Spanish pilgrims never stopped visiting the Holy Land. Shortly after the arrival of the Ottomans (1517), some famous Spaniards would visit Jerusalem: the poet Juan de la Encina, who would narrate his pilgrimage in verse (1519); saint Ignatius of Loyola (1523) and the music composer Francisco Guerrero (1588). Due to the complex political situation, none of these pilgrims visited Galilee: their entire pilgrimage was limited to Jerusalem and its surroundings.

Father Antonio del Castillo had better luck; since he was a Franciscan, he lived in the Holy Land for several years and could explore it more in-depth. Gathering all his experience, in 1666, he published The Devout Pilgrim. About Magdala, he writes: “Some two miles away (from Gennesaret), you see the fields in which the Lord miraculously fed the five thousand men with five loaves and two fishes (…) Next to them, there is a castle called Magdalo because it belonged to the Magdalene; and close to these fields, about a mile away, there is the so-called ‘Mount of Christ’ because the Lord frequented it much, and it was there that he retired to pray.” As you can see, for Antonio Castillo, some of the most important events in Christ’s life happened around the Magdalo Castle.

The book by Antonio Castillo would become the obligatory guide to the Holy Land for Spanish-speaking Christians. A couple of centuries later, the Catalan priest and poet Jacinto Verdaguer would narrate his trip to the Holy Land by recalling how his beloved mother “liked to read The Devout Pilgrim of Father Castillo.”

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