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

[Jim Greer]

I receive the digest version of this list, so I have taken the liberty
of snipping out a few messages from the most recent summary so that I
may comment.

First, though... and I do not mean this as a criticism, but my, we are
an argumentative lot.  My friends, I did not write intending to stir
up an argument, but merely to suggest an explanation which would fit a
scenario.

Here is what I understand so far:
1) In a book on the Camino a person claims that someone who walks the
Camino receives a shell upon completion.
2) A person claims that a person who walked the Camino says she
received a shell.

What I do not know:
1) Whether the author was speaking of current practice or past practice.
2) Whether the author was speaking authoritatively or conjecturing.
3) Whether the recent claim is to have received it from the Pilgrim's
office in Santiago, or a stranger on the street.
4) Whether the recent claim was speaking of having taken a shell on
the journey and kept it as a memento or truly only picked one up in
Santiago.
5) Truly, anything else.

Once again, what I do not know exceeds what I know.  Sigh.  Such is life.



> From: Renato Alvarado Vidal <machi at telsur.cl>

> Dear friends, I have always have the idea that the "vieira" is a
> pilgrim's badge that we get at the beginning of our path, not a token
> of accomplishment, like the Compostela.
>  From the rainy springtime of Patagonia

> Machi

I like this idea of bookends to our journey very much, Machi, and it
clearly represents current practice.  Whether this custom is original
or not, it is the custom of choice of current Camino pilgrims.  People
choose to wear a shell even though there is nothing that says they
must.  I wear a small shell around my neck most of the time, even now.



> From: Sil <sillydoll at gmail.com>

> 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.

Sil points us back to the original point, which is that the book is
factually incorrect.  The original point was that the book contained
information that either isn't true or is no longer true.  To
illustrate this, a specific example was chosen: a comment in the book
about receiving a shell upon completion of the Camino.  I think that
all of us agree that there is no current practice of
formally/officially receiving a scallop shell upon completion of the
Camino.

I have not read Starkie, either, but there must be a reason why he
would mention receiving a shell some 50 years ago.



> From: 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


Rosina, you know a lot about the Camino, but when you say the
Pilgrim's office has _never ever_ given out shells, I can only think:
never is a very long time.  The pilgrimage to Santiago is old enough
that surely practice and custom has changed over the course of the
centuries.  Even the 15th century is not so long ago for a pilgrimage
practice that started much earlier.  What was the pilgrimage like in
the 10th century?  Was a Compostela given, or were the names of
pilgrims inscribed in a manuscript?

Certainly a shell was a useful tool for an early pilgrim to carry , as
was a walking staff, a cloak, and a gourd.    A tie is good
decoration, but also useful for protecting the front of a shirt, and a
cummerbund makes a tuxedo look nice, but it can be used to catch
crumbs, too.   Wearing a shell, though,  is not an atavism but has
taken on another meaning symbolic of the journey itself.  As a
practical matter, I mention this: shells come from the sea.  Santiago
is near the sea, relatively speaking, so shells would have been
plentiful there.  And this event of a young man jumping to the
sea....., well, that would have happened near the sea, too.   My post
was meant to suggest that the origin of the practice -  the
affiliation of a shell with the pilgrimage to Santiago -  perhaps
started when early pilgrims to Santiago traveled there and picked up
shells as souvenirs or proof of their journey.   Other pilgrims saw
these returning pilgrims and did they same thing.  Pretty soon
everyone thinks: "Pilgrims of Santiago wear shells."  Then someone
decides to find, or borrow, or buy a shell _before_ they begin their
journey, and the practice is eventually inverted.   Of course, this is
speculation, and LePuy is not so far from the sea, either.   While I
am pointing out practicalities, I will point out another: shells look
alike, and I can't see why the pilgrim's office would choose to give
out a shell as "official" indication of the completion of a Camino at
any time.    Informally, perhaps, but officially, no.

Either way, you are right to insist this is not current practice, and
Sil is right to guide us back to the original discussions, which was
of a book about the Camino and how it compares to others and how
factually correct or not it is.



> From: Sil <sillydoll at gmail.com>

> Huh?  Don Quixote was a fictional character!  Walter Starkie was not!  He
> was Professor of Spanish at Trinity College in Dublin. As a translator 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


Just because Don Quixote is fictional does not mean that he must
engage in purely fictional practices.

I have seen too many mentions of Starkie now and so I must add his
book to my list of things to read.



Bon Camino,
Jim Greer