1. METAPHORS PILGRIMS LIVE BY:
METAPHOR SYSTEMS OF THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE
by
Todd N. Valdini
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of
The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts
Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, Florida
May 2007

2. Copyright by Todd N. Valdini 2007
ii

3. METAPHORS PILGRIMS LIVE BY:
METAPHOR SYSTEMS OF THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE
by
Todd N. Valdini
This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate’s thesis advisor, Dr. Prisca
Augustyn, Department of Languages and Linguistics, and has been approved by the
members of his supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of the Dorothy F.
Schmidt College of Arts and Letters and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Master of Arts.
SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE:
______________________________
Thesis Advisor
______________________________
______________________________
____________________________________
Chairperson, Department of Languages and
Linguistics
____________________________________
Interim Dean, The Dorothy F. Schmidt College
of Arts & Letters
____________________________________ __________________
Interim Dean, Graduate Studies and Programs Date
iii

4. Acknowledgements
I would like to extend my gratitude to my thesis committee for their thoughtful
and comprehensive reflections in the writing of this work: Dr. John Childrey for his
proficiency in metaphor in literature; Dr. Martha Mendoza for her expertise in metaphor
theory; and Dr. Prisca Augustyn who chaired this committee and put in additional hours
to help me put all the pieces together.
I am also deeply indebted to the unofficial fourth member of this committee and
personal political advisor Dr. Benjamin Goldman of the University of Syracuse: My first
and final line of defense.
Finally, I am truly grateful to Dr. Myriam Ruthenberg for her encouragement and
sage conversation over the past four years. Thank you for helping me navigate the
labyrinth.
This pilgrimage would not have been possible without all of your kind assistance.
Ultreya!
iv

5. ABSTRACT
Author: Todd N. Valdini
Title: METAPHORS PILGRIMS LIVE BY:
METAPHOR SYSTEMS OF THE MODERN PILGRIMAGE
Institution: Florida Atlantic University
Thesis Advisor: Dr. Prisca Augustyn
Degree: Masters of Arts
Year: 2007
Pilgrimages have produced volumes of textual reflections by pilgrims and
outside observers. These writers represent a wide variety of disciplines from travel
theorists to travel bloggers, medieval historians to modern anthropologists and
sociologists. The findings of this study reveal two major complex metaphor systems:
one based on a series of interlaced existential metaphors orbiting the nuclear LIFE IS A
JOURNEY and the other stemming from a network of economic metaphors of MORAL
ACCOUNTING. The symbolic exchange embedded in these metaphorical systems
reflects the human desire for a meaningful and worthy life. These mutually
supporting complex systems of metaphor reveal an existential connection between the
medieval pilgrim and the contemporary tourist.
v

6. This labor is dedicated to
Marcie and Al, my parents, who saw me off on the right path,
Jessica, my wife, who walks at my side always, and
Sarah, my friend, whom I’ll met again at journey’s end.

7. Table of Contents
Page
Epigraph ……………………………………………………………………………… ix
Author’s Note ………………………………………………………………………… 1
Limitations and Further Research ………………………………………………... 2
Chapter One: The Why of Saint James ………………………………………………. 4
The Way of Saint James …………………………………………………………. 5
The Way Yesterday …………………………………………………………... 7
Symbolism …………………………………………………………………… 9
The Way Today ………………………………………………………………. 11
The Great Age of Pilgrimage …………………………………………………….. 14
The Literary Tradition of Pilgrimage …………………………………………….. 16
Pilgrim: Universal Traveler ……………………………………………………… 18
Chapter Two: Life is a Pilgrimage …………………………………………………… 21
LIFE IS A JOURNEY ………………………………………………………………… 23
(Re)Birth ……………………………………………………………………… 28
Death and Afterlife …………………………………………………………… 31
LIFE IS A PLAY ……………………………………………………………………. 33
PILGRIMAGE IS NURTURE …………………………………………………………. 39
The Pilgrim’s Decision …………………………………………………………... 44
Pilgrimage as Hero’s Quest ……………………………………………………… 49
Implications and Conclusions …………………………………………….……… 53
Chapter Three: The Economics of Pilgrimage ………………………………….….... 54
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8. MORAL ACCOUNTING …………………………………………………………….. 55
The Corporate Structure of the Catholic Church ………………………………… 59
Sin and Penance ………………………………………………………………….. 61
Symbolic Exchange ……………………………………………………………… 63
Pilgrimage as Penance …………………………………………………………… 65
The Medieval Pilgrimage Business ……………………………………………… 71
The Contemporary Pilgrimage Business ………………………………………… 72
PILGRIMAGE IS A COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE …….. ……………………………… 75
A PILGRIMAGE IS A JOB …………………….………………………………… 76
A PILGRIM IS A LABORER …………………………………………………….. 78
A PILGRIMAGE IS WORK PRODUCT …………………………………………… 81
A PILGRIMAGE IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY ………………………………… 85
Implications and Conclusions ……………………………………………………. 89
Chapter 4: Pilgrims and Tourists …………………………………………………….. 92
The Turning Point in Pilgrimage ………………………………………………… 93
Touri-grinos …………………………………………………………………….... 94
Rites of Passage ………………………………………………………………….. 96
Liminality …………………………………………………………………… . 96
Communitas: the Other-hood of Pilgrimage …………………………………. 98
Tourism as a Rite of Passage ………………………………………………… 99
Pilgrim’s Return and Symbolic Exchange ……………………………………….. 100
Pilgrim or Tourist? ……………………………………………………………….. 102
Destinations ………………………………………………………………………. 103
vii

9. Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………. 104
Appendixes …………………………………………………………………………… 115
Appendix A: The French Routes of the Way of Saint James ……………………. 115
Appendix B: The Spanish Route of the Way of Saint James ……………………. 116
Appendix C: The Scallop Shell and the Way of Saint James ……………………. 117
Appendix D: Composite History of the Cult of Santiago de Compostela ……….. 119
Appendix E: Numbers of Pilgrims Gaining their Compostelas (1986-2006) ……. 121
viii

10. “The Road to Compostela is nothing but a metaphor.”
William Melczer, medievalist and Santiago pilgrim (1993, p. 23)
ix

11. Author’s Note
The pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela—also known in English as The Way
of Saint James—is one of many Christian pilgrimages. Its appropriateness to the current
linguistic study is due to its evolution from a religious ritual to a secular one, which is in
and of itself a metaphor for the secularization of life as such. Currently, the wealth of
professional and non-professional writing about the experience provides a deep pool of
linguistic evidence suitable for a scholarly evaluation of its metaphoric structures.
Because of the nature of this Christian pilgrimage, many of the writing samples available
are of a religious disposition. This study is based on the techniques of cognitive science
as developed by Lakoff (1994, 1995), Lakoff & Johnson (1980, 1999), Lakoff & Turner
(1989), Johnson (1987), and Turner (1991, 1997) to provide a better understanding of the
conceptual framework that lies beneath the thinking of contemporary pilgrims on the
Road to Santiago. Specifically, I have described the mental concepts that constitute the
writings produced by, for, and about the modern English-speaking pilgrims who
voluntarily take part in this thousand mile journey in the traditionally accepted modes
(i.e. by foot, bicycle, or horseback).
For the purposes of this discussion and to avoid confusion I will primarily be
looking at evidence from modern English speaking pilgrims on the Road to Santiago,
pilgrims who write from a non-religious—but often spiritual—point of view. The nature
of this particular pilgrimage has changed over time, from primarily religious to largely
secular. As such, the language used by these pilgrims lends itself to a diachronic
examination of a fundamental metaphorical system.
1

12. Additionally, the proliferation of web logs or “blogs” and online message boards
on the Internet has also increased the amount of material from which to cull linguistic
evidence. This material, which is frequently produced by inexperienced writers, has been
extremely helpful in identifying the most recent reflections on Camino experiences and
provides an up-to-date record of the metaphors by which English-speaking pilgrims
structure their experiences.
Different motivations for partaking in pilgrimage will reveal different underlying
metaphors. Because of the myriad interpretations of pilgrimage, we will have just as
many metaphors. Kittay (1987, p. 20) reminds us that “… metaphors are always relative
to a set of beliefs and to linguistic usage which may change through time and place – they
are relative to a given linguistic community.” While modes and motivations attached to
the journey may change slightly on the surface, the saliency of these English metaphors
remains fairly well intact. The overt or novel usages of pilgrimage metaphors has shifted
over time to become far more implicit and embedded in the language.
Limitations and Further Research
The institution of Christian pilgrimage has produced a tremendous amount of
linguistic material from which I might have chosen myriad additional examples of the
metaphors discussed herein. The material studied and represented here—although not
nearly exhaustive—paints a generally accurate picture of the major metaphors that
support the pilgrimage concept.
Additionally, not having a multi-language repertoire is a major limitation but not
a detrimental one. The Way is an international phenomenon—indeed it would seem to
predate the very idea of nations—and as such it has been interpreted and discussed in
2

13. various linguistic/cultural permutations. In the Holy Year of 2004, Spanish pilgrims
represented 75.8% of all pilgrims while the next three highest nation groups comprised
less than 5% each (Italy 4.2%; Germany 3.7%, France 3.6%) (Archbishop of Santiago de
Compostela, 2005, Peregrinos distribuidos según…). This suggests that there is
undoubtedly a deeper resource pool from which to draw for a more complete picture of
the pilgrimage. I think comparing the various other metaphor systems used in other
languages to describe the Western institution of pilgrimage would be another direction
that the current study could take. But that would exceed by far the limitations of this
study.
The sources in this study are therefore limited to those of the English language.
This is not a detriment to the current study because I am only discussing the cultural
phenomenon of pilgrimage as interpreted by an English-speaking culture which has been
profoundly impacted in its own right by the Way: “There are roughly four hundred
churches in England consecrated to St James and of these three-quarters were built before
the seventeenth century and would therefore have connections with the cult of St James at
Compostela” (Layton, 1976, p. 20).
Finally, I have at times used non-English material where appropriate, not to
expand the argument cross-culturally per se, but rather as a supplement to the themes. I
have tried to use the original texts when available and tendered professional translations
in footnotes. When unavailable, I have made my best effort to translate the material on
my own. Any mistakes to this end are my own.
3

