense of return. Pilgrims actively participate in the circle of pilgrimage when

they reintegrate with their society. Many of these pilgrims, in creating their own journey and

making it their own have returned home with a sort of work output which is often shared or

given to other members of the society who have not yet been indoctrinated in the ritual of

pilgrimage. Pilgrim Robin Neillands (1985) concluded by his journey’s end that his ultimate

object in writing and publishing his travel log was “[…] not so much to retell an old tale but to

encourage [his] readers to make the journey for themselves” (p. 9). In this way, pilgrimage

becomes a self-replicating machine with returned pilgrims working to keep it alive, bringing

tokens home with them to perpetuate the cycle.

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The gift of the returned pilgrim does not always take the form of a story. The material

exchange of relics from the journey is another way of continuing the spirit of the Way alive. For

the medieval pilgrim, these tokens were real, material items, often images embossed on an ingot

of the relic or sacred site. They were given—and often sold—by the Church in recognition of

the completed pilgrimage. The tokens were typically dispersed back home as charges for further

pilgrimage. Carr (2002) informs us that one of the roles of the pilgrim token was as a stimulus to

future pilgrimage: “Knowing through an image about a saint or an exceptional intervention

could prompt a pilgrimage.” (p. 83). These items of exchange themselves were seen as “[…]

avenues of contact with the divine.” (Carr, 2002, p. 84). This tradition lives on with the Way and

the exchange of the scallop shell. Today returned pilgrims from Santiago continue the tradition

by giving scallop shells from Finisterre to friends and loved ones so that they will have their

identifying pilgrim symbol for a future journey.

Often, medieval pilgrims would return home and cast their scallop shells into a local bay

or river—water symbolizing the purifying body and liminal boundary—as a sort of offering of

thanks for a safe return1 (Garcia, 2002, p. 6). Garcia (2002) suggests that the symbolic offering

encompasses the entire scope of the journey:

A journey is not complete until one has returned home. So depositing a pilgrim sign at

the end of a journey places the sign in the same location of the beginning of the journey.

The pilgrim sign ended up at the point from which the owner had set out on pilgrimage

Thus, the pilgrim sign deposited as thanks for safe return is found at the site of both the

beginning and end of a pilgrimage, and at the same time its imagery represents the goal

1A more prosaic version of the tradition is seen in the wishing well phenomenon, where people will toss a coin into a fountain or well for good fortune.

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of the journey. Therefore the start, climax, and conclusion of the pilgrimage are found in

the context and imagery of the sign (p. 7).

The pilgrim tokens represented the actual journey itself, the rite of passage with its period of

liminality, and the spiritual reward for accomplishing a pilgrimage. The symbolic exchange

exhibited in the returned token is an example of the gift-giving performance in archaic societies.

The effluvium of stories and souvenirs flow in an endless unbroken exchange; this circular

energy of the pilgrimage provides life to the Way itself which in turn revitalizes those who seek

its rewards.

Pilgrim or Tourist?

Though motivations of tourists and pilgrims converge on the fundamental level of

primitive ritual, there remains a functional difference between the two. In most cases, the real

interest of a sightseeing vacation is touring the destination, not the physical expedition to it. That

is where the pilgrim and the tourist diverge. The tourist has forgotten that the root of travel is

travail, meaning “to torment; to suffer affliction; to labor, toil; to suffer the pains of parturition”

(Simpson, 1989). The main difference between these two characters is their level of

participation in the ritual. A tourist is content to use any vehicular means at his or her disposal to

arrive at a destination and soak in its atmosphere, possibly even achieving some spiritual union

with the place. The physical nature of pilgrimage, however, does not allow for this passive

association. There are no osmotic benefits to pilgrimage today. The benefits sprout from the

self-created journey. The tourist will not experience the delightful aura of communitas, nor will

they return with a new appreciation for the power of community. Tourists and pilgrims are both

travelers at a common level, but for the tourist travel is secondary to the destination; for the

pilgrim, the true meaning behind the word is retained—at least unconsciously. For the pilgrim it

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is not a holiday but a holy day, it is not a just a trail it is a trial, and is not a simple vacation, it is

a serious vocation.

Destinations

The metaphor systems of pilgrimage imply a fundamental drive of the human spirit to

achieve a sense of belonging—a oneness with the world. This is accomplished by both the

believer and the non-believer because the drive is manifest socially and spiritually. The social

aspect of the pilgrimage reward is the (re)learning of communitas. The spiritual aspect of the

pilgrimage reward is the transactional participation in agape. Participation in the Way evokes

these feelings because it is a living reminder of a way of life focused on communion with each

other, and on communion with God.

