Quite soon into this trip, we walked through the big city of Leon. The Camino took us right past the entrance to this magnificent cathedral ...
The office where we went to get a stamp for our pilgrim passports was just after the rather fine screen in our next picture...
The artwork was so intricate that there was almost too much to see. I concentrated on the colours instead as I'm a simple soul, and found some of the frills too much.
In contrast, I really loved the simplicity of the church at Rabanal. It was just outside the albergue we stayed at, run by the English Co-fraternity of St James. It was very old and very peaceful. When we arrived a French pilgrim was playing his recorder inside and it sounded wonderful.
A few days later we went into a church that was open and, while the church was not really to my taste, with a bit too much gold and heavy decoration, I was more pleased that you can imagine, to see my old friend St. Roch, with his dog, again. We saw St Roch quite a lot in France but only occasionally in Spain. He is the patron saint of pilgrims and was a similar sort of figure to St Francis of Assisi, so, with me being a Franciscan bear, there is an immediate affinity.
You'll always know if you've seen St Roche as he always has his very distinctive thigh wound and the dog who saved his life by bringing him food when he was sick, at his feet.
We'll talk a bit more about the big one, Santiago Cathedral, next time.
Lots of love Gio xxx
1 comment:
Suffolk Branch an see why Rabanal appealed - we like it too. We were interested to hear about the saint being aged by his dog but feel sure a cat would have helped too if he had come across the injured saint.
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