Peter Robins, his website

The Roads to Santiago - The "Pilgrim's Guide"

Background to the Codex

Codex Calixtinus is the name given to a compilation of documents to do with the history and cult of St James and the pilgrimage to his shrine in Santiago. It was seemingly based around a book of miracles, and probably compiled around the middle of the 12th century. It is called "Calixtinus" because it commences with a letter signed by Calixtus II, who was pope from 1119 until his death in 1124. This attribution to Calixtus is, however, bogus, so it's perhaps better to call it by its other name, the Liber Sancti Jacobi (LSJ), or Book of St James. Although it contains much of interest - for example, some of the liturgical pieces in Book I are among the earliest known examples of polyphony - by far the best-known part is the last, the "Pilgrim's Guide", which is itself a compilation of documents written by several different people at different times. The first printed edition of the Guide was that of Father Fidel Fita in 1882, and the first translations out of Latin were not until the 20th century. The first published English translation was that of James Hogarth for the Confraternity of St James in 1992.

The Political Context

Aquitaine

The first thing to be clear about is that, although many modern commentators claim that the Guide describes routes in France, this is not really the case. It's true the Capetian kings of France inherited the western part of the Carolingian empire and were nominally its rulers, but in practice into the 12th century they were weak, and only held sway in a comparatively small area - roughly NE of the Loire. If the Guide had covered 'France', it would no doubt have dealt with places such as St Denis or Reims, but it doesn't mention these; the only shrine in France mentioned is Orleans.

At the time of LSJ, the largest and most important part of what is now called France was Aquitaine, the capital of which, Poitiers, was the literary and cultural centre of the time, and the home of the troubadours. At this time, it consisted not only of the dukedom of Aquitaine (which stretched as far east as the Auvergne), but also of the County of Poitiers, and the dukedom of Gascony (see maps on Wikipedia: overview; more detailed). It also claimed suzerainty over the County of Toulouse, although it had lost control of this in 1120. So the area covered by the Guide's "four roads" broadly corresponds to Aquitaine, not 'France'. In fact, chapter VIII specifically distinguishes between the area covered and France, claiming that Philip of France ('Gallia' in the Latin) tried to carry off the relics of Martin, Leonard and Giles to France, but couldn't remove them from their sarcophaguses.

Castile

South of the Pyrenees, Alfonso VII of Castile had, as a child, grown up in Galicia, and Bishop Diego Gelmirez, that great proselytiser of the pilgrimage to Santiago, was one of his guardians. His uncle was the Burgundian Guy of Vienne, who in 1119 (when Alfonso was 14) became none other than Pope Calixtus II. Diego had been chancellor to Raymond of Burgundy, Calixtus's brother, and it was Calixtus who made Diego Archbishop in 1120 by transferring the metropolitanate of Merida - an act mentioned approvingly by the Guide at the end of chapter IX. Calixtus also made him papal legate in Spain. Chapter V mentions Diego, Alfonso and Calixtus together in the same sentence.

Alfonso's mother, Urraca, was first cousin to Guillaume IX of Aquitaine, and both kingdoms had fought together against the Moors in the early 1120s. So links were clearly established between Galicia/Castile south of the Pyrenees, and Aquitaine and Burgundy to the north.

Already as a child, Alfonso had been crowned king of Galicia in Santiago cathedral by Bishop Diego in 1111, and in 1135 he had himself crowned Imperator totius Hispaniae (the Guide (chapter V) refers to him as 'Imperator Hispaniae et Gallaeciae') and tried to unite the territories south of the Pyrenees. He also had aspirations to the north: according to the chronicle of his reign, the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris*, the Counts of Barcelona and Toulouse, and "all of the nobles from Gascony and from the area up to the Rhone River, including William of Montpellier, . . . became his vassals. . . . Many sons of French nobles, as well as many individuals from Poitiers, came also. . . . Hence the boundaries of the kingdom of Alfonso, ruler of León, extended from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, near where the city of our holy patron Santiago is located, all the way to the Rhone River."

