Codex Calixtinus Recovered!

Santiago (St. James), doorway frame, Collegio Fonseca, Santiago de Compostela

©EOP 2012

After a long dry spell, over the next few weeks I hope to post several things, none of which are ready as yet. I am posting today because of excellent news received this morning, the Codex Calixtinus stolen from the Cathedral archive in Santiago de Compostela has been located and four persons, including an electrician who is an employee of the cathedral, have been arrested in a suburb of the city in relation to the theft. La Voz de Galicia the major local newspaper has a good overview of the recovery as does El Pais.

Hospitalero!

Camino Francés descending into Santo Domingo de la Calzada, La Rioja

©eop

Thinking about repaying a little of my debt to those who make walking the Camino de Santiago feasible and enjoyable, I had considered for several years the possibility of being a volunteer hospitalero in one of the albergues which offer inexpensive accommodation to peregrinos. In March I took the training course for potential hospitaleros offered by American Pilgrims on the Camino at its annual gathering, this year in Winter Park, Florida. I applied for a 2 week assignment (the usual term) shortly thereafter, and a few days ago I received an assignment: I shall be serving at the "Casa del Santo" Albergue, operated by the Cofradía del Santo in the town of Santo Domingo de la Calzada (St. Dominic of the Causeway, about whom I shall have something to say in future postings: he was sainted following a life of serving pilgrims) in La Rioja. My hospitalero term extends from 16 May to 31 May.

After hospitalero duties, I plan to walk for a bit more than a week on one of the routes to Santiago de Compostela, though I have not yet decided where.  My current thinking is the Camino Inglés from Ferrol to Santiago in extreme northwest Galicia, though I may opt for the Camino Portuguése from Tui in southern Galicia to Santiago, or perhaps I may simply revisit one or another section of the Camino Francés. The hospitalero assignment came only a few days more than 2 weeks before my duties begin, and I leave for Madrid in a bit more than a week, so I have to make lots of arrangements in a hurry! In the meantime, I may not have time to write much until late June.

If you should be on the Camino Francés through Santo Domingo in the last half of May, please stop by at least to say hello, if not to spend the night.

Piety: Places and Things

Conques, Pilgrimage Destination and burial site of the relics of St. Foi.

Copyright EOP

Trying to walk longish distances daily in the esthetically depressing slurbs of northern Virginia, for diversion I have taken to listening to podcasts while walking. The number and variety of such audio materials presently available is truly awesome, and more than a few of them are of excellent quality. In addition to doing 30-40 minutes of Spanish language review with "Coffee Break Spanish," and its advanced cousin "Show Time Spanish," I became enamored of the "History of Rome" series done by a young man who, sadly for those of us addicted to his telling of the chronicle of the Roman Empire, recently announced he is discontinuing that engrossing history from earliest times to about 500 A.D. His termination has prompted a search for other podcasts, and one I found awhile ago and started listening to in earnest a couple of weeks ago is particularly fascinating for the vast array of topics it covers, "In Our Time With Melvyn Bragg," distributed by the BBC which broadcasts the programme weekly on BBC4. (all of the podcasts noted above are available gratis and can be downloaded on iPods and related devices from the iTunes store).

Today I listened to a broadcast of "In Our Time" from 12 February with the Netherlandish savant Erasmus as the topic. Two professors of church history, one from Cambridge and another from Oxford joined the Warburg Institute librarian and Melvyn Bragg the interviewer for an overview of the life, work and influences of the great humanist. I knew that Erasmus was an opponent of pilgrimage, suggesting that the blessings bought to Christians by visiting distant shrines like Rome or Santiago de Compostela could be as readily found in the local parish church if only the piety of the believer was turned inward. In the introduction, the commentator (I believe it was by Eamon Duffy of Cambridge University) stated that in the medieval era piety was firmly rooted in places and things, a statement that gave me a shock of realization. After struggling with the question of why pilgrimages are made, I realized that is a good explanation of why pilgrimage was so central to Christianity in the late Middle Ages. Places, sites of important events including burials, and things, relics such as the bones of saints interred or brought to those places, were venerated. Only by visiting the places, it was believed, could one be blessed. The decline of pilgrimage, in its turn, was in some measure a consequence of the humanist ideals espoused by Erasmus and forcefully injected into the Reformation churches following Luther. Needless to say it is time to do some deeper investigation of Erasmus, humanism and pilgrimage.

