Santo Domingo de la Calzada

I still remember the crowing of the rooster in the cathedral. My introduction to Santo Domingo de la Calzada came on my first Camino. There’s a town early on named for him that contains a cathedral dedicated to him. Today is his feast day, so it might be good to learn something about him – and his chickens.

He was born of peasant stock in the hamlet of Viloria de Rioja in 1019. He was a shepherd in his youth, and he twice attempted to join the Order of Saint Benedict as a monk. After being turned away by two different monasteries, he retreated to the forests and became a holy hermit.

In 1039 in the midst of a plague of locusts afflicting Navarra, the Papal envoy St. Gregory of Ostia arrived to take charge of the situation. Himself a former Benedictine abbot, he ordained Domingo a priest and asked him to build a bridge over the Río Oja as an aid to pilgrims walking the Camino de Santiago.

After Gregory’s death in 1044, Domingo threw himself into the work of aiding pilgrims and making the route less dangerous, no small feat considering how bad a shape the roads were in (not to mention bears, wolves, bandits, and the occasional raid by militant Moors).

Among his many projects was a paved causeway in the area between Nájera and Redecilla del Camino. This led to Domingo’s nickname “de la calzada”, which means “of the causeway”. The now bustling town of Santo Domingo de la Calzada began as a cluster of houses around the saint’s hermitage.

He was joined in his work by many volunteers, including San Juan de Ortega. Together, they replaced the earlier wooden bridge built in 1039 with a stone bridge and founded a pilgrim hostel still in operation today, more than 900 years later.

When he died in 1109, he was buried in a church that he built and is now named after him. Many miracles, particularly of healing, were attributed to the saint in his lifetime and in the centuries since.

But what about the chickens? That miracle happened in the 14th century, long after the saint’s death. Here is the story, as related in a sign at the cathedral itself.

To this day, a rooster and a hen are ensconced here in the only Papally-approved chicken run in a cathedral. Permission was granted by Rome in the twelfth century to house the descendants of the original chickens here. On October 6, 1350, Pope Clement VI granted an indulgence for the faithful who pray the Divine Office in the Cathedral or “look at the rooster and the hen in the church”.

Back in 2020, during the Plague Year, Pope Francis announced a plenary indulgence would be granted to those faithful who visited the tomb of the saint over the next seven years. By my count, that’s good until 2027! I will certainly stop in later this year as I walk my long Camino.

Santo Domingo de la Calzada, pray for us!