Pilgrim's Road

to encourage the faint-hearted for Picaud invariably found conditions and people along the route extremely distasteful, if not downright barbarous, especially when comparing either to his native Poitou — a place he considered such a bastion of civilisation in those uncertain times — that it was clearly very brave of him to have left it, even for the purpose of acquiring spiritual merit. I would join Picaud’s route south of Bordeaux, just before the crossing of the Pyrenees, and I was looked forward to consulting his guide at the appropriate places.
    From the Confraternity I had also been able to buy a silver scallop shell badge for my beret, and a bright red sweater emblazoned on the front with a small scallop shell, and on the back with a much larger one. These symbols would have to serve me as a modern equivalent of the St James pilgrim’s garb, since cloak, broad-brimmed hat and staff, picturesque and practical though they might be for a walker, are certainly not suitable wear on a bicycle. The traditional Santiago costume, evolved from the practical need to protect a pilgrim from the extremes of sun, wind and rain, quickly became a uniform, and for sound reasons. Being immediately identifiable as a pilgrim conferred important benefits at a time when the roads were full of people on the move — artisans seeking work, people fleeing from plague and disease, and those whose livelihood was preying upon others. Strict laws existed in the Middle Ages for the protection of pilgrims, and harming or interfering with one was considered a very serious offence. Pilgrims were also exempted from paying tolls or local taxes, and, since the vast majority of them were poor (poverty being considered a Christian virtue in medieval times) they were also entitled to food, shelter and doctoring in the monasteries and hospices set up for that purpose along the route.
    Since the roads of the twentieth century are equally thronged with traffic of a lethal nature, I hoped that the large shell on the back of my sweater would bring me benefits; in particular, that it would make truck drivers slow down and give me a wide berth when overtaking. But as wind and rain had as yet prevented me removing any outer layers I had not as yet been able to test modern sensitivity to the symbol of the pilgrimage. I also had a real scallop shell given me by my fishmonger, and this I had fastened to the front of my handlebar bag.
    Why the scallop shell, since ancient times a symbol of the female, had been adopted as the badge of St James and his pilgrimage is explained by a fanciful legend, of which of course there are infinite variations. In fact, the entire saga of St James’ association with Spain is so imaginative that coming to grips with it sheds considerable light on the world of the medieval pilgrim. The story goes that obeying Christ’s instructions to preach the Gospel, St James drew Spain as his lot: the short straw it would seem, because after many weary years he had netted no more than a couple of converts. He returned to Jerusalem with these two disciples, and hard luck striking yet again, became the first of the apostles to be martyred; Herod ordering his execution by beheading. His two faithful disciples were told in a dream to take both head and body and make their way to the coast where a stone boat was waiting for them. Without oars or sail this boat made its way across the Mediterranean, passing between Scylla and Charybdis, ever westward, until it reached the coast of Spain and the very edge of the known world, coming finally to rest at the head of one of the long river inlets of Finisterre. A horse maddened by the sight of the stone boat, galloped into the ocean bearing its rider beneath the waves. When they emerged both were covered with large scallops, thereby setting the precedent for all later pilgrims to the shrine of St James.
    A more mundane explanation for the adoption of the shell symbol, of course, is that like the palm leaves which Jerusalem pilgrims brought back from the Holy Land, the large scallop shells were a local feature and suitably distinctive. Unlike palms, or the crossed keys of the Rome pilgrimage, scallop shells had the added advantage of making useful drinking vessels, handy for dipping into streams and rivers — their later employment as ashtrays was still a few hundred years off. At dinner one night it dawned on me that the delicious French dish called Coquille St Jacques was a uniquely Gallic way