The Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela: A Bibliographic Update

THE PILGRIMAGE TO SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA: A BIBLIOGRAPHIC UPDATE Maryjane Dunn Lufkin, Texas "In the year 2525, if man is still alive, ifwoman can survive, they may find...."1 In the last 25 years, the medieval pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela has become a fashionable topic for study by art historians, musicologists, historians,literaryscholars, anthropologistsandarcheologists. Pilgrimage frequently serves as the frame for university classes concerning the medieval period. This interest in the Camino de Santiago parallels the incredible increase in the numbers of pilgrims traveling the Camino(s) to Santiago de Compostela. As I began to examine what has been written about the pilgrimage to Compostela in the past 20 years I found myself asking what scholars 500 years hence will say about this millennial era and the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. What will be seen as the cultural, religious, literary, economic, and sociological similarities and differences between 1 "In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus)", written by Richard Evans, produced by Denny Zager and Richard Evans. RCA Records, 1969. La corónica 36.2 (Spring 2008): 415-25 416Maryjane DunnLa corónica 36.2, 2008 Santiago pilgrims ofthe first and second millennia? Halfway to the third millennium, what will be the bibliographic remains to be gleaned and picked over by scholars? In general, pilgrimage to Compostela reached its first zenith in the twelfth through thirteenth centuries, when scholars estimate that 250,000 pilgrims from across Europe visited St. James's shrine each year. Although the Reformation is often considered the death knell for the pilgrimage to Compostela (and other lesser pilgrimages as well), pilgrims continued to make their way to the Galician shrine, although in smaller and smaller numbers and with less universality, through the twentieth century. The universal interest in the Santiago pilgrimage increased dramatically beginning in the 1970s. This awakening of interest in the Camino de Santiago is attributed to various persons, and interest groups -René de la Coste Messelière2 and Madame DebriP in France, Fathers Javier Navarro4 and Elias Valiña Sampedro5 in Spain, the pilgrimagebased university study trips from the United States led by David Gitlitz and Linda Davidson6- and to the recognition of the pilgrimage route, its towns, and its churches, not only in Spain, but across Europe as important artistic, cultural, sociological and historical heritage sites.7 A quick search shows an increase in the numbers of compostelanas8 granted from only 2,500 in 1985, to 10,000 in 1992, and to 179,944 in 2004 (the first Holy Year of the twenty-first century).9 Five hundred years from 2 Co-founder ofthe Société des Amis de Saint-Jacques (Paris), and its president for 40 years. 3 Pilgrim "registrar" in St-Jean-Pied-de-Port, now deceased. 4 Canon at the Colegiata in Roncesvalles. 5 Priest of O Cebreiro, the first hamlet in Galicia, and beginning in 1984, the primary promoter of signaling the Camino with the now famous painted yellow arrows. 6 Their first pilgrimage study trip occurred in 1974 and was followed by four more, in 1979, 1987, 1993 and 1996. 7 The Camino was proclaimed the first European Cultural Itinerary by the Council ofEurope in 1987 and a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1993. 8 Compostelanas are certificates of completion of a nonmotorized pilgrimage of at least 100 kilometers; they are not actually plenary indulgences. 9 The Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela417 now, cultural anthropologists will certainly have a field day counting and comparing the numbers of pilgrims traveling the Camino, determining their motives, and considering the impact ofthese pilgrims in Spain, on the Camino, and throughout the world. As Compostela pilgrimage scholars in the early 1990s, Linda Davidson and I compiled a fairly extensive bibliography ofworks treating the pilgrimage to Compostela in some aspect or another. Our annotated bibliography cites 2,941 works; the earliest manuscripts cited are from the inception ofthe pilgrimage (ninth century) but the majority ofentries are for works from the fifteenth century through 1993 (a Holy Year). Only six years after the publication of our bibliography, a team of scholars, sponsored by Spain's Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, produced yet another bibliographic collection, this one providing 8,614...