'In the early years of the thirteenth century, with the Temple fully planted in the country ruling from his commission of Ponferrada on the castles and places of Cornatel, Antares, Corullón, Sarracín, Rabanal, Villafranca, Balboa, Bembibre, etc., the Renaissance occurred of the Bercian Priscilianist heresy and the coming of Occitan Catharism ... '(1)
About 10 or 15 kilometers from Foncebadón, in the vicinity where the Maragatería inadvertently lulls itself with El Bierzo, and guarded in the distance by the highest peaks of the Aquianos mountains and the sacred Teleno, Rabanal del Camino sleeps dormant his millenary Jacobean dream .
A dream full of memories, of course, that the pilgrim, or the researcher or even the curious one is discovering as soon as he begins his journey, walking through its silent streets. The pilgrim shells, the symbolic references of its streets -including the one that, being called Calvary, it is difficult not to associate, also, with the tragic end of the Order of the Temple- the monuments in memory of deceased favorite sons -as the one who remembers to Julian Field (Chelan), missionary, I must assume that Rabanés, who lost his life in a train accident happened in Villada (Palencia), on August 21, 2006- are only weak fragments of stories and mysteries yet to be elucidated.
Perhaps these begin precisely here: in the square that bears his name and that is located, precisely, in that mysterious space where the old church is located and the renovated mansions that constitute hostels for pilgrims today. While it is assumed that the church, very much reformed today, belonged to the Templars, the clues of its primitive mensarios - if they ever had them - have been irretrievably lost.
However, the numerous pilgrim graffiti that are located in the door that gives access to the bulrush are still curious; graffiti in which you can locate one that, by its shape and the staircase that accompanies it, could be a clear reference to the grise of O Cebreiro legend.
It is affirmed, also, that from the church there was a tunnel that connected with the house of the Temple; house, which could be very good, some of those located in front of the church and, as I said, renovated constitute separate hostels for pilgrims.
Now, interestingly, one of them is run by German missionary monks from the Santa Otilia abbey. And this detail, I say anecdotally, makes me wonder if this Otilia will not be a reference to a curious German saint-Santa Odilia-whose life is covered with amazing facts, to the point of being considered, let's say it, like a Great Teacher.ginas 171-172.
I say well, because you only have to look at the attributes and the staff that it carries -as a reference, you can look for the so-called 'window of Odilia', St. Pierre et Paul, Rosheim-that equate it with other great pontiffs of our History, as Santo Domingo de Silos, San Juan de Ortega or Santo Domingo de la Calzada.
And it is that Odilia -I suppose that this information will be especially interesting to lovers of the mysteries of the divine dynastic lines- was a Merovingian princess, blind -symbol at the time of being blessed by the Divine-, shaman and saint woman, and in her Cultural aspects converged - not to say cultural - in which different cultures converged, including, of course, the Celtic. So it could be said that we have here, in Rabanal, some missionaries whose order commemorates another of those characters that, of course, do not clash in an initiatory journey like the Jacobean Route.
And another curious fact, although it does not seem so because of its appearance, is that there do seem to be indications that, although it is not completely proven that the Templars exploited the Las Médulas gold mines, they did with the existing ones in Rabanal. , according to data provided by the researcher, recently deceased, Juan García Atienza (2). Atienza also comments on the existence of the image of the twelfth century of a curious saint, San Blas - which, I admit, I had no chance to see - and a party, the Arado, which recovers - always according to the vision of this researcher - ancestral traditions that the ruling church always tried to erase.
Notes and Bibliography:
(1) Rafael Alarcón Herrera: 'The Footprint of the Templars: Rites and Myths of the Order of the Temple', Editions Robin Book, S.L., 2004, page 207.
(2) Juan García Atienza: 'Guide to Templar Spain', Editorial Ariel, S.A., 1st edition, March 1985.
NOTICE: originally published on my blog LA ESPAÑA DE LOS TEMPLARIOS. Both the text and the photographs are my exclusive intellectual property. The original entry, where you can check the authorship of juancar347, can be found at the following address: https://juancarlosmenendez.blogspot.com/2012/03/un-pueblo-templario-de-la-ruta-jacobea.html
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