Structure of Guide

The Guide is divided into 11 chapters of widely differing lengths; these are the page numbers in the Fita edition:

  1. the roads to St James - the famous 'quatuor viae' (pp2-3)
  2. the stages of the road (from the Pyrenees) (pp3-4)
  3. the names of the towns on the road (from the Pyrenees) (pp5-7)
  4. the 3 hospitales of the world (Jerusalem, Gt St Bernard, Somport) (p7)
  5. those who remade the road (p8)
  6. the good and bad rivers on the road (from the Pyrenees) (pp8-11)
  7. the names of the countries and nature of the people (brief mention of Toulouse-Somport-Puente la Reina, otherwise road from Tours) (pp11-20, 1 of which is reproduction of MS, 3 others complaints about Navarrans)
  8. the bodies of the saints which rest on the road and which pilgrims should visit (pp20-44; 36-43 is the Passion of Eutrope)
  9. the qualities of the town and basilica of Santiago (pp45-60)
  10. the number of canons in Santiago (lists how the cathedral offerings are divided) (pp60-61)
  11. how pilgrims of St James are to be received (3 stories of what happens to those who do not welcome pilgrims) (pp62-63)

So, two of the chapters (IX, X - 17pp, 28% of the total) are about Santiago itself, three (IV, V, XI - 1.5pp, 3%) are minor chapters of general interest, three (II, III, VI - 6.5pp, 11%) deal with the Camino Francés (including Navarre and Aragon), a further one (VII - 10pp, 16%) with the Camino Francés plus the road from Tours. Only two (I, VIII) deal with the 'quatuor viae': of these, I is only a brief overview (1p), and VIII, although it occupies 25pp (40% of the total), is largely hagiography and miracle-stories of the shrines, and seems to be written by different people and come from other sources.

Places mentioned

Aquitaine

Chapter I lists the following places on the 'four roads':

  • St Gilles, Montpellier, Toulouse, Somport
  • Le Puy, Conques, Moissac
  • Vézelay, St Léonard de Noblat, Périgueux
  • Tours, Poitiers, St Jean d'Angély, Saintes, Bordeaux

then Ostabat, St Michel, Port de Cize, Puente la Reina.

Chapter VII lists the following places on the road from Tours: Tours, Poitou, Saintonge, Bordeaux, Landes, Gascony, St Jean de Sorde, [Bayonne, mentioned as off-route], Ostabat, St Jean [this is what is now called St Jean le Vieux], St Michel Pied de Port

Chapter VIII gives details of the following shrines:

  • Arles (Trophimus, Caesarius, Honoratus, Genesius), St Gilles (Aegidius), St Guillaume le Désert, St Thibéry (Tiberius, Modestus, Florentius), Toulouse (Saturninus)
  • Le Puy, Conques (Ste Foy)
  • Vézelay (Mary Magdalene), Noblat (St Léonard), Périgueux (Fronto)
  • Orleans (rood, Evurtius, paten), Tours (Martin), Poitiers (Hilarius), St Jean d'Angély (head of John the Baptist), Saintes (Eutropius), Blaye (Roland), Bordeaux (Severinus, horn of Roland), Belin (various companions of Roland)

This is hardly detailed route description: for the 4 roads, a total of 7, 3, 3, 12 places respectively for 600-700km! Explicitly, it says there were 4 roads, but nowhere does it say what those roads actually were.

Also, contrary to the widely held view that these roads 'start' at the first shrine listed for each of the four roads, the text simply says that the road passes by this shrine; in other words, the first shrine is simply the one nearest to the border with Aquitaine. So, if you approached from the north, you would enter Aquitaine shortly after leaving Tours (which belonged to Anjou); if from Burgundy, between Vézelay and St Léonard de Noblat; if from the Auvergne, just before Le Puy; and if from Provence (which since 1112 had been joined to the County of Barcelona), between Arles and St Gilles.

At least north of the Pyrenees, chapter VIII and the Guide in general are not a road guide but an assorted collection of shrine descriptions bundled together in roughly the sequence a pilgrim would find coming from Anjou, Burgundy, Auvergne or Provence. Assuming this collection was assembled, not as documentation of an actual pilgrimage, but from a collection of documents the compiler happened to have to hand, this would also explain why some important shrines on these roads are missing. Anyone walking through the Limousin, for example, could hardly fail to notice St Martial in Limoges, but it would be missing if the document collection happened not to mention St Martial.

