Santiago de Compostela

Today is the feast of St James the Great, whose great shrine church is, of course, the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia.

Santiago de Compostela cathedral

Image:sacredsites.com

Recently, with the help of a friend, I acquired a very handsome glossy handbook - it is more than the usual guide book - to this remarkable and majestic building.

There is a detailed, illustrated online account of the building and its complex history at Santiago de Compostela Cathedral.

An article from the Financial Times travel pages writes about the current conservation of the twelfth century sculpture of the Portico de la Gloria in the west front at Santiago de Compostela's sacred sculptures.

The Portico de la Gloria

Image:turnbacktogod.com

 

Statues of Prophets on the Portico 

Image:turnbacktogod.com

The late medieval cloisters

Image:turnbacktogod.com


On this his feast day may we entreat St James to ever pray for Spain, its King and people, and for the Church in that realm and for all pilgrims to Compostela

The Botafumeiro of Santiago

Yesterday's terrible train crash just outside the city will clearly overshadows celebrations in santiago de Compostela for St James' feast today. The vistims and their relatives are definitely people to keep in our prayers.

On a happier theme celebrations at Santaigo are noted for the use of the botafumeiro in the cathedral - the great thurible that fills the cathedral with incense. The great twelfth century church was inspired in its design by the abbey and traditions of Cluny.

In a sense the botafumeiro - Galician for thurible - is every thurifer's delight, and asuitably estravagent piece with which to celebrate a great festival.

There are various videos of the botafumeiro in action on YouTube. From those I have selected three to illustrate the use of this wonderful piece of liturgical paraphanalia:

Here is another video, with the clergy vested in red as for St James:

The third is a record of the visit of Pope Benedict XVI during the Santiago Holy Year and includes some good aerial shots of the cathedral:

Popr Gregory VII and liturgical reform

I was interested to read in a recent post on the Medieval Religion discussion group that Pope Gregory VII started to mandate a standardisation of the liturgical rite in early 1074.  His letters in March 1074 to King Alphonso VI of Castile and Leon and King Sancho IV of Navarre are clear that the kings need to get the liturgical life of their realms aligned with Rome (he mentions that the Toledan/Mozarabic order will not be sufficient - it must be the Roman order).  He returns to the subject in a letter to King Alphonso VI in 1081, praising him, and holding him up as an exemplar, for restoring the Roman rite.  In that he can perhaps be seen as a precursor of King Philip II and his insistence that the decrees of the Council of Trent be enforced in his realms in the later sixteenth century.

With regard to the Hildebrandine reform, as the MR contributor points out, these letters, if nothing else, gives us a significant indicator at a starting point for the attempt at standardisation - and that it was tied, from the Pope’s perspective,  to his broader reform programme. It is also an answer, in part, to those who claim that such Papal initiatives are a modern thing, and indeed, that they are unjustified and unprecedented actions.

Pope Gregory VII

Image: uncouthreflections.wordpress

There is an online account of King Alfonso VI here and for those with Spanish there is a fuller version here.   The King was a notable patron of the abbey of Cluny and encouraged the Cluniac presence in his kingdom along the pilgrimage route to Compostella.

King Sancho IV was to be a victim in 1076 of the fratricidal tendencies not infrequently displayed in these years by the Iberian royal houses as can be seen in the online account of him here.

King Alfonso VI
Twelfth century minaiture at Santiago de Compostella cathedral

Image: Wikipedia

St James at Santiago

To continue the theme of St James here a picture of the votive statue of St James above the High Altar in the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela. I understand from reading Edwin Mullins' book on the Pilgrimage  that is the custom for pilgrims who have walked the Camino to embrace the statue and to briefly place their hats on the saint's head.

The statue of St James

Image:blog,travelpod.com





The interior of the cathedral

Image:Flickr.com

... and here is the great thurible of Santiago in action

Image:blog,travelpod.com

There are pictures of the visit of the King and Queen of Spain to Santiago for the Jubilee Year in 2010 in the post Jubilee of St James the Greater from the New Liturgical Movement.

Medieval Navarrese and Scandinavian churches

The Medieval Religion discussion group has pointed me to two very interesting websites.

The first is about Romanesque architecture and sculpture in Navarre. Entitled Arte Románico en Navarra it is in Spanish but easily understood and can be accessed here. There is also an index page here so that one can click on the individual recorridos.

It is not only an indication of the fine things to be found in this part of Spain but areminfder of the flow of Romanesque art along the routes of the camino to Santiago and in particular the spread of Cluniac ideas in the eleventh and twelfth centuries as pilgrimage and the reconquista developed.

From Scandinavia there is an excellent web site with a great series of images of churches and monastic remains in Sweden and Denmark, as well as some other examples, including some in Scotland and Spain- and well worth exploring by clicking on the links on the sidebar. It is entitled Medeltidmed fokus på Skåne och Stockholmsområdet and can be found here. The text is in Swedish but comprehensible I think as to dates, places and patrons.

The churches illustrated are a reminder of how fully later medieval Scandinavia was integrated into the culture of medieval Christendom. Lutheranism did not prove so destructive of the artistic heritage of preceding centuries as did Calvinism or the various strands of reformist religion in England. In particular parish churches often preserved under whitewash whole cycles of paintings illustrative of late medieval folk piety.

Both sites are well worth looking at,or - putting it another way -jolly good timewasters.

Profiting by Pilgrimage

Last year I wrote about the sponsored pilgrimage to Compostela by Fr Daniel Seward, the parish priest of the Oxford Oratory and a group of young people from the parish. The aim was both to join with other pilgrims to this great shrine in the Jacobeo Jubilee Year and to raise funds for the Oratory's Reaffirmation and Renewal Appeal.

Today we were told that with the promised funds collected in and the gift aid added the pilgrimage had raised £5462.57 for the appeal. This is a splendid achievement and many congratulations are offered to those involved in the effort.

Pilgrimage can therefore bring materal as well as spiritual rewards.

There is more about the appeal at the Oxford Oratory Appeal site.