Pilgrim writings are relics. They are the material products of those who have left the

circle of home, participated in the symbolic exchange of this special journey called pilgrimage

and returned home with their gift of experience, thereby satisfying the social obligation encoded

in the hero’s journey and in the fabric of moral exchange. This knowledge is part of the gift of

the Way, the relic taken back with the pilgrim when they reintegrate back home. In addition to

the social fulfillment achieved by participating in pilgrimage, the pilgrim’s journey also

completes an existential compass of all human experience by paralleling the archetypal hero

myths of old. The natural symbols of the Way provide a backdrop for a participatory mythology,

by which the participant can engage in a spiritual communion with a larger power. Call it Nature,

God, Cosmic Energy the words used to describe it vary, but pilgrimage enacts a fundamental

connection with the ‘big picture’, putting the individual’s existence into a more understandable

perspective, providing some comfort to the pilgrim with the peaceful knowledge that they are

welcome, home, and right in the world.

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Appendix A

Map 1.1 The French Routes of the Way of Saint James, Recognized by UNESCO

(International Council of Monuments and Sites 1998)

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Appendix B

Map 1.2 The Spanish Route of the Way of Saint James, Recognized by UNESCO

(International Council of Monuments and Sites 1993)

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Appendix C

The Scallop Shell and the Way of Saint James

The scallop shell is one of the most easily recognizable symbols of those

associated with the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. It has consistently appeared

along the path to Santiago since the 12th century. Even today, pilgrims to the shrine of

Saint James can be seen with the shells around their necks or sewn onto their hats or their

backpacks, identifying them to others as pilgrims of the Way. A sermon called

“Veneranda dies” from the twelfth century manuscript known as Liber Sancti Jacobi

explains why the symbol of the shell is associated with the pilgrim: “[…] it reminds him

of the spread fingers of the back of the hand” (Melczer, 1993, p. 58). One can only

speculate as to whether this is a reference to the virtue of charity or reaching out to God,

or some other interpretation.

Figure 1.2 Scallop shell

Other origin myths include variations of the thalassic resurrection of a horse and

rider. One of the first miracles associated with Saint James in Galacia has to do with a

horseman who was drawn into the ocean—horse and all—just about the time James’

body was arriving ashore on the stone raft. Rather than drown, the horse and rider

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emerged unharmed from the sea, covered in scallop shells thus sparking an association

that would last for centuries (Frey, 1998 p. 9).

The scallop shell has further symbolic ties to the underlying themes of the

pilgrimage in that it is “etymologically linked to Venus [Sp. venera = ‘scallop’] and by

association, birth and regeneration” (Frey, 1998, p. 54). It is also true that the shells can

be found in great abundance on the beaches near Cape Finisterre; pilgrims often comb the

beaches at the end of their journeys, searching for the souvenirs of their experience.

118

Appendix D

Composite History of the Cult of Santiago de Compostela

As the story goes, in or around the year 800 AD, a hermit in Galacia saw a shaft

of light spilling from the heavens and as hermits (a.k.a. wise men) are want to do, he

followed the light beam to a gathering of thick underbrush and growth. Upon

investigating further, the hermit discovered an unmarked tomb which was later declared

to be that of Saint James the Greater martyred apostle of Jesus of Nazareth and witness to

his transfiguration and the Agony in the Garden.

Figure 1.1 Bas-relief of Saint James at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela

Though there seems to be evidence supporting the above recounting of the discovery of

the tomb of Saint James, the story behind how he came to be buried in Galacia seems to

be one of legend. Supposedly, after James was beheaded under the order of Herod in

Jerusalem for his heretic evangelism, a small band of the apostle’s supporters gathered up

his body (along with his head) and spirited it away on a stone raft which was able to stay

afloat by divine intervention. The raft came ashore in Galacia where his body (along

with two of its rescuers) was buried in an unmarked tomb where it would not be

discovered for another 750 years.

119

120

After the Catholic Church learned of the hermit’s discovery, a church was built

over the site and a proper tomb was constructed to contain the holy relics. Soon

thereafter, as news of the miraculous discovery spread, stories about other miracles

associated with the site began to spring up and with the help of the sanctioning and

promotion of the Church, the compostela or ‘star field’ became a popular destination

point for pilgrims from all over medieval Europe.

Appendix E

020,00040,00060,00080,000

100,000120,000140,000160,000180,000

1986

1987

1988

1989

- Pop

e's V

isit

1990

1991

1992

1993

- Holy

Year

19

9419

9519

9619

9719

98

1999

- Holy

Year

2000

- Jub

ilee Y

ear

2001

2002

2003

2004

- Holy

Year

20

0520

06

Table 1.1 Number of recorded pilgrims gaining their Compostelas from 1986 to 2006 (Confraternity of Saint James, 2007

121