14. Chapter One: The Why of Saint James
“What is not a journey?”
Tzvetan Todorov, philosopher (1996, p. 287)
In the summer of 2006, my wife Jessica and I spent our honeymoon walking from
Le Puy-en-Velay, France to Finisterre, Spain 1 , an expedition of over a thousand miles.
We followed the same route traveled by countless pilgrims since the Bishop of Le Puy set
out on that same road in 950: The Way of Saint James. Like many modern day pilgrims,
our reasons for pursuing such an undertaking were numerous. We saw the pilgrimage at
once as an epic challenge to overcome together as a team, a relatively cheap holiday in
Europe, a long distance church crawl, a living history book, a strenuous physical
adventure, a chance to commune with nature, and a promise of spiritual fulfillment. Our
journey was each of these things to some degree and much more. The experience has
affected the way we look at the world and inspired us to apply our pilgrimage lessons to
it.
A refrain often heard by pilgrims of the Way is “it is not the destination, but the
journey that matters most”. The focal point of importance for other Christian pilgrimages
like Fátima or Lourdes is the shrine of devotion, the end point. The Way, by comparison,
unfolds its rewards over the course of the pilgrimage and beyond. Fellow veteran
pilgrims told us that the full purport of our endeavor would not be immediately apparent
upon our arrival at Santiago. Not until we had returned to our lives back home, they
informed, would the impact of our accomplishment have real significance. Indeed, over
1
Officially, the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela ends in that city, but many sojourners who have
come that far will travel the additional 100 kilometers, usually by bus, to the coast at Cape Finisterre for
symbolic reasons (explained below). We continued on foot for the extra three days to complete the journey
the way we had begun it.
4

15. the distance of time and space a gestalt of our feat has emerged from storytelling and
reflection. Consequently, we continue to develop a deeper understanding of the
magnitude of this endeavor and of the impact it has had on the rest of our lives. We are
changed people for having made the pilgrimage to Santiago and yet we did not
necessarily seek this outcome.
It was as evident then as it is now that a pilgrimage is a de facto investment as
well as a metaphorical one. As with any other significant financial investment, I
wondered, “What has been our return on this pilgrimage?” Naturally, the boons of the
Way must come from the lessons learned and experiences gained from it. These rewards,
though, were not earned without paying the tolls of the road: the route requires an
extended span of time to complete (Jessica and I took seventy five days to reach the coast
of Spain); the constant, daily walking takes a tremendous physical toll on the pilgrim’s
body (aside from the horrendous blisters endured by us both, Jessica suffered tendonitis
in both feet twice and I lost nearly eighteen percent of my normal body weight); and for
the pilgrim of modest means, the financial strain can be more burden than one can bear
(we twice had money wired from family members in order to finish the arduous journey).
We are now returned pilgrims; our wounds have since healed, our inner clocks have
syncopated again with the rest of the world, and our families have been repaid. Since our
return we have gradually realized the return on our investment. The gift of the Way is the
discovery that you are not alone on this journey.
The Way of Saint James
The Way of Saint James—hereafter referred to as ‘the Way’—is known variously
throughout Europe as O Camiño de Santiago (Galician), Donejakue Bidea (Basque),
5

16. Camí de Sant Jaume de Galícia (Catalan), Der Jakobsweg (German), O Caminho de
Santiago (Portuguese), Slí Naomh Shéamais (Irish); most commonly, it is referred to as
Le Chemin de Saint Jacques (French) and El Camino de Santiago (Spanish) since its
main footpaths converge in these latter countries. This linguistic variation is testament to
the route’s diverse popularity and reflective of the reverence held by Europeans, who
have preserved it as a continental treasure. The United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Centre (2007) added the Way to
its World Heritage List first in 1993 with the Spanish side and later included the French
routes in 1998. UNESCO (2007) identifies four major historical origination points in
France—Paris, Vézelay, Le Puy, and Arles—each fed by a number of subsidiary routes
all converging on the southern side of the Pyrenees and eventually terminating at
Santiago de Compostela in the northwest corner of the Iberian peninsula (see Appendixes
A and B).
Though the Way can claim noteworthy Santiago pilgrims of old—including
Charlemagne 2 , Saint Francis of Assisi, Isabella of Castile and, more recently, Pope John
Paul XXIII in 1989—the pilgrimage owes its enduring charm to its democratic appeal to
all travelers, not just those with Christian beliefs or the financial means to make the trek.
The accessibility of the Way is described by Roddis, et al. (1999): “Medieval pilgrims
simply left home and picked up the closest and safest route to Santiago de Compostela”
(p. 380). Though non-European pilgrims typically have to fly to their embarkation point,
pilgrims living on the continent still travel in the same mode as their medieval
predecessors.
2
Though apocryphal, since he would have been impossibly old by the time this Christian pilgrimage had
been established proper, Charlemagne’s supposed pilgrimage to Santiago has become so much a part of
pilgrim lore that his inclusion here and elsewhere is almost obligatory.
6

17. The Way Yesterday
The medieval Christian pilgrim had three main destination choices for his or her
peregrination: Jerusalem, Rome and Compostela, Spain. Each of the pilgrim roads
offered a series of blessings and indulgences to those who traveled their length: the
pilgrim who reached Santiago de Compostela, for instance, could reduce his or her time
in Purgatory by half. Those brave souls who endeavored to travel to the Holy Sepulcher
of Christ in Jerusalem were referred to as ‘palmers’ since they carried palm branches to
identify themselves as pilgrims. Those who traveled to Rome to visit the tomb of Saint
Peter were referred to as ‘wanderers’ or ‘romeos’ and identified themselves iconically
with the Cross. Pilgrims to Compostela wore scallop shells (see Appendix C) as their
signifying mark but were not referred to as anything other than ‘pilgrims’. Dante
Alighieri (ca. 1293) is thought to have been the first to define a pilgrim, doing so—it
appears—based on an assessment of quantity over quality: “[…] chiamansi peregrini in
quanto vanno a la casa di Galizia, però che la sepultura di sa' Iacopo fue più lontana de la
sua patria che d'alcuno altro apostolo 3 ”. Dante’s insinuation that the Saint James pilgrim
is a sort of archetype of the practice may be an early indication of the mass popularity
and democratic appeal of the Way given that the title bestowed on this particular traveler
(simply pilgrim) is unmarked and linguistically paradigmatic.
Of the three pilgrimages, the first was—and still is arguably—the most important
in the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish traditions: “The Jerusalem pilgrimage was the
pilgrimage of pilgrimages; others were types and shadows of it, for Jerusalem was at the
center of the world (it is regularly pictured there in maps of the period) […] and it was a
3
[…] they are called pilgrims if they go to the shrine of Saint James in Galicia, since the sepulchre of Saint
James was further away from his country than any other apostle […] (Kline (Trans.), 2001)
7

18. symbol of the Heavenly City” (Howard, 1980, p. 12). However, outside historical
forces affected the popularity of the Jerusalem pilgrimage for would-be Christian
pilgrims setting out from Northern Europe. Principal among these was Muslim
occupation of the Holy Land. The overland route to the East was long, arduous and
controlled by Islamic empires that had long been at violent odds with the Europeans.
After the collapse of the Mongolian Empire and the rise of the aggressive and
expansionist Ottoman Empire, land trade routes which pilgrim roads often followed were
un-policed and became treacherous, limiting the possibilities for Europeans wanting to
participate in the popular pilgrimage.
Ironically, like the land eastward to Jerusalem, the Iberian Peninsula was also the
location of territorial disputes between Muslim and Christian forces. But the Catholic
Church was able to turn this to their advantage, stoking the popularity of the Way by
propagandizing the road as a crucial aspect of the Reconquest of Spain. Mullins (1974)
indicates that the Church was indebted to none other than their “infidel” enemy for the
idea behind this successful public relations campaign: “It was Islam that taught European
rulers the notion of a ‘holy war’, and taught European churchmen the binding power of
moral propaganda. Both were central to the spirit of pilgrimage” (p. 32). The
implementation of this campaign involved several historical revisions. Despite Saint
James’s legacy of peace—he was Christ’s apostle and is believed later to have
evangelized in Iberia 4 —the Church used the Saint as a rallying symbol for their ongoing
4
Though there does not seem to be any debate over the fact that Saint James the Greater did actually
evangelize Christ’s teachings in the years after his mentor’s crucifixion (an avocation for which James
himself was martyred later), the evidence supporting whether or not he did his missionary work in the area
now known as Spain is murky at best: “Incredulous historians over the past centuries have doubted that it
was physically possible for St James ever to have got to Spain, and what is surprising is that the learned St
Isidore of Seville (seventh century) twice makes mention of the Apostle without commenting that he had
any particular affinity with Spain” (Layton, 1976, pp. 28-9).
8

