This multimedia CD-ROM provides an interactive guide to the medieval Pilgrim's Road from France to Santiago de Compostela. It presents a series of medieval texts related to the cult and shrine of St. James, including the various pilgrimage routes available to pilgrims during the Middle Ages. A number of medieval texts have been included in the CD. These include:Codex Calixtinus, Book I, The Letter of Pope Calixtus Codex Calixtinus, Book I, chapter 17, The Veneranda dies Sermon Codex Calixtinus, Book II, The Miracles of St. James Codex Calixtinus, Book V, The Pilgrim's Guide to SantiagoAn Unknown Roland Legend Jacques de Vitry, Texts Relating to St. James Fulbert of Chartres, Mass of St. James William Wey, Journey to Santiago, 1456 Hieronymus Munzer, Journey to Compostela, 1494/5 Hieronymus Munzer, Selections from the Codex Calixtinus
The Road to Compostela features a Gazetteer of historic places along the Camino, a Dictionary of saints that can be found along the pilgrimage route, and an extensive bibliography. After an opening sequence of very nice photographs accompanied by medieval/baroque music, the user is introduced to an opening page that features a general map of the pilgrimage route through southern France and northern Spain. This map is divided into four clickable sections: Galicia, Leon-Castile, Navarre, and France. When the user clicks on one of these map sections, a detailed road map is brought forward that contains the various pilgrimage routes through that section, and allows the user to click on various cities, towns, and shrines. The majority of the city and town names are clickable, although some are not. Using the mouse button, the user can find out more information about the cities, towns, and shrines along the route through access to the Gazetteer.
The Gazetteer is the focal point of the CD-ROM, as it contains all of the information in a book format, including page numbers. The Gazetteer is arranged as follows: opening map, the four route maps, the Gazetteer/Encyclopedia proper, the Library of texts indicated above, the Dictionary of Saints, bibliography, and help pages. The Gazetteer contains twelve city maps, seventeen plans, and 150 color photographs of the various towns, cities, shrines, and monuments along the Camino.
The CD-ROM uses the Quarkmedia/Quark Immedia software package. The user must follow directions in the user's guide to load this software. Once loaded, I found it extremely difficult to determine how to get the program running. A number of files are loaded, and there are no clear instructions for what the user needs to do to start the CD-ROM. I examined the contents of this resource three times, and each time it took well over fifteen minutes for me to figure out how to get the program to run. While the interactive possibilities of the technology are interesting, what is ultimately marketed to the user in this product is an interactive book/gazetteer with maps. For the time being, the fact that this information is available in this manner is important, but it seems that today's technology could be used much more efficiently and in a more interactive manner than is done with this product. I also found it strange that not all locations indicated in the map have information contained in the Gazetteer.
System requirements (Macintosh): System 7.1.2 or later; 7.5.3 or later recommended. Hard drive with at least 20 MB free space, 20 MB internal memory; color monitor, and compatible with 680x0 (68030 preferred) or PowerPC Macs. Monitor must be set to at least 256 colors. CD-ROM drive; QuickTime 2.1 and Sound Manager 3.1 or later.
System requirements (Windows): A hard drive with at least 20 MB free space, 20 MB internal memory (RAM), 256-color monitor. 80486 processor and above with sound card; Windows 3.1, Windows for Workgroups 3.11, Windows95; Apple QuickTime for Windows 2.0.3.