Read Paris to the Pyrenees: A Skeptic Pilgrim Walks the Way of Saint James Online

Authors: David Downie

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #General, #Travel, #Europe, #France

Paris to the Pyrenees: A Skeptic Pilgrim Walks the Way of Saint James (3 page)

BOOK: Paris to the Pyrenees: A Skeptic Pilgrim Walks the Way of Saint James
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This was certainly more uplifting a tale than the other, possibly more credible origin-myth for Santiago de Compostela and the real reason for the spot’s unusual-sounding name. According to modern archeologists, the tomb of two Roman patricians named Athanasius and Theodore, discovered somewhat inconveniently under the main altar of the Cathedral of Saint James, their names sculpted on it, seems to confirm the existence of an ancient Roman villa beneath the holy shrine. The rational explanation for the name is simple enough: the villa had become a cemetery or dumping ground—a
compost
heap—and the word “compost” had evolved into Compostela. I folded the photocopy and felt warm inside, encouraged by the thought that a humble compost heap had become a site of miracles, the source of hope and inspiration, misguided or not, for millions of fellow questers.

BONING UP

Possibly because I spent several formative years in the mid-1960s living in Rome, and was dragged by my mother into hundreds of places of worship there, as an adult I’ve actively stayed out of churches. It was with trepidation that I now approached the basilica of Mary Magdalene, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Perched high on Vézelay’s hill, it attracts about a million visitors each year. The façade is not handsome, despite the best efforts of architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, the 1800s over-restorer of France’s monuments. He rebuilt the basilica as we see it today, rescuing a ruin while trying and perhaps not entirely failing to preserve its magic.

Tradition has it that the Saturday before Easter is a mournful day, anticipating Sunday’s rising of Christ. Consequently there were no tapers to light, no flowers on the altar, and no singing. But we, the visitors shuffling down the soaring nave, made our untidy presence felt. Were pilgrims also allowed to be tourists, I wondered. And vice versa: Could tourists be true pilgrims?

We let the crowds thin before climbing down a steep staircase into the dark, damp crypt. I stumbled on the uneven stone floor. Behind bars in a niche was Mary Magdalene’s reliquary, an ornate neo-Gotext-align: justify; } p.indentedothic arc of gilded silver borne aloft by angels and holy men. In the early 1000s, Alison reminded me, the abbot of Vézelay discovered the remains of Mary Magdalene somewhere inside the monastery, or so the story goes. What were they doing in Vézelay? To query their provenance was to doubt the miraculous nature of the discovery. And doubting raised the uncomfortable, associated question of how a saint had been made of a wild young woman of alleged loose virtue, a long-haired temptress who had dried Jesus’s feet with her hair and might be on stage or in a padded cell were she alive today.

“Relax,” Alison whispered, taking my hand. “You’re trembling.”

“I’m cold,” I said. But the origin of my nervousness had little to do with the temperature.

I closed my eyes, allowing the presence of Mary’s relics to bestir feelings of spirituality. More tourists crowded around, some with flashing cameras. I tried to meditate, beginning with progressive relaxation, but that didn’t help either. I changed tack, and thought again of history. With Mary Magdalene’s bones in its crypt, Vézelay had soared in status, becoming not merely a stopover on The Way of Saint James but the starting point and, for many, the goal of pilgrimages. Here we were, at Ground Zero, by the saint’s bones.

Mary Magdalene’s reliquary niche was designed to hold an entire skeleton. But I knew from my readings that there’d been a minor hiccup: the Vatican had de-authenticated the relics in 1295, and Mary’s tomb had vanished. Happily some of the bones stayed behind and were placed in containers. We were in the presence of the largest portion of the relics.
Pop, ping, zing
went the flashes and camera lenses. Cell phones rang. A guided tour group tramped in. Feeling like a spy in the house of love, I was swept away by disbelief.

Another reliquary is on the ground floor, in the church’s right transept. As we headed for the cloisters, we stopped to look at it. Crowned by a gaudy modern sculpture, the reliquary had been vandalized. A pocket-sized niche stood empty, a wire grate bent back. The miniature effigy of Mary Magdalene had been stolen by souvenir hunters in the early 2000s, the relics too.

“Are you sure you don’t want to get a pilgrim’s passport?” I asked Alison, feeling a twinge of guilt. She was a lapsed Catholic and, I reasoned, might want spiritual insurance while walking. “Just because I refuse to submit doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have one.” But she firmly shook her head.

