What follows is my attempt to chronicle and recreate a few of experiences in Spain and France this summer for those interested. Focus primarily will rest on history and religion, and in particular the history that lives in the churches and castles that line the pilgrim roads to Santiago Compostella in Spain.

The Muslim conquest of the Holy Land in the Seventh and Eighth centuries caused the traditional pilgrimage to Jerusalem to become increasingly dangerous. As the Middle Ages unfolded, the journey across the Pyrenees and into Spain to the traditional burial place of St. James became the dominant pilgrimage route. The results were dramatic. The first great wave of Christian churches in the Middle Ages sprung up along the pilgrim roads - the age of Romanesque was born. Architecture, spirituality, culture and politics would all be dramatically affected by the great mass of Medieval Christians on the road to Compostella.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Lourdes

We stopped at Lourdes and went into the baths - Isabel, too.

In 1858 Bernadette Soubirous claimed to be receiving apparitions from the Virgin Mary. This was of course well after the French Revolution and the climate was very anti-clerical. During the last apparition in front of a large crown filled with skeptics she was instructed to dig into the dirt. Out of the hole she dug gushed a spring which immediately started to yield miraculous (and very well documented) healings. Today the spring still flows and millions travel there every year. It is quite moving. There are throngs of people there in wheel chairs who go into the baths. Every night there is a large candle light procession where they pray the rosary and sing hymns.






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