Carpe Diem #1137 The Bridge

My Response to Carpe Diem #1137 - Road to Santiago - The Bridge

This episode is titled "The Bridge" and it refers to some of the paragraphs in "The Pilgrimage":

[...] One morning Paulo and his guide Petrus. arrived at an immense bridge, totally out of proportion to the modest stream that coursed below it. 

They had a talk over breakfast - going something like this:-

‘But it is known along the Road to Santiago as the “honorable passage.” 

These fields around us were the site of some bloody battles between the Suevians and the Visigoths, and later between Alphonse III’s soldiers and the Moors.

Maybe the bridge is oversize to allow all that blood to run past it without flooding the city.’

‘However, it wasn’t the Visigoth hordes or the triumphant cries of Alphonse III that gave this bridge its name. 

It was another story of love and death.'

During the first centuries of the Road to Santiago, pilgrims, priests, nobles, and even kings came from all over Europe to pay homage to the saint. 

Because of this, there was also an influx of assailants and robbers. 

History has recorded innumerable cases of robbery of entire caravans of pilgrims and of horrible crimes committed against lone travelers.’

‘Because of the crimes, some of the nobility decided to provide protection for the pilgrims, and each of the nobles involved took responsibility for protecting one segment of the Road. 

But just as rivers change their course, people’s ideas are subject to alteration. 

In addition to frightening the malefactors, the knights began to compete with each other to determine who was the strongest and most courageous on the Road. 

It wasn’t long before they began to do battle with each other, and the bandits returned to the Road with impunity.' [...] (Source: The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho)

Photo Credit

You can see the original bridge that pilgrims used to cross over the Miño River in Portomarin,

It is located on the pilgrimage route known as the French Way.

The town of Portomarín was constructed and built next to a Roman bridge over the Minho River and rebuilt in the Middle Ages.

New Tanka for “the Bridge”.

beautiful bridges

rivers change courses in floods

some taking the bridge with them

like bridges built between friends

they can change directions too

Photo Credit