We found an unoccupied bench on the tree-lined road called Promenade des Fossés paralleling Vézelay’s oval ramparts and enjoyed our first picnic as pilgrims, albeit unofficial pilgrims. Alison had picked up the local newspaper. It carried the Easter address by Archbishop Yves Patenôtre of nearby Sens-Auxerre. He noted that our lives overflow with unanswered questions regarding mortality and the loss of loved ones. The big question was why did humans have to die? Even Jesus had asked God why he had to die. However, according to the archbishop, the good news was, Jesus and God were still among us, in the streets—alive. The joy of Easter, alas, would always be mixed with the gravity of the human condition: finitude. Mortality. But, for people of faith, with the balm of hope that they too, in some way, would rise again as Christ did.

Lingering over my apple, I contemplated the apparent infinity of the scenery, and felt the irreverence drain out of me. Skeptic or believer, there was much to chew on in the archbishop’s words.

I chewed on the words as we walked down a rocky path in important stopover or starting point on fa nto the Valley of Asquins. Edging a thicket stood a tall wooden cross. We slid down to it, mindful that here, in the year 1146, the militant abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, not yet a mystic or saint, had harangued an assembly of thousands, from King Louis VII down, calling for a second Crusade to free Jerusalem from the Infidel—thereby restoring trade and Christian control of the Near East and Mediterranean. Petroleum and terrorism were not yet on the agenda. I squinted, imagining the sleepy valley alive with knights in shining armor, foot-soldiers, mercenaries, farmers, and priests. The assembled dignitaries could not fit into the basilica of Mary Magdalene. Anticipating the overflow, the abbot had erected a country chapel. It still stands and is named La Cordelle.

I was glad that the rain and wind had swept away other visitors. After the crowds at the basilica, we were alone at last, inside the chapel’s mossy walled compound. The beauty of La Cordelle is its simplicity: un-faced gray stone walls and a floor of beaten earth. There was no noise from outside. Eyes shut, I felt the pleasant weariness that comes from rising before dawn, riding a train for several hours while seated backwards, walking for several more hours, talking to pious strangers, and wrestling with the ghosts of adolescent existentialism. I’d probably thought more and deeper about the human condition in the last six hours than I had in the last ten years. It had been quite a day. Perhaps “spirituality” was no more than an altered physical and mental state attainable by sleep deprivation or the fatigue of labor, prayer, or pilgrimage? Often, in my experience, it was the least likely candidates who had spoken the loudest about their spirituality and possession of religious feelings. Was I joining the choir?

What I really needed was another cup of coffee. Everyone knew that sleep deprivation was the favorite weapon of the medieval monastic orders, and plenty of contemporary sects, the kind that brainwashed adepts. I banished the thought and felt strangely elated. Birds chirped. Rain pattered. The silence was not silent—it hummed. We hadn’t even begun to hike down to Spain. But I felt I’d crossed a threshold. Maybe the walking would not be necessary after all. Maybe we could call the whole thing off and go back to Paris after Easter.

SACRED FIRES

The real challenge in getting to the 10 P.M. Easter Eve ceremony at the basilica was not the rain, wind, or cold. It was overcoming the desire for sleep that dogged us after dinner. We admired Vézelay’s lichen-frosted, floodlit old houses as we marched. Other diners teetered along full of good wine. Bells rang out. The night was full of other sounds, including the roar of a motorcycle engine. Around the parking lot facing the basilica rode an adolescent boy, his tricked-out, four-wheeled Quad motorbike scattering pilgrims and other worshippers.

Darkness has its advantages. The basilica’s homely façade had undergone a transformation. Illuminated by spotlights, it hovered and glowed, an amber-colored hologram against the indigo sky. I thought for a minute about my confused state of mind and realized I was wrestling holograms of my mind’s own making.

Inside the enclosed porch, the darkness teemed. I could barely see. A woman handed me two wax tapers with white paper hoods. A choir of voices emanated from the basilica’s nave. A figure in robes appeared, his face lit by a flickering taper. He positioned himself beneath the central tympanum, stooped, and lit a fire.

As if fed by gasoline, the fire exploded into a blaze. It cast the priest’s shadow upward, across the tympanum where Christ reigned. A dog-headed man and the figure of Saint James gla rue Saint-Jacquesoic, and red down at us. With flames leaping and shadows prancing around him, the priest spoke. I could not make out what he was saying. I grappled with slippery emotions, my mind jumbled with thoughts of the primal fire, the eternal flame, and the campfires of my childhood. The priest tipped his taper and lit the candles of the men and women standing nearest. They lit others’ candles. One by one, the twinkling points of light illuminated arms, necks, and faces, a throbbing canvas. And then a bell tinkled.

