The Pilgrimage to Compostela in the Middle Ages (review)

Reviews 231 and background in chapter after chapter, is an approach which seems to be aimed at the 'general reader' rather than a scholarly audience. Antony Howe Department ofHistory University of Sydney Dunn, Maryjane, and Linda Kay Davidson, eds., The Pilgrimage to Compostela in the Middle Ages, N e w York, Routledge, 2000; paper; pp. xlviii, 188; 16 b/w plates; R R P US$13.39; ISBN 0415928958. The paperback reissue of volume 1829 in the Garland Reference Library of the Humanities (1996) is very welcome. Dunn and Davidson's 'Preface' on time and place in the pilgrimage to Compostela is a lively introduction to the meaning of the Camino for m o d e m people, with particular emphasis on Americans; their bibliographic 'Introduction' reviews the literature on Saint James and the pilgrimage from the medieval period to the present. The experiences ofpilgrims and their response to the journey and arrival provide c o m m o n threads, while the final section ofthe essay details the rapid growth in 'Santiago studies' since the 1965 Holy Year, with a few thoughts about the future of the pilgrimage in the wake ofvirtual internet pilgrimages and other cultural and religious changes. Alberto Ferreiro's important 'The Cult of Saints and Divine Patronage in Gallaecia before Santiago' carefully reviews early medieval (chiefly Frankish) sources for the cult of Martin of Tours among the Suevic kings of Galicia, and the way in which Martin becomes a precursor to Santiago (in his Matamoros guise) when the Suevifightthe Arian Visigoths, under his protection. In the reign ofAlfonso II in the eighth century the bones of Santiago were discovered, and he displaced Martin as the protector saint ofthe Asturian kingdom. Colin Smith's 'The Geography and History of Iberia in the Liber Sancti Jacobi' concentrates on the image of Spain which the intending pilgrims possessed and the guidebooks which were written to assist them in their travels, particular the Pilgrim's Guide (Book V of the Liber). These sources were supplemented by the chansons de geste and sundry chronicles, which, in Smith's view, left the intending pilgrim 'badly confused by the authorities about the religious history, the political and physical geography, the cities, and much else in lh,e Peninsula' (p. 36). Greater certainty is offered by Vincent Corrigan's quite technical 'Music and the Pilgrimage', which investigates the Codex Calixtinus, with a view to elucidating the nature of its liturgical uses. 232 Reviews This bibliophilic theme is continued in Jeanne E. Krochalis's '1494: Hieronymus Munzer, Compostela, and the Codex Calixtinus' which focuses on the 1495-6 travels of the Nurnberg physician and his three companions. Munzer traveled for pleasure, although he did occasionally treat patients, and he wrote an account of his circuit of the Iberian Peninsula. In this he noted 'the presence of scientific or specially beautiful books' and his conversations with scholars (p. 71). The bulk of this paper is a most useful translation of Munzer's observations 'as they concern Compostela and the Pseudo-Turpin' (p. 72). Connie L. Scarborough's 'The Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in the Cantigas de Santa Maria' examines the collection of 427 songs to Mary collected by Alfonso the Learned in the second half of the thirteenth century as an act ofpersonal piety. Pilgrimage appears in these hymns as a perilous activity, one where the pilgrim might well need the assistance of the Blessed Virgin. Unscrupulous inn-keepers and false pilgrims abound, but so do miracle cures and other signs of grace. The essay by David M . Gitlitz, 'The Iconography of St James in the Indianapolis Museum's Fifteenth Century Altarpiece' continues this concern with the Camino as a concrete setting. The presumably Flemish 12-panel altarpiece depicts nine episodes from the life of St James, and the paper engages in offering interpretations and sources for these. The panels include scenes of the translation of Santiago's body, Santiago in the guise ofthe Moor-Slayer, and the saint's visit to the magician Hermogenes. Gitlitz believes that the triptych 'might well have served a pilgrimage church on the route to Compostela as a comprehensive indicator of the principal aspects of the St James...