19. war with the Muslim interlopers. Even today in Spain there remains statuary of Santiago
Matamoros (Saint James as ‘Moor Slayer’), usually mounted upon a charger, wielding a
sword, and often trampling dark-skinned figures. The Archbishops who ruled
Compostela used the pilgrimage as a tool to raise arms and money to help fight the
Muslims as well as to promote their own interests. Their disinformation crusade was
hugely successful, resulting in the arrival of millions of devoted pilgrims—and more
importantly their money—from every corner of Christian Europe.
Symbolism
The Way is characterized by its wealth of natural symbols. The physical
symbolism of the Way invokes a mythological aura that certainly made it of particular
interest to its pagan purveyors. The sheer age of this archaic road alone lends itself to the
sphere of epic mythology. The road pre-dates the Christian inception of the pilgrimage;
some have suggested that it was in use even before Roman rule had spread to the
peninsula:
The kings of Spain had built a highway to assist pilgrims in the twelfth century:
but the road was there already. The Romans had built a military road as a sign
and condition of their domination: but the road was there already. Paleolithic man
had moved along it, and the stations of a living devotion today, he had frequented;
there he made his magic, and felt vague awe before the abyss of an antiquity
unfathomed (King, 1920, p. 22).
The conjecture concerning the road’s ancient existence—even Paleolithic existence, as
the author proposes—suggests that the Way is a suitable backdrop for the symbolic
associations between a pilgrimage journey and a life journey. The Way, according to
9

20. King (1920), appears to have been a source of existential meditation even before the
Church appropriated it for its own ritual.
Indeed, there is archeological information that suggests the Way was used
similarly by the Celts who settled the area 5 . The tradition, still followed by many, of
continuing the pilgrimage past Santiago and on to the westernmost tip of Cape Finisterre
is said to recreate a Celtic death journey. Finisterre translates roughly as “lands end” or
“end of the world”, which to the pagan and medieval mind, it most certainly was. The
nearby Costa de Morta (“Coast of Death”) also adds to the eschatological scenario. The
geographic actuality of the end of the road makes this mandatory termination of the
pilgrimage a more fitting resolve to the adventure.
The symbolism associated with the Way is not only the ground below the pilgrims’ feet,
but also in the sky above their heads. The nighttime sky is responsible for providing
orientation for the pilgrimage to Santiago. The Way is also often called “the Milky Way”
because the pilgrims’ course was supposedly plotted there (Bignami, 2004, p. 1979).
Other legends have suggested that the star configuration is the dust kicked up by the feet
of years of Santiago pilgrims. The Spanish refer to the Milky Way as “el camino de
Santiago”. This celestial corollary has inspired travelogue titles like Edward E. Stanton’s
(1994) Road of stars to Santiago. Also, incidentally, the directional orientation of the
Way, with its eastern originations and western destination, satisfies a symbolic aspect of
the pilgrimage. For all of its paths originating in Northern and Eastern Europe, the
direction of movement for the pilgrim road is an east-to-west orientation. Since this is
also the same physical progression of the path of the Sun–as we perceive it from Earth–
the parallels between this particular pilgrimage and the passage of time are quite strong.
5
The region of Galica most likely derives its name from ‘Gael’, someone from the Gaelic race, a Celt.
10

21. Further supporting the time symbolism associated with the Way is the fact that
European pilgrims, even today, initiate their journeys from the countries of their birth and
travel to Saint James’s final resting place, his tomb. The naturally occurring symbolism
of the Way provides the basis the pervasive conceptualization LIFE IS A JOURNEY, a
metaphor which I will explore in further detail in the following chapter.
Comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell (1986) suggests natural and
permanent metaphors of the kind associate with the Way can be particularly helpful in
sustaining the vitality of a tradition: “The life of a mythology derives from the vitality of
its symbols as metaphors delivering, not simply the idea, but a sense of actual
participation in such a realization of transcendence, infinity, and abundance …” (p. xx).
Pilgrim and novelist Paolo Coelho (1986) recalls his own meditation on the mythological
connection:
I was going to relive, here in the latter part of the twentieth century, something of
the greatest human adventure that brought Ulysses from Troy that had been a part
of Don Quixote’s experiences, that had led Dante and Orpheus into hell, and that
directed Columbus to the Americas: the adventure of traveling toward the
unknown” (p. 14).
Christianity has overlapped its own mythology surrounding the origins of the cult of
Saint James, providing an additional intrigue for travelers and compelling them to
participate in the legend (see Appendix D).
The Way Today
The popularity of the Way has survived into modern times. Though its numbers
waned greatly after the Middle Ages, the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela has
11

22. become increasingly popular in the last thirty years and promises to continue its upward
trend (See Appendix E). Indeed the Way is a time-tested venture with numbers reaching
into the six figure range during Holy Years 6 . In the most recent Holy Year of 2004,
nearly 180,000 pilgrims completed the trek (Rekve, 2005). Last year my wife and I were
two of 100,377 pilgrims who received their Compostelas 7 (Confraternity of Saint James,
2007).
Since the mid-eighties, books by popular modern and diverse writers (e.g., Paulo
Coehlo, Tim Moore, Cees Nooteboom 8 ) about the Santiago pilgrimage have provided
insight into the written mind of the modern pilgrim. As a result of its being featured by
admired authors, the Way has become something of a pop-culture travel destination,
attracting greater numbers of people wishing to recreate the footsteps of these
romanticized journeys. Consequently, non-professional writers too have partaken in
written reflection in the form of shared experiences on list serves, journal writing, and
web logs (“blogs”).
Additionally, with the increased popularity of the Way, a system of free or
donation-only hostels to shelter and feed pilgrims has been reimplemented in the tradition
6
A Holy Year is when July 25, the Festival of Saint James, occurs on a Sunday. It is on these years that the
pilgrimage surges most with traffic.
7
The Compostela is the name given to the document awarded to pilgrims who have walked at least the last
100 kilometers into Santiago de Compostela (bicycalists and horseback riders must travel the final 200
kilometers). Essentially, they are the modern equivalent of the medieval indulgence issued to pilgrims of
old.
8
Paolo Coelho (1947-) is a Brazilian lyricist and internationally best selling novelist. His novel The
pilgrimage: A contemporary quest for ancient knowledge (1986) is a spiritual allegory based on his
experiences along the Way. Tim Moore is a British humorist and travel writer who wrote Travels with my
donkey: One man and his ass on a pilgrimage to Santiago (2004). The title of Moore’s travelogue—based
on his journey down the Way—is fairly self-explanatory and indicative of the author’s lighthearted take on
the pilgrimage. Cees Nooteboom (1933-) is a Dutch poet, travel writer, and novelist who is frequently
mentioned as a candidate for the Novel Prize in literature. His book Roads to Santiago: A modern-day
pilgrimage through Spain (1992) chronicles his pilgrimage made on foot.
12

23. of the medieval pilgrim hospices that grew up along the road. The refugios of Spain
continue to keep the pilgrimage’s much-desired authenticity intact.
The Way has in recent times adopted more secular associations, drawing
adventurers from all over the world for physical, spiritual, and purely pleasurable reasons.
Some guidebooks tend to suggest that the Road to Santiago has undergone a
transformation from being a religious pilgrimage to now being more of an outdoors
physical adventure: “The Camino de Santiago (Way of Saint James) originated as a
European medieval pilgrimage. Today it is a magnificent long-distance walk spanning
738km of Spain’s north from Roncesvalles on the border with France to Santiago de
Compostela in Galica” Further on the authors list the benefits of such an excursion: “For
a great physical challenge, an immersion in a stunning array of landscapes, a unique
perspective on rural and urban Spain, a chance to meet intriguing companions, as well as
the opportunity to participate in a 1000-year-old tradition through a continuous outdoor
museum, this is your walk.” (Roddis, Frey, Placer, Fletcher & Noble, p. 381).
Though indulgences are now a thing of the past and the Way seems to have
progressed in a less religiously-oriented direction, the statistics (Archbishop of Santiago
de Compostela 2005) for the last Holy Year in 2004 reveal that most modern pilgrims
still claim to take part religious reasons. Those who claimed that their pilgrimage was for
strictly non-religious motives represented only 9.04% of pilgrims in that year while those
claiming purely religious motives represented 37.75% of pilgrims surveyed. The
majority of 2004 pilgrims (53.21%) answered that their motivation for making their
pilgrimage was “religious and other,” suggesting that little has changed on the road since
the Middle Ages. This information appears have inherent flaws given that the statistics
13

24. are taken by a source of Catholic bias and do not give the pilgrim a choice of “spiritual”
rather than “religious”.
Of the major Christian pilgrimages, none are better candidates for investigating
the shift in attention from religious to secular than the example of the Way of Saint James.
The Way not only saddles the gap between the ancient and the modern, but its physical
and symbolic characteristics make it decidedly appropriate for the current discussion.
The Great Age of Pilgrimage
Pilgrimage had its greatest influence on the cultural mind of the West between
roughly 1000 and 1500. The ritual has been a devotional practice of the Christian faith
from its very beginnings when followers of Christ flocked to the site of his crucifixion
and resurrection (Addis & Arnold, 1957, p. 649). Christ’s model of suffering and
sacrifice are at the heart of the faith and could be enacted by believers through the
hardships of pilgrimage. Eventually, Christians made pilgrimages to various other holy
places sanctified by the Church. Officially these could be journeys of penance or
thanksgiving to a site associated with or containing the relics of a sainted figure of the
Church. In most cases, pilgrimages were spiritual exercises or quests as well as actual
journeys of salvation since one of the rewards brought back by pilgrims from those sites
were tangible, sanctioned documents awarded by the Church called indulgences
(remissions of the temporal punishment for sin).
Popular pilgrimages were also fueled by a medieval belief in the restorative
powers of the Church and its sanctified relics. A fervor generated by the so called “cult
of the saints” caused many medieval adventurers to go on far reaching expeditions with
the belief that physical contact with the relics of a saint would induce a miracle of
14

