Off the Road (19 page)

The appeal of the Knights
Templar made them an unparalleled source of fund-raising. A meeting was
convened in Toulouse, France, in 1130 just to coordinate the promiscuous, often
competitive donations of property and money to the popular order. Hundreds of
estate owners throughout Europe willed their lands to the Templars. The most
impressive donor was King Alonso I of Aragon. He ceded one-third of his kingdom
in Spain.

On March 29, 1139, the pope
issued the most powerful decree ever given to an order of monks. The Omne Datum
Optimum, or “Every Best Gift,” exempted the Knights Templar from local taxes,
tithes, and nearly every other financial claim. Their only responsibility was
to the pope. The church at last had an army, and now a well-funded one.

The power and the privileges
of the Knights Templar, though, soon caused resentment. In Europe the
every-best-gift decree infuriated the local clergy. Their greatest weapon
against the secular nobles was the edict, or the suspension of church
activities—baptisms, marriages, services, etc. Since the Templars were exempt
from such bans, they often carried out those offices, at considerable profit,
in the teeth of priests’ complaints.

Meanwhile, back in the Holy
Land, the Knights Templar attacked Damascus in 1148 but were repelled, pursued,
and slaughtered. Ibn al-Qalaisi wrote that the corpses of Templars and their
horses were “stinking so powerfully that the birds almost fell out of the sky.”
With resentment stirring at home, defeats such as these provided the local
clergy with a rich source of rumor and innuendo. The knights didn’t help their
case much. In 1154 the Templars captured a Moslem courtier named Nasr, who was
fleeing Egypt after murdering the caliph of Cairo. Despite his conversion to
Christianity, the Templars traded him to the caliph’s four widows for sixty
thousand dinars. Before they reached the Nile, the women had ripped off Nasr’s
limbs and mutilated the remains. Back in Europe, it didn’t sound good: a
Christian handed over for certain execution in exchange for a purse of silver?
This story had an unpleasant resonance.

Over time, the bureaucracy
of the Templars grew, and the abundance of detailed amendments to the Rule
suggests nasty, often bizarre infighting. One new regulation forbade a brother
from leaving the dinner table except for a nosebleed. Another codicil excused
from chapel “any brother who is washing his hair.” Could the mighty Templars be
going soft?

The mission of the Templars
was getting cloudy as well. For example, after the Fourth Crusade of the early
thirteenth century, the Templars were asked by the pope to help combat a potent
heresy in the French region of Languedoc. The Templars .—now a century old, all
descendents of Holy Land warriors, more Eastern than European in
temperament—were pleased to slaughter the Cathar heretics in the French town of
Béziers. They had only one question: How could one tell good Catholics from
bad? The papal legate Arnaud Amalric responded notoriously,
“Tuez-les tous!
Dieu reconnaîtra les siens.”
It is an answer that is still with us. I have seen
it on the T-shirts of marines on leave from Parris Island in South Carolina:
“Kill them all! Let God sort ’em out!”

By the mid-thirteenth
century the Templars weren’t performing well in the Holy Land, either. Out of
the east had come a new breed of infidel. One witness raged: “Men? They are
inhuman and bestial, better called monsters than men. Thirsting for and
drinking blood, they butcher the bodies of dogs and humans, and eat them. They
wear bulls’ horns, they are armed and squat, with compact bodies; they are
invincible in war, and blood to them is a delicious drink.” These were the
Khwaraz-mian Turks.

Their attack on Jerusalem in 1244 was brutal. Only a few Templars survived a Holy City consumed in fire.
It would be the Christians’ last look at Jerusalem for almost six centuries,
until Napoleon entered.

