Compostela by night

This month, I have spent much time writing about the cult of Saint James the Elder in medieval Europe, as he was formulated and disseminated at and from the cult centre at Santiago de Compostela. Today, April 29, most of my work day was dedicated to writing a one and a half page summary of the cult-making process of the twelfth century. While the writing itself only took a few hours, those hours were founded on long periods of reading, travelling, writing, discussing and researching spread throughout 2024. In order to write that page and a half, I relied on notes and memories, and in order to reach this particular point in my work I have read three books, numerous articles, travelled to Santiago de Compostela twice, prepared and given two conference presentations, and expanded my personal library. This preparatory work is part of the pleasure of writing academic texts, but it is work that is rarely acknowledged by funding bodies or by universities. But today, I could relish in all those hours spread across 2024 that I had dedicated to researching the cult of Saint James and the history of Santiago de Compostela. And part of that relish rested on some of the glorious views of the city that I was able to witness in the course of my travels. Below are some of those views, taken a late evening in December, on a day that cemented my love for Santiago de Compostela even more strongly, and made me feel even more at home in its confusing and confounding streetscape. 

 

A three-week book haul

Most of March 2025 was spent on a long, circuitous journey that brought me to two cities in Norway, one in Germany, and two in Spain. The journey was occasioned by two conferences, one in Hamburg and one in Salamanca, and since these conferences were quite close in time but not close enough to warrant a more direct itinerary, I decided to spend the majority of three weeks travelling, spending my nights variously at hotels or at the houses of kind friends. It was an eventful and lovely trip, and I returned home much richer than when I left, as is always the case when I have been inundated with impressions, food, new knowledge, and the joy of friendships new and old. And when I have purchased new books. 

This time around, I was heroically restrained in my book-buying adventures. Partly, my restraint was due to a rather tight schedule, where so much of my time was spent either at conferences on en route to them, or meeting up with friends along the way. For instance, I found no time to peruse the numerous bookshops that I passed when hurrying to and from the conference locale in Salamanca, and I just managed to purchase an edition of Lazarillo de Tormes that I happened to see displayed outside one of them. Partly, however, the restraint was guided by practical matters, as I was travelling with a large suitcase for three weeks, and I wanted that suitcase to remain manageable throughout the journey. Even so, I did manage to add a few valuable tomes - valuable to me, that is - to my still-too-miniscule book collection. The haul is shown below, containing items from Hamburg, Bergen, Salamanca, and Madrid. 

Pain in stone - the Deposition of Christ at Aguilar de Campoo

There is a narrative about modernity that presupposes that people of the past did not have the same kinds of emotions as we do today - that they were harder, more toughened by high death rates and statistically low life expectancy. There is a variant of this narrative - once uttered by a friend of mine who is an early modernist - where medieval art is said to have been static and without emotion, in contrast to the glorious geniuses of the Renaissance. Both narratives come from the same place, namely the identity-construction of the Enlightenment and its latter-day versions promoted by capitalists, industrialists and techbros. The basic purpose of this idea is to argue that we as humans are evolving, becoming more civilised, that we are more elevated than the people of the past, especially the Middle Ages. Both these narratives are pure nonsense, and there are plenty of sources that provide evidence against them. 

Since today is Holy Saturday, I will take the opportunity to provide one of my favourite examples of such sources, namely the Deposition of Christ as depicted on a capital in the church of the monastery of Aguilar de Campoo in Northern Spain. The capital, along with others from the same church, are currently kept in the Museo Arqueológico Nacional in Madrid, and it is one of the many masterpieces of Spanish Romanesque art.  

These pictures were taken in the spring of 2024, and I viewed this capital from every possible angle. The pain carved into these figures is breathtaking, and would have been even more powerful in their original locations as they would likely have been painted, meaning that the death-closed eyes of Christ had provided an even more powerful contrast to the Virgin Mary's eyes shut in the pain of weeping. This capital is a wonderful, painful, amazing reminder that the pain of love - in its myriad manifestations - is universally human and not something that came about in modernity, or something that is typically modern. 

