(1300s)
She’d journeyed to Jerusalem three times.
Strange rivers she had crossed in foreign climes.
She’d been to Rome and also to Boulogne,
To Galicia for Saint James and to Cologne,
And she knew much of wandering by the way.
She had the lover’s gap teeth, I must say.
—Geoffrey Chaucer1
As the 14th century began it seemed to be conventional wisdom that the Spanish Reconquista was on the verge of imminent completion while the days of Islamic Iberia were severely numbered. The brief flirtation with cultural coexistence introduced by Alfonso the Wise had ended with rebellions on both ends of the extreme political spectrum—one by his supposed Islamic vassal in Granada, and the other, far more devastating, by his own son and aristocratic allies who only saw in coexistence their own worldly privileges and prerogatives being threatened. Now, by the year 1301, Alfonso’s grandson, Ferdinand IV (1285–1312) El Emplazado (“The Summoned”) occupied the throne of Castile and thoughts of reconciliation with Muslims and Jews could not have been further from the Christian mentality of that era. Then, contrary to expectations on all sides, the world itself seemed to convulse and depopulate, sending severe, multiple disruptions and political disorders across the whole of Europe, including Iberia. Although the fragile and vulnerable Kingdom of Granada would not be completely immune from these disasters, it somehow appeared to weather them better than most, giving it a new lease on life for over another century to come. What emerged from this century-long reprieve was a city-state of legendary beauty and refinement that still captures the popular imagination and, for many, even among Christians, causes them to grieve for its eventual and irretrievable loss in the year 1492.
Despite showing considerable promise and determination, Ferdinand IV died in 1312 at age 26 under mysterious circumstances, according to some in divine retribution for a capital miscarriage of justice against some of his own knights.2 His 23-year-old Queen, Constance of Portugal, joined him in death shortly thereafter in 1313. In hindsight, these setbacks appeared like an ominous harbinger of events for the rest of the century, especially with respect to the Christian Reconquista effort. Nevertheless, the overall mood of the era in Christendom was still optimistic, as reflected in Dante Alighieri’s poem Paradiso, in which the pilgrim narrator and his guide Beatrice, encounter and receive encouragement from SS. James, John, and Peter (see Chapter 21).3 Ferdinand and Constance left a one-year-old son behind them, the future King Alfonso XI (1311–1350) El Lusteçero (“The Avenger”), while adult rival claimants to the Castilian throne all perished during an attempted but failed invasion of Granada in 1319. After Alfonso later came of age, he led the Castilians to victory in 1330 at the Battle of Teba near Málaga. Among the Christian casualties during that successful engagement was a prominent Scottish nobleman, Sir James Douglas; by this point in history, outside Europeans were fulfilling Crusader vows by joining the Spanish Reconquista rather than traveling to Middle East to die far away from home in vain. Then in 1340, an attempted Islamic invasion of Iberia from Marinid North Africa to relieve the pressure was thrown back by combined Castilian and Portuguese forces under Alfonso at the Battle of Río Salada near Cádiz. Back on the offensive by 1344, Alfonso conquered Algeciras, and after that, began planning a siege of Gibraltar, which now stood alone with the city of Granada as the sole remaining outposts of Iberian Islam.4 For Spanish Christians, total victory was now clearly in sight, as Granada braced itself for what appeared to be the final, inevitable onslaught. Then came the unexpected.