Exhibitions

Fuji Seen Through the Mannen Bridge at Fukagawa

Hokusai "36 Views of Mt. Fuji"

Wikimedia Commons

As often happens in Spring, there are numerous special exhibitions at various art, science, and history museums, and for my interests this Spring brings a surfeit. Among the many choices, there are three shows closely related to pilgrimage topics. In Washington, DC a 'Japan Spring' is being celebrated, the centenary of the planting of the cherry trees around the Tidal Basin, and there are must see exhibits in two museums on the Mall for anyone who is a lover of things Japanese or with an interest in Japanese pilgrimages. At the Freer-Sackler there is a display of Hokusai's "36 Views of Mt. Fuji", original strikings of the famous colored woodblock pints of Mt. Fuji, itself a pre-eminent pilgrimage destination, and several of the scenes are along the Kansai pilgrimage route, the oldest and most popular in Japan visiting the 33 temples in the region southwest of Tokyo.

Hokusai's images of Mt. Fuji, including the great wave, probably the best known of all Japanese images, are often seen and reproduced. Not so the scrolls containing images of Japanese nature included in the National Gallery of Art's exhibit of bird and flower paintings by Itō Jakuchū.  These images, owned by the Japanese Imperial Household Agency, are rarely seen but are truly stunning. In a normal year they are on public view for a single day, and pilgrimages are organized to view them on that date. The National Gallery exhibit is only a month long and will close 29 April, so they are worth a rush visit.

The exhibit I would most like to see is at the British Museum in London, Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam. Alas, it is unlikely I will be in London between now and Sunday, and in any case all advance tickets are sold out. After reading a review of the exhibit in the most recent issue of the New York Review of Books, I almost booked a trip to London in order to see an extensive collection of materials on the world's largest pilgrimage. I shall have to be content reading the catalogue of the exhibit.

Cathedrals, Basilicas and Large Churches

Roman Catholic Cathedral, Orlando, FL 

©eop

Having just returned from Orlando, Fl where I attended the annual Gathering of American Pilgrims on the Camino, a group devoted to travel on, study of and promotion of the Camino de Santiago in Europe,  I decided it was time to do a posting and to try to adhere to a more regular schedule of postings. Today's posting is a follow-up to a topic discussed informally at the meeting.

There is a tendency in the United States, and perhaps elsewhere, to call any large church a cathedral. Indeed, driving between Lake Wales and Tampa on Sunday I saw the Sunshine Cathedral which appeared from the road to be two double-wide trailers attached on their long sides. Just outside Seattle there is a large church in Redmond that calls itself Washington Cathedral. The Crystal Cathedral in Orange County, California has been in the news, for the protestant congregation it served recently went bankrupt, and the building, designed by a famous architect and well-known from television broadcasts of its holiday entertainments, has been sold to the local Roman Catholic diocese. That sale may render the Crystal Cathedral an actual cathedral in a rigorous and traditional usage of the term, for the diocese may choose to relocate the seat of its bishop to the building. Until now, however,  the name Crystal Cathedral has simply meant a large protestant church building serving a single congregation and not the administrative center of a diocese.

It is useful to look a little further at the usage of the term cathedral and a related kind of church, the basilica.

1. Cathedrals. In the Roman Catholic tradition, and in those protestant denominations whose governance traditions are episcopal, including the Anglican (in the US the Episcopal) and the northern European Lutheran churches, a cathedral is the seat of the bishop or archbishop responsible for a diocese and is a center of church governance. The term cathedral derives from the latin cathedra or chair. An actual chair for the bishop or archbishop near the altar is almost always a feature, and from that chair important declarations about church matters are issued, ex cathedra. Generally there is a single church building in a diocese serving as a cathedral, though there are a few notable exceptions like the diocese of Calahorra in Spain (La Rioja) where the co-cathedrals of Calahorra, Logroño and Santo Domingo de la Calzada (the latter two familiar to pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago) share the task. The cathedral may not be a large or impressive building, indeed the Roman Catholic cathedral in Orlando shown above and the Anglican cathedral in Vancouver, BC are fairly modest buildings, smaller than some of the parish churches in their respective dioceses.

In some cases older buildings no longer serving as centers of church governance retain the name cathedral, though there are only a handful of examples. A few older cathedral buildings have been abandoned in favor of newer ones, but tradition keeps the name cathedral attached to the antique structure. In parts of Europe where Roman Catholicism was replaced by Calvinism during the Reformation, including Scotland and parts of Switzerland, some church buildings once Roman Catholic cathedrals no longer have a church governance function in that congregationalist tradition, but the churches retain the name cathedral.

The term, cathedral, in a rigorous usage, is derived from the role of the building in church governance. It has no architectural meaning, for any style or size of building can serve as a cathedral.

