Talk to people about travel and one word keeps coming up: pilgrimage. You'll hear about pilgrimages to Monet's garden, Sartre's tomb, Gertrude Stein's apartment or the tunnel where Diana lost her life. It seems that in our secular age, the search for the kind of spiritual transformation that pilgrimages promise is still strong. You might even say that all tourism is a kind of pilgrimage, what Thomas Pynchon called "the most absolute communion we know on earth." A pilgrimage is a journey to a shrine or holy place, made to confirm the pilgrim's reverence and religious faith. It is not restricted to the Christian world one of the Five Pillars of Islam is that every Muslim should make the pilgrimage to Mecca (in modern Saudi Arabia) at least once; Jews go on religious voyages to Jerusalem, Hindus to Benares and the Ganges River, Buddhists to various sites associated with Buddha's life. In the High Middle Ages, most travelers in Europe were Christian pilgrims on their way to Rome, Canterbury or the most important pilgrimage destination, the tomb of Saint James at Compostela in northern Spain. At their height, pilgrimages were highly organized, with official guide books and a great infrastructure of inns and souvenir-sellers catering to the estimated 100,000 believers who made the great trek each year. "The faith is not in the arrival, it's in the journey," explains Brian Spence, director of the Abbey Bookshop here in Paris. A book lover with a longstanding interest in religion and the Middle Ages, he made the pilgrimage to Compostela in 1982. He is not alone; there has been a big resurgence in this pilgrimage over the last decade, and close to 10,000 believers now make the journey each year. Spence's interest in pilgrimages began in Kent, England, after his Canadian parents bought a cottage near the Pilgrim's Way, the path connecting Winchester to Canterbury, site of the shrine of murdered saint Thomas à Becket. In 1979, he spent six days walking the Way, and had a profound spiritual experience when he reached the cathedral in Canterbury. Three years later he made the much longer pilgrimage to Compostela, taking six weeks to cover the thousand miles from Le Puy in the Auvergne, the earliest traditional starting point, to Saint James' tomb. (There are many routes, which gradually come together around the Spanish border; one leaves from the foot of the Tour St-Jacques in Paris). He traveled light, forcing himself to cover 30 miles a day, and slept in a tent at night. His greatest fear was of getting lost, a fear almost realized when he fell off a cliff into the Lot River one night while setting up camp; the river had flooded and changed course, so his map was wrong. After a few frantic moments thrashing in the water he managed to reach the shore and find his camp in the dark. Spence regrets the haste that pushed him to walk so fast; at the height of a very hot summer, he arrived exhausted, using his staff for a crutch because of the horrible blisters on his weary feet. This time there was no religious experience, just fatigue and relief. So what separates modern pilgrims like Spence from their medieval models? "Very little," he jokes, "except for the 15 kilos of camera equipment on your back." And the sense of historical perspective; the early pilgrims also came to see the sites, especially the wonderful churches along the route, but they did not set out to "commune with the past." The solitude of the road gave him a lot of time for reflection, he says, adding "I had no idea of the depth of pain that I would go through. And joy, too, though that was less frequent. It was a long, long path, an ordeal, more than I had ever imagined." The grueling regime gave him a heightened sense of his own strengths and weaknesses. He was surprised to find how isolated he felt from his fellow travelers, especially because no two seemed to walk at exactly the same pace. He felt uncomfortable with the deep believers (the most fervent carry crosses on their backs), and no better with the trekkers who were just treating it as another physical challenge. "Each pilgrim had such a personal approach," he explains. "It was difficult to communicate what you were feeling." This seems to be the crux of the matter. The pilgrim makes two voyages: the outward, physical voyage and the inward, spiritual one. Medieval believers all followed the same routes, both literally and in their faith. But modern pilgrims, even those following an ancient path with a 13th-century guide book, are all on deeply personal voyages. Whether they're bound for Compostela or Jim Morisson's grave in the Père Lachaise cemetery, these spiritual travelers are finally on their own with their thoughts. And the destination is just a pretext: the getting there is most of the experience. |