The origins of the Black Death in Europe have been widely studied with much speculation and hypothesis, but it is not within our purpose herein to recap the various competing theories. It is generally agreed, however, that the pandemic first began somewhere in central Asia, perhaps India, then rapidly spread in all directions with an impact never witnessed before by recorded civilization, hitting particularly hard in the urban centers of Eurasia and North Africa. No one knows exactly how many people died, but some fairly reliable estimates believe it was roughly one out of every three persons. The plague reached Europe by boat in 1348, no doubt accelerated by the expanding globalized economy and booming east-west trade along the Silk Road in wake of Marco Polo and other world travelers from the Italian city-states.5 There is also some evidence that by the mid–14th century, the civilized world had become overpopulated in terms of man-made infrastructure systems being unable to support its growing number of dependents. Many prospered and multiplied, but far more lived in poverty and squalor. It was perhaps Nature’s unforgiving way of making a correction in human folly. Whichever the causes, the mortality rate was so overwhelming that survivors at first denied what was happening all around them, or joked about it while trying to cope, then finally mourned and lamented, being helpless to do much of anything until the devastation had run its course. Very slowly, very gradually, limited preventive measures were identified and implemented, but the process took several generations and ultimately proved more useful in blunting or containing the effects of future outbreaks, provided those outbreaks were similar in cause.
The Iberian Peninsula was no different than the rest of Europe in this regard. The Black Death swept away Christian, Muslim, and Jew, regardless of economic class, political allegiance or religious sect. Its most prominent victim, however, was King Alfonso XI of Castile, who at age 39, expired in March of 1350 while laying siege to Gibraltar, having remarked shortly before that while he feared no man, he very much feared the plague, which indeed proved to be the cause of his sudden demise.6 After Alfonso’s death, everyone looked to their own safety, and the Castilian threat to Gibraltar and Granada receded as speedily as the Black Death continued to advance forward. Everything, for that matter, seemed to stop in its tracks. Then the most talented Italian poets, at least those still left alive, such as Boccaccio and Petrarch, began to write about the catastrophe, either directly or by inference, trying their best to articulate the widespread sense of grief and loss.7 Curiously, although no precise numbers are available, the impact of the pandemic on the city of Granada, while terrible, also appears to have been somewhat less severe than on the Christian dominions then closing in around it, possibly because at that unique point in history, Granada probably had the best sanitation, the best medicine, and the highest living standards (read: civic support systems) in all of Europe. Meanwhile in northern Iberia, it is difficult to surmise whether pilgrimage traffic to Santiago de Compostela along the Camino Frances was more reduced due to higher overall death rates or in fact more increased by those fleeing from perceived certain death in the cities.
Even before the Black Death began to reconfigure world demographics, however, Europe managed to self-inflict itself another major wound with the Hundred Years War between France and England, breaking out in 1337.8 The Reconquista and Saint James the Greater had nothing to do with this conflict. Instead, two of western civilization’s most wealthy and powerful emerging nation-states, neither interested any longer in Middle Eastern crusading, began to relentlessly hammer away at each other over territorial rights on opposite sides of what later became known as the English Channel. Unlike the Reconquista, which ground to halt during the pandemic, the Hundred Years War dragged on remorselessly year after year. Even as the ranks of contending French and Anglo armies were thinned out mid-century by the bubonic plague, it only seemed to increase determination on both sides never to capitulate. Somehow surviving all this mayhem was the greatest English writer of the Middle Ages, Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400), whose Middle English masterpiece The Canterbury Tales was written during the last decades of the poet’s life. It seems likely that pilgrimage life on the road as portrayed by Chaucer was not unlike that simultaneously transpiring in northern Iberia along the Caminos to Santiago de Compostela. The primary difference between the two was that Canterbury pilgrimage traffic was more localized.