25. recovery, an idolatrous adulation encouraged by the papacy. Church-generated stories of
the healing powers of the pilgrimage destinations and the paraphernalia associated with
them also enticed believers to take to the road. Historian John Ure (2006) describes the
magnetic power of Church relics to draw pilgrims from afar, believing they might benefit
from their osmotic magic: “The inspiring power of physical association, relics and
miracles have often been inducements to tread the pilgrim road and it is equally true that
atonement for sins and punishment for crimes have also been factors in obliging unlikely
and often unwilling travelers to set out on far-flung quests” (p. 7). As pilgrimage became
more institutionalized by the Church, even some courts of law started to impose
pilgrimage as an alternative to execution or incarceration (Ure, 2006, p. 8).
Historically, pilgrimage assumed three forms: the actual or physical pilgrimage,
the labyrinthine pilgrimage, and the spiritual pilgrimage or ‘vision quest’. The latter two
versions were often seen as vicarious pilgrimages. In the medieval period pilgrims could
still satisfy a Church-sanctioned pilgrimage by labyrinthine means: “At its furthest
remove, it was possible to make a substitute pilgrimage by crawling about a cathedral
labyrinth” (Howard 1980, p. 12). The ‘vision quest’ required no physical movement at
all, but did call for sound mental discipline or psychotropic assistance and was often
found in an ascetic or shamanistic tradition. The current discussion, however, will focus
on those pilgrims who partook and continue to partake in the first of these modes yet, as
medievalist L. J. Bowman (1980) informs us, prototypical pilgrimages were not to be
casually undertaken: “the actual journeying was of no significance unless animated by the
spiritual quest of the viator 9 seeking his heavenly home” (p. 12).
9
Latin for “a traveller [sic]” or “a wayfarer” (Simpson, 1989)
15

26. Despite its religious and spiritual associations, motivations for making
pilgrimages often varied. In part, these journeys were also undergone for mere curiosity
and the sheer adventure of travel. Considering that medieval Europeans lived in
relatively insular isolation, the pilgrimage offered a more complete worldview than the
patch of land they called ‘home’. In this way—and in many others, as this study will
reveal—the medieval pilgrim was the archetypical tourist who leaves home for the
promise of adventure elsewhere and the chance to improve their overall quality of life.
Mullins (1974) observes, “the pilgrim in the Middle Ages shared with the modern tourist
a conviction that certain places and certain objects possess unusual spiritual power, and
that one was a better person for visiting them” (p. 1). And according to MacCannell
(1976), modern holiday destinations and tourist attractions are “precisely analogous to the
religious symbolism of primitive people” (p. 2). The linguistic evidence of pilgrim
writers deepens this connection, revealing a shared metaphor system supporting both the
historical pilgrimage—religious and spiritual in nature—and the more touristic and
secular one of today.
The Literary Tradition of Pilgrimage
The highly symbolic quality of pilgrimage easily lent itself to the imaginative
invention of medieval literature. The pilgrimage motif emanates strongly from this
period starting with Dante’s fourteenth century La Commedia Divina (The Divine
Comedy), a metaphysical journey into Hell, through Purgatory, and culminating in
Heaven. About seventy years later, the theme was popularized in English with Geoffery
Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, a story cycle depicting an assorted band of pilgrim
raconteurs headed for the shrine of Saint Thomas Beckett of Canterbury. Using the
16

27. pilgrimage frame allowed Chaucer to assemble a wide array of characters of varied stock
and social standing, thereby painting a detailed picture of English life in the Middle Ages,
a novel invention praised by scholars including Chaucer’s translator Neville Coghill
(1951): “In all literature there is nothing that touches or resembles the Prologue. It is the
concise portrait of an entire nation, high and low, old and young, male and female, lay
and clerical, learned and ignorant, rogue and righteous, land and sea, town and country,
but without extremes” (Coghill, p. 17). Chaucer’s cross-sectional portrait is also
reflective of the egalitarian appeal of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages. Furthermore, his
characters do not embody the typical image of the suffering pilgrim; in fact, they are
enjoying themselves: “they assembled at an inn, they all had mounts, and they entertained
each other with storytelling of a highly secular—and on occasion ribald—nature” (Ure,
2006, p. 14). Most of Chaucer’s pilgrims were atypical for the religious pilgrimage,
reflecting the historical reality of this changing tradition: motivations behind pilgrimage
had shifted or were shifting from pious devotion to secular tourism.
Contrary to common beliefs, great poets like Chaucer and Dante do not hold a
monopoly on the use of metaphoric conceit: the tools of the language trade are used by
every one of us. Metaphor in particular “is a tool so ordinary that we use it
unconsciously and automatically” (Lakoff & Turner, 1989, p. xi). The language used to
describe and to discuss the concept of pilgrimage is metaphoric, not only because we
conceive of all activities—extraordinary and ordinary—in this way, but fundamentally
because the act itself is a metaphor for human life. Pilgrimage is a living metaphor, an
act set upon the stage of a tangible world.
17

28. Medieval biographers of pilgrimage recognized the saliency of this metaphor as
one for life and their depiction of it would create reverberations felt far beyond its literary
popularization. Howard (1980) informs us: “The pilgrimage itself, dead as an institution
in England by the end of the sixteenth century, lived on as an idea preserved in books.
There was never a time when the words pilgrim and pilgrimage didn’t have force […]” (p.
6). The extended life of pilgrimage as a literary concept testifies to its legacy as a
powerful metaphor. However, the pilgrimage metaphor would change as different ideas
of travel developed over time. For medieval travelers, the pilgrimage was symbolic of
the unidirectional journey from birth to death:
From early times it had the metaphorical significance of a one-way journey to the
Heavenly Jerusalem: the actual trip was a symbol of human life, and the corollary,
that life is a pilgrimage, was a commonplace. The pilgrim enacted the passage
from birth to salvation; at his destination he adored relics of a saint or, at
Jerusalem, the places where the Lord had lived and died in his earthly body […]
(Howard, 1980, p. 11).
Pilgrimage steadily became secularized with the help of the corpus of literature that
celebrated it; and as early as the seventeenth century this notion of a one-way journey
grew to include the return trip. The notion of the return changed the way people
conceived of travel and it is here that the mythology of the modern tourist is germinated.
Pilgrim: Universal Traveler
Pilgrimage is not exclusive to one culture, religion, or social grouping. In fact,
ritualized pilgrimages have been a part of cultures around the world for centuries. The
phenomenon can be found in all of the world’s major religions (the Islamic flight to
18

29. Mecca, the Christian sojourn to Vatican City, the Buddhist journey to Kapilavastu 10 , the
Jewish visitation of Jerusalem). The meaning of pilgrimage has evolved to include any
journey that starts at home and ends at a particular site held sacred by the pilgrim. Non-
religious pilgrimages include protests such as Dr. Martin Luther King’s Selma-to-
Montgomery marches of 1965, charity fun runs like the American Heart Association’s
annual “Heart Walk”, even family vacations like those to Disneyworld can be considered
modern pilgrimages. One of the essential criteria for pilgrimage include a definite
purpose for—and worth of the journey to—the participants. The concept is such a
fundamental form of the journey schema that it has the metaphoric versatility to be
applied to events whose movement may only be implied. In this way, the current study is
a pilgrimage itself: it sets off from an initial idea, or starting point; it follows progressive
steps as it proceeds; the author—as tour guide—directs the reader’s attention to various
landmarks along the way, occasionally suggesting sites of interest; and eventually the
travelers arrive at the ultimate point of the paper, the sacred destination of the journey.
The highly flexible character and adaptability of pilgrimage is an indication of its
lasting influence on Western culture. The Oxford English Dictionary’s primary
definition of pilgrim is “a person on a journey, a person who travels from place to place;
a traveler, a wanderer, an itinerant. Also in early use: a foreigner, an alien, a stranger”
(Simpson, 2006). Not until the secondary definition does the modern inquirer discover
the word’s more germane legacy as “a person who makes a journey (usually of a long
distance) to a sacred place as an act of religious devotion” (ibid. [emphasis mine]).
Historically, pilgrims were only those people who fit the latter definition. However,
10
According to Turner (1973), Buddhist traditions of this kind are also shared with—and ultimately derived
from—those found in the Hindu tradition (p. 204).
19

30. because of the saliency of the institution of pilgrimage in the history of Western thought,
the word has drifted from the particular to the generalized in the English language. This
potential universality of what it means to be a pilgrim begets another question echoic of
Todorov’s: “Who is not a pilgrim?”
20

31. Chapter Two: Life Is a Pilgrimage
“And what’s a life? – a weary pilgrimage,
Whose glory in one day doth fill the stage,
With childhood, manhood, and decrepit age.”
– Francis Quarles, Elizabethan poet (1634, 1808, p. 127)
The verse above by Francis Quarles (1592-1644) reflects a literary sensibility
flavored by the institution of pilgrimage and is indicative of the rich metaphoric
properties which made the concept such fertile material for English poets and dramatists.
In these three lines of verse, the author employs several concepts which are lynchpins in
the understanding of life and its metaphoric relationship with pilgrimage in the English
tradition. Though Quarles penned these lines nearly four hundred years ago, pilgrim
writers today rely on these same conceptual metaphors to craft their own musings on the
subject.
Two main metaphors are at work here which furnish much of our
conceptualization of pilgrimage today: LIFE IS A JOURNEY and LIFE IS A PLAY. These
metaphors will be explained herein using the imaginative language of poetry written in
the tradition English pilgrimage. These conceptual metaphors of existence are supported
by the PILGRIMAGE IS NURTURE metaphor establishing the core metaphors of modern
pilgrim writing on the Way. Pilgrimage is saturated with metaphor at many levels: from
the overall structure and shape of the activity down to the everyday language used to
describe it. The language of pilgrimage can often be a confounding subject to engage in
because of its metaphor-heavy properties since the line between symbolism and reality
easily becomes blurred: “Pilgrimage is often described both in terms of literal journey
21

