We would like to thank Sebastian Rider-Bezerra for his suggestions on the linguistic aspects and translation of this text.
Upon arrival at the Cathedral of Santiago, pilgrims today participate in rich traditions that shape their experience of at last reaching their destination: They may attend a pilgrims’ mass, descend into the crypt to view the relics of St. James, watch the enormous botafumeiro swing, marvel at the Pórtico de la Gloria, and, of course, greet their host: One of the most beloved Camino traditions involves climbing the stairs embedded within the ornate altar to hug a statue of St. James from behind.
Thanks to some intriguing medieval documents (as well as painstaking scholarship by José Pensado, Francisco Javier Pérez Rodríguez, and Pär Larson, among others), we can get a sense of what pilgrims experienced when they entered the cathedral centuries ago. The 13th-century document translated below, held in the Cathedral Archive in Libro 2 de Constituciones (f. 64-65), is an excellent example. It outlines the important features within the cathedral and contains instructions for those working there to welcome and guide pilgrims in their path through the cathedral interior. The multilingualism of this text is especially striking: It proposes various “scripts” that can be addressed to pilgrims in different languages, including forms of Occitan and Italian. Above all, practicality pervades the text, and these multilingual lines seem to reflect the kinds of pragmatic communication that arose from a diverse context of locals and pilgrims.
Background on Pilgrims’ Experiences in 13th-Century Santiago
The Altar of St. James was the principal attraction of the cathedral, and it received the richest portion of visitors’ offerings. These offerings were then shared out to various beneficiaries, including the archbishop and the cathedral chapter. Such a collection of offerings was known as an arca, a word that can refer both to the physical donation box and to the fund more generally.
Next in importance after the Altar itself was the Arca de la Obra, which likewise took in a variety of offerings, in this case earmarked for the cathedral fabric: Within this context, the word “fabric” refers to the physical materials and upkeep of the cathedral. The donations made to the Arca de la Obra thus supported the stone masons, as well as other groups with a stake in the fabric of the church. It’s hard for us know exactly how funding for the cathedral’s maintenance worked in practice, given a lack of relevant documentation; we are thus left to speculate about precisely how the alms given to the Arca de la Obra were divided, as well as how stone masons and artisans were contracted and by whom.
Apart from these two main arcas within the cathedral, others existed of lesser importance. In the 13th century, these included: the chain, crown (corona), and treasury (thesaurus), as well as others whose precise significance is not immediately apparent (guardarie, madanela, carta). It’s clear that numerous places and objects existed within the cathedral where pilgrims could dedicate their offerings, each connected to some aspect of St. James’ life, though for some objects, the link to St. James is clearer than for others. The crown is particularly associated with German pilgrims, who participated in a special coronation ceremony; one striking sculptural depiction of such a ceremony once decorated the Nordstetter Kapelle, an important German waypoint along the Camino (today, the sculpture can be found at the Villinger Münster in southwestern Germany).
We know a considerable amount of detail about the cathedral customs that guided pilgrims’ visits thanks to the quarrels that erupted during the 13th and 14th centuries between the Altar of St. James and the Arca de la Obra. In 1228, Archbishop Bernard threatened to excommunicate anyone who confused or misled pilgrims while they were trying to leave offerings in the various chapels of the cathedral. Issues arose over the question of donations: If the arqueyrus of the Obra (guardian of the Arca de la Obra) wanted to secure a larger portion of the pilgrims’ offerings, then he might take advantage of the fact that the names of the two arcas were very similar: the fund for the Altar was the arca beati Jacobi, while that for the Obra was the arca operis beati Jacobi. An unscrupulous arqueyrus merely had to mumble the word operis or omit it entirely. In addition, the Arca de la Obra enjoyed a convenient position within the cathedral, attracting the attention of pilgrims soon after they entered.
The rivalry between the Altar of St. James and the Arca de la Obra led the Archbishop Juan Arias to entrust the cantor Juan Peláez, the cardinal Lorenzo Domínguez, and Juan Fernández Rapati with conducting an investigation. The document translated below is the result of this investigation. Though undated, the document is believed to date to the period between 1243-1250, based on the people involved in carrying it out.
Translation of the Text
How the guardians of the Altar of St. James should behave toward the guardians of the Obra of St. James, as well as the other honors of the church of St. James. These are the customs which the guardians of the Arca de la Obra of St. James ought to observe, along with the guardians of the Altar of St. James.
