To Santiago by Edwin Mullins

Author:Edwin Mullins [Mullins, Edwin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-fiction on pilgrims' routes
Publisher: Hornbeam Press
Published: 2014-08-01T16:00:00+00:00

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This stretch of the pilgrim road along the edge of the central mountains was the front line in territorial battles between England and France for more than three centuries. It is hardly surprising that as a result, so many of the saints revered in this region should have been honoured for miracles in which victims of war were healed of their wounds or released from captivity. In the mediaeval church at St Léonard-de-Noblat, with its massive bell tower and spire pointing so confidently to heaven, kings, dukes and countless more humble soldiers came to offer prayers of thanks to the saint whom they believed to be responsible for their deliverance from enemy hands.

Mediaeval pilgrims who paused here to pay their respects to those miraculous events then headed westwards across the valley to the city that gave its name to this road. The city was Limoges, and in the Pilgrim’s Guide the road is named the Via Lemoviense. Its two 13th-century bridges still lead the traveller along the ancient trail. Limoges was the city of another miracle-worker, St Martial, who surprisingly gets no mention in the Pilgrim’s Guide. The little we know about Martial is that he was a preacher in pre-Christian Roman Gaul who defied persecution and achieved popular acclaim for his miraculous powers. It is reasonable to suppose that he might have been forgotten like St Léonard but for the fact that seven centuries later the newly-founded monastery of Cluny began to extend its influence southwest from Burgundy, sponsoring abbeys and priories which serviced the pilgrim road to Spain. And the abbey of St Martial was one of them.

With the growing popularity of the pilgrimage movement, spurred by the legend of St James and the emotive cause of Reconquest in Spain, the abbey of St Martial soon became richly endowed, and by the 11th century the abbey church could offer pilgrims the dramatic sight of a reliquary of the saint as a seated figure entirely encased in gold, with hands outstretched in a gesture of blessing. The impact on pilgrims entering the candlelit church after days and weeks on the road in this war-torn countryside must have been hypnotic. Here was the golden saint himself, the master of miracles, arms extended in welcome to the weary traveller. It would have been the closest to being blessed by God. Alas, the reliquary-statue no longer exists. But travellers on the third of these pilgrim roads, the one from Le Puy, will soon come face to face with a similar reliquary that has survived, the extraordinary Majesté de Saint-Foy at Conques, about which a great deal will be said later.

The abbey church of St Martin in Limoges was one of the five archetypal pilgrim churches which conformed to the same plan, designed to accommodate large congregations capable of circulating freely along the broad aisles and behind the high altar in order to venerate the relics placed in full view on the altar itself (as described in Chapter 3). Such was the power

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