32. and as a lifelong spiritual experience but it is by no means always immediately clear
which is considered to be the metaphor and which the reality” (Dyas, 2001, p. 2). In the
following Coelho (1986) passage for instance, it is not certain whether the author means
his real ‘first step’ or his metaphoric one: “I was actually in Spain and there was no
going back. In spite of the knowledge that there were many ways in which I could fail, I
had taken the first step” (p. 10). Essentially, it does not matter which sense Coelho
intends because both effectively convey the meanings of pilgrimage and life as
significant journeys. For non-literary writers like pilgrim Louise Gehman (2006, April
30) the use of potentially metaphoric language in written reflection of the pilgrimage is
meant as literal: “[The ‘cuckoo’ birds] were particularly vocal when we walked about 2
km out of our way, thinking we were on the right path.”
The poetic examples here provide a historical reference to the importance of
pilgrimage in the literary tradition as well as demonstrate the foregrounding use of these
metaphors. The connections drawn between source and target domains 1 therein have
become so engrained in the Judeo-Christian conceptualization of human existence that
they are largely taken for granted by the present-day language user. As a result, where
the poets’ use of the metaphors will have been explicitly metaphoric, the modern pilgrim
writings referenced here will demonstrate them as embedded metaphors. This is an
indication of the metaphors’ saliency and durable usefulness in the language. What some
would call ‘dead metaphors’ are really the bedrock of the language itself; as Deutscher
(2005) so metaphorically puts it, language is a river on which metaphors flow from
concrete to abstract concepts:
1
Cognitive linguists use these terms to explain the structure of metaphor as a transfer from one conceptual
field of conventionalized information (source) to another more abstract one (target). This is called mapping
from source to target.
22

33. In this constant surge, the simplest and sturdiest of words are swept along, one
after the other, and carried towards abstract meanings. As these words drift
downstream, they are bleached of their original vitality and turn into pale lifeless
terms for abstract concepts – the substance from which the structure of language
is formed. And when at last the river sinks into the sea, these spent metaphors are
deposited, layer after layer, and so the structure of language grows, as a reef of
dead metaphors (p. 118).
The calcified metaphors embedded in this substratum of language provide evidence of the
mental framework of its users in much the same way that the fossilized remains of plants
and animals inform an archeologist about our prehistory. The coherency of the
metaphors of pilgrimage provides a barometer of Western culture’s consciousness. This
data can be extrapolated to discuss some of the fundamental questions about how we
conceptualize our existence. Consequently, the linguistic survey of the modern
pilgrimage also provides an insightful investigation of mythology’s role in this human
ritual.
LIFE IS A JOURNEY
The word journey, by definition, is connected wit the passage of time. It is a
twelfth century lexical borrowing from French journée meaning variously a day, a day’s
space, a day’s travel, work, employment, etc. (Simpson, 1989). The basic structure of a
typical journey provides an analogical comparison with the span of a lifetime. It has an
embarkation point (a birth), a series of stopping points along a distance (the stages of
aging), and a final destination (eventual death). And though life does not actually follow
a linear path—the way this analogy suggests—a journey and all of its entailed
23

34. components provide experiential source material for discussing a human life in this way.
Accordingly, one of the ways in which English speakers conceptualize their own lives is
through the complex metaphor LIFE IS A JOURNEY. Lakoff and Johnson (1999) dissect
this pervasive metaphor, revealing that it is in fact composed of elemental or primary
metaphors through which we conceive our day-to-day experiences. Metaphors are based
on cultural assumptions and agreed-upon expectations. In the case of the LIFE IS A
JOURNEY, one assumption is the seemingly self-evident notion that actions are motions;
this gives metaphoric movement to the accomplishment of a task which may not require
any actual travel. Additionally, Westerners believe that in order to have purpose in their
life, they must have goals for which they strive. They conceive of these goals as
destinations in time and space which they must arrive at as one might arrive at an actual,
physical location in order to achieve some purposeful task (“I want a book about
pilgrimage, so I must go to the library.”) Similarly, more abstract purposes and goals are
also conceived of in this way (“I want to be rich and famous, but I still have a long way
to go.”). A pilgrimage offers its participants a definite purposeful destination and—as I
will discuss further on—can provide the successful pilgrim with renewed meaning in
their post-pilgrimage lives.
Implicit in these fundamental metaphors is an understanding that goals are
tangible things. Santiago pilgrims look at their final destination not as an elusive dream,
but as a real object that they will eventually acquire: “I still had two weeks in which to
reach Santiago […]” (Selby, 1994, p. 89); “[…] I pressed on and by the time I reached
the monastery at Irache, barely two miles outside the town, I was again flagging under
the appalling heat” (Neillands, 1985, p. 103). Not only is the purposeful destination
24

35. metaphorically graspable, the latter example also suggests that the physical difficulty
involved with the pilgrimage can be pushed against like an actual negative force. This is
all to suggest that our metaphorical understanding of a journey with a purposeful
destination is interactive. What is more is that in the case of the pilgrim writers, the
destination is not conceived as an object that might be reached in the future; its
acquisition is only a matter of time.
These primary metaphors animate the basic structure of a physical journey
(ACTIONS ARE MOTIONS and GOALS ARE DESTINATIONS). These three conceptions
provide the blueprint for the complex metaphor A PURPOSEFUL LIFE IS A JOURNEY which
entails the following metaphoric notions:
(1) A PURPOSEFUL LIFE IS A JOURNEY
(2) A PERSON IS A TRAVELER
(3) LIFE GOALS ARE DESTINATIONS
(4) A LIFE PLAN IS AN ITINERARY
Quarles’ somewhat pessimistic verse falls directly in line with this metaphorical
concept, casting Man as a weary traveler whose only real destinations and goals are the
biological realities of life’s progression (birth, adulthood, death), hardly the only goals
that modern man and woman are likely to strive for. To be sure, Quarles does not
explicitly refer to life as a ‘journey’, but pilgrimage is, as has been shown, a special type
of journey—it is one of the fundamental forms a journey can take: it is one which has a
purposeful destination in the form of a sacred site that is only arrived at after undergoing
a series of struggles over great distance.
25

36. For these reasons, pilgrimage assumes greater significance as a fundamental
version of LIFE IS A JOURNEY—we might even say LIFE IS A PILGRIMAGE. And since
geographical journeys were frequently understood as representing moral or spiritual
progress, pilgrims of the Middle Ages did just that, believing their journeys took on
symbolic significance: “… pilgrimage was a metaphor for human life: life is a one-way
passage to the Heavenly Jerusalem and we are pilgrims on it” (Howard, 1980, pp. 6-7).
Pilgrimage was indeed idealized as a unidirectional, upward journey from earthly reality
to heavenly perfection by many medieval pilgrims. Clearly, the numerous perils along
the way made the journey’s successful conclusion questionable—even doubtful—but to
arrive at the final destination and to actually die there was the ultimate ideal of
pilgrimage, “the return voyage was a mere contingency, an anticlimax” (Howard, 1980, p.
48). It was considered desirable to die at the destination because embodied in that act
was the perfect union of symbol and reality. Today—as we shall discuss in detail
below—the pilgrimage is not really complete until the pilgrim returns home for the final
stage of the journey takes place there.
One of the more famous, novel uses of the LIFE IS A JOURNEY metaphor in English
pilgrimage literature is John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678, 1957) in which
pilgrimage and its trappings take on allegorical significance. By the time Bunyan was
writing in the seventeenth century, the great age of pilgrimage had already passed in
Europe and its presence had become well established in English literature. Bunyan’s
Christian allegory relies heavily upon the use of character and place names which
symbolize moral qualities and refer to biblical passages, essentially having double
signification in- and outside of the narrative itself. For example, the main character and
26

37. primary pilgrim is called Christian; he travels through locations with names like the
Slough of Despair and the Valley of the Shadow of Death on his journey to the Celestial
City, meeting along the way characters named Evangelist, Hypocrisy, Faithful, and
Hopeful.
Bunyan’s allegory is an extended parable that uses metaphor, not as a simple
embellishment of the language, but as a basic tool of reasoning. One of the central
purposes of a parable is to teach a lesson. Bunyan’s didactic use of metaphor is an
example of the literary sensibility of human cognition. Turner’s (1996) theory amends
the generally accepted notion in the field of linguistics that the human mind has a genetic
predisposition to the application of grammar, proposing instead that the human capacity
for story telling precedes grammar: “the linguistic mind is a consequence and
subcategory of the literary mind” (p. 141). His theory suggests that, “Narrative
imagining—story—is the fundamental instrument of thought. Rational capacities depend
upon it. It is our chief means of looking into the future, of predicting, of planning, and of
explaining” (pp. 4-5). A key ingredient of the literary mind is the ability to map one
story schema onto another, using a narrative that is already culturally established to
illuminate aspects of a less familiar one. In The Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan maps the
universally understood story of a journey onto the story of a righteous life in order to
teach the virtues of Christian doctrine.
Bunyan self-consciously makes his case for the appropriateness of his use of the
extended metaphor in the Author’s Apology, preceding Part I imploring:
But must I needs want solidness, because
By metaphors I speak? Were not God’s laws,
27