First, as soon as the bell has been rung at the Altar of St. James for morning mass, the arqueyrus (that is, the guardian of the Arca) and a cleric ought to stand there at the Arca de la Obra with their rods in hand for calling pilgrims to the Arca and for delivering [blows] to the backs and limbs of the pilgrims as penitence. But neither in the grilles of the doors, nor at the doors of the Altar of St. James, nor anywhere else, should they use the rods in a way that causes [noise] or tumult. And the cleric ought to wear his surplice and stand over the Arca, and he who speaks the indulgence or pardon ought first to identify the Arca before any other honor of the church.
And after it has been called out, the arqueyrus ought at once to say to the French, “Here is the Arca de la Obra of my lord St. James. Here is the work of the church [Ze e l’archa de l’obra mon sennor San Iame. Ze e l’obra de la egresa].”1
And he ought to say to Lombards and Tuscans, “O Master Lombard, here is the Arca de la Obra of my lord St. James. This goes to the work of the church [O miçer lombardo, quest’e l’archa de la lauoree de micer Saiacomo. Questo uay a la gage fayr].”2
And to campisinis, he should say, “And you [and] [those from Tierra de Campos] and the frontier,3 come here to the Arca de la Obra of the lord St. James. The offerings which you bring from the living and the dead for the work of the lord St. James, put them here, and not in any other place [Et uos et del estremo aca ueinde a la archa de la obra de sennor Santiago. Las comendas que trahedes de mortos et de uiuos para la obra de sennor Santiago, aca las echade et non en outra parte].”4
And he ought to say each one of these phrases once in the morning, at the time the pardon is given and not before. And then, he and the other people from the church should stand there quietly until the indulgence is said. And once the pardon has been said, he ought to call all the pilgrims to the Arca in each language. And he should say, “{?}5 This is the Arca of St. James; this is the Arca de la Obra [{ƀtom} A acron Sangyama, a acron de labro].”6
And then, after Matins are finished, when the group of pilgrims advances toward the Altar of St. James, the arqueyrus (or his man whom he has there) should call them to the Arca. And if he realizes that a pilgrim wishes to leave an offering there at the Altar of St. James, then he should speak to them and point out the Altar of St. James and say that this is [instead] the Arca de la Obra. And so, the pilgrims should be guided there [to the Altar], namely so that they first make offerings at the Altar of St. James, and then the chain, and then the Arca de la Obra, and then the other honors.
And if the crown of St. James has been brought to the Altar of St. James, the Germans ought first to make an offering there to the aforesaid crown, and then to the cross, which is brought before that crown, and then to the chain, and then to the Arca de la Obra. But if the Germans are brought to the crown and then to the treasury, when they are refreshed from the treasury, they first ought to make an offering to the Arca de la Obra prior to the Altar.
Likewise, if a pilgrim tells the treasurers that he is bringing an offering, the treasurers ought to ask him if he is bringing it to St. James or to the Arca de la Obra of St. James. And if he says that he is bringing it to St. James, they should tell him to put it on the Altar. And if he says that he is bringing it for the Arca or for the work, they should send him with it to the Arca de la Obra or lead him to the Arca.
Likewise, if a pilgrim says that he brings an offering, then the arqueyrus and cleric (or those who stand there with them or in their place) ought to ask if he is bringing the offering itself to St. James or to the Arca de la Obra. And if he says he is bringing it to the Arca de la Obra of St. James, they should say that they will bring it there.
But when the door of the Altar of St. James is closed, or the treasurers have gone from there, then the cleric who stands at the Arca ought to take off his surplice and go there with the arqueyrus and sit on the steps without his rod and guard the linens, wax, and other things; but the man of the arqueyrus should remain there. And they should not call pilgrims. But if a pilgrim asks after the Arca de la Obra or the Altar of St. James, the man ought to show him and he ought to do this well and faithfully.
After eating, when the treasurers come to the Altar of St. James, the arqueyrus and cleric should presently go to the Arca de la Obra, and the cleric should put on his surplice and stand there over the Arca with his rod, and the arqueyrus with his rod, and however the pilgrims come to the Altar of St. James, the arqueyrus and the cleric (or his man) ought to call out “Arca de la Obra of St. James” and not “Arca of St. James” – but rather the “Arca de la Obra of St. James.” And from there, they should lead the pilgrims through the honors according to how it is said above.
