Mark McCarthy
Active Member
- Time of past OR future Camino
- CF 2014 2015
Lourdes 2 SdC 2016
Sarria 2 SdC April&Oct 2016 & (April 2018)
Camino Baztan June 2017
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Yes @Mark McCarthyThank you for sharing.
While on lockdown, I was wondering if we could start a daily post of Camino trivia (history and background). As a start here is some background on the monastery next to the wine fountain at Irache:
"The abbey at Irache was one of the oldest Benedictine monasteries in the world with its foundations believed to date back to the 8th century. The first formal records date the monastery back to 958.
I do remember that fountain on a hot summer day!Today's Camino trivia is:
"Valdeviejas itself is just a suburb of Astorga which you pass by almost unnoticed. However, at the exit to Valdeviejas is a 16th century hermitage/chapel dedicated to Ecce Homo.
Ecce Homo comes from the Latin translation of John’s Gospel (19:5). This is when Pontius Pilate after having had Jesus scourged and crowned with thorns shows the degraded Jesus to the baying crowd with the words “Behold the Man”. Subsequently, many Christians have prayed and paid adoration to this humbled image of Christ at his lowest point. This is a moment of great import in his victory over death and sin.
The legend for this hermitage is that a pilgrim stopped at this well to drink but her son fell in the well. The pilgrim immediately prayed to Ecce Homo and with a great surge of water the child was washed up and out of the well to safety. Thus, leading to the inscription “Give alms pilgrim to Ecce Homo and you will immediately know how to get out of your problems”. Whether you believe in the legend or not, the chapel is beautiful, the stamp is very pretty and the water fountain very welcome on a hot day."
Today's trivia concern the small hamlet of San Xulián do Camiño just after Palas de Rei.
"The story of Saint Julian the Hospitaller is a strange but apt story for the Camino in that Saint Julian uses pilgrimage and hospitality to pilgrims to atone for his terrible sin of killing his parents.
Yes, and on the Primitivo the gold mine A Freita in Hospitales and many more. They had water for the mine at Puerto del Palo (from latin Paluster).Galicia and Asturias is where all the gold is! The great gold mines of Las Medulas near Ponferrada had been worked by the Romans for two hundred years until the gold began to become harder to get out of the earth. The Romans took 20,000 pounds of gold, using upwards of 50,000 free men as miners, each year out of Las Medulas. Incredible! We know from the writings of the Roman historian Pliny of the massive engineering project which they called ruina montium. Pliny describes the hydraulic mining process where water pressure opened up the narrow hand-dug tunnels. They built aqueducts at the site to deliver the water and to blow open the tunnels. It was an amazing feat of engineering on a massive scale.
Las Medulas is right on the Invierno.The great gold mines of Las Medulas near Ponferrada had been worked by the Romans for two hundred years until the gold began to become harder to get out of the earth. The Romans took 20,000 pounds of gold, using upwards of 50,000 free men as miners, each year out of Las Medulas. Incredible! We know from the writings of the Roman historian Pliny of the massive engineering project which they called ruina montium. Pliny describes the hydraulic mining process where water pressure opened up the narrow hand-dug tunnels. They built aqueducts at the site to deliver the water and to blow open the tunnels. It was an amazing feat of engineering on a massive scale.
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