2. Basilicas. Perhaps the most famous church in Christianity, St. Peter's in Rome is not a cathedral, but it is a basilica. The cathedral of Rome, where the Pope, who is also the bishop of Rome, has his seat, is St. John in Lateran (San Giovanni Laterano) which in addition to being a cathedral is also a papal basilica. In other words a church can be both a cathedral and basilica, though many are one but not the other. Originally a basilica was a type of Roman building, rectangular in ground plan, used for pre-Christian religious and civic purposes. As the Roman Empire was converted to Christianity, a number of those buildings became churches. In Rome itself and in some other cities of the empire a few of those ancient basilicas still exist and retain a religious function almost 2,000 years on. A pilgrim or tourist in Rome can visit several ancient churches that are architecturally basilicas. In addition some more modern churches, for example San Paulo fuori la Mura in Rome, said to house the remains of St. Paul, are designed in the Roman style of basilicas.

Over history, the original definition of the term basilica based on architecture has been expanded as the Roman Catholic tradition has granted the name basilica to churches with other ground plans. Church buildings built on a cruciform ground plan introduced later in the evolution of Christianity and elaborated first in the Romanesque and later in the Gothic styles of architecture are not, sense strictu, basilicas for they deviate from the Roman rectangularity. However at some stage the term basilica came to be applied to large and important churches regardless of architecture, often in dioceses where there was also a cathedral. Most basilicas were centers of intense devotion, many housing relics, and pilgrimage destinations.

A few basilicas are are also cathedrals or co-cathedrals, as for example the basilica of St. Mary in Minnesota. Others, for example the shrine church at Lourdes or the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, are simply basilicas with no governance function for their local diocese. Finally, some are Papal Basilicas with a  special altar where no mass may be conducted without permission of the Pope. In such cases the architectural design is of little relevance, but most basilicas are large churches.

The Eastern Orthodox traditions have a slightly different set of definitions for cathedral, though a church governance function remains paramount. The term basilica, on the other hand, has not gone beyond the Roman Catholic tradition as far as I can determine. Various Protestant groups, especially those of recent vintage like the group that established the Washington Cathedral near Seattle or the Crystal Cathedral, have rather carelessly used the term cathedral to simply mean a large church building serving a single congregation. For those wishing more information, the Wikipedia entries on the various topics of cathedral, basilica and church governance are useful.

Finally, in a discussion of Cathedral of St. James, in Seattle, I said I was not aware of any other cathedral in the United States named for and dedicated to Santiago (St. James). The next day driving through downtown Orlando, I discovered our meeting was held in a diocese whose cathedral is named for the patron Saint of Spain and to whose shrine in Galicia pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago travel!

Music from the Codex las Huelgas

Burgos Cathedral Towers, chalk drawing ©eop

Late in 2011 Anonymous 4 issued its second CD of Camino related music, Secret Voices: Music from Las Huelgas c. 1300 (Harmonia Mundi USA HMU 807510). It is not my favorite among their recordings, and its review in BBC Music was nuanced and not entirely positive, but for anyone with an interest in the music of the Camino at the time of its apogee, the CD is a must have.

Several of the few great compilations of medieval and early renaissance music, collections crucial to our understanding of European musical culture in the high Middle Ages, have direct links to the Camino Santiago de Compostela and the pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James. Two of those collections were compiled for religious institutions adjacent and important to the Camino. One is, of course, the Codex Calixtinus usually held as a treasure in the archive of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. (Following its theft last year, its current whereabouts are unknown as far as I can determine.) Early in its career with its original personnel, Anonymous 4, the American female quartet specializing in medieval and renaissance vocal music, recorded a wonderful CD Miracles of Sant’Iago: Music from the Codex Calixtinus (Harmonia Mundi USA).

The second compilation of medieval liturgical music is the Codex las Huelgas assembled at the Convent (Monasterio) of the Huelgas, a lovely set of buildings the Camino Frances passes on its way out of Burgos. The Codex has provided material for numerous recordings, many with titles suggesting a link to the Camino and some quite good.  Small samples of the riches of the Codex are readily available, and mixed gender choirs and even all male groups have recorded some of the materials, though the convent was female and evidence suggests that at least some of the musical compositions in the Codex were written for female voices, perhaps, a rarity of the era, even written by women. It is thus a great pleasure to hear a female group of unparalleled technique and expertise in the music of the period record parts of the Codex in the voices the music was written for. Several of the selections on the CD are not included on any other recording I am aware of.