Unable to speak from the emotion, I pressed Alison’s hand. As I lit her candle, her face leapt out of the darkness. I caught my breath as the basilica’s giant doors yawned open. The faithful broke into song, their faces painted by childlike grins made strange in the dancing candlelight. I felt myself slipping into an intoxicating oneness with my fellow human beings, the torch bearers, the happy, the saved, the faithful.

But as the assembly filed from the porch into the nave, and the spotlights came up to enchanting harpsichord music, the stagecraft overwhelmed the authenticity. My cheeks burned with shame. I’d been hoodwinked. I’d hoodwinked myself. Shuffling forward, my candle before me, I felt like a walk-on in a cultish theater performance. The bone-china spell had broken. Toto had dragged open the curtains, revealing the Wizard of Vézelay. The words of an aged, atheist friend spoken years before welled up from memory. “If I had to do it again, I’d be a Catholic,” she’d said with a wicked smile, “for the pageantry, the ritual, the marvelous hocus-pocus.”

It was marvelous. With incense, bonfire, and candles burning, we took seats in the artfully lit nave—Plato’s cave transmogrified by the Brothers and Sisters of Jerusalem, keepers of this extraordinary temple. I sneezed and felt at once foolish and guilty, a spy in the house of love all over again.

The Easter Eve sound-and-light extravaganza segued into the days of Creation. But my teeth chattered from the cold and my backside went numb at the thought of a French version of Intelligent Design. As the fourth day of Creation dawned, I rose silently from my seat and stole out of the basilica. The harpsichord’s notes played up my spine, and the candles became voices roaring with skeptical fury.

Back outside in the parking lot, I watched the acne-scarred adolescent buck his Quad onto its back wheels, making it rear up like a horse as he rode around. I wondered how I could explain to Alison that I was not cut out to be a pilgrim after all. I’d been insane to think otherwise.

EASTER WITH ASTÉRIX

Dawn’s surly light discovered us already at the breakfast table, our packs ready by the door. The sun’s first rays had barely begun to tickle the town as we settled up and strode out. I’d had a change of heart in the night. Today was another day. I would hike. I would do it my way.

The Way of Saint James curls down into the Cure River Valley from Vézelay to a hard-driven village below it called Saint-Père-sous-Vézelay, our first stop on the way to Spain. Flanking the grass-grown dirt road were pastures and fields and confusing, competitive signage designed to lure pilgrims down the true path. But which true path? Yellow scallop-shell panels showed the Via Lemovicensis, the official Catholic pilgrimage route from Vézelay to Santiago—direct. Blue signs with a yellow scallop shell indicated the secular E-4 trans-European route, also to Santiago, but not as direct. Nearby, red-and-white bands painted on fences or trees tempted innocent hikers along Grande Randonnée long-distance trail number GR-13, which also led south across Burgundy paralleling the E-4 and then branchM">passéisme incarnate.dChing to Cluny. From there, you could hike any way you wanted.

I remembered what a wild-eyed pilgrim we’d met earlier had said to us. “There is no one route,” he had insisted. “Any road to Santiago will do.” At least for this short stretch out of town it appeared that all roads from Vézelay to Compostela ran together in blissful, competitive harmony.

At the bottom of the valley and a mere eight hundred years old, Notre-Dame de Saint-Père seemed undistinguished compared to the basilica. Mary Magdalene and Saint James stared out at us from niches on the façade. Inside, a colorful baptismal font from the 8th century and a stone altar from the 10th hinted at earlier origins. Our guidebook made things clear. Underneath the Gothic church there lie a Merovingian chapel and cemetery, and a Carolingian monastery for women, all built atop the ancient Roman village of Vezeliacum.

The monastery had been founded on the banks of the Cure River around 855 by a local robber baron turned pious Christian, Count Girart de Roussillon and his wife Berthe. But Viking marauders in kayaks paddled up the river, repeatedly raping and burning, so Girart and Berthe sent away the beleaguered nuns and set up a community of Benedictine male monks atop a fortified hill, and Vezeliacum became Vézelay. Alison tucked the guidebook into her pack between her cameras and seemed content.

Trained in art history and a lover of all things mossy and decrepit, she was already in heaven. “Let’s see what’s in there,” she said, drifting off before I could object.

BOOK: Paris to the Pyrenees: A Skeptic Pilgrim Walks the Way of Saint James
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