Camino de Santiago: the routes in the region of Viseu

Abstract

The Camino de Santiago is a network of routes where it is possible to find persons with religious purposes, tourists, curious and other pilgrims with the more diverse objectives and interests, showing the multidimensional perspectives and meanings of these ways. Several times the several stakeholders have effective difficulties to identify, in each region, the route used in the past by the pilgrims of the Camino de Santiago. In this framework, the study here presented intends to explore the main insights highlighted by the scientific literature about the Camino de Santiago, stressing the specific case of the routes in the region of Viseu. As methodology, it was, first, made a literature survey with 52 different articles obtained from the scientific platform Web of Science (all databases) for the topic “Camino de Santiago” and after explored literature related with the routes in the region of Viseu. To improve the initial literature review and to support the organization of the study it was made previously a bibliometric analysis. As main insights, of stressing the importance of considering multidisciplinary approaches in the analyses of the several dimensions of the Camino de Santiago. Specifically for the routes in the region of Viseu of referring that, the Camino de Santiago, starting from Coimbra to Chaves passing by Viseu, was one of the main routes of Portuguese pilgrimage. The first references of a route that crossed the region date back to the XIIth century. In the XVIth and XVIIIth centuries, pilgrims from diverse nationalities walked the Camino towards the tomb of the Apostle. They were driven by various motivations from the misfortunes of life. Devotion, spirituality, and penance in particular were, however, the determining factors for anyone being willing to wear the habit of a pilgrim. The roads they took are not easy to exactly trace back. Nonetheless, it was possible to perceive that the pilgrims in the region preferred the main routes dated from the Roman period.