Codex Calixtinus

[baron]

Hello all,

VERY geeky question, maybe, but: does anyone have, or know if there exists online, an electronic copy (in English) of the Codex Calixtinus, the medieval text/"guidebook" about the Camino?

More for fun than anything, I'd love to take a look at it (esp. Book V, the so-called "tour guide") before I start my Camino in a couple weeks. I've looked online and can't find one, and the public library doesn't have one either.

Just tossing it out there... thank you!

 

[sillydoll]

Not sure about electronic copies but you can buy a copy of the so-called guide from the CSJ in the UK. http://www.csj.org.uk (As with many great historical works it was actually lost and forgotten for many years until rediscovered in 1886 by the Jesuit scholar P. Fidel Fita.)

Click on Bookshop
Enter the bookshop
Other Confraternity Publications

The Pilgrim's Guide: a 12th Century Guide for the Pilgrim to St James of Compostella
James Hogarth, trans. CSJ, London, 1992. 98 pp.
This was the first English translation of the medieval 'Pilgrim's Guide' Price: £6.00

 

[jabri]

Here is a comprehensive summary in German:
http://www.tu-dresden.de/phfikm/Kunstgeschichtefinal/spanien/codex1.html

Jan Brilleman

 

[Peter Robins]

All the English translations of the Guide are very recent and still firmly under copyright. The only part of the Codex that was widely distributed before the 20th century was the Pseudo-Turpin, various translations of which are available online.

If you fancy creating your own xlation of the Guide, Fr Fita's edition is on Gallica.

See the end of my (lengthy!) dissertation on the subject for some links http://pilgrim.peterrobins.co.uk/santiago/lsj.html

 

[baron]

Thank you all for your help, suggestions, and guidance!

 

[denismurphy]

This translation of the Pilgrim's Guide has now been completed, and is online.

https://sites.google.com/site/caminodesantiagoproject/

 

[Bridget and Peter]

One of those co-incidences, this thread re-appearing...
just this morning I was talking with a member of our church congregation, Mary, about the cathedral in Santiago. She visited there a few years ago with an old (not just long-term old, but aged between 80 and 90) friend. Mary described how her friend, a clearly redoubtable and determined woman, an archivist and fluent Spanish speaker, persuaded the reluctant cathedral authorities of her superior academic credentials and right to be admitted to the archives, where they were shown the ACTUAL Codex Calixtinus. Wow! I joked that I would have to report this to the forum but never imagined that the thread would be up and running already!

 

[sillydoll]

Jeanne Krochalis, an associate professor of English at Penn State, wrote an interesting paper on the Codex Calixtinus. I copy some of it here.

"There are lots of cheap surviving medieval guides to Rome," Krochalis notes.
But when she and her colleagues studied the 12 manuscripts that remain, they learned this wasn’t the case with the Codex Calixtinus.
"Like a Baedecker’s that never was published, the Pilgrim’s Guide did not see the wide distribution its sponsors apparently intended, and that scholars had assumed it received. The survivors date from the 12thC (three copies), 14thC, late-15thC, early 16thC, 17thC, and 18thC. Each was hand-copied from an earlier manuscript, in a tedious process guaranteed to produce errors.
Most of the manuscripts were copied directly from the original at Santiago, which means that, instead of being the forerunner to Frommer’s, the Pilgrim’s Guide was a curiosity read only by the clerics, historians, and antiquarians who had access to the monastery library. Only one copy of the Pilgrim’s Guide was made during Gelmírez’s lifetime; it was sent, along with a bone from St. James’s jaw, to Bishop Atto in the North Italian city of Pistoia."

 

[ivar]

Re: Codex Calixtinus stolen

This morning, the Galician papers reports that the Códice Calixtino has been stolen/lost. It has not been see since tuesday afternoon. More on this here (translated by google translate).

 

[Bridget and Peter]

Goodness - this sounds like the beginning of a Dan Brown novel! Though that would have been set in the Holy Year. I'm sure.

If it is really lost/stolen, this is very serious, I know.

Still, see my story above, perhaps they were a bit lax about who they gave access to.

Sadly, my friend Mary, mentioned above, died earlier this year. Her redoubtable friend gave a eulogy at her funeral during which she recounted the story of their viewing of the Codex.