38. His gospel laws, in olden time held forth
By types, shadows, and metaphors? (p. 4)
Here Bunyan defends his use of metaphor in his discussion of weighty religious issues (in
this case the soul’s spiritual salvation), presaging Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980, 2003)
insistence that human cognition is developed from an imaginative rationality that is based
on metaphoric reasoning.
The linguistic evidence appears to be in Bunyan’s favor on this account given that
Christian teachings have—from their inception—been steeped in metaphoric language.
The New Testament gives us the believed word of God through Jesus’ message: “I am
the way 2 , and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me” (John 14:6
[my emphasis]). Not only is this message metaphoric but it fits perfectly into the A
PURPOSEFUL LIFE IS A JOURNEY Metaphor. It is reasonable that the Christian belief
system would conceptualize the course of a life from birth to death to an afterlife in terms
of a path on which ultimate harmony is achieved through struggle and effort given Lakoff
and Turner’s (1989, p. 61) observation that conventional knowledge of journeys dictates
that “to understand life as a journey is to have in mind, consciously or more likely
unconsciously, a correspondence between traveler and a person living a life, the road
traveled and the ‘course’ of a lifetime, a starting point and the time of birth, and so on.”
(Re)Birth
In some ways, the highly symbolic make-up of the Christian pilgrimage is still
intact in the structure of the Way today and is fundamentally consistent with the
2
Just as Christianity is not the only religion to employ pilgrimage as a ritual of devotion, it is also not alone
in using the A PURPOSEFUL LIFE IS A JOURNEY METAPHOR. The biblical verse above is echoic of the
famous Taoist teaching in which tao translates as “way” or “path” and is literally the path to enlightenment
(Tzu, 1963).
28

39. overarching conceptual metaphor A PURPOSEFUL LIFE IS A JOURNEY. With this in mind,
typically one’s literal home is the staging platform from which a pilgrimage to Santiago
is embarked upon. While non-European pilgrims will typically make use of other means
of vehicular transportation (airplane, automobile, etc.) in order to arrive at their official
starting points, the first steps of the pilgrimage begin by studying the pilgrimage course,
reading returned pilgrims’ testimonials, researching guidebooks, making inquiries at
confraternities associated with the Way, etc. The point being that even today’s pilgrim
literally begins their pilgrimage at home.
While modern conveniences of transportation give today’s pilgrim the luxury of
choosing the actual location from where they will embark, pilgrims living in the Middle
Ages had no choice but to set out from their front door. Even today, many Europeans
leave from the very place in which they were born—if not their hometowns then the
countries of their births (their mother- or fatherlands). The association of a journey’s
beginning with birth is represented in Geoffery Chaucer’s3 (1957) description of spring
as the appropriate season for making a pilgrimage in his General Prologue to The
Canterbury Tales:
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
3
Susan Alcorn’s 2006 travelogue Camino chronicle: Walking to Santiago suggests that Chaucer may have
actually walked the road to Compostela in his lifetime. What is more certain is that Chaucer probably took
many insights from actual returned Santiago pilgrims from England (Mullins, 1974, p. 61)
29

40. The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, […] 4 (p. 17).
This passage relies on the metaphor A LIFETIME IS A YEAR, by which time is condensed
within the scope of the solar calendar and the spring season is one that teems with new
life at its beginning. This metaphor derives from the natural phenomenon of the
changing seasons which are a constant physical reminder of the passage of time.
Speakers use this metaphor to highlight only the most symbolic seasons, specifically
winter and spring since the natural characteristics of these months provide cognitive
associations with the beginning and ending stages of a life (“He’s a man of sixty winters”,
“She is in the springtime of her youth”). The metaphor is consistent within the general
scope of LIFE IS A JOURNEY in that the journey in A LIFETIME IS A YEAR is that of the
Earth around the Sun. In addition to the practical basis for starting in spring—the
lengthening days and the entire summer to finish the round trip before winter—the
imagery of birth and rebirth symbolized in springtime fits well into the idea of a
4
When in April the sweet showers fall
And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all
The veins are bathed in liquor of such power
As brings about the engendering of the flower,
When also Zephyrus with his sweet breath
Exhales an air in every grove and heath
Upon the tender shoots, and the young sun
His half-course in the sign of the Ram has run,
And the small fowl are making melody
That sleep away the night with open eye
(So nature pricks them and their heart engages)
Then people long to go on pilgrimages (Coghill (Trans.), 1951, p. 19)
30

41. pilgrimage as a life, making it clear why the metaphor LIFE IS A PILGRIMAGE developed in
the medieval mind, persisting today with the Way as its proof. Accordingly, the
beginning of a pilgrimage, just as in a life, is a place of birth. As we shall explore later,
the promise of a spiritual rebirth is also a motivating factor in the pilgrim’s decision to
participate in the ritual.
Death and Afterlife
By comparison, then, the final destination of a pilgrimage is a representation of
death with the reward of afterlife. Again, we can look to Chaucer (1957) for a fitting
example of this metaphorical connection:
This world nys but a thurghfare ful of wo,
And we been pilgrymes, passynge to and fro.
Deeth is the ende of every worldly soore 5 (p. 44).
These lines from Part IV of The Knights Tale are in keeping with the medieval
conceptualization of life as a pilgrimage (line one), people living as pilgrims (line two)
and death as the end to the pilgrimage and deliverance for the pilgrim’s efforts (line
three). The participation in a pilgrimage was a suitable method of doing so. Suitable
insofar as the Catholic Church was concerned as the medium between the human world
and God’s.Contributing to that metaphor today in the Way, is the notion that the
endpoint—Santiago—is literally the final destination of the pilgrimage and thus—
metaphorically—death. Symbolic support of the idea of death in Santiago is the fact that
the main attraction in the Cathedral is the alleged relics of the long expired apostle Saint
James the Greater. Here the symbolism of a final resting place marking the final stopping
5
This world is but a thoroughfare of woe
And we are pilgrims passing to and fro.
Death is the end of every worldly sore (Coghill (Trans.), 1951, p. 95)
31

42. point of a journey is apparent. Additionally, pilgrims just outside of the gates of Santiago
would wash their bodies in the stream at the nearby village of Labacolla in preparation
for their arrival (Mullins, 1974, p. 196). The symbolic aura of Santiago as tomb brings
added significance to these ablutions as ritualistic preparations of the corpse before its
ceremonial reunion with the hereafter.
Pilgrims seeking the radiating powers of holy relics sought a personal contact
with the eternal, with the afterlife. The word relic derives from the Latin verb relinquere
meaning “to leave behind” (Simpson, 1989). The underlying significance of coming into
contact with these relics was to encounter that which was left behind by some saint or
other holy person, usually, literally, the corporal remains either in part or in whole.
Implicit here is that these holy men and women, like Saint James, whose relics have lured
pilgrims from the far corners of Europe for centuries were here once but have now left to
travel the ultimate pilgrimage to the world beyond: Heaven. Not only is the notion of
journeying contained in the etymology of this word but also is the idea of a separation
between body and spirit. It is the spirit of a person that continues beyond this material life
journey and into the ethereal world. The earthly pilgrim sought the promise of their
eternal life with God.
The Church supported the idea of eternal splendor through the symbolic
garishness of their cathedrals. The grandeur of the Santiago Cathedral is a physical
representation of that heavenly reward for which pilgrimage has been traditionally
undertaken. This heavenly reward was represented materially in indulgences which were
essentially shortcuts to the afterlife, reducing the time a traveler spent in Purgatory.
Today this is represented symbolically in the form of the Compostela (See Chapter One).
32

43. Furthermore, the end of the pilgrimage is not the end at all just as the winter season is not
the end of the life-year. The ending of the final season simply marks a new beginning, a
new spring in the life of the pilgrim. This is a priceless lesson of the pilgrimage cycle.
…
The stages of life are linguistically linked to the stages of a journey. The Codex
Calixtinus is a twelfth century anthology said to have been compiled by French scholar
Aymeric Picaud, detailing the history, culture, sermons, and travel guidance of the Way.
Book V - “A Guide for the Traveller” is thought to be one of the first travel guides of the
Western world (Layton, 1976, p. 196). In it, the author provides advice on how to
properly make the pilgrimage, separating the journey into twelve navigable stages. The
segments of a life are also described in the same manner (“The child is still in a
developmental stage of her life.” “He is in the recovery stage of his illness.”). The
convention of partitioning lengths of space and time into stages is yet another indication
of the link between a life and a journey. The word evolves from the Latin verb stāre
meaning “to stand” and it is from this source that we also derive its use as a platform for
theatrical production (Simpson, 1989). While speakers regularly use the former sense of
the word to organize their journeys, the performance aspect of pilgrimage suggested by
the second sense is manifest in other linguistic mappings from the domain of theatre.
LIFE IS A PLAY
In the eighteenth century the metaphor of pilgrimage was “supplanted or
augmented by other images, especially that of life as theater: this image allowed the
author to be not a returned traveler and omniscient narrator but a privileged spectator,
exploring personages in relation to one another and to the world, uncovering their masks
33