Spain

The chapters dealing with the Camino Francés give a reasonably detailed list of places, but only 3 shrines apart from Compostela itself are listed in chapter VIII: Santo Domingo, Sahagún (Facundus and Primitivus), León (Isidore).

Dating

Most authorities date LSJ to around 1140. However, as it is a compilation of various documents, it's likely these were composed at different times and it's entirely possible the finished version was not completed until later. See, for example, Gicquel*, who suggests there were several preliminary versions, with the last Book finalised around 1160. As we know the Ripoll copy was made in 1173, this makes this the latest possible date. The reference to Alfonso as 'Imperator' implies that it was written after his coronation in 1135. Several commentators conclude from the reference in chapter IX to the death of Louis VI (1137) that it must have been written after this; however, Hogarth states that this sentence is in a different hand, inserted at a later date.

A Pilgrim's Guide?

Leaving aside the hagiography, what we have here is the core of a medieval guidebook: a guide to Santiago cathedral, a guide to various aspects of the road from Tours and the Camino Francés - particularly the latter - plus a page or so on other ways of getting to the Pyrenees. This would appear to be written with the aim of helping pilgrims from Aquitaine to get to Santiago. The term "Pilgrim's Guide" was not, however, used in the Latin original. It seems to date from Jeanne Vielliard's seminal translation into French in 1938, and has given rise in some quarters to the notion that medieval pilgrims walked along with a copy of the guide in their hands like some prototype Baedeker. Of course, a moment's thought shows this is a ridiculous anachronism. Quite apart from anything else, the overwhelming majority of the medieval population - even many kings and nobles - were illiterate, and moreover did not know the Latin that the text is written in. What's more, they will have had no access to such a document.

Despite the obvious problems of reproduction in pre-printing-press times, other guides for pilgrims, such as various guides to the holy places of Palestine or Rome, and even some pilgrim itineraries, do appear to have been used by pilgrims on their travels, albeit only by a small number. There is though no evidence that this was ever the case with this guide. Only 12 copies are known, most Spanish (a complete copy of the Codex, as well as a fragment including chapters I-VII of the Guide, are in the British Library). None of these copies is in France, which seems to be the country it is primarily aimed at. Moreover, at no time does Book IV/V seem to have been copied separately from the rest of the Codex, which would have been the case if it were to have been used on a pilgrimage. After being compiled, it seems to have been taken to Santiago, where it was filed away and, apart from these dozen copies, forgotten about for 750 years when Father Fita produced his Latin edition, around the time of Leo XIII's Apostolic Letter confirming the identity of the recently excavated relics of St James. So, although it seems to have been written as a guide for pilgrims, it does not appear to have been used as such, and appears to have been completely unknown in what we now know as France until the 19th century.

Authorship

Chapters II and VI are attributed to "Pope Calixtus", VIII to "Aymericus", and IX to "Pope Calixtus and Aymericus the Chancellor". These may well be just as bogus as the purported preface to the Codex, and see Gerson* for a brisk dismissal of the widely-held view that the Guide as a whole was written by one Aimery Picaud from Parthenay.

The route guide, with its mentions of 'us', 'we French', 'when we were there', and its praise of people from Poitou, appears to be based on an actual pilgrimage of someone from those parts. On the other hand, some sections suggest the author had no first-hand experience. For example, the daily stages in chapter III are probably intended to be similar to the mansiones listed by other itineraries (see, for example, the Bordeaux pilgrim or Matthew Paris's London-Rome itinerary), but the distances vary widely, and quite a few (Borce to Puente la Reina as '3 short days', for example) are clearly impraticable, either on foot or by horse. Similarly, the author's views on the sexual perversions of Navarrans are clearly based on hearsay and not personal observation. This is perhaps another indication that the Guide, even if written by one person, was compiled from information from more than one source.

So why was the Guide written?

