History has too often been written by and about men. For centuries, authors of all kinds and conditions have told us about intrepid adventurers, travellers and navigators, but completely leaving women like Egeria or Santa Elena, pilgrims and travellers of the fourth...
Thanks to the dissemination and donations made by Camino Society Ireland, the very active Jacobean association of Ireland, we have been able to access a gem of pilgrimage literature: the book Medieval Irish Pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela. by Bernadette Cunningham....
The pilgrimage of the 21st century is undoubtedly very different from that of medieval times, but there is one aspect in which the two experiences seem to be similar: the emotions experienced during the Camino and those that are experienced when reaching the goal,...
The most famous and indispensable of the traditions is the one that takes the pilgrim to the high altar of the cathedral: to embrace to the Saint, and later to visit his tomb in the crypt. The embrace or "tightening", as it is called in Galician, is given to the...
Over the centuries and, in particular, in recent years with the new awareness of protecting heritage, many of the rituals that pilgrims performed in the Cathedral of Santiago have been lost or have had to change, today we are going to remember some of them. Among the...
The importance of pilgrimages by sea is unquestionable. English, Irish, Flemish, Scandinavian and Hanseatic sea routes were used since virtually the beginning of pilgrimages. Some experts like Lacarra speak of the sea as the oldest pilgrimage route, and it was via the...
A few kilometers from Compostela is the celebrated "Monte Gaudii" or Monte do Gozo, whose name refers to the joy that the pilgrims felt when from that hill they got their first glimpse of the towers of the Cathedral of Santiago in the distance and realized that after...
Throughout the centuries, many pilgrims to Santiago have continued on their way to the sea, to the beaches and sanctuaries of Fisterra and Muxía. Many of them did so for the same reasons they visited Compostela, to make pilgrimages to holy places, to Christian...
O Cebreiro is today a magical place, known and loved by pilgrims from all over the world. In the past, however, its geographical location in a high mountain area, in the Galician-Leonese massif, which reaches 1,300 meters of altitude, made it an extremely fearful...
We are continuing to go through the books that make up the Codex Calixtinus… Book II occupies 16 folios (f. 139v – 155v) of the codex, being the second smallest of those that compose it. After the extensive book I, dedicated to the liturgy and festivities of Santiago,...
In 1934 the manuscript of the biographical stories of Margery Kempe (1373-1438) was discovered - a very long text from the early fifteenth century of which until then only seven pages were known. It is one of the oldest pilgrimage itineraries, a very different...
During the pandemic, the confinement and the difficulties in travelling from other countries or in moving around Spanish territory made the Camino inaccessible, but, in addition, the restrictions made many of the main traditions and rituals of the pilgrimage to...