44. and roles—an important step in the history of fiction” (Howard 1980, p. 7). In the case of
the Quarles verse, we see that the poet has indeed augmented the pilgrimage metaphor of
life with that of the play representing the course of a life as a drama playing out on a
‘stage’. The theatre metaphor figures into the body of pilgrimage language by virtue of
the metaphor of life as a pilgrimage. As we have seen, the metaphor LIFE IS A
PILGRIMAGE was a recognized poetic formula from the fourteenth to the eighteenth
century and the commingling of this and the LIFE IS A PLAY metaphor in the Quarles
poem is indicative of how well the allegory of pilgrimage transitions into the language of
theatre. The notion of life as a performance was championed in the twentieth century by
sociologist Erving Goffman (1959) who observed that our everyday interactions are
analogous to “dramaturgical performances”. The pilgrims of today can be seen to
engage in this theatrical behavior.
Ritual—like theatre—often makes use of special accessories peculiar to the
tradition. The connection between the activity and its associated costume is such that the
agent of the activity is not considered authentic without the costume. In medieval times
the outward signs endowed the pilgrim with a certain amount of social privilege and
exemption: “The pilgrim signs worn by travelers, in addition to their attire, marked them
as pilgrims and separate from society, and therefore immune from political-military
conflicts between countries wherever they traveled” (Garcia, 2002, pp. 7-8). The
component signs of the pilgrim costume became synonymous with the pilgrimage itself,
representing role, purpose, and destination at a glance. Sir Walter Raleigh’s (1604, 1681)
“His Pilgrimage” itemizes the trappings of a pilgrim to Santiago:
Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,
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45. My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
My bottle of salvation,
My gown of glory, hope’s true gage,
And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage (Lns. 1-6)
The pilgrim accessories are essential to the person enacting the pilgrimage: the ritualized
garb identifying one as a proper pilgrim. The vestments described by Raleigh remain
indispensable components of the pilgrimage today: scallop-shell, staff or walking stick,
water bottle, rucksack (scrip), and rain cloak (gown). Not only do these items serve the
practical purpose of facilitating a nomadic existence, but they help to identify the pilgrim
as such to outsiders and to each other. The make up of pilgrim signs creates a “front”
which Goffman (1959) defines as, “the expressive equipment of a standard kind
intentionally or unwittingly employed by the individual during his performance” (p. 91).
The front is at once inclusive and exclusive, representing the connection and camaraderie
between fellow pilgrims and distinguishing the wearer from the common tourist—a
distinction that could also have its practical merits: “It is much more advantageous to be
considered a pilgrim than a tourist. The pilgrim, especially in Spain, is often treated with
generous hospitality for simply being a pilgrim. It is not uncommon for those who go
alone or in very small groups to be offered a fresh beverage or a snack by someone who
recognizes the shell or the staff” (Frey, 1998, p. 63). Taken together, the symbols of the
Way become the pilgrim’s costume for they are essentially acting out the part of the
pilgrims of old. What is more is that in their undertaking they are reenacting—as their
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46. medieval counterparts did—the suffering of the Christian martyrs of bygone days with
Christ as their archetype.
Along with the cosmetic symbolism of the pilgrim costume, pilgrim writing also
reflects the conceptualization of life as a play. Pilgrimage writing makes use of only
some of the components of the schema for a play on which the LIFE IS A PLAY metaphor
is based. Specifically, writers today employ the metaphor to discuss the pilgrimage as a
stage and its component parts as actors upon it. Scores of examples exist in the corpus of
pilgrimage writing to support the notion that pilgrims see themselves and others
associated with the Way as actors in roles within a play.
Some pilgrim writers are often self-consciously aware of their new roles as
pilgrims. In the case of Neillands (1985), he makes several hedged claims qualifying
himself as an authentic pilgrim, which makes this reader slightly suspicious. Here he
talks about ‘getting into his part’—as it were—by trying out his pilgrim paraphernalia:
“As I soon discovered in my role as a true pilgrim, the scallop-shell is a useful item in its
own right” (p. 25 [emphasis mine]). A caption beneath an image on one pilgrim’s online
photo archive reads, “Henry takes on his pilgrim persona next to the famous pilgrim
statue …” (Maloney, 2005, p. 1 [emphasis mine]). In the photo, the pilgrim is pictured
before a larger-than-life bronze statue, posing in the same ‘man-in-motion’ manner as the
sculpture. While these pilgrims seem to jump right into their parts, Spanish historian and
Santiago pilgrim George Greenia (2005) has to adjust to the prospect of his new identity:
“The role of the guy handling his midlife crisis was starting to look a lot more
manageable” (p. 5 [emphasis mine]). Pilgrim and former Confraternity of Saint James
Chairperson Laurie Dennett (1997) suggests that the role of pilgrim requires the agent to
36