If it was never used by the generality of pilgrims, was it written for a specific pilgrimage? There was, in fact, a major pilgrimage from Poitou in 1137. Duke Guillaume X of Aquitaine (William the Saint), Count of Poitiers, and son of Guillaume IX, made a pilgrimage to Santiago then - in fact, died there, apparently of food poisoning. He will have had a large entourage and, given that the Guide would appear to have been written by a Poitevin, it's entirely possible that one of his party wrote the basic text for use by future pilgrims from those parts. However, if that was the case, then the logical thing to do would have been to take it back to Poitou afterwards and not leave it in Santiago to gather dust. Perhaps it simply got forgotten about in the turmoil caused by the duke's death.

Another possibility is that it was written before the duke's pilgrimage for use by those participating, perhaps by one of those 'individuals from Poitiers' who the chronicle claims had attended Alfonso's coronation two years previously. Once they got to Santiago, they didn't need the Guide any more and left it with the cathedral authorities who incorporated it into their Codex. If we also assume that people from all over Aquitaine joined Guillaume's pilgrimage, the 'quatuor viae' begin to make sense. Not a definitive list of Compostelan roads, but simple advice to those joining the pilgrimage from elsewhere - 'if you're coming from Burgundy, do try and fit in a visit to Vézelay, St Léonard and Périgueux'.

Why the hagiography was added?

On the face of it, filling 40% of your guide to the Camino de Santiago with information on other shrines is an odd thing to do. The norm with other medieval documents promoting shrines or relics is to belittle any rivals: 'the power of their relics is, of course, feeble compared with ours'. This, plus it's being limited to the area in and around Aquitaine, has led some historians - see, for example, the Fondation David Parou - to suggest that this lengthy digression on the other shrines was added later to bolster Castile's claims to Aquitaine. If these Aquitanian shrines were simply stages on the road to Santiago, that implies that they are subordinate to Santiago; it also implies that the land in which they are situated should be subordinate to the land where Santiago is situated, i.e. Castile. So the Guide attempts to link Santiago and the pilgrimage of St James with Aquitaine in the same way as the so-called Pseudo-Turpin, another part of LSJ, attempts to link them with the popular Charlemagne legends of the chansons de geste. (A well-known chanson de geste is the Pèlerinage de Charlemagne, also written around 1140, which purports to recount Charlemagne's pilgrimage to Constantinople and Jerusalem; like the Pseudo-Turpin, which recounts how Charlemagne, guided by the Milky Way, played a major role in the discovery of the body of St James and the instigation of the pilgrimage to Santiago, it is complete fiction.)

Why was the Guide forgotten?

However, although this provides an interesting angle on the background to the Guide, it doesn't explain why it lay forgotten in Santiago's archives for 750 years. Perhaps the main reason was a very simple one: the main driving force behind LSJ, Diego Gelmirez, died in 1140.

However, it's also possible that a factor was the major political changes of the next 15 years, which severed the links between Galicia/Castile and Aquitaine, and thwarted Alfonso's schemes. When Guillaume of Aquitaine died, he ignored Emperor Alfonso and appointed Louis the Fat (Louis VI) of France as guardian of his daughter Aliénor/Eleanor who, at the age of 15, became the most eligible heiress of the time. Louis promptly married her to his son, who became Louis VII on his father's death shortly after. So Aquitaine was now oriented north to the royal domains of France, not south to Castile. Alfonso's efforts to unite Spain were no more successful: also in 1137, Aragon merged with Barcelona, not Castile, in the Crown of Aragon, and when Alfonso died in 1157 his kingdom was divided amongst his children. A more lasting unification 'totius Hispaniae' had to wait for a further 300 years.

Had it been a success, Louis and Aliénor's marriage between France and Aquitaine would have cemented France's position as overlord of what is now SW France; but it wasn't. It was annulled in 1152, and Aliénor promptly married Henry, Count of Anjou, who became Henry II of England in 1154. So Aquitaine was still oriented north, though now to England, and what is now western France was fought over by France and England for the next 300 years - something Castile played little role in. The only part of Aquitaine which became in any lasting way 'Spanish' was Basse Navarre, the Merindad de Ultrapuertos, which was given by Richard the Lionheart, son of Henry and Aliénor, to his wife Berengaria of Navarre, who in turn passed it on to her brother Sancho VII; this remained part of Navarre until 1620.

