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

[John Rafferty]

errr - the Confraternity of St James in the UK was not formed until 1983


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <blaroli at aol.com>
To: <sillydoll at gmail.com>; <GOCAMINO at oakapple.net>; 
<saintjames at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 1:20 PM
Subject: Re: [Gocamino] Fwd:? A Traveler's Highway to Heaven


>
> 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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