47. act a certain way: “But may I be so bold as to suggest that everyone who sets foot on the
Camino has the personal responsibility to reinforce, through the way they enact their
pilgrimage, its character of simplicity, self-sacrifice, openness to encounter” [emphasis
mine]. And pilgrim John O’Henley (2001) shares his advice with his fellow actor-
pilgrims: “There are certainly more vehicles on the roads, and in the towns, calling for
caution on the part of walkers” (p. 1 [emphasis mine]).
Pilgrims are not the only ‘actors’ on the Way. In fact, all people associated with
the pilgrimage in some official or semi-official capacity are also part of the cast—we
might call them the supporting cast of the pilgrimage. Travel writer and Santiago pilgrim
Bettina Selby (1994) describes one of the representatives of Le Amis de St Jacques de
Compostelle in St Jean-Pied-de-Port: “[Madame Debril] had become a victim of the
popularity of the Santiago pilgrimage and her own part in it” (p. 61 [emphasis mine]).
But, she continues, “She is reluctant to lay down her role or to compromise the execution
of it” (ibid. p. 62 [emphasis mine]). Locals of the villages along the Way are included in
the role call: “[…] I think it no exaggeration to say that generations of local people,
living along the Camino and extending hospitality to pilgrims as the natural expression of
devout religious beliefs and their own open and generous characters, played a major part
in keeping the pilgrimage alive …” (Dennett, 2003 [emphasis mine]).
Pilgrim-actors do not even have to be actual people. Inanimate objects of the
pilgrimage are also personified as actors. The cities that dot the Way are metonymic
players in the pilgrimage drama: “Astorga owes much of its past and present prosperity
to its role as a road junction” (Neillands. 1985, p. 141 [emphasis mine]); “[La Réole, a
provincial French town] played host to me too in a small grassy ‘campement’ beside the
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48. broad brown Garonne […]” (Selby, 1994, p. 34 [emphasis mine]). Churches, too, share
the honor: “If the church in Oviedo had a heightened awareness of its own role as
custodian of doctrinal purity, the court of King Alfonso II was imbued with a
corresponding sense of territorial mission …” (Dennett, 2005 [emphasis mine]).
Places—as might be expected—provide the proper background to the unfolding pilgrim
drama: “No tributaries from other pilgrim routes met at Astorga, but it was the scene on
31 December 1808 of another and much less happy meeting of the ways […]” (Layton,
1976, p. 145). These locative, inanimate players of the pilgrimage provide a sort of set
dressing with which the starring actor-pilgrims interact and on which they perform their
roles.
The implications of LIFE IS A PLAY suggest that modern pilgrims are somehow
more than just themselves when engaged in the Way. Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgical
theory suggests that a person's identity is not stable, but subject to re-creation as the
person interacts with others: “when the individual presents himself before others, his
performance will tend to incorporate and exemplify the officially accredited values of the
society” (p. 95). The perception is that these pilgrims are cognizant—perhaps only
subconsciously so in some cases—that they are involved in a grand ritual which is in
many ways a spectacle and their authentic performance in that role is determined by the
conventionalized front of the Way. They are players in a highly symbolic, simplified
version of the allegory of human life. In support of this is the fact that pilgrimage must
be participated in by leaving home–almost as if when they are removed from the familiar
environs of their home life, they become different people, inhabiting different personas.
This would seem to be a form of escape as Howard (1980) recognizes, “It was among
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49. other things a fine way to escape duty, debt, or the law …” (p. 15). Escapism, indeed,
has an especially strong tradition in Christian heritage: the idea of escaping one’s
earthbound self, one’s ego, becoming an ascetic through self-imposed exile in remote
mountain wildernesses, outside of society. By casting off the excesses of life and casting
oneself in the part of the pilgrim-exile, the modern pilgrim unintentionally—or perhaps
intentionally—participates in this tradition.
PILGRIMAGE IS NURTURE
Recall that, LIFE IS A JOURNEY provides a metaphoric understanding of the
beginning and ending of a pilgrimage. But what of the stages in-between these defining
poles of the pilgrimage? Like their metaphoric birth and death on the Way, pilgrims also
experience progressive ‘growth’. Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress is an example of how
this development plays out spiritually, using the poetic language of allegory. Similarly—
but less explicitly—many pilgrim writers have expressed their expectations of some sort
of spiritual growth to develop as a result of their journey. Accordingly, their written
output makes use of a complex metaphor of growth expressed as PILGRIMAGE IS
NURTURE. This metaphor entails several other related metaphoric properties of the Way:
(1) PILGRIMAGE IS NATURE
(2) PILGRIMAGE IS A PARENT/CAREGIVER
(3) PEOPLE ARE PLANTS
Each of these metaphors is systematically coherent within the structure of PILGRIMAGE IS
A NURTURE. It suggests the desire on the part of many pilgrims to alleviate some
perceived ‘sickness’ or ‘under-development’ through the act of pilgrimage.
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50. The Way is often described as having a ‘spirit’ or an ‘aura’, suggesting that it
embodies some living presence. The metaphor PILGRIMAGE IS NATURE is perhaps a
result of the fact that pilgrimage is animated by the people who travel it, but as Neillands
(1986) suggests here, it may also have to do with the flora of the Way: “Every summer,
as the green leaf turns and the heat starts to shimmer across the vineyards of France or the
grain fields of Navarre, the Road to Compostela comes alive again (p. 18 [emphasis
mine]). The reality of these vibrant images clearly takes on metaphoric significance as
reflected poetically in Chaucer’s Introduction above. Like the descriptions of flora above,
the Way itself exhibits some characteristics of vegetable life in some writing: “It
stretches along more than 700 km of northern Spain, nearly 2,000 km if its four stems in
France are to be included […]. It crosses many rural communities, villages and,
especially, cities that flourished during the Middle Ages” (González & Medina, 2003, p.
447 [emphasis mine]). Note here that it is not only the Way that grows plant-like, the
cities along its stalk also share the same features of a budding plant. In other works cities
are said to “spring up” along the pilgrim road (Selby, 1994, p. 99).
The conceptualization of the pilgrimage as an organism that is born, lives, and
dies emerges in guidebook writer and Santiago pilgrim Miles Roddis’s (1999)
observations:
… the fact that [the story behind how Saint James’s remains were delivered to
Galicia] was believed led to … the birth of the Camino …” (p. 383, [emphasis
mine]).
And later:
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51. After its medieval heyday the pilgrimage suffered during the Reformation and
nearly died out altogether by the 19th century before its late 20th century
secularized reanimation (ibid. [emphasis mine]).
The pilgrimage is personified by Roddis here in such a way that it is given characteristics
of the prototype in Christian martyrdom: Jesus of Nazareth. Like the pilgrims who act
out their roles as sufferers along the Way, modeling themselves after the martyred saints
of Christianity, the road itself is seen as taking on these same features. The metaphoric
life of the Way takes on further aspects of personification in Selby’s (1994) relief to
rejoin the pilgrimage after a day of sightseeing in an urban center: “[…] to be back on the
Camino Francés again after the swirl and bustle of the town was like rejoining an old and
much-loved friend” (p. 125). Neillands (1985) exercises his poetic voice in describing
one medieval hamlet on the Way: “Today the little village [of Larressingle] dreams in the
sun, the warm golden walls draped with madly drooling hollyhocks” (p. 67 [emphasis
mine]).
The character of the Way as a person is often conceived of in the same way as
Selby has described it above. Nearly always pilgrim writers will describe their
pilgrimage-person as someone friendly and nurturing. On one online discussion board, a
pilgrim advised others, “If you trust the camino you have never an [sic] problem”
(Markus, 2006, February 22). Pilgrim Lynette Torres (2004 July 8) writes her family
about her impressions of the Way: “[…] the distance has become meaningless in a
way...you just pack in the morning your mochila, have some cafe con leche y pan and
walk as far as you can for the day, open to what the path brings, which always nurtures
and provides […]” [emphasis mine]. In keeping with this particular personification, the
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52. Way is often given the human qualities of a mother. Santiago pilgrim and art historian T.
A. Layton’s (1976) description of towns along the road gives readers the notion that the
pilgrimage has the life-giving properties of a mother: “All hamlets and towns we now
come to before reaching lovely León are decrepit and ugly, but all the churches and
monasteries were built for the pilgrimage; indeed, the places came into existence solely
because of the St James” (p. 125 [emphasis mine]). It is a fact that many—if not most—
of the cities found along the road owe their presence to the sustained popularity of the
Way and, thus, metaphorically the pilgrimage functions as a creator as Layton indicates.
As such, other language users personify the Camino as a mother-creator more explicitly
as seen here: “On the route you follow scenic country roads, fields and forest tracks as
well as crossing countless villages and cities born of the Camino” (Roddis et al., 1999, p.
381 [emphasis mine]). Inherent in this quote is the metaphoric entailment that CITIES
ARE CHILDREN, a metaphor that occurs throughout the literature. Cities along the Way
are overtly referred to as offspring of the pilgrimage as in these passages:
As the name indicates, Villafranca, the ‘French town’ was created by the pilgrim
trade. Even [Aymeric Picaud’s] guide describes Villafranca as the hija de la
peregrinacion jacobea 6 (Neillands, 1985, p. 147); “in 997, the little town of
Santiago which had grown up around the Field of the Star […]” (Selby, 1994, p.
42 [emphasis mine]).
6
“daughter of James’s pilgrimage” (Spanish [my translation])
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53. Additionally, way-marks 7 along the pilgrim road also take on human characteristics as
products/offspring of their mother-road: “The waymarks grew strangely neurotic,
zigzagging furiously and disappearing” (Fainberg, 2004).
The nurturing aspect of the Way is one of its biggest attractions for potential
pilgrims. There is a perceived belief in many pilgrim writings that making a pilgrimage
will help a person to grow spiritually or that their lives will be reenergized in the
undertaking. This motivation is symbolized in these writers’ use of the PEOPLE ARE
PLANTS metaphor. Lakoff and Turner (1989) describe the conceptualization thusly: “In
this metaphor, people are viewed as plants with respect to the life cycle—more precisely,
they are viewed as that part of the plant that burgeons and then withers or declines, such
as leaves, flowers, and fruit […]” (p. 6). Pilgrim writers tend only to highlight the growth
aspect of PEOPLE ARE PLANTS since one of the driving forces of making a pilgrimage is
to celebrate or seek the fertile, nurturing spirit that it symbolizes.
Though Selby (1994) claims not to seek this sort of nurturing, she does recognize
its reality: “[…] whereas I believed that all journeys were a form of pilgrimage in the
sense that they offered time and space for reflection and for looking at life from a fresh
angle, I had no expectation of any particular reward of enhanced spiritual growth at the
end of it” (p. 24 [emphasis mine]). One pilgrim writer expresses her belief that the Way
will facilitate her spiritual nurturing to an online community of fellow and would-be
pilgrims: “It's been a difficult year this year but one that has presented much opportunity
for change. As I grow and extend outwardly, I want to do so inwardly, hence this
7
Way-marks are blazes placed along the road by the local municipalities which pilgrims follow in order to
stay on the proper path; they are identified variously with red and white lateral stripes (the French GR65),
yellow arrows (Spanish side), and a scallop shell emblem (intermittently and between Santiago and
Finistera).
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54. impending journey” (Mungobeanie, 2006, November 3 [emphasis mine]). Here, the
writer expresses her desire not only to ‘grow’ but to ‘extend outwardly’ in the same way
that a plant extends outward (and upward) from its germinating seed. The pilgrimage as
nurture has the added effect of also fostering growth vocationally: “However, the
experience itself [i.e. the pilgrimage] was amazing and definitely helped me grow as a
person and a writer, which is why I [am] doing it all again in Sept 2006, starting from
SJPP this time” (Mifsud, J., 2006, August 20). The spirit of the Way is perceived as a
sort of Petri dish in which its internal environment provides the appropriate conditions for
the pilgrim-plant to develop:
Perhaps it really comes down to whether one accepts what certain kinds of
experience -the accommodation to silence, solitude, sharing, trials of one sort or
another - invite personal growth on the pilgrim's part, beyond that usually
required by the circumstances of everyday life (Dennett, 1997 [emphasis mine]).
The Pilgrim’s Decision
The existential metaphors described above are given their full import when we
also look at the motivations driving pilgrims to make their journeys. Howard (1980)
suggests, “[…] the ‘pilgrimage of life’ is marked off by moral crises and choices; its goal
is growth in character” (p. 7). Indeed, many pilgrim writers express their coming to the
Way at some ‘cross-roads’ in their lives or amidst some personal life ‘crisis’. I use these
particular terms because of their relevance to LIFE IS A JOURNEY. A cross-road is a literal
location where two roads cross each other and the point at which the literal traveler must
make a decision as to which road to take on his or her journey. Since we also conceive of
our lives as journeys, a cross-road is a metaphorical point in one’s life path where a
44

55. decision must be made which will determine the course of the life traveler’s future. We
also often hear of people experiencing ‘mid-life crises’ or being at ‘critical’ points in their
lives. ‘Crisis’ comes from the Greek verb meaning ‘to decide’ (Simpson, 1989). People
who find themselves at these points in their life journeys are at a cross-road, a place at
which one must make a life-altering decision. The LIFE IS A JOURNEY metaphor is
apparent in these terms and in the motivations behind the modern pilgrimage to Santiago.
Pilgrim writers describe that their reasons for making their pilgrimages are related to life
changing events which force them to reevaluate their current directions in life.
Pilgrim Robin Neillands (1985) describes the state of his life at the time of his
decision to make his pilgrimage:
“In my case I went to get away from the life that seemed increasingly sterile, in
which I could not find a reason to be happy. I left for Compostela because I had
slowly but completely run out of the ability to tolerate my life as it was. The
world seemed to have run dry and lost its colour. Living in it had become a
pointless exercise. I suppose I was simply depressed. The Road seemed to offer
a little chink of light, and I got up wearily and followed it” (p. 22)
At the time, Neillands found his life without purpose, without direction. So many pilgrim
writers echo his sentiment. They too are at cross-roads in their lives, experiencing
spiritual crises of their own. Selby 8 (1994) describes some of her fellow pilgrims in
much the same way:
8
Though she does not go into a great detail about her own troubles, Selby (1994) does inform her readers
that the difficulties of the road had caused her some of her own crises de coeur [‘heartaches’] (p. 104 [my
translation]).
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56. [Harrie, a pilgrim from the Netherlands] was walking to Santiago, he said,
because he had come to a point in his life where he needed ‘space to think, to
work things out’; a time away from everyday problems (p. 144);
It was the death of [Kurt’s] wife the year before, coinciding wit his retirement that
had given him the jolt he needed to finally fulfill the debt he felt he owed his
father (p. 103);
[A student pilgrim] was fed up with his courses and wasn’t sure anymore if
engineering was really what he wanted to do. He hoped the journey would give
him time to think things out, but even if he found no answers, he thought the
experience would have been worth it (p. 102 [emphasis mine]).
The italicized terms above are part of a metaphorical system called MORAL ACCOUNTING.
Though I will discuss this system at length elsewhere, its introduction here will be helpful
to better understand pilgrim motivations and to establish its coherency with LIFE IS A
PILGRIMAGE.
In brief, the language of MORAL ACCOUNTING borrows from the terminological
field of business and finance, illustrating our conceptualization of morality as currency.
The pilgrim, Kurt, has undergone the pilgrimage as part of a promise to his father. This
is not a real financial debt that he owes, it is a moral one. Likewise, the student pilgrim
conceives of the activity as having money-like value. In MORAL ACCOUNTING, making
the pilgrimage is worthy of repaying moral debts. By discussing participation in the Way
using this metaphor system, the writer reveals an unconscious understanding behind the
pilgrims’ decision: that the pilgrimage road can remedy one’s moral life road.
46