The Wayward Pilgrim: A Pilgrimage to Santiago De Compostela in Northern Spain Is Stitched Together with Adventures, Side-Trips, and Visits to Sites Unknown to the Medieval Pilgrim.

By William Elihu Palmer

The Wayward Pilgrim is an account of the desultory pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain made by a professor of Spanish on Sabbatical leave from the Salisbury University in Maryland. The professor undertakes the pilgrimage not as a religious experience but as an attempt to better understand the history and culture of Spain. In the book, he combines an account of the Medieval pilgrimage with the diversions often taken by the modem pilgrim. In the end, the professor comes to realize the hardships, the endurance and the hardy and devote spirit of the true pilgrim.
In addition to the account of the pilgrimage, the book also contains vignettes of great moments and great historical figures that changed the world forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483606699

William Elihu Palmer

William Elihu Palmer grew up on a farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland during the Great Depression. He enlisted in the Army at the age of 17 and served n Occupied Japan and fought in the Korean War. He married Angeles Palmer in Madrid, Spain in 1960. They have four children. He spent his career as an educator, teaching at universities in the USA and abroad, including Ohio University, the University of Salamanca, Spain, and at Salisbury University in Maryland. He and Angeles moved to Coronado, California in 2017.

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Copyright © 2013 by William Elihu Palmer.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-4836-0668-2

                Ebook          978-1-4836-0669-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 03/09/2013

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CONTENTS

Part I:   The Road to Glory

1.   Prologue

2.   The Leave-Taking

3.   Paris: April 1150

4.   A Personal Pilgrimage: Fall 1987

5.   The Pilgrim as Tourist

6.   Encounter in Naples

7.   Pompeii

8.   La Bella Italia

9.   The Ins and Outs of France

10.   Reflections on the Pilgrimage Road

11.   On to Santiago

12.   End of the Journey

Part II:   Other Wayfarers

1.   Paris, Son of Priam

2.   Helen of Troy

3.   The Ultimate Weapon

4.   The Reluctant Heroes

5.   Joan of Arc

6.   Columbus

7.   The Monastery at Yuste

8.   The Invincible

9.   A Heaven for Henry VIII

10.   Conquering Heroes

Part III:   Other Roads

1.   The Uncharted Road

2.   Place as Prelude

3.   The True Dreamers

4.   The Right Way to End the Day

5.   The Search Goes On

6.   King Kronos

7.   The Puppet Show

PART I

THE ROAD TO GLORY

PROLOGUE

During the Middle Ages the most heavily traveled pilgrimage road was the road to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. Christians from all parts of Europe made the long trek across the Pyrenees to worship at the Tomb of St. James. Those who made the pilgrimage came back bearing the symbol of St. James: a cockle shell.

The earliest Christians pilgrims, though, were the Palmers. Pilgrims who traveled to Jerusalem to worship at the holy sites there carried as a symbol of their pilgrimage a leaf or branch of the palm tree. These pilgrims were called Palmers. Who, then, has a greater pedigree to write about a pilgrimage than a Palmer?

THE LEAVE-TAKING

Every leave-taking has the potential for permanent separation. Thus, though the road beckons brightly, a tinge of sadness laces the goodbyes. On the eve of the pilgrimage, the pilgrim today, like the pilgrim before him, takes leave of his neighbor, his friends and his family; he eats and drinks well before setting out on the journey—a journey that promises the fulfillment of a spiritual obligation for some; a miraculous cure of a grave disease for others; an act of penitence tor the sinner; a curious diversion for the wealthy; and for all—merriment, adventure, strange new places, diverse and different foods, local color, local speech and the vast landscape in between.

What promise does the pilgrimage hold for me, a professor of Spanish now old enough to seek salvation? This personal journey to Santiago de Compostela is not undertaken as a spiritual pilgrimage. Rather it is undertaken to fulfill a promise that I made to myself in 1960 when I spent my honeymoon in Santiago de Compostela with my Spanish bride, Angeles. It was then that I first learned about the pilgrimage to the Tomb of St. James. It was then that I was so taken by the stalwart faith of the pilgrims and the vital role of St. James in the history of Spain that I vowed to return to Santiago someday as a pilgrim.

Now in the Fall of 1987 as I am about to depart, I have no pretensions of possessing a faith strong enough to observe the rigors and formal traditions of the true pilgrimage. Instead, I plan to combine the pilgrimage to Santiago with a tour of France. Switzerland and Italy. It will indeed be a wayward pilgrimage!

But as I lay in bed on this. the eve of my departure. I try to imagine, even visualize and sense the excitement even rapture, that the Medieval pilgrims must have felt as they gathered in Paris to begin their long journey to Santiago de Compostela. It is again April in Paris, but in the year 1150, and as the snows begin to melt in the Pyrenees, the season of the pilgrimage is about to begin.

PARIS: APRIL 1150

They come trudging into Paris under the low April clouds—the cobbler, the miller and the stone-cutter; the tailor, the plowman and the clerk—hundreds and hundreds more of high station and low. They gather with high spiritual purpose at the great Cathedral of San Jacques de la Boucherie. It is the season of the Pilgrimage and they are the pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela in Spain-the site of the Tomb of St. James. They gather in the place beside the Tower of San Jacques and on the steps of the cathedral to tell tales of their arriving: tales of the hard rains and winds in the mountains to the north; the flooding rivers and the muddy roads and the beggars and urchins along the way. They gather in the Place de San Jacques with pickpockets and petty thieves among them, the prostitutes and hussies beckoning to them from doorways and street corners, and the street vendors—calling their wares: the water sellers, the wine carters, the food merchants with their trays of bread and sausages and cheese and great pans of steaming stew. And all the voices—the shouts and shrieks of a hundred tongues.

And edging around the crowd, under the archways and on the paved walkway in front of the shops and cafes that line the place—a lad of about seventeen leads by the hand an old man with a long grey beard who walks with hesitant step and with