And at the conclusion of Vespers, the arqueyrus and the cleric should place any pilgrim, if there are any, under the guard of the Arca. Once a guard has been placed on the altar, he should say to anyone asking that this is the Arca de la Obra of St. James and tell them, if they ask, where they should put offerings to the Arca de la Obra of St. James. But he should not call pilgrims there. And the man of the arqueyrus should remain there, who guards the iron and linen and wax and other things. But he should not call any pilgrim. And the arqueyrus should not receive the image of a man, horse, or any other form; nor incense; nor any bread. Likewise, at the Altar of St. James and at the other honors of the church, they should not accept iron rods or iron crosses, nor lead or iron candlesticks. But they ought to accept at the Altar of St. James a good sword, a good knife, or a good bell. If any of the former things are offered, the Arca de la Obra should have them. Also, the arqueyrus should not accept unrefined beeswax, but he should have all the candles which are offered there, unless it is the great candle of clamor.7 And the treasurers should not show the collection box to the pilgrims who make offerings there.
Likewise, they ought to give something from the altar of St. James to the arqueyrus and the cleric and render service to them. And the arqueyrus and the cleric (or his man) should not say to the pilgrims that they should put what remains of the wax and hirloure (which is called expedimentum in Latin)8 at the Arca de la Obra of St. James. But they should tell them that they should put candles before the figure of St. James.
I, Juan Peláez, sworn public notary of Compostela, wrote this at the mandate of Juan Peláez, Cantor, and Lorenzo Domínguez, Cardinal of Compostela, and Juan Fernández, called “Rapati,” who investigated this matter at the mandate of the Lord Archbishop.
Notes
1 Francigenis: These lines are directed “to the French,” meaning more broadly those from the territory of France. José Pensado (1960) identifies the phrasing here as belonging to the language of southern France (langue d’oc) rather than northern France (langue d’oïl): see Pensado, p. 330.This linguistic community also implicates the Crown of England, since Occitan would answer for Gascony, Henry III’s nearest territory. The rhotacism (egresa for eglesa (< ecclesia)) is surprising, but perhaps not unthinkable in a Galician-Portuguese context (modern Portuguese has praia for Spanish playa, etc.). If so, it is quite telling, because it is very rare in an Occitan context.
2 Lombardis et tozcanis: “…to the Lombards and the Tuscans”: that is, to northern and central Italians more generally; see Pär Larson (2020), p. 334, n. 11 on the use of these terms to designate larger swaths of north/central Italy. Pensado identifies the lines that follow as combining Tuscan with other north Italian (Lombard, Genoese) elements. He notes that this script begins with a formula of invocation (O miçer lombardo…), which he views as an especially courteous opening; Larson argues instead that Spanish-speakers commonly used miçer at this time to address or indicate Italians. The final line of this section (Questo uay a la gage fayr) offers some complications. Larson suggests interpreting it as inflected with French ([questo] va à les gages faire) and thus meaning: “What you leave here goes to pay wages.” See Larson, p. 335. Pensado observes the Latin-influenced word order of the sentence, with the verb fayr at the end, rather than Questo vay a fayr la gage, which would be more typical; see Pensado, p. 338.
3 Campisinis: These lines are directed “to the campisini” (campisinis), though it is difficult to identify the precise group of people to whom this refers. The Castilian word campesinos would typically denote peasant farmers, and so the campisini here may refer to peasants from the surrounding areas or from across Iberia who spoke a variety of local dialects. Another possibility is that it refers to those from Tierra de Campos (see, e.g., Larson, p. 335). Some editions of this text (e.g., López Ferreiro) open the quotation that follows with E uos de Campos et del Estremo acá, but de Campos does not appear in the manuscript. Overall, we find it likely that this line may be a reference to Tierra de Campos, but that it is not strictly intended to be understood in that sense. Just as the reference to lombardi et tozcani covers the northern Italians more generally (remembering that there are also the Liguri, Veneti, etc.), and el estremo covers the Iberian frontiers to the south, campisinis is likely intended to mean simply “to the Iberians.”
4 Et uos et del estremo: As both Larson and Pensado note, the language used in this passage combines Galician and Castilian elements; Pensado ultimately concludes that these lines represent a lingua franca, “a mixed language, without linguistic reality, born from the necessity that contact among Spanish people from different regions and languages demanded for ease of mutual comprehension.” (“Nos vemos obligados a explicar el pasaje como una lengua mixta, sin realidad lingüística, nacida de la necesidad que el contacto entre gentes hispánicas de diversas regiones y lenguas exigía para una más fácil comprensión.”): see Pensado, p. 339-40.