Was it accurate?

Perhaps though the more interesting question about the Guide is: even if it wasn't used by pilgrims, does it accurately reflect the pilgrimage to Santiago? As discussed above, the evidence is mixed: in some respects it surely does; much of the description of food and drink, of landscapes, for example, rings true. There are though some caveats:

  • Area covered
    Because it's concentrated on Aquitaine and the Camino Francés, it ignores everywhere else. In Iberia, by the mid C12, when LSJ was compiled, Toledo was again a cultural and intellectual centre; Zaragoza, scene of the important Jacobean cult of Our Lady of the Pillar, had been recaptured, which in turn opened up routes from Catalonia; the kingdom of Portugal had recently been created. Pilgrims from the north arrived mainly by sea, and their passengers will have walked to Santiago from the coast, for example, along the route known as the English Road, the Camino Inglés. This of course is of particular interest to English people like myself, but such journeys were also made by Irish, Scots, Welsh, pilgrims from the Low Countries, Scandinavia, N Germany, Bretons and other places in W France . . . Pilgrim ships also sailed from the Mediterranean, for example from Genoa and Venice, to Catalonia and other ports on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. Yet none of these routes are mentioned in the Guide, nor are any of the coastal or other northern routes in Spain.
  • An evolving situation
    Moreover, even if the Guide did give us a detailed and accurate description of the routes at that time, this tells us little about the situation before or after.
    The route development pages give more details, but it's clear from pilgrim accounts that pilgrims at different times made detours, sometimes voluntary to visit other shrines en route, and sometimes forced by the political and military circumstances of the time. As Spain was gradually recaptured from the Moors, routes from those areas became available that were not available at the time of LSJ.
    As for the sea journeys, maritime trade became increasingly important during the Middle Ages. Although trade from England was concentrated on Gascony (the coastal road S from the Gironde estuary was so much used by English people that it too became known as the 'English Road'), there was substantial trade with N Spain too, including Galicia. Mediterranean galleys from the Italian merchant ports - Genoa, Pisa, Venice - made regular voyages via Galicia to England and Flanders from the 14th century. When numbers warranted it, for example during Holy Years, shipowners transported pilgrims as well as or instead of goods. Sea pilgrimages from France to Galicia are well documented too; for example, Marie d'Anjou, mother of Louis XI, sailed from La Rochelle in 1463.
    In addition, not only was the underlying politico-military and economic situation in flux, the status of the various shrines changed over time too. Rocamadour, for example, became one of the most important shrines in France, but only from the late C12, after LSJ. Other shrines lost in popularity; Vézelay is a prime example: it went into rapid decline after 1279, when the relics of Mary Magdalene were deemed to be in St Maximin, not Vézelay, and by the C16 the abbey was derelict. If a shrine was no longer popular, pilgrims to Santiago will no longer have gone there. One cannot assume that, just because a route is claimed to be important in a mid-C12 document, it remained important throughout the Middle Ages!
  • Route detail and supporting evidence
    As discussed above, the Camino Francés is described in some detail, but to find details for the Aquitaine routes, you would have to use other documentation, such as road documentation or pilgrim accounts. The page on French route development gives more details, but the only roads to the W Pyrenees with any substantial documentation are the main road south from the Loire valley and that from the Rhone delta via Toulouse. There seems to be little evidence, for example, of any major road via Le Puy, or for the claim that pilgrims from the east used the Somport.

Conclusion

So, to summarise: this supposed pilgrim's guide to the four roads of France was not used by pilgrims, nor used as a guide, reflects shrines not roads, and does not cover France! It is surely high time that modern commentators on the Camino stopped treating it as though it were some sort of holy writ, and the "four roads" the be-all and end-all of routes to Santiago. An important and interesting document it may be, but one to be taken together with all the other documentation on the pilgrimage to Santiago.

External resources

April 2005, revised and expanded January 2007