In 1291 the last bastion
fell. Templars began drifting back to Europe, a land many of them had never
seen. Despite total failure, the Templars returned to their European fortresses
and vast wealth. The local clergy and the secular nobles had their long knives
out for the Templars. A poem written by Rostan Berenguier of Marseilles at the
time spoke of the knights “riding their gray horses and taking their ease in
the shade and admiring their own fair locks.” The verses ended with the ominous
proposal that Europe should “rid ourselves of them for good.” One writer said
that the Templar defeats were not merely a military matter, but “a judgment of
God against the order which he himself had approved and established.” Their
return was not just a decampment; it was a sign from heaven. The Crusades had
been wrong. The common folk plunged into a dark mood, troubled by self-doubt
and wallowing in the self-pity that comes with defeat. Europe pouted, like a
scolded child in search of a scapegoat. “It is no accident,” writes
twentieth-century historian Peter Partner, “that representations of Christ at
this time begin to place less emphasis on Christ in majesty and more on the man
of sorrows, on the passive Christ.” Could the Templars have come in contact
with something evil? Might they have wrongly possessed something? Had they done
something perverse? There had to be a reason, didn’t there?

At the end of any day,
groups of pilgrims gather, coalesce, and then diverge with ease. For a while,
the amateur historians of the road are myself; Louis, AKA the Frenchman Who Has
Walked the Road Eleven Times; Javier, the Spanish Banker; Roderick and Jerri,
the Young Married British Couple; and a few Germans. But there are other groups
that form. Some are keen on the peculiar traditions of the road—a pilgrim is
supposed to pause before a statue or throw a coin off a certain bridge. Others
are taken by the physicality of the road. They gather and discuss the
intricacies of the backpack. And yet others, like the Flemish, have a more
carpe diem approach.

All of us participate in
these groupings in some way or another. And in these maneuverings and
jostlings, one can feel a kind of low-grade panic. We are trying to assert an
approach to the road or an interpretation of it that is in some sense bigger
than ourselves. The old vocabulary of the road—that language of suffering,
penance, grace, mystery—are terms most of us find uncomfortable in our
conversations. There are those who make a show of old-fashioned piety. They
assume a public position at every church, praying a little loudly. Or they
strike stances of studied pensiveness, make it known that they are writing in
their journals, or alert other pilgrims to the beauty of a sunset. They are, in
short, annoying: they walk the road with an untroubled confidence in what they
are doing. The rest of us are anxious. Madame Debril’s words haunt everyone,
even those who may not have encountered her. Are you a true pilgrim?

This frantic effort to make
the road into something else, either through history or tradition or endurance
or mere enthusiasm, is tangible. It is a kind of competition. All our
discussions are flavored with a subtext of “I know more than you.” At times
this competitive edge manifests itself as knowledge—of history, of tradition,
of what’s around the next bend. This spirit assumes its most primitive form the
next morning in Rabanal.

As the cocks crow, I pop
open my eyes to see the early birds such as Louis and Paolo packing in the
auroral light for the walk to Ponferrada. Willem, of course, has left hours
ago. The little noises of cinching a strap or stowing a tin cup has sent an
electric message through the room. Eyes are opening all around, and the fever
felt by the pilgrims is one of primal competition. Sleep too late and walk with
the laggards! True pilgrims must rise now! Pack! Down a coffee and hit the
road! Within minutes the entire room is buzzing with hectic pilgrims, packing
furiously.

This morning the claim to
purity, to true pilgrim status, takes an old, old form. Today’s proof will have
nothing of history or solemnity or detached silence. I can feel the group
dynamics of the herd gather into a force. It is nothing less than a race.

I can’t resist (partly out
of being a guy, partly out of some vestigial sense of duty). I am stuffing my
sleeping bag carelessly into its little sack, and within minutes I am seated
with the hostel’s British proprietor in the kitchen, crunching toast and
slurping coffee with the others. A stifled hysteria blazes on each face. Were
we bulls, this would be a stampede. But we are human, sniffing in the air an
ancient odor. Breakfast has all the dignity of “Last one out is a rotten egg.”

The rain of the last few
days has secreted in these mountains enough little pockets of water that the
insects are overpowering. The cattle in the neighboring pastures swat the air
with their metronomic tails. Throughout the morning’s odd blue light, we
pilgrims pass each other and fall back. We look like a line of hasty cowards
surrendering in battle, snapping the air before our faces with bandannas.

