San Amaro

Camino Portugués · Camino Portugués de la Costa

PontevedraGalicia

Here Camino Portugués and Camino Portugués de la Costa converge. It is one of the points where the pilgrim shares the way with those arriving by another route.

Hagiotoponym dedicated to San Amaro, the Galician and Portuguese dedication of Saint Maurus the Abbot (6th century), disciple of Saint Benedict and patron of pilgrims in the popular tradition of the Camino. His devotion spread in the Middle Ages through the northwestern peninsular quadrant and gave its name to dozens of hamlets with their own hospice or hermitage.

Maurus the Abbot was one of the first direct disciples of Benedict of Nursia, founder of Western monasticism. The hagiography collected by Saint Gregory the Great in his Dialogues (6th century) recounts how the young Maurus walked on water at his master's command —⁠a miracle that made him medieval patron of fishermen and, by displacement, of travellers and pilgrims. The name form Mauro became popular in medieval Galician-Portuguese as Amaro with a vocalic prosthesis (A-) or as Santo Amaro, advocations that generated hundreds of hagiotoponyms across the northwestern Peninsula. The Pontevedrian hamlet belongs to the Meis council and sits at mid-stage between Pontevedra and Caldas de Reis, with a rural chapel dedicated to the saint. The devotion to San Amaro is documented in charters of the Armenteira monastery from the 12th century.

Evolution of the name

  1. Sanctus Maurus Latin 6th — 9th centuries
  2. San Amaro / Santo Amaro medieval Galician-Portuguese from the 11th century

Languages of origin

Themes

Origin status

confirmed

Glossary

Hagiotoponym
A place name formed from a saint's name (from the Greek ἅγιος, hágios, "holy"). Frequent in the medieval Christian repopulation: Sansol (Sanctus Zoilus), Santander (Sancti Emeterii), Donostia (Done Sebastian).
Vocalic prosthesis
The addition of a vowel at the beginning of a word during its phonetic evolution or through popular use. In Castilian and Portuguese it is frequent: Latin stare → estar, Latin scribere → escribir, Latin Maurus → Amaro. It usually facilitates pronunciation by avoiding initial consonant clusters.

Sources

  • Gregorio Magno — Diálogos, libro II
  • Navaza, G. — Toponimia de Galicia

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Camino Portugués

  1. Santiago de Compostela
  2. Teo
  3. Esclavitud
  4. Pontecesures
  5. Padrón
  6. Caldas de Reis
  7. San Amaro
  8. Pontevedra
  9. Arcade
  10. Redondela
  11. Saxamonde
  12. O Porriño
  13. Mos
  14. ··· toward the start