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In 950 a bishop -and his followers-
was one of the earliest, who walked the camino to Santiago
and recorded it. Because of the local churches' word-of-mouths
publicity, this pilgrimage became even more popular than
the other two main destinations, Jerusalem and Rome. The
testimonies of cures and miracles along the way brought
Kings, nobles and commoners (and lots of their money)
from all over Europe. Some had their expenses underwritten
by their villages to go pray for rain or relief from the
plague.
The equivalent of the Hollywood PR
machine spread the word of miracle cures and built an
infrastructure of churches, hospices, monasteries and
refugios (hostels) along the route to accommodate the
hundreds of thousands of pilgrims and spend their money
at Disney World, uh I mean on the Camino de Santiago de
Compostela.
12th-century Challice
in O Cebreiro
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Miracles
on the road exploded and became increasingly weird
and grotesque. Just a few of the hundreds recorded
and publicized by the church include miraculous
cures, resuscitation from death, release from
imprisonment, aid in battle, rescue from drowning
and forgiveness from sins. A few specifics are:
- A dead groom brought back
to life after one whole year.
- Thomas Aquinas levitating 3 ft of the floor.
- A group of nuns praying on their heads. Miraculously
their skirts
clung tastefully about heir ankles.
- A teenager, Christina, was so poor that she
had nothing to give up,
except food. She lived on nothing. Miraculously
her "dry virgin
breasts" filled with milk and she
fed of them.
- In O Cebreiro the host and wine visibly turned
into flesh and blood.
The 12th-century challice on the
left became a true sign, for the
thousands of pilgrims, of the real
presence of Christ at the
Eucharist. |
Some of the holy, certified, relics, which the Catholic apparatus
displayed in churches along the way to attract more pilgrims
are still bringing in people today:
- Bits of the true cross, on which Jesus died.
- A vial of milk from the Virgin Mary's breasts.
- Locks of her hair.
- Several pieces of manna, rained down on the Israelites.
- Chunks of bread, left over from the Last Supper.
- One of the jugs from the marriage of Cana, in which Christ miraculously changed water
into wine.
(If I could only have this one).
Did we experience any miracles on our 800 kilometer trip? Well, overall we had beautiful
weather (except for 3 days of rain, 3 days of very hot and 3 days of very windy and cold
weather) and we completed the hike in 28 days. Six days faster than all the guide-books
suggest, with still plenty of time every day to enjoy art and architecture, good food and
wine.
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