Paris to the Pyrenees, From a Traveler’s Notebooks, Part 7: Vézelay, relics, and the pilgrimage-tourist trade
These blog posts are taken directly from my notebooks. They contain much of the material that went into the final version of the surprise bestseller Paris to the Pyrenees: A Skeptic Pilgrim Walks the Way of Saint James.
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Part adventure story, part cultural history my book explores the phenomenon of pilgrimage along the centuries-old Way of Saint James in France—not in Spain. Starting in Paris then training to Northern Burgundy we trekked 750 miles south, an eccentric route taking 72 days on Roman roads and pilgrimage paths—a 1,100-year-old network of trails leading to the sanctuary of Saint James the Greater. It is best known as El Camino de Santiago de Compostela—“The Way” for short. The book includes 32 pages of evocative color photographs by Alison Harris. She has generously provided the images that appear with these posts.
What follows is unexpurgated, unedited material—the uncut version.
The paperback of Paris to the Pyrenees comes out in April 2014…
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photo copyright Alison Harris
Paris to the Pyrenees, From a Traveler’s Notebooks, Part 7: Vézelay, relics, and the pilgrimage-tourist trade
Santiago was the mothership but to lure pilgrims to other “holy places” such as Vézelay along the Saint Jacques route, bishops and abbots vied to acquire body parts of Jacques (St James the Greater) and other saints and martyrs. They bought, sold, traded and stole skeletons, fingers, toes, skulls, tibia and fibia, tufts of hair, shreds of holy cloth, tatters of Saint Martin’s cape, coffins, nails of the True Cross, bags of holy dirt, flacons of water that had been poured over relics, and suchlike.
In Vézelay a miracle occurred. An important stopover for northern and eastern European pilgrims heading to Spain, Vézelay also “discovered” one day in the early 1000s that it possessed the remains of a powerful personage… Mary Magdalene.
Egad! What were Mary’s bones doing in Vézelay? That was like asking how a saint had been made of a wild young woman of loose virtue, a long-haired, possibly crazed groupie who dried Jesus’ feet with her hair and would probably be in a padded cell were she alive today.
One version of the mystery-of-Mary’s-bones claimed that, while on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, a monk from Vézelay named Badilon had taken the saint’s remains into custody and brought them back for safekeeping. Another version claimed they had been secretly removed from the seaside sanctuary of Sainte-Baume near Marseille and hidden at Vézelay from marauding Saracens. Confusion reigned. Events in both versions supposedly took place in the eighth century, but were attested by eleventh-century documents with important-sounding Latin titles written, of course, in Vézelay. The dispute was resolved by a Papal Bull of 1058 sanctifying the relics’ authenticity. It must have been quite a Bull.
With Mary Magdalene’s bones in its crypt the Vézelay basilica soared in status, becoming not merely a stopover but the starting point and, for many, the goal of pilgrimages. In purpose-built shelters both underground and along Vézelay’s streets, up to 10,000 pilgrims could be found on a given day.
That figure seems all the more astonishing considering the village’s size. The current year-round population hovers around 500.
As the numbers of Jacquet pilgrims swelled so too did the refuges, monasteries, abbeys and villages that sprang up to lodge, feed and often despoil travelers. Roads were improved and bridges built. Trade expanded as economies boomed. The nascent pan-European, Catholic culture took hold, bringing a semblance of order after the chaos of the “Barbarian” invasions of the Mediterranean Basin and Gaul, the Moorish conquest of Iberia, and the doctrinal debates and heresies that had divided early Christianity. Never mind that the cult of relics smacked of idolatry and had pagan or “heathen” roots: the term “thaumaturge” itself recalls the ancient Greek pantheon of “wonder-workers.”
Like cathedrals erected atop Roman temples themselves tucked into Celtic or prehistoric, megalithic sacred sites, the superstructure of the medieval church rose upon layers borrowed from pre-Christian belief. It found truly miraculous ways to accommodate everything from heresy to polytheism, in the form of saint-worship. That was its strength.
The network of capillary pilgrimage trails and major arteries to Compostela (Compostelle in French) some scholar’s claim, pumped blood through Europe again for the first time since the decline of ancient Rome. For these historical reasons and other, contemporary pork-barrel motivations, in recent decades the Council of Europe, UNESCO and a handful of European governments and regions have underwritten projects aimed at reinvigorating or recreating a modern interstate pilgrimage network.
Marginally religious, the Saint Jacques routes and the sites along them are nowadays a cultural, even political embodiment of re-found European unity. They create jobs, stimulate the economy and help in the battle to maintain Europe’s cultural patrimony or heritage if you prefer.
Across from the Scallop Shell crêperie another bivalve-shaped sign pointed to the headquarters of les Amis de Compostelle. The building housing the Friends of Compostelle appeared to be at least 500 years old. On the ground floor under thick ceiling timbers an artist displayed the kind of work found in better American motels.
We followed the scallop shell insignia up a creaking staircase to a sparsely furnished room. In it perched two pilgrims layered in sensible, warm clothes. Of indeterminate age and suntanned like the young lion on our train from Paris, I guessed they had crossed into their 60s and were recent but dynamic retirees. They welcomed us with hearty, earnest handshakes. Large maps hanging from the otherwise bare walls showed the various pilgrimage routes across France to Spain and Compostelle…
Read part 8 about the colorful (eccentric) Friends of Compostela at Vézelay, and the Rebirth of the Modern Pilgrimage Route
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photo copyright Alison Harris
Coming up in the next part: Vézelay, rites, rituals, Easter Sunday, and more about the pilgrimage-tourist trade
Watch a video about us walking the pilgrimage route in Paris
Please come back, blog post 9 coming up soon…
Images by Alison Harris copyright all rights reserved. Note: some images are from other sources.
Listen to an interview about Paris to the Pyrenees with Jacki Lyden on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday
Listen to David being interviewed by NPR Paris correspondent Eleanor Beardsley about the pilgrimage revival
Snippets of reviews/praise:
“Evocative and moving… Downie’s quest is unconventional in tone and spirit as well as route. A lively wordsmith, Downie brings a deep and impassioned knowledge of French history, culture, and language to this pilgrimage. He also brings something more, a longing that he himself can’t pin down at the beginning… they encounter a memorable succession of taciturn, deep-rooted local farmers and gregarious, transplanted-from-Paris innkeepers. They also encounter the multi-layered, interweaving pathways of French history, commerce, religion, and spirituality—and manage to tuck in a few sumptuous celebrations of French food and wine, too. The result is an extraordinary account that illuminates France past and present and casts a light on something even greater: the truth that, however we choose to label our journey, we are all pilgrims on a common quest, to answer why we wander life’s question-paved path.” (Don George – National Geographic Traveler)
“In the tradition of Patrick Leigh Fermor, David Downie takes off on foot. Such a rigorous, slow journey—the polar opposite of airport-to-airport travel—gives him the gift of time, and the chance to absorb, taste, and experience the places he sees. Downie’s adroit, learned, and ambitious book re-invigorates my sense of travel, taking me back to the happy knowledge that the world is still large, and history unfathomably deep.” (Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun)
“Profound. A witty and intelligent spin on the spiritual-journey motif.” (Kirkus Reviews)
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Order the paperback of Paris to the Pyrenees, it comes out in April 2014!
