Friday, 22.Oct. Sarria day of rest

Sarria is a very small town as far as the old town goes, though sizable for the part of Spain we’ve been walking through. You can see it in the background behind the statue here, a crucerro (typical for Galicia).

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We took it easy this morning, then took a taxi (!) out to the Samos Monastery, monks have been here since the 6th century. There are 9 currently, though the monk told us there were only 4 functioning because the other 5 were sick. And the place is giant. I don’t know how they do it. However, I did see a nun later when I peaked in a door that was propped open to the sidewalk. Oops. 

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The main in the center is Saint Benedict who started the Benedictine practices. The 2 Episcopalian priests we had a lot of meals with us knew a ton of history about the different practices and explained the transition of different orders. Benedict wrote the basic rules for living in harmony in a cloister and were so reasonable that most other orders ended up adopting these rules. 

Largest cloister in Spain:

The fountain was built in the 1700’s by a monk who loved Greek mythology. The monk told us that this was NOT Christian and was basically looked at askance by the other monks, but too late. 

The statue above is of Benito Jeronimo Feijoo y Montenegro (1676-1764) a brilliant mathematician, but also interested and wrote about physical, astronomy, medicinal, social sciences, literature…truly, he was remarkable and revered.

There was an incredible library, but there were two big fires, in 1536 and in 1951, both catastrophic, but rebuilding happened in both cases and some of the library was saved – though not much in the 1951. How painful. 

This is the pharmacy where they made medicines for the community:

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The second floor of the cloister had incredible paintings that were destroyed in the 1951 fire and new murals were painted, including many by a woman who wrote her name on one of them so that people would know a woman had contributed.

The murals all depicted different miracles by Saint Benedict.
Then the Iglesia:

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It was a very relaxed exploring day, and Rick and I are now starting our own Camino. All we knew have moved on since we took an extra day. We’ll see if we end up connecting with others. Sarria is the point at which many people start because if you start here you make the 100k needed to earn the Compostela certificate or stamp in your Camino passport. So – lot more people moving forward.