Canterbury Tales also forever provides readers with a lively portrait of society from that time and place, set within the context of English pilgrimage whose characters are, for the most part, fleeing the ravages of plague under the guise of religious tourism. Chaucer’s unforgettable Wife of Bath is introduced in the Prologue, along with other main characters. She openly boasts of her many other pilgrimages, including to Santiago de Compostela (see header quote). Chaucer was himself documented to have been a savvy continental traveler—which likely saved his life from random death in the cities—including a possible trip to Santiago conjectured by some biographers, although this is unproven. What is in fact firmly documented is that Chaucer, in addition to being a great writer, was a successful civil servant and retainer under at least two British monarchs, Edward III and Richard II, as well brother-in-law to John of Gaunt, father to King Henry IV.9 Another societal aspect vividly revealed by The Canterbury Tales and Chaucer’s later writings in general is that public faith in religious institutions and religious leaders had been understandably shaken and undermined after the multiple calamities of the 14th century.10
By way of contrast, the journeys and pilgrimages of Chaucer and his semi-fictional (or semi-autobiographical) characters were short local excursions compared to those of the Berber world traveler Muhammad Ibn Battuta (1304–1369?), whose astonishing Arabic-language memoir Rihla (“Journey”) was dictated after his return to Morocco in 1354 and began to circulate about the same time that Chaucer was producing his greatest works in Middle English. Ibn Battuta began traveling around the year 1325 as an obligatory religious pilgrim to Mecca, but in the process discovered that he had a taste and knack for living on the road. Over the next three decades, he would traverse most of the civilized world across Eurasia and Africa, dwarfing even the earlier long travels of Marco Polo by comparison. In 1350, following a sudden impulse, Ibn Battuta rushed across the straits to Iberia to fight as a jihadist in what appeared to be Granada’s last stand against the Christian Reconquista. By the time that he arrived at Gibraltar from Tangiers (his home town), King Alfonso XI was dead and the immediate crisis over, although Battuta dodged death a second time as the regiment he sought to join was ambushed and killed or captured shortly thereafter.
Reaching Granada, Battuta was amazed at the Islamic kingdom’s beauty, prosperity, and refinement (see Chapter 10).11 There he met Ibn Juzayy, an Iberian scholar whose father had been killed 10 years earlier at the Battle of Río Salada, and who happily took on the not inconsiderable task of writing Battuta’s dictated travel memoirs. In effect, Juzayy played the important role of Rustichello da Pisa to Battuta’s Marco Polo.12 Understandably, the dead Alfonso is characterized by Battuta and Juzayy as a “tyrant” punished by God for his arrogance and presumption.13 Then the world traveler turned back to his forte, descriptive prose. When not being dazzled by the agricultural bounty of Al-Andalus (especially during an era in which worldwide hunger was common), Battuta speaks of Gibraltar, named after the eighth century conqueror of Iberia (see Chapter 3), in the reverential tone of a religious pilgrim.14 To Juzayy and Battuta, the shrine-like Gibraltar is a “Mountain of Victory” and “stronghold of Islam, a choking obstruction in the throats of the worshippers of idols.”15 In Battuta’s memoir, Gibraltar becomes an interesting symbolic counterpart to its approximate Christian equivalent, Santiago de Compostela. Many centuries later, fate would play one of its many ironic tricks on both Spain and Morocco by transforming Gibraltar (along with its iconic rock) into a tiny nation-state of its own, after having been the flashpoint of numerous military contests between various world powers throughout history.16
As for Spanish Christendom, its misfortunes were far from being over. By 1367, the Kingdom of Castile and León had turned upon itself by erupting into civil war, resulting in the overthrow of Alfonso’s anointed successor, King Pedro I (1350–1369) el Cruel (“The Cruel”), who during his unproductive reign mainly busied himself with making unnecessary war on neighboring Aragón. Then in 1385, Castile made the big mistake of picking a fight with its old rival Portugal and was badly defeated by them at the Battle of Aljubarrota. For this memorable engagement, the Portuguese had enlisted its useful English allies and loudly invoked the protection of Saint George while prevailing over the Castilians, as well as their traditional protector, Saint James the Greater. Shortly thereafter, in 1387, this effective Portuguese-English alliance was formalized by marriage between King João (John) I with Philippa of Lancaster, daughter to John of Gaunt, a woman likely known to Gaunt’s brother-in-law and contemporary, Geoffrey Chaucer. In any event, this maiden era of ongoing Portuguese-Anglo cooperation may well have marked the beginning of long-term distrust and hostility between England and Spain, animosity that would find full violent expression during the 16th century and continuing somewhat into the present day (see Chapter 13).
