Eunate

Eunate

This is not a blog post. This is a valentine--for a place called Eunate, an old, old church on the Camino de Santiago.

Its full name is actually La Iglesia de Santa Maria de Eunate, devoted to the Virgin Mary. And technically, it's not situated on the Camino, but a couple kilometers off of it, after Pamplona and Cizur Menor, not long before Puente la Reina. Its location means that many pilgrims will miss it, choosing to ignore the detour to Eunate in favor of the direct route through the village of Obanos to Puente la Reina. Of those who do chance the detour, most will only stop to visit the church briefly, take a look around, snap some photos, say a little prayer, and move on.


Following the detour off the Camino to Eunate

This is both a pity and a blessing. A pity because Eunate is not only one of the most beautiful and unique churches on the Camino, but also has a few beds for pilgrims who wish to experience this magical and peaceful place a little less temporarily, a little more fully. A blessing because the small number of pilgrims choosing to stay at Eunate, the lack of crowds, is partly what adds to the magic and peace of Eunate. Many albergues and churches on the Camino will give pilgrims a sense of camaraderie and community with their fellow peregrinos, and a few will even deliver a sense of grandeur or awe--Eunate is the only one I visited that offered a sense of intimacy, a rare and almost unsettling feeling of genuine communion with...with God? The universe? The spirit of the Camino and all its seekers throughout the ages? I don't know. Whatever it was, it was lovely and memorable beyond compare with any other experience I enjoyed on the Camino.

Entrance through gate to Eunate

Portion of Eunate's external cloisters (and dog) at sunset

Bell tower of Eunate

It was built in the 12th century in the Romanesque style. That much seems to be known about its origins, which are otherwise mysterious. Some have linked the church to the Knights Templar, an order that protected pilgrims to Christian sites during the Crusades. But this linkage seems to be owing to the enigmatic octagonal shape of the church and its unusual location in the countryside (rather than in a town past or present) and the Templar order's own enigmatic history. In truth, there has been no evidence found of the Templars' existence in the area, but instead of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. So it was actually part of a large complex for that order long ago...maybe. The presence of graves in and around the church has also led to suggestions it served as a cemetery for pilgrims who perished on the Camino.

If it's true that Eunate was once a place where pilgrims were brought for burial, it's true today that Eunate is a place where pilgrims can come for rebirth--or at least, for a renewal of their commitment to the Camino, a re-conviction that what they're doing by putting life on hold for a month to walk 500 miles across a country is the right thing to be doing, is not and will not be a journey made in vain.

Like the Franciscan albergue I stayed at in Tosantos, the refugio at Eunate offers very basic facilities for the pilgrims who choose to spend a night there. There's space for only about 8 pilgrims at Eunate, in a stone house beside the church. Pilgrims sleep in one room on mattresses on the floor, and enjoy a communal dinner and breakfast prepared by the refugio's caretakers--a lovely, soft-spoken couple who of course were once pilgrims on the Camino themselves.

Pilgrims' room at Eunate

Outside the house and church are surroundings as bountiful as the buildings there are basic. All around are cornfields, interspersed with fields growing peppers, tomatoes, asparagus, and fennel and trees offering figs, olives, and grapes. Along the sides of the roads and edges of the fields are tall green stalks stuck with tiny snails. The hospitaleros at Eunate claimed these stalks are harvested by the locals and placed across a grill, with the snails still on them, for eating.

Snail plants around Eunate

Cornfields at sunset at Eunate

Fennel fields and mountains near Eunate

The beauty of Eunate's surroundings complements the beauty of the church itself. Eunate has little in the way of gilding, of the gold and silver statuary and ornamentation that crowd and cram so many other old churches throughout Europe. Neither has it tall, piercing spires or massive domes or multiple imposing entrances. It's beautiful, but there's something modest about its beauty, and something calming about it. Maybe it's the symmetry of the place. The church has an unusual and striking octagon shape and is guarded by a sharp-cobbled stone path, a series of arches, and a low wall that run all around it. There's a legend that says healing can come from a ritual of walking three times barefoot around the path just inside the low wall and three more times around the stone path inside the arches, before entering the church to present one's prayer and petition to the Virgin and Child statue behind the altar. I didn't try this myself, partly because the sources I had couldn't agree whether the walk should be done clockwise or counterclockwise around the church, and I didn't want to jinx the ritual by walking the wrong way. Another legend says Eunate is built upon a strong energy center that explains its choice as a sacred site. Perhaps the ritual of walking around the church is a remnant of some practice that pre-dated and survived Christianity and took advantage of the energy felt there.

