There is no doubt, or so it seems to me, that, when it comes to travel, anecdotes are a fundamental part that enriches our life experience, so much so that it could be added that a trip without anecdotes is like an empty stomach without bread.
The medieval world, as many of those who know me know, particularly interests me and therefore, it also forms a very important part - although not the only one, of course, since I was born with the defect of an insatiable curiosity - of my personal experience, above all, in the part related to a certain architecture: Romanesque.
Architectures are abundant in Spain and are, in many cases, more than a millennium old and which still, in the full expansion of this future of Science Fiction marked by the present Digital Age, continue to perform their function and host, as is the present case, small communities of monks, whose life, as incredible as it may seem, is little or nothing different from that of their medieval brothers.
Some communities, such as that of the Navarrese monastery of Saint Mary of the Olive, which I had the opportunity to introduce to you some time ago, have, next to the gatehouse, a small shop, where, apart from a large collection of texts related to philosophy and the Cistercian spirit, they also offer the public a wide range of natural products, which they themselves treat and manufacture, among which stand out wine, oil, chocolate, honey and some other prodigious liquor, which, as in the case of the Orense monastery of Oseira, they still make with medieval alchemist methods and surprise with their unprecedented quality.
This is not always the case, but sometimes the brother who runs the shop is genuinely and surprisingly extroverted and talkative enough to tell, after a brief history of chocolate - I have always thought that the monks are to chocolate what the greedy children are to the famous witch's cottage in the famous Grinn Brothers' tale - one of those curiously strange anecdotes that would possibly have fired the imagination of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer: that of the strange bird.
Superstitious at heart, like their medieval brothers, it is not surprising that, beneath this attachment to retirement and solitude, they see, in the most humble and circumstantial things, a glimpse of supernaturality, in the depths of which is sensed, at least for them, a sample of delicate divine wisdom.
Imagine the scene, just as I was imagining it as the monk told it to me: inside the imposing Romanesque church, with the nave and the vaults in a semi-darkness that not even modern spotlights can completely make disappear, with the congregation around the coffin that holds the mortal remains of Brother Zacarías, recently deceased, and the Father Abbot, at the head, officiating a funeral mass for his soul, when, inexplicably, a strange bird flutters in circles around the pointed windows of the apse, then lands on the coffin.
After a few seconds of watching the open-mouthed brothers, who cannot explain how it could have sneaked into the church, the bird takes flight again and lands on the Father Abbot's shoulder, allowing him to stroke its little head, to the astonishment of the bewildered monks.
The amazement grew in crescendo when the Father Abbot, unperturbed, turned to them and said:
- I believe that it is the soul of Brother Zacharias, who, so solicitous in life, also came after death to ask me for permission to ascend to heaven.
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