I am not working as their agent, but Ariama, an on-line supplier of  physical CDs as well as mp3 and flac downloads, currently has the new album on sale in all three formats. Ariama's website  allows one to listen online to samples of many of the albums it has for sale (like the record stores of my childhood with listening booths!), including both of those noted above.  

Loss of a Great Voice

Capital, Monasterio de Pedralbes, Barcelona

©EOP

For those of us who love the music of medieval and renaissance Europe, and especially that of Spain during the great age of pilgrimage to Santiago, November 2011 was a particularly sad month, for it witnessed the passing of a magnificent talent, the Catalan soprano Montserrat Figueras. With crystalline tone and great emotional intensity, Figuras brought to life the songs, and particularly the religious music, the lullabies and the laments, that were familiar to pilgrims on the route to Santiago in its great apex of the 15th and 16th centuries. In concert with her husband the inimitable master of early music Jordi Savall, her son and daughter and their several choral and instrumental groups including Hespèrion (later renamed Hespèrion XXI) and Capella Reial de Catalunya, Figueras performed and recorded some of the most haunting music of Spain's "Golden Age" (as I write I am listening to a gripping recording of Tomas Luis de Victoria's "Cantica Beatae Virginis" by those groups with Figueras as featured soloist). A multifaceted talent, she was also at home performing music by contemporary masters like the Estonian Aarvo Pärt. It will always be a regret that while I have had the great privilege of hearing her husband and her daughter Arianna Saval perform in concerts, I never had an opportunity to hear Montserrat Figueras live. 

Many of the world's major newspapers including the New York Times the Guardian and El Pais printed obituaries after her death. 

Her funeral was held in one of the most beautiful and beloved sites in Barcelona, the 
monastery of Pedralbes. 

While we no longer are able to hear her in concert, Figueras has left us with an extensive recorded archive in which she sang some of the most beautiful music ever written in Europe and around the Mediterranean Basin, and for that we must be thankful indeed.. 

Music

San Juan de Ortega, Burgos, Spain,  September 2011

©eop

Sitting in the family waiting area of Sibley Hospital nervously awaiting the surgeon's report (thankfully for a fairly minor procedure) on my wife, it seems a good time to get back on track and pen a few words. I had intended to have a completed report on my September-October walk on the Camino Frances posted by now, but events, including some family medical issues and the holiday season, have made that impossible. The season was not without its pleasures, not least two performances by the Folger Consort. In December they collaborated with Piffaro (the Philadelphia based wind band of which I admit to being something of a groupie) and vocal soloists to present a wonderful concert of renaissance era Spanish Christmas music, "O Magnum Mysterium." Last Saturday we went to the (earthquake damaged and partially shrouded) Washington National Cathedral to hear the instrumental musicians of the Consort and the ethereal voices of Anonymous 4 perform music by Hildegard of Bingen and various 12^th century French composers, a stunning experience hearing the music in the type of venue for which it was composed, played and sung by true masters of early music. At some date in the not too distant future, I would love to hear live performances of some of the instrumental and vocal music associated with the Camino de Santiago played and sung by the Consort and Anonymous 4. Perhaps they can be persuaded to give such a concert. There is a fantastic CD of music from the Codex Calixtinus by Anonymous 4, but despite the wonders of modern audio recording, a live performance is still special.

I must get back to surveying Camino music as several good recordings have recently come to my attention. This is being written a few days after the last music store in Washington, DC carrying classical CDs announced it is closing. No more browsing, the serendipitous source of many CDs in my collection. Scrolling through lists on websites is just not the same. On-line one can listen to snippets of the recordings, recalling the record store booths of my childhood where one could sample records, but reading the album notes while holding the disc has been my avenue of serendipitous discovery. At various music websites, it is easy to find recordings advertised and promoted by major labels, but much recorded early music, including that linked to pilgrimage, is on small or private labels with budgets barely large enough to cover production costs. Only with a little luck and reports from a network of others who share the arcane taste for early music can one find these titles.

With the holidays over and medical issues under control, I hope, the usually grim weather of winter is a good time to get back to writing about pilgrimage issues, so I plan to write some additional postings in the next few weeks. At least I have managed to go through many of the 2,000+ photographs from my autumn pilgrimage and do a bit of editing, so I might even post a photo blog on Flicker or similar.

Meanwhile, what is the fate of the purloined Codex Calixtinus? While I was on the Camino no one seemed to know if it had been located and returned to the Cathedral archive, and many peregrinos were unaware of the theft. Since returning I have not had the opportunity to do research on the topic, another task for the next few weeks.