Pathways, arches, and wall surrounding Eunate church

Eunate church beside caretakers' house and pilgrim refugio

I'm actually not much a believer in energy centers and things like that. I liked Eunate and found it special simply because it's quiet and pretty. And I found a creative honesty in the intricate little carvings on the columns and archways in and around the church. Some of the images and faces were easily identifiable and familiar and some were confusing and strange. Some looked funny and some looked a little frightening. Humor and horror, positivity and negativity--life, essentially. Maybe that explains the sense of calm around Eunate, almost like a stillness or perfect balance. For me that might be it anyway--for me, calmness comes from accepting both the symmetry and strangeness of the world, not denying or suppressing one in favor of the other.

Mugging it up. Faces on the exterior of the church

Lions with intertwined tails

Human figures, one pointing the way...to ???

Naked human figures, grimacing heads, and hybrid creatures make up some of the grotesquerie on the church 

The truth is, as peaceful as I found Eunate to be, I did also find staying there a little scary. Maybe unsettling is the word I mean, or stirring. The feeling of peace can be like that at times, especially if it's rare to you. There was also some concern on the way out there that it'd be closed, or there wouldn't be any space left to stay there, or the place itself would prove a let-down. I went there with another pilgrim named Aileen, a wonderful friend from Ireland I met on the first day of the Camino. We walked there from Pamplona, and we took the time of our lives getting out there. Almost there, we passed two girls who told us there was no place to stay there--but we weren't confident they understood us or were aware Eunate has sleeping space for a few pilgrims, so we kept on "to see the church anyway." We arrived close to the start of sundown, and were told by the hospitaleros that of course we could stay there if we wished, that there were in fact 3 mattresses left. They were so welcoming and so assuring, the couple who kept Eunate, telling Aileen and I and the others not to worry if we didn't get our day's washing hung out until late. "In the morning your clothes will be dry. We will make sure." (And this promise they delivered--bringing in the racks of clothes inside after dark and setting them by the fire and radiators, a thoughtful act only one of the other albergues I stayed at offered to do.)

Eunate's surroundings at dusk

The experience at Eunate was so gently welcoming and reassuring, and in such an intimate way given the small number of pilgrims and communal spirit there, that I wasn't at first sure how to react to it. I'm a shy person, sometimes almost to the point of being a little socially inept, and I don't think I would have had the courage to opt to stay at Eunate, at such a closely communal place, without Aileen with me. I was glad she was there. Besides, she brought the gift of a little song to Eunate during a prayer service inside the church after dinner.

During dinner our hosts asked if any of us (Aileen, another American named Nancy, a Japanese woman, three Spanish pilgrims, and myself) could sing, but he didn't explain why he asked. After dinner we all walked across the path outside the house to the church, our short way there lit up by a brilliant vast net of stars above us, and the especially brilliant wash of the Milky Way. Inside the church, which was pitch black, we were each given a small lit candle to hold and took turns reciting a prayer out loud in our native language--first the Spanish pilgrims, then the Japanese pilgrim, then we three English speakers. We each placed our candles on the stone step in front of the altar and then gathered in a small circle and held hands. We had a minute of silence for those on the Camino who are ill or suffering or walking for someone who is sick or suffering. And then our hospitalero asked Aileen to sing. Whatever she wanted, she was told. After a moment of shyness, she sang a couple verses of a song she had told me before she really liked, "The Water Is Wide." And then we broke circle and walked back to the house. It was beautiful and genuine. It was the way all prayers, all services holy or spiritual, should be.

Aileen on the path leaving Eunate

Me in the fields around Eunate, the morning after