Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Evening in Santiago

I have never known Santiago de Compostela, the town: I have been here at least five times, not counting these last three visits in two weeks: 1957, 1965, 1969, 1985 and 1996. Yet all I remember of the visits is the area around the Cathedral. Yet Santiago, being the seat of a medieval Cathedral, and a place of pilgrimage, had many religious orders associated with it, each with their own building and community, some of which are still active. Among these are the cloistered Dominican sisters of Belvis, the Convent of las Mercedarias the Convento La Salle, and the Order of Saint Clare. As to orders for men, the Jesuits still teach at the Colexio San Francisco Javier, diocesan priests at the Seminario Menor, a school for boys, and distinct from El Seminario Mayor, which trains priests. All these institutions have their own buildings, most of them built in Baroque style in the 17th and 18th centuries, like much of Santiago, including the Cathedral.

Santiago also has many chapels, each with its own personality. The Capilla de las Animas, next to the Arquivo Universitario Historico, the university archives, is particularly striking: it features a polychrome plaque in the architrave of the exterior: nine long-haired men --they resemble the Apostles at the Last Supper, with the fifth being the tallest, the others in descending height making up four on each side of him. Their throats and shoulders and the top of their chests are exposed, and their hands are clasped together in a prayerful gesture. Yet their bodies are being consumed by flames as tall as wheat sheaves, a field of fire.

These are not apostles filled with the Holy Ghost, nor are they souls in Hell. They are souls in Purgatory, and, like Hell, it is hot there. The modern mind no longer contemplates Purgatory in the sense the builders of the chapel did, if we believe at all, we live with the dichotomy of Heaven and Hell, and nothing in between. The medieval mind, however, recognized gradations between the seventh circle of Hell, and the "seventh heaven" as we speak of it today. Santiago is full of reminders of this kind, that indicate that human beings looked at existence on earth very differently from the way we do. On the Cathedral facade on Praza das Praterias, for another instance, is a sculpted scene in relief of a woman kissing the lips of a head severed from its body. Legend has that it was the head of her lover, whom her husband --who killed him-- obliged her to kiss twice a day. Not a mere folk tale, the founders of the Cathedral --for the Praterias facade is one of only two that retain their original Romanesque form intact-- saw some edifying value in illustrating this grisly story, raising it to parable status by commissioning the sculptures.


There are lighter sides to Santiago as well: it is a University town, of one of the oldest universities in the world, founded in 1495, around the time Ferdinand and Isabella sent Columbus to discover a new route to the Indies, and built the Hostal. It is also a center of Galician folk culture, featuring Galician musicians playing hammered dulcimers and especially bagpipes in the high-ceilinged passageway that leads to the Plaza del Obradoiro. The sound of a piper playing a cheerful jig (and there is a different one every hour of the day), can be heard from a distance, the music floating through the air and adding a light note to the natural solemnity of the Cathedral. When I hear the piper's strains, I want to dance --and have.

A classical guitarist playing in another corner, offers an alternative musical form. And the mimes dressed like Santiago as a pilgrim, with varying degrees of success --one actually has the soulful eyes and rustic manner associated with the Apostle in his pilgrim garb, and attracts many who want their picture taken with him-- all make for a peaceful experience in the vicinity of the Cathedral. Not that this is always the case, as my entry into Santiago the day of the bicycle race demonstrated, but generally, the Plaza is a place of peace and celebration for those who made the trip to this remote place in Europe.

I go there this evening, after having gone so far as to tour Santiago's modern shopping district --not too much different from those anywhere else, and therefore, just as well avoided. There will not be too many more opportunities to visit the Saint, and I want to know more about the chapel behind the altar, la Capilla de la Confession, where the German pilgrims heard Mass this morning. There is a seven-thirty Mass, the last of the day, so I head over to the Cathedral.


There is a large group of Italian pilgrims visiting with their priest. The church is full, but I squeeze into the one remaining seat in the front pew, next to a couple who will take the collection, on one side, and two Brazilian visitors on the other. The highlight of the Mass (apart from the sacrament, of course), is the swinging of the censer, the botafumeiro.

The botafumeiro, about fifty inches tall, and made of silver, takes eight men to raise. The sacristan places the incense on the already hot coals, which catch and start to smoke as the men, pulling together, start raising the censer with one abrupt pull, followed by a pause, and another, each pull widening the ambit and height of the censer's swing. Starting out small, the eight men widen the censer's arc until it swings out almost the full length of the transept, over the heads of the faithful seated in the transept pews, until, at the climax of the spectacle, it just misses the ceiling, before the decline in centrifugal force brings it slowly down to earth in a few more swings. One of the eight grabs the censer by one of the chains attached to its parts, the remaining force swinging him around once, at which point the censer is once more at rest. Another man removes the ashes of the incense, and another pulls on the rope to lift the botafumeiro back to its stationery position above the altar table.

The botafumeiro is not raised predictably: some holy days it is, others not. The censer was raised this evening as a courtesy to the pilgrims who came from Italy with their pastor. Its raising is a bit of a circus act --and the presiding priest noted that whenever it occurs, word gets around in advance, and the Cathedral fills up, particularly during the last half of the Mass. Think of the perfume rising as a sign of the Holy Spirit he said, and I am reminded of Indian temples and similar references to incense as the material manifestation of the spirit. In fact, when I look at the altar piece of the Cathedral of Santiago, I see an elaborateness of gold decoration comparable only to the many-layered elaborations of Hindu temples and the churrigueresque, the Mexican Baroque (which reaches its apogee in the Viceregal Chapel in the Monastery of Tepozotlan). The multiple layers of gold decoration on all of these are like encrustations --it is almost impossible to tell where one motif ends and another begins, they are so piled on top of one another. Of the three gilded elaborations, Santiago has the largest and most fully realized angels, though.


And, although Saint Peter's in Rome may be more architecturally significant, and more externally representative of Roman Catholicism, Santiago represents something else, something perhaps more compelling. Santiago represents the life of the spirit, and its promise. Because everyone who goes on a pilgrimage to Santiago hopes that, at the end, whatever the rigors of the journey, at its end, our inner restlessness will be becalmed, if only temporarily. This is not the same thing as a vacation from the workaday, it is the hope that our souls will find peace and our incompleteness completion.