Back to Sources

I have returned home to Laie, Hawaii from my Aunt Helen’s funeral.  We gathered in Panguitch, Utah.  I met family members who I had not previously known.  We told stories, laughed, mourned and marveled about Helen.  

The quick trip was a return to a family history source.    “History with Jim” gives me a chance to share my enthusiasm for historical research and writing - and that’s mostly about sources.  When two historians meet, they will talk about sources.  They are how we know what we know.  In Panguitch, we visited the Daughters of Utah Pioneers (DUP) Museum.  We found photos, primary sources, of Helen’s mother (my grandmother Marie Evans Heywood) who died in 1949, when Helen was 25 years old and my mother was 19 years old.  The photos showed us what Grandma Marie looked like when she was a child.  

This post will be a return to the July 5 “Walking in Kaimuki” sample of Camino de Santiago sources. The sources explain and point to my excitement for the coming pilgrimage.  Beth and I will be walking the Way of St. James in less than two months.  The four travel books are fun to read and indicate the diversity of authors writing about the Camino and Spain: three contemporary authors from the USA, the UK, and the Netherlands.  The fourth author is a bit of a mystery, but he is most often associated with a French monk who wrote in the mid-1200s.

Andrew McCarthy (born 1962), Walking with Sam: A Father, a Son and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain, (2023).  Yes, the author is the same Andrew McCarthy who starred in the 1980s movies St. Elmo’s Fire (1985) Pretty in Pink (1986), Mannequin (1987), and Weekend at Bernie’s (1989).  Besides Hollywood “Brat Pack” movies, McCarthy has also won awards for his travel writing.  This 2023 book recounts his five week walk along el camino francés (the French Way) from the French border to Pamplona, Burgos, across Old Castile, León and through Galicia to Santiago de Compostela.  The book focuses on his relationship with his teenage son, which provides a good example of the benefits of walking the Camino with family and friends.

Giles Tremlett (born 1962), Ghosts of Spain: Travels through Spain and Its Silent Past (2006). I recommend this book to friends who travel to Spain. Tremlett, from the UK, has adopted Spain as his home, and writes for the Guardian, a British newspaper.  The Camino, Santiago and Galicia are only one chapter about the many ways in which “in Spain the dead are more alive than the dead in any other place in the world” - an epigraph in the book from the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca (1898 - 1936). In Chapter 12, Tremlett contrast the traditional view of Galicia, Gallegos and the pilgrimage to Santiago - superstitious, devout and galego-speakers with contemporary life of narcos, middle-class mothers and Amancio Ortega Gaona (born 1936), the second wealthiest retailer in the world worth $73 billion dollars with his Inditex company, with fast-fashion stores, Zara and Bershka. 

Cees Nooteboom (born 1933), Roads to Santiago: A Modern-day Pilgrimage through Spain (1997).  This is the English translation of the Dutch author’s 1992 book, De Omweg Naar Santiago.  Nooteboom has won multiple awards for his novels, short stories, poems and travel writing.  The many roads to Santiago capture the diversity of Spain - languages, climates, peoples and foods.  He writes “Those who have not roamed the labyrinthine complexity of her [Spain’s] history do not know what they are traveling through.  It is the love of a lifetime, the amazement is never-ending.” (page 5) 

The Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago de Compostela (12th-century Liber Sancti Jacobi also known as the Codex Calixtinus), English translation with Introduction, Commentaries and Notes by William Melczer (1993).  Like so much of the past, we have primary sources and make our best guess about who wrote it and why the surviving document was written.  The hand-written document, with many later copies elsewhere, is in the Cathedral archives in Santiago de Compostela.  It was re-discovered in 1886 and published in print in 1944.  In 2011, the document of 225 double-sided folios, each page 295 x 214 millimeters disappeared from the archives. In 2012, the codex was found and returned to the Cathedral.  A former employee and three members of his family were found guilty of theft and sentenced in 2015 to ten years in prison.

Professor William Melczer (1925 - 1995) of Syracuse University published the fifth book of the Codex which can be considered an early tourist guide for the Camino.  Two people named Aymericus (Aimery) appear in the codex.  The first was Aymericus cancellarius (Aymery the chancellor) a native of Berry, France who was an advisor to three popes - Calixtus II, Honorius II and Innocent II.  The Chancellor is credited in the document with writing, along with Pope Calixtus II, Chapters 5 and 9 in Book Five.  The preface is also credited to the Pope, hence the name Codex Calixtinus.  The second Aimery is named as the man who originally donated the Codex to the Cathedral.  He was Aimery Picaud of Parthenay-le-Vieux.  There is plenty of evidence in the guide that the author is a Frenchman.  Because of a long narrative in the document dedicated to St Eutropius of Saintes, a city of Poitou, we can even speculate that the author came from there.  As Melczer writes “But things are not so simple. . . Opinions continue to be divided on the subject.” (page 141) 

In this complicated and delightful book, which is just one book of five in the Codex, there are glossaries of the Basque language, advice about what to eat and where to stay on the Camino, insults and compliments about the people, and descriptions of the oblations at the altar of St. James in the Cathedral.  The book concludes with “it should be known that the pilgrims of St. James, whether poor or rich, have the right to hospitality and to diligent respect.” (page 133).  

These books are primary sources for learning about the Camino as experienced by pilgrims, researchers and writers.