Small french routes to Santiago

[wanda]

Linda, After reading
----- Original Message -----
From: "davidson" <davidsonaetal.uri.edu>
To: <GOCAMINOaPETE.URI.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2004 11:45 AM
Subject: Small french routes to Santiago


> I'm living in a teeny village in the Luberon valley, near the town of Apt
> while trying to write on the next book with hub David Gitlitz. [Apt:
Provence,
> between Avignon on the west and Aix on the south-east and Marseille to the
> south. If you've read Peter Mahle's _A Year in Provence_, you've got the
right
> area, but don't push me on Mahle: he missed a lot of what's real here.]
>
> When it's a nice day we try to take a short hike. The hiking routes, the
> randonnees, are terrifically well marked and there are a lot of them
around
> this area. One nice day we're out hiking and what do we see on the hiking
> signpost ? An taped on famous-after-1993 symbolic star for the St. James
> route. Sure enough, right through Apt. It would have to have been since
the
> Roman road (the Via Domitia; Domition Road) is the highway from Avignon to
Apt
> before having to face the great gorges and massifs.
>
> There is a lot to see around here that is pilgrimage-based, in the broad
> sense. The town of Apt claims a relic of St. Anne, mother of Mary.... Her
> pilgrimage is still a viable/living one. A small town just 15 kilometers
to
> the west contains another miracle-working statue of Mary and people still
make
> pilgrimages there today. Their ex-votos are in the form of handpainted oil
> "thank you's". There is a little evidence that this area may have formed a
> minor route toward the Pyrenees and ultimately compostela. Most churches
> around here have a statue of St. Roche/Roq: he with the leper wound and
the
> dog who holds out bread for him. St. Roch is always dressed as a Santiago
> pilgrim.  There are an occasional reference to St-Jacques, such as the
> aumonerie / almshouse in Gordes.
>
> Linda DAvidson
>