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

[Sil]

Huh?  Don Quixote was a fictional character!  Walter Starkie was not!  He
was Professor of Spanish at Trinity College in Dublin. As a translater of
Spanish literature, he published his own unabridged translation of
Cervantes<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cervantes>'s
*Don Quixote <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Quixote>* in
1957<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1957> in
hardcover <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardcover>for Macmillan
Publishers<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macmillan_Publishers>,
and seven years later, published an abridged version in
paperback<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paperback>for New
American Library <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_American_Library>.
(Wiki).
His book, Road to Santiago is a classic and one of the few that recounts
pilgrimage to Santiago in the early 1950's.  If Walter Starkie says he
collected a scallop shell, then he collected a scallop shell!  Too late to
verify his information - he passed away in 1976.
Sil




On 06/12/2007, blaroli at aol.com <blaroli at aol.com> wrote:
>
> 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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-- 
Sil