Review: The Pilgrimage to Compostela in the Middle Ages: A book of Essays
Document Type
Book Review
Department
History (Pomona)
Publication Date
1-2000
Keywords
Camino de Santiago, Santiago de Compostela, pilgrimage, medieval europe, Spain
Abstract
The editors of this volume have assembled an unusual mix of papers pertaining to the Camino de Santiago. The first, "The Cult of Saints and Divine Patronage in Gallaecia before Santiago", by Alberto Ferreiro, is a study of the spread of the cult of St. Martin of Tours in northwest Spain and its ultimate displacement by the cult of St. James (Santiago). The author carefully culls what little has survived in the way of textual evidence to illustrate not only the establishment of Martin's cult in sixth-century Galicia, but its rapid demise as a result of the Visigothic conquest of Galicia as well as continued Visigothic concerns about the Franks, who were themselves closely associated with the cult of St. Martin. Colin Smith's "The Geography and History of Iberia in the Liber Sancti Jacobi", highlights the inaccuracy of the geographical and historical information contained in the twelfth-century "Book of St. James". Focusing primarily on the Historia Turpini (the fourth part of the Liber Sancti Jacobi), which recounts apocryphal legends about Charlemagne's conquests in Spain and his defense of St. James' shrine in Compostela, Smith deduces that any pilgrim relying on its sense of Iberian geography and history would have been hopelessly misled.
Rights Information
Copyright © 2011 The Trustees of Indiana University
Recommended Citation
Wolf, Kenneth Baxter. Review of Maryjane Dunn and Linda Kay Davidson, eds. "The Pilgrimage to Compostela in the Middle Ages: A Book of Essays" (New York: Routledge, 2000), in The Medieval Review (2001).
