The Way — from Le Puy to Santiago

For more than a thousand years people have been walking from all over Europe to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. What it is about this place that has drawn people to it for centuries? Clearly the idea of “place” must have an incredible hold on the human imagination to draw so many people to a small city featuring an architecturally undistinguished cathedral over such an extended period of time. Not only has the city of Santiago called to millions of pilgrims over the centuries, but the Way itself, the route and the many cities and villages along it, exert their own powerful force on people.

Santiago de Compostela means Saint James of the Field of Stars. The legend goes that in the 9^th Century a Spanish hermit, following the guidance of a field of stars, discovered the relics of the Apostle James in a cave near the Spanish coast. The veneration of those relics in the church where they came to rest is the goal of the pilgrims of the Way. Saint James became a particular object of veneration because he was believed to have intervened on behalf of Christian crusaders fighting to evict the Muslims (Santiago Matamoras – St. James the slayer of Moors), who had created a great culture of their own during the Middle Ages from the Iberian Peninsula.

Santiago, from The Cloisters.

In the 12th Century a guidebook to the Camino was widely circulated in the Codex Calixtinas, which described the route through Spain and its hazards and amenities along with the miracles of the saint. The Codex also includes some wonderful music (http://www.anonymous4.com/discography.php?7). Bishop Diego Gelmírez of Santiago (1070-1140), made two pilgrimages to Rome during his tenure, promoting the relics and the miracles wrought by the saint. From that time forward, the Way captured the imagination of Europe.

Santiago – the patron of the pilgrimage, from the Church in St. Felix.

In France, there are four principal routes of the Chemin de St. Jacques, which lead to two paths over the Pyrenees into Spain and to the Camino. The one beginning in the town of Le Puy, the Via Podiensis, is often thought of as the most beautiful (the others begin in Vézelay, Chartes and Arles). The start of the Via Podensis is the spectacularly sited Church of St. Michel d’Aiguille – which sits hundreds of feet atop a narrow stone column, which can only be obtained by climbing 267 up steps. The Chemin traverses the lovely Aubrac plateau through cow pastures abundant with wildflowers and descends into the valley of the Lot. The trail is well-marked and passes many ancient and remarkable places that provide services to the pilgrims – chapels, fountains, churches, villages and plinths with crosses. The plinths are topped with small stones deposited there by Pilgrims as they pass by.

The last judgment tympanum at the Abbey Church in Conques. Worth a close look — how about the little guy reach down to the Christ figure?

The village of Conques is hidden in the hills, in a valley where the Ouche and the Dourdou Rivers meet. Pilgrims follow a steeply descending trail into the village. Conques is the second most important sacred site on the Way. The relics of Ste. Foy reside in its abbey church, which also boasts a spectacularly beautiful and well-preserved 12^th Century tympanum displaying the Last Judgment (some of the ancient polychrome is still visible). St. Foy’s relics are contained in a gold covered sculpture, impressed with precious stones, of a girl sitting on a throne, that itself dates back to Roman times beautifully displayed in the Abbey’s treasury. Ste. Foy, herself, was martyred in the 4^th Century in the nearby town of Agen after professing her Christian faith to Roman invaders in response to their demand that she renounce Christianity. The story of the “translation” of her relics form Agen to Conques by thieving monks is an essential part of her legend. Pilgrims sought the intercession of the girl saint for the freeing of prisoners, the restoration of eyesight and the resurrection of donkeys. The Abbey Church in Conques reflects the wealth generated by those seeking the saint’s intercession.

The reliquary of Ste. Foy in the treasury of the Abbey Church in Conques.

The experience of sitting in the Abbey Church as the diminishing sunlight passes through the stained glass, casting a wash of colored light on the church’s floor, while the resident monks chant and bless the departing pilgrims has a rare intensity. Being bundled up to keep out the chill only adds to the effect. You feel a part of something very solid and permanent. There is a security in knowing that this place and this practice have taken place for centuries. There is an awe that rises from the height of the arches, the expanse of the stained glass, the quiet inside the church. All of the elements, the history, the architecture, the tradition of the Way and the situation of the town contribute strongly to the sense of place here.

Leaving the village of Faycelles to enter a magical wood of birdsong along the Chemin de St. Jacques.

On our recent walk from Conques to the larger city of Cahors we passed through the village of Faycelles, and after leaving the town the Chemin passed at the foot of chalk cliffs with springs spouting from them creating caves in the limestone. As we spent the morning walking along the path through dense forest we heard two solid hours of birdsong – warblers and cuckoos being most pronounced – a remarkable experience.

All of this is to demonstrate the tremendous gravitational pull that “place” exerts on all of us. The multi-sensory sense of place that we feel pulled toward provides us with a level of satisfaction and stimulation that is available to us in no other way. Awareness of that sense of place is essential to us and is what draws us to certain locations rather than others. It governs our choice about where we choose to live and work. It casts an inexorable spell on all of us. In the many millennium-old towns and cities of Europe (and Asia), this sense of place is built into the environment. Here in the New World it is more difficult to conjure a distinctive experience of place. This experience needs to be created and structured – perhaps except for in those natural places that were so striking to those who first came here from Europe (like early European visitors to Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon).

The work we as placemakers do to improve places is essential to a community’s personal and civic happiness. It lies at the essence of what we have more recently come to call “quality-of-life.” Creating a sense of personal safety in shared spaces is an essential, but also an insufficient part of drawing people to places. In the middle twentieth century, in an effort to rationalize, standardize and make movement in public spaces more “efficient” much damage was done to the naturally slow and layered process of providing the human imagination with the elements that contribute to the satisfying feeling of place we require. The leveling influence of a globalized consumer culture combined with the physical ease of travel also presents a threat to the uniqueness of places and how we experience them.

What is this? Foam on foam on a rock. One-star dining in Conques.

On our most recent trip to Conques we took advantage of the opportunity to eat at the village’s Michelin one-stared restaurant – an elegant establishment whose décor and cuisine were Asian influenced. To me, the meal, while finely crafted and beautiful in it’s way, was a great disappointment. Here we were in a town with one of the deepest and most profound senses of place I have encountered, and the meal incorporated none of the “terrior” that makes being in Conques, in the Department of the Aveyron, this very particular location, so satisfying.

Cities, towns and villages are vital because of the desire they stimulate in people of wanting to be there – to inhabit that special place, at this particular time. In placemaking, we work to preserve and enhance those singular characteristics that people find so essential to their happiness. At this time of year, when the days grow shorter and colder in the Northern Hemisphere we are especially drawn to places that provide history continuity, meaning and warmth. This is why people are drawn to spend days and weeks on the Way of Saint James, to visit Santiago and Conques – to absorb their deep and satisfying sense of place.

The Chemin de St. Jacques on the Aubrac plateau.