Returning to the 1300s, Castile’s military setbacks had indeed been severe and in rapid order. Within the mere space of 35 years it had gone from the cusp of dominating all of Iberia to being thrown into an unaccustomed defensive posture by its surrounding neighbors Granada, Aragón, Portugal, and England. This political descent was in turn aggravated by one of the more sordid periods in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, an institution from which Castile and Toledo derived much of its presumed authority. Beginning in 1378, two popes claimed simultaneous legitimacy, one based in Rome and the other in Avignon, France.17 This embarrassing situation would continue for the rest of the century and beyond. Avignon and the southern Rhone Valley had in fact been a summer residence for the popes since the early 1300s, during which time the papacy itself became a political football between Italian and French Cardinals. After the break, Castile and Aragón sided with Avignon while, not too surprisingly, Portugal and England allied themselves with Rome. Because of this divided ecclesiastic authority and prestige, it became almost impossible to do anything unanimously in the name of the Christian religion. Even a humble pilgrim traveling on foot to Santiago de Compostela might be hard pressed to answer which earthly Pontificate the cult of Saint James the Greater served. Technically, it would be Avignon since Castile had given formal recognition. The reality, however, was that many Spanish Catholics stayed loyal to Rome or could never accept any religious authority originating from France. It is worth recalling that by the late 1300s, the old alliances between Spain and France—never strong to begin with—had long since vanished, now replaced by the escalating rivalries of emerging European nation-states, with France and England occasionally using a still divided Christian Iberia as their pawn in these wider struggles.
And yet some vestiges of solidarity remained. If along the Camino Frances images of Santiago still inspired the devout, so did those of Saint Martin of Tours (especially in France), whose shrine had been so vigorously defended by the Franks back in 732 as a prelude to the Reconquista (see Chapter 3). Moreover, Martin is traditionally venerated as patron saint of the same poor and impoverished who so surely swelled the ranks of Camino pilgrims during the late Middle Ages. The historical Bishop Martin also had odd roundabout connections with the Santiago cult, via the Priscillian controversy of the fourth century (see Chapter 1), and much later the shrines of the saints became intertwined along the same Franco-Spanish thoroughfares crossing over the Pyrenees Mountains.18 In Paris itself to this day along the Rue St. Jacques, travelers may contemplate a bas relief depiction of Saint Martin severing his cloak for the benefit of a homeless beggar at the entrance to the Saint-Séverin Church in the Latin Quarter section of the city along the Left Bank.19 Named after either a shadowy fifth century Parisian hermit or a shadowy fifth century Parisian abbot, the current structure dates from the mid–15th century when the church was rebuilt after damage from the ongoing Hundred Years War.20 Certain Gothic or Romanesque elements of the design hark back to those of earlier-built religious shrines along the Camino, including those in Toulouse (named after Saint Sernin, not Saint Séverin) and Santiago de Compostela.21 The site remains a popular tourist and pilgrim destination, having survived 15 centuries worth of upheavals caused by war, revolution, plague, schism, and time itself.
