So while some of us were meeting in Ringwood this month,
other encounters were going on elsewhere.
In France there was a trip to a pilgrim refuge on the Limoges route to
Santiago in Spain – one of the branches of the Camino de Santiago de
Compostella. This is one of the toughest
branches of the famous pilgrim trail, and people researching taking that route
are advised that their motivation will be well tested. On this route there are only three refuges
especially set aside for pilgrims; otherwise pilgrims must find their
accommodation in the normal range of B&Bs or hotels.
The refuge at St Ferme in Gironde
is simple, build as a mezzanine to a barn, and comprising a kitchen/dining room/office, a bedroom with bunks for
six, two showers, a loo and a washing machine.
There is a small separate bedroom set aside for the hospitalier who welcomes
and hosts the pilgrims, and who themselves must have completed the pilgrim route in the past. All pilgrims
must move on after one night. It was the
hospitalier for the week that we went to visit; someone known to us in the UK,
someone who gives up a fortnight a year to live in very bare circumstances alongside
pilgrims who are doing the same.
While visiting our friend, we also visited the Benedictine Abbey of St Ferme, which is vastly
larger than such a small hamlet as St Ferme would normally be associated with. And the Abbey is visited by many of the Santiago pilgrims, as a sanctuary in which to restore their spirits, and perhaps once more focus on why they have chosen to make their pilgrimage.
In this part of France it is clear that the whittling down
of pilgrim paths to the few that are well documented and supported today is a
very new thing. Many villages and towns
not today recognised as being on the pilgrimage route still display the scallop
shell denoting a pilgrim in little architectural details, over the doors of
chapels, or houses.
Until contemporary
times it is likely that pilgrims drifted down towards the crossing into Spain across
a much broader swathe of countryside.
Some were welcomed, but in other areas the pilgrims were seen as harbingers
of disease, and were strongly encouraged to remain outside the precincts of the
bourg. Little chapels in the middle of nowhere, established to allow pilgrims to pray apart from the townsfolk, are still found in some places.
Another interesting August encounter was with the French nun of the
Russian Orthodox convent near Grassac, in the Charente. There are now four sisters there and the
convent, which is regularly open to the public, was inaugurated in the late 1980s.
All the icons inside were painted by the sisters themselves, and they
cover the interior walls of the striking church. Like Ely Cathedral, there is a lantern window
in the very centre of the church that lets light down into the nave below. Unlike Ely, the flat ceiling of this lantern
is painted with an icon of Christ, and this too was painted by one of the
sisters, some 15 m above the floor of the nave.
Our nun guide lit up when she understood that some among our visiting
party were Scots, and she broke into good English to describe how she was for
quite some years a nun at a Buddhist community outside Glasgow. The hamlet with the Russian Orthodox convent
is even smaller than St Ferme, yet the nuns have set up a long, new-ish building
set aside for inter-religious conferences, meetings and training sessions. We couldn’t help thinking that the nun’s
experience as a Buddhist before finding her vocation in the Russian Orthodox Church,
as well as the experience of being Russian Orthodox in a secular state like
France (yet faintly influenced by the Roman Catholic Church), probably explains
the success of this venture.
