[Gocamino] Fwd:? A Traveler's Highway to Heaven

[blaroli at aol.com]

The Pilgrims Office in Santiago has never, ever, given any shells to pilgrims. And, where is the "Confraternity of St James office in Santiago"?.? Do you mean the French Confraternity?? They do have an office there.

The shells were used by ancient pilgrims, of all ilks (as anyone who has read Don Quijote will know), as a travel tool useful to scoop water from rivers, or as a vessel-spoon to drink water, wine or soup, or even to scrape their bodies when taking a bath. The shell became associated with the Camino when the lore grew that the decapitated ?body of Saint James had been brought to Galicia, on a boat made of stone, and that a young man riding to?his wedding who had irresistibly jumped?into the water to meet the boat? emerged completely covered in seashells.

(I am sending an etching of such happening to the techno-wizardsw here to post for those who may want to see it.

Hugs!

Rosina




ps.com
Sent: Thu, 6 Dec 2007 2:04 am
Subject: Re: [Gocamino] Fwd:? A Traveler's Highway to Heaven




In the middleages - and even as recently as the 1950's - the pilgrim office
gave scallop shells which the pilgrims wore as proof of their arrival at
Santiago.  In his classic book, The Road to Santiago, Walter Starkie says
that he went to the Confraternity of St James office in Santiago and
collected his scallop shell (no mention of the Compostela).
Around the late 1700's, when paper became more readily available in Spain,
the cathedral authorities would issue
'la* autentica*'.
A CSJ article on the Compostela says:
"Confession and communion remained essential to the granting of the
certificate of having completed the pilgrimage. Originally hand-written and
sealed, with slips of paper attesting confession and communion pasted on, it
became in the C17th (printing reached Galicia very late) a printed document
which included the confirmation of confession and ommunion." You can read
more here:
 (http://www.csj.org.uk/compostela.htm)
Perhaps the author has read Starkie's book?  Even so, I think he should have
done some more up-to-date research before publishing a book with incorrect
and misleading advice.


On 06/12/2007, Ana Young <ayoung2001 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Like Jim, I too have heard many times about the
> ancient custom of finishing the Camino by being given
> or awarded the shell, not as something done now.
>
> I didn't fully understand the reason this custom was
> reversed for modern pilgrims, but it most definitely
> has been. Our rewards are internal (for a million
> reasons) and external (the Compostela, the
> Fisterrana).
>
> So I decided, on my second sojourn, to do both: Before
> setting off from Somport, I bought a "modern-day"
> shell with the cross to put on my pack. A few stops
> later I was given two handmade shells as a gift from a
> lovely Swedish couple with whom I spent my birthday on
> the feast of San Juan.
>
> Sadly, I lost one of them but I still have the other,
> which was around my neck from that time until I
> arrived in Fisterra as hospitalera. Then, there on the
> beach, I found what had to be the most
> perfectly-shaped scallop shell to both finish off that
> sojourn as both pilgrim and volunteer ... and to begin
> the next one. That shell will be around my neck when I
> walk again.
>
> So I do three shell traditions: one from the ancient
> past, one modern and one of my own. It's as profoundly
> personal as Jim says, and it feels awesome.
>
> Ana
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Sil
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