Santiago de Compostela

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Santiago de Compostela: The Botafumeiro

Tuesday, May 15, 2012 in Santiago de Compostela, Spain

The giant Botafumeiro in the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela.

I had to go to mass today. Not because of all the nasty things I said about people who believe the fairytale about St. James’s body being discovered by a crazy religious nut back in 813 (769 years after he was beheaded in Jerusalem), but because they were going to bring out La Alcachofa Grande—The Big Artichoke.

The Big Artichoke is a thurible. A thurible is a censer—one of those things you put incense in and swing around in church to make everybody get all mystical. I was an altar boy when I was a kid and I loved being the guy that got to swing the censer around. It was like being Merlin.

Anyway, the thurible at the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela is so honkin’ big that its nickname is The Big Artichoke (but it’s officially known as the Botafumeiro). The Botafumeiro weighs over 175 lbs. and is over five feet tall. The eight guys that swing it, called tirabeleiros, use shovels to fill it with 80 pounds of charcoal and incense. You have to see this thing in action to really get an idea of what I’d talking about (see the YouTube clip below and watch what happens to the tiraboleiro at the end when he catches the Botafumeiro to stop it from swinging).

They started using this giant censer back in the Middle Ages when all these stinky pilgrims were arriving from all over Europe after making their pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela. Of course the first thing they’d want to do was attend mass in the Catedral del Apóstol. But they smelled like dead goats and many had various diseases (see my earlier blog about the hospital that was built for these buggers which is now a luxury hotel), which didn’t make it real pleasant for the locals.

So what to do?

Build a gigantic thurible and swing it from the roof of the church over the unwashed masses. It wouldn’t clean them up but at least it would mask the stink in the church. Besides, it was thought at the time that the incense smoke had a prophylactic effect against things like the plague (which wiped out something like 30-60 percent of Europe’s population in the 14^th century). So swing away!

Tags: botafumeiro, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

The fairytale that made Santiago de Compostela

Monday, May 14, 2012 in Santiago de Compostela, Spain | 1 comment

The cathedral built over the supposed grave of St. James discovered by a religious hermit 769 years after he'd died. Photo by David Lansing.

Santiago de Compostela is a beautiful city. The Catedral del Apóstol is magnificent. But the whole reason for why this city is here is a joke. It doesn’t speak of man’s faith in The Big Kahuna. It speaks of man’s incredible gullibility. It makes me want to pull my hair out and run around screaming What’s wrong with you people?

Here’s the fairytale: In A.D. 44, King Herod had the apostle, James, beheaded in Jerusalem. Ouch. His body was put in a stone boat (of course) and sailed to Padrón (why not?), way up in the northwest corner of Spain.

Now, if you flew from Jerusalem to Padrón today, you’d get 2,500 frequent flier miles. But that’s as the crow flies, crossing over northern Spain from Barcelona almost to Portugal. If you were going to go by sea, you’d have to follow the northern coast of Africa, through the Straits of Gibraltor, and then up the coast of Portugal. Maybe adding 600 or 700 hundred miles to the trip. In a stone boat. In 44 A.D.

Never mind. You did it. It wasn’t easy, but what the hell. You got that corpse (which is probably a little ripe after godknows how many months upon the sea) to Northern Spain. Now you find a cart and you drag that coffin another 20 klicks or so inland and bury it in an unmarked grave. Where it rots for the next 769 years. Until a religious hermit (what we now call a “homeless crazy person”) claims that he’s rediscovered the grave. Hip-hip-hooray! Send a letter to King Alfonso II. Who actually shows up and says, What the hell—let’s build a big, honkin’ cathedral where the loony guy says St. James is buried. Why not? There’s nothing else here. Maybe it will be good for tourism.

Which it is. Dozens stop by. Thousands. Tens of thousands. It becomes the Disneyland of Europe back in the Middle Ages.

Meanwhile, these nasty Moors have been messing with things. Good Christians are getting pissed off (sound familiar?). For a good 400 years, Christians and Muslims and Jews throw things at each other and slit each other’s throats. Finally, in 1482, the Christians decide that what they need is a good ol’ fashioned Holy War. And if you’re going to have a good ol’ fashion Holy War, you need some sort of a war cry. I know! How about, “Santiago de Compostela!” in honor of the apostle who mysteriously floated back to Spain in a stone boat? Perfect! Yell your war cry and then stick a sword in a Muslim!

By 1492, it’s all over. The Moors plead uncle. All the Jews are kicked out of Spain (or worse). The Moors are given three choices: Convert to Christianity; leave Spain; or die. (Actually, sometimes the choices are combined. For instance, it’s not at all unusual over the next 150 years or so for a Moor to convert to Christianity and then be put to death.)

Lots of people die. How many? Too many to count (besides, nobody cared about body counts back in the Middle Ages). What’s important is that by praying to St. James, the Spanish have been able to slaughter the Jews and Moors and get them the hell out of Spain. Hip-hip-hooray. Let’s go there and say a prayer!

And that’s how Santiago de Compostela became famous.

And people say religion is ridiculous…pshawww!

Tags: Santiago de Compostela, St. James