Adjacent to Saint-Séverin in Paris is the famed Musée National du Moyen Âge, originally the Hôtel de Cluny and dating from the early 14th century (see Chapter 7). Even before Europe and Spain were blindsided by the Black Death, the booming medieval industry of hospitality along the Camino Frances reached new and greater proportions. Vestiges of this industry still exist, some continuing to serve tourists who may or may not be traveling in route to faraway Santiago de Compostela. Food and lodging naturally play a big role in this apparatus, occasionally appearing in the most unlikely places and forms. In the ubiquitous outdoor markets of Paris near the vicinity of the Rue St. Jacques it is not difficult to find “St. Jacques scallops” for sale, named not after the street but for the emblematic scallop shell of Saint James the Greater. By the time one finally reaches Spain anywhere along the Camino, it is easy to enjoy delicacies such as Galician “Santiago” almond cake (“Torto de Santiago”), a local signature (gluten-free) desert, typically decorated with the Cross of the Order of Santiago, and having its culinary origins during the Middle Ages. On a more bizarre level, it is also not difficult to find restaurants worldwide named after the patron saint of all Christian pilgrims. These range from the touristy Restaurante St. James in Madrid’s posh Barrio de Salamanca, to the American small town vibe of the St. James Restaurant located in Spanish-named Avilla, Indiana.22 This digressively broad topic obviously could generate a book by itself, but a few random examples such as these demonstrate how the Santiago cult eventually became a global phenomenon via tourist pilgrimage beginning in the Middle Ages, whether it be to Canterbury, England, or Santiago de Compostela in Spanish Galicia.
Choosing artwork that captures the disoriented spirit of 14th century Iberia is no easy task, but perhaps we would not be totally remiss in looking beyond that specific era, after the shocks had long passed but near enough in memory to have been thoroughly internalized by European society. In this respect, the late 16th century work of Doménikos Theotokópoulos (1541–1614), better known as El Greco (“The Greek”), is appropriately representative of a much older time and place, yet instantly recognizable by its unmistakable style and mood. This is not surprising since the life and career of El Greco were also one of a kind. Born on the Venetian-ruled Greek island of Crete, he had migrated west to Spain and Toledo (via Venice, Rome, and Madrid) by age 36, yet his painting never seemed to lose its original Byzantine iconic flavor. Like his Venetian predecessor Lorenzo Lotto (see Chapter 8), El Greco was a journeyman artist in the truest sense of the phrase, but on a much broader geographic and cultural landscape. Fleeing the impoverished and militarily contested environment of Crete, El Greco landed at ultra-Roman Catholic Toledo in response to a demand for outside artists when the dominant Italians and French saw no attraction in exchanging their native lands for the growing tyranny of Hapsburg Spain (see Chapter 13). El Greco spent the last 37 years of his life in Toledo, where he produced some of the greatest masterpieces of the early Spanish Golden Age. Most of these have devout Christian religious themes, including multiple depictions of Saint James the Greater, with the majority of these portraying an unstable earthly existence in which all human endeavors have been blasted by various setbacks seemingly beyond anyone’s control.
The first overt indication that El Greco was a tremendous genius (as opposed to merely a good painter) came during the late 1580s when he was commissioned by his own parish church in Toledo, the Iglesia de Santo Tomé (Church of Saint Thomas) to create a huge canvass depicting the miraculous Burial of the Count of Orgaz (1586–1588). Orgaz, aka Don Gonzalo Ruíz, was historically minor but highly popular local knight and jurist in Toledo interred at Santo Tomé who had previously donated a large sum of money for its beautification. His death in the year 1312 (the same year that the young King Ferdinand IV had died) harked back to a much earlier period in Spanish history in which such losses seemed to presage an entire century filled with premature loss. According to the legend, attendees of the public funeral for Orgaz were dazzled by an apparition of SS. Stephen and Augustine appearing to personally lay the body of the deceased to rest. El Greco’s grandiose, heroic treatment of the legend won him instant fame and recognition. Many of the themes and motifs in the work are parallel to those of the Santiago legend: famous saints supernaturally appearing and actively participating in current affairs, the living being inspired by these divine interventions, an unapologetic overlap between politics and religion, etc. Curiously, however, King Philip II of Spain was not a fan of El Greco’s style, and the artist’s livelihood remained firmly rooted in Toledo throughout his long career.23 Nevertheless, after 1588, important paintings were typically expected from El Greco, and he frequently did not disappoint in this regard.