The morning’s competition
has put us in Ponferrada by early afternoon, giving us enough time to see the
place. The famous Knights Templar castle, set in the center of town on the
banks of a river, is the size of ten football fields. The city surrounds and is
defined by this beautiful ruin.

“The great mystery of the
Knights Templar is buried there, you know,” Louis says. I honestly can’t tell
whether he is serious or not.

“Ask any local,” he says.

So I do. At the gate to the
fortress is a gypsy and her two children. The town employs her to sell
postcards. Admission is free. I ask her if the Knights Templar had hidden
anything here.

“The Holy Grail,” she says
matter-of-factly. “No one has ever found it.”

The fortress is a child’s
dream. Much of it has been destroyed over the years, but there are enough
crenellated walls, oddly shaped turrets, storerooms, ammo depots, and the like
to keep this tired Hardy Boy roaming for hours. Up a steep, narrow stone
staircase, I clamber onto one of the corner turrets. It is a small space, no
larger than a good-size room. A few minutes later two young men in dark blue
suits emerge from the staircase, dragging a bag of books. We greet each other
in Spanish as I notice name tags on their jackets that say “David” and “John.”

“Excuse me,” I say in
English, “are you two Mormons?”

“Yes, how could you tell?”

“Clairvoyance, I guess.”

They are missionaries from Utah, sent here to proselytize. They try to give me a book of the words of their angel, Moroni, but I explain to them I am a pilgrim to Santiago. I am thinking: One religion at a
time, please. Soon they want to know if I have any inside dope on the castle
because they know plenty.

The boys are amateur experts
on the Templar castle, and I get the impression that these missionaries play
hooky every afternoon and cruise the fortress. (Note to Utah: Not a good idea
to send two young men to a Spanish city with a huge empty castle.)

“Have you found the secret
passage?” they ask.

“Secret passage?”

“Oh, yeah, follow us.”

They escort me to the back
end of the wall near the river. Outside the fortress a slender hump, like the
top of an earthen pipeline, descends to the river. A caved-in hole in the
ground opens into a subterranean staircase. I step inside and walk as far down
as the light will let me. Here was the answer to at least one Templar secret.
In case of war, the knights had hidden access to the freshwater river outside
the fortress.

“Isn’t this place neat?”
they ask.

“Extremely neat.”

From atop another turret,
they point to the remaining walls and corner establishments. Templars were said
to be enamored with order, the boys explain. Many of the Templar establishments
are built in octagonal shapes, suggesting some kind of cabalistic significance.
But this fortress seems to quarrel with any attempt to impose order on it. The
wall appears to be twelve-sided, each one of different length. And each turret
is shaped differently, with unnatural protrusions of stone. The theory, they
explain, is that the odd un-Templaresque shape of this fortress speaks some
message to those who might understand it. So far, no one has broken the code.

After a while I tire of
peering into empty stone bed chambers, ammo dumps, and meeting rooms. At the
front gate I stop to buy a postcard from the gypsy mother and her kids.

“Did you find the Holy
Grail?” she asks. There is not a trace of irony in her voice.

“Still looking,” I tell her.

The king of France at the turn of the fourteenth century was known as an uncommonly handsome man. He
was called Philip le Bel, the Beautiful, an ironic epithet for a king of Gothic
pitilessness. Because of the French king’s constant financial problems,
relations between Paris and Rome had degenerated into a ludicrous state. The
Beautiful had exhausted all the usual medieval methods for balancing the books.
He had stolen property, he had arrested all the Jews, he had devalued his
currency. As a last resort, he tried to tax the church.

Pope Boniface VIII was a fat
and dissolute pontiff. One contemporary described him as “nothing but eyes and
tongue in a wholly putrefying body... a devil.” The Beautiful himself openly
referred to him as, “Your Fatuity.” But Boniface knew the rules of the game as
well.