Digital Camino de Santiago provides an online guide to one of the world’s best-known pilgrimages, ending at the tomb of the apostle St. James in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. The site is a work-in-progress, and we continue to add new material regularly, including explanatory and interpretive text, images, excerpts from relevant primary sources, and bibliographical information, with plans to incorporate interactive maps. Our goal is to bring the Middle Ages to life through a virtual pilgrimage that can be experienced from anywhere.
You can use this site to learn more about historical sites along the pilgrimage route and in Galicia, to become acquainted with Santiago’s medieval archbishops and other key figures in Spanish history, to explore specific themes related to the pilgrimage, and to read primary sources created during the High and Late Middle Ages.
For instance, you can read about how pilgrims were welcomed in multiple languages to the Cathedral of Santiago during the thirteenth century. This text is one of several on the theme of hospitality that we’ve recently translated. Or, you can find excerpts from the Deeds of Berengar, a fourteenth-century eyewitness account describing the actions of Santiago’s archbishop during a rebellion by the townspeople. Appointed by the pope to the See of Santiago de Compostela in 1317, Berengar arrived in the city to a barrage of swords, spears, and siege catapults. Present-day pilgrims can visit sites associated with Berengar’s tumultuous entrance, including the Castle of Rocha Forte.
This project has been supported by the Wright Library at Princeton Theological Seminary and a Digital Education Innovation Grant from the Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning.
The Pilgrimage
Many roads lead to Santiago de Compostela–but this is the route that is described in the famous “Pilgrim’s Guide” in the twelfth-century Liber Sancti Jacobi.
Digital Camino focuses on medieval historic sites along traditional pilgrimage routes, as well as medieval sites in Galicia, especially those that have a connection to the archbishops of Santiago de Compostela.
To get started, click on “Places,” “People,” “Themes,” or “Primary Sources.”
Plans for the Digital Camino
We are currently conducting research on hospitality along the Camino; this project involves translating medieval primary sources related to hospitality (such as a 13th-century poem in praise of the pilgrims’ hospital at Roncesvalles); mapping hospitality infrastructure in as much detail as possible; linking these maps to primary sources (both textual and art historical); and analyzing our findings to gain a clearer picture of how hospitable institutions shaped the “pilgrim experience” in the Middle Ages.
Over the next few years, we plan to expand in the following ways:
- Populate the site with more entries on historic sites and figures.
- Translate and make available more primary sources.
- Create pages for important medieval manuscripts.
- Add interactive maps.
- Produce a podcast covering the history of the pilgrimage.
- Write comprehensive book reviews of Camino-related books written in Spanish, French, German, and other languages (to make this content more accessible to English-speaking students and pilgrims), as well as overviews of important scholarship written in English.
Digital Camino Team
Amelia Kennedy (Princeton Theological Seminary)
Burton Westermeier (Yale University)
Sean Perrone (St. Anselm College)
Unless otherwise stated, pages on this site are created by members of our team.