Not surprisingly, El Greco’s interpretations of Spain’s patron saint began to appear shortly thereafter. One prototype, perhaps dating from the 1590s and now displayed in the Museo de Santa Cruz of Toledo, shows Santiago as a full figure pilgrim with his standard paraphernalia—a staff, a codex, and a hat (on shoulder) sporting a scallop shell emblem.24 The execution is competent, straightforward, and a bit pedestrian—not displaying the high level of genius that we today have come to expect from this outstanding master. By way of contrast, not long after this, or around the same time (1597–1599), El Greco created one of his most celebrated canvasses, that of Saint Martin and the Beggar, with a larger version found at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and a smaller version of the same image at the Art Institute of Chicago. The work dramatically depicts the most famous scene from Martin’s life, one in which as a young cavalryman he divides his cloak with a sword and gives half to a freezing, naked beggar along the roadside. The beggar may as well have been a pilgrim along one of the Caminos during the miserable mid–14th century. Martin is astride a magnificent Arabian white mount, not as a military avenger like Santiago Matamoros, but rather as a benefactor to the poor, the weak, and the disenfranchised. Martin’s bright green cloak unfolds across nearly the entire length of the scene, as if to emphasize that there was plenty to go around for everyone. Whereas El Greco’s earlier Santiago portrait had seemed a bit uninspired by comparison, his Saint Martin and the Beggar must rank as one his most inspired (and inspirational) creations.
The old master, however, was not finished with Saint James the Greater. During the last decade of the artist’s life (1604–1614), another prototype appears for Santiago. This time, Saint James is not viewed as a fully-equipped, confident traveler along the Camino, and certainly not as any sort of military conqueror. By the 17th century, the Reconquista was long over, not completely unlike the mid–14th century in which the Black Death seemingly brought all human aspirations to a complete standstill. Now Saint James is imagined by the artist as a rather dirty, unshaven, and unkempt highway beggar, rustic staff in hand, the other hand ambiguously outstretched either to invite us along for the journey or (more likely) asking us for alms. This version of Saint James as an impoverished and homeless pilgrim was of a type not often seen on canvass, and the effect is both unsettling and unforgettable.25 Is it a portrait of the artist as a young man? Closer inspection reveals a bright green cloak betraying the look of a luxurious hand-me-down. Then we, as the viewers, realize that it appears to be the very same green cloak given to the beggar by Saint Martin in El Greco’s earlier work. Saint Martin’s beggar is thus transformed into Saint James the Greater as a Camino pilgrim in want. The overall message is not one of Reconquista, patriotism, pilgrimage, or tourism, but rather of moral and social commentary. El Greco’s brilliant and unique contribution to a soon-to-be overworked genre of the 17th century (see Chapter 14) may today be viewed at the El Greco Museum in Toledo, along with his slightly less vivid versions of the same later prototype at the Museum of Fine Arts Asturias in Oviedo, Spain, and at Oxford University in Great Britain.26
As the wretched 14th century in Europe drew to a merciful close, all participants in the ongoing Iberian drama seemed to draw a collective breath. Santiago and Spanish Christians may have been down, but they were far from being out. The new century to come would be no less violent or tragic than its predecessor, but there would be far more geo-political change, ending with what later historians would dub “The Encounter,” as a Genoese mariner turned Spanish explorer for hire would venture into unknown territory and, more importantly, make it widely known to others thereafter. In the meantime, as Europe reeled from depopulation, newly emerging nation-state rivalries, and a fractured papacy, Islamic Iberia was perhaps lured into a false sense of security as Grenada enjoyed the height of its prosperity and prestige. All of this was about to be permanently disrupted. The papacy would reconsolidate far more quickly than it had taken to break apart. Castile would recover its lost prestige. Major military and political shock waves would be felt from the far east, sending ripple effects to the opposite side of the European continent. At almost the same instant in time, one of the most outstanding political figures in world history would be born in Castile, though it would be decades before many people realized it. Then suddenly, with little warning, Santiago Matamoros would reappear on the Iberian scene with a vengeance.