The Crucifixion in Ål stave church

As today is Good Friday, I take the opportunity to share a scene from one of the most stunning survivals from the wealth of art created in medieval Norway, namely the ceiling of the ciborium of Ål stave church. The ciborium, a barrel-valuted structure placed above the choir, was painted in the thirteenth century, and provides a compressed version of the salvation story, beginning with the Creation and reaching its climax with the Resurrection. The ceiling is currently housed in the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, where the paintings are accessible to the general public. 

The crucifixion scene is a good way to assess the level of biblical and apocryphal knowledge available in medieval Norway in the thirteenth century. In our times, there is a pervasive myth that medieval Norway was out of touch with Christian traditions and Christian knowledge elsewhere in Europe, which in turn has led to several unfounded claims about the continuity of paganism, at least on a popular level. By the thirteenth century, Norway had been Christian for three centuries, and although urbanisation was limited and there were few monasteries, the network of parish churches ensured that at least the most important feasts of the liturgical year were celebrated throughout the country, despite its rather difficult topography.  

The crucifixion scene shows that there was a familiarity with Christian iconography in thirteenth-century Norway, and also that the artists behind the ceiling at Ål stave church were just as adept at compressing information as artists elsewhere in Latin Christendom. The scene also reminds us of the abiding and pervasive evil that is antisemitism. 

The central feature of the scene is, of course, the crucified Christ, bleeding from his pierced side, his head drooping in the typical manner of the Gothic style, emphasising the suffering and human Christ. Above him, we see two symbols of the evangelists, namely the angel of Matthew and the eagle of John. Six figures are standing at the foot of the cross. The most recognisable are perhaps John the Evangelist on the left (or the viewer's right), depicted as a young, clean-shaven man, and identifiable as an evangelist thanks to the book he is holding, and the Virgin Mary on the rightmost end, clutching her hands in pain. Next to the Virgin Mary, a woman, probably Mary Magdalen, is raising aloft a chalice. This chalice is strongly laden with symbolism, but it is difficult to assess how it is meant. It might be that the chalice represents the jar of alabaster which is Mary Magdalen's saintly attribute. It is possible that the chalice refers to Christ's prayer in Gethsemane, where he asked God to let the chalice pass him by, meaning that he would not have to go through with the ultimate sacrifice. A modern audience will probably connect the chalice to the vessel that gathered some of Christ's blood, which is part of the developing grail mythology - but this is unlikely given the stage at which this story had developed in the thirteenth century. 

Beyond the Virgin and the Magdalen, two male figures are located. The one closest to the cross is the Roman soldier Longinus, who pierced the side of Christ with his spear. According to post-biblical tradition, the blood of Christ got in the soldier's eye - to which he is indicating in the scene - and thereby healed it. The miracle promptly converted Longinus to Christianity, and his feast was celebrated in calendars until the twelfth century - at least that is as far I have been able to trace it. As part of this story, Longinus' spear became the holy lance, which was claimed by Ottonian emperors and became part of a long register of Christ-related relics in the Middle Ages. 

Beside Longinus, we see a beard-puller, a typical figure of otherness in medieval art. It is likely that the beard-puller represents the unbelieving Other, the non-Christians who refused to accept Christ as Messiah, and it is possible that this figure represents both pagans and Jews. 

The final figure, placed between the cross and John the Evangelist, is another and indeed more forceful reminder that Christian iconography is, tragically, saturated with antisemitism. This figure, appearing as a royal harlot, is most likely a figuration of the Synagogue, a figure demonising and attacking all Jews. The crown askance might be understood as the imminent loss of sovereignty - being replaced by the Christian faith - and the bared breasts and the goat held by the horns might be interpreted as lasciviousness or unfaithfulness. 

The antisemitic imagery in this picture is part of an artistic tradition that fuelled Christian antagonism against Jews throughout the Middle Ages, and which continues to do so today. We are therefore reminded that it can be intensely difficult to untangle the heritage of Christian antisemitism from the commemoration of the mystical climax of the Christian liturgical year, and indeed the history of salvation. In our own times, antisemitism remains deeply rooted in many groups of society - including many Christian groups - and for Christians the season should be a time of reflection for how Christians have persecuted Jews throughout the centuries, all in contradiction with Christ's commandment of love and tolerance.