Les haltes du chemin de Compostelle : géographie hagiographique et construction idéologique

Abstract

The study of the stopovers on the Way of Saint James allows us to understand how, for a man of the Middle Ages, space covers different and complementary statutes. The concept covers, at the same time, the concrete and material space of the journey, the political and institutional space of time and its princes, and the symbolic space of ecclesiological places that affirm the power of the Church here below. Within this predefined framework, the history of societies is inscribed with its cities, its churches, its sanctuaries, all linked to the progressive and still nascent construction of a Spanish state where geography is invested with an epic fresco: the fifth Book of Codex is, certainly, a guide for pilgrims. But it also shows them, and above all, a way in which faith is inseparable from a struggle against the infidel in which the peoples of France and Spain are invited to participate under the aegis of the Emperor Charlemagne and in accordance with his chivalrous model. The book proclaims the need for this unity in the Rosary of the carefully chosen stages which make up the path and which are completed by the Apostle’s Sanctuary. The Guide is also a place of experimentation, that of a writing anxious to give to see, whether it is the strange human creatures that inhabit the lands crossed, the miracles of the saints whose exemplary lives are remembered, or the wonders of sacred art.

Keywords

• santiago de compostela
• pilgrimage
• way
• peoples
• hagiography
• history
• politics
• reconquista
• description
• wonder