5 ƀtom: Scholars have disagreed on how to read this line. One difficulty arises from a word in the manuscript beginning with ƀto and ending with either om or oni. Pensado’s transcription reads Et debet dicere bretoni: «A acron Sangyama, a acron de labro» (“And he should say to the Breton: «…»”). In this case, the language of the quotation would be Breton, a Celtic language spoken in northwestern France. However, this reading is implausible, and the language here does not appear to be Breton. Others read the word as bentom, bertom, or similar and see it instead as the first word of the recommended script spoken to the pilgrim. This second interpretation seems to us more plausible. Larson transcribes this section as follows: et debet dicere: ƀtom aatrō sangyama aatrō d’labro.
6 A acron Sangyama: Larson offers speculative readings of the line to be spoken to the pilgrims and in particular suggests swapping the vowel order of aatrō. The line thus becomes: ƀtom a ōtra [or otrā?] san gyama a ōtra [or otrā?] del obra, which he translates (leaving out ƀtom) as: “l’una è per san Jacopo, l’altra è dell’Opera” (“One is for St. James, the other for the Obra”). On this issue, we suggest following Pensado’s reading of the word as acron (arca) since this involves fewer changes to the sentence as it appears in the manuscript. We have thus settled – for now – on the translation above: “This is the Arca of St. James; this is the Arca de la Obra.”
7 The candela magna de clamore (“great candle of clamor”) was a big candle offered to the Apostle to request his help obtaining some special wish or goal. See Pensado, p. 330.
8 It is unclear what hirloure/expedimentum means, and decades of scholarship has been (to our knowledge) unable to decipher it. One early modern Latin dictionary defines expedimentum as fustian, a type of fabric: See Riders Dictionarie, Corrected and Augmented (London 1606), Link to Google Books. More convincingly, for expedimentum Du Cange gives impedimentum, sarcinae, with the meaning of “equipment, baggage”; he supplies as evidence a letter of St. Thomas Becket: “He says that he does not have [the letters] to hand, due to the fact that he had sent them with his baggage (cum suo expedimento) to Winchester.” In the context of the Liber de Constituciones, this could be all the other offerings and gifts which have been brought by pilgrims. Wax (cera) is a fairly standard gift, but there are other votive offerings (a number listed in the text itself) which should be accounted for in the rules of the cathedral. Thus, the proposal of expedimentum as a simple variant of impedimentum, perhaps arising conceptually from a confusion between those things which impede your movement (impedimenta) and those things which are carried along (expedimenta). Unfortunately, hours upon hours of searching have been insufficient to locate any piece of Galician, Castilian, or French vocabulary which is plausibly connected phonetically to hirloure and definitionally to expedimentum. That does not mean that it cannot still be found, nor that this definition does not serve, at least for the moment. [See: http://ducange.enc.sorbonne.fr/EXPEDIMENTUM].
REFERENCES
For the information in our introduction, see especially: Pérez Rodríguez, Francisco Javier. La Iglesia de Santiago de Compostela en la Edad Media: El Cabildo Catedralicio (1110-1400). Santiago: Xunta de Galicia, 1996. Pages 149-51.
For the primary source text itself: The manuscript containing this document is Libro 2 de Constituciones, held in the cathedral archives of Santiago de Compostela. An image of the manuscript, as well as a transcription and linguistic analysis, can be viewed in an article by José L. Pensado: “Aspectos lingüísticos de la Compostela medieval.” Vox Romanica 19 (1960): 319-40. Link to PDF.
The document is also included in López Ferreiro, Antonio. Historia de la Santa A.M. Iglesia de Santiago de Compostela. Vol. 5. Appendix #25, pages 64-67; and in a volume by Luis Vázquez de Parga, José M.A Lacarra, and Juan Uría Ríu: Las Peregrinaciones a Santiago de Compostela. Vol. III. Madrid, 1949. Pages 113-14.
On the coronation ritual for German pilgrims, see:
Plötz, Robert. “Santiago ‘coronatio peregrinorum.'” In Santiago, Camino de Europa: Culto y Cultura en la Peregrinación a Compostela. Edited by Serafín Moralejo and Fernando López Alsina. Santiago: Monasterio de San Martín Pinario, 1993), p. 344.
On the linguistic elements of the text, see:
Larson, Pär. “Per totam linguaginem. [‘In every language’].” Verba 47 (2020): 329-40. Link to DOI.
Monteagudo, Henrique. “O Camiño, as linguas e a emerxencia do galego.” Grial 42 (2004): 52-61. Link to JSTOR.
Pensado, José L. “Aspectos lingüísticos de la Compostela medieval.” Vox Romanica 19 (1960): 319-40. Link to PDF.