It is not without reason that the pilgrims returning from the threshold of Saint James bear shells

The scallop shell was the sign of the pilgrimage to Compostela. They were plentiful on the coast of Galicia where pilgrims would go the short distance to reach the western sea shore as the final act of their journey to collect their emblem.

At the Burgundian shrine of Saint Lazarus at Autun, there is the great porch sculpture of the Final Judgment. Christ reigns in Majesty, to the left is the college of the Apostles and to the right the Weighing of Souls.
On the lintel below is the procession of the Damned and the Elect. At the head of the line of the Elect is a diminutive figure bearing a scallop shell on his bag, the first to be admitted to the Heavenly Paradise: the Compostelan pilgrim.

Lazarus was celebrated as the first to be resurrected by Christ and there is no more eloquent image of the meaning of the journey to the shrine of Saint James.

The Codex of Calixtus, the collection of twelfth century manuscripts which sets out the cult of Saint James, contains a sermon to be read on the feast day. It explains the significance of the shell as a symbol of charity.

Yet the mystery of the shell’s meaning goes much deeper. We know that since prehistoric times men were buried with shells, even at great distances from the sea. This age old association with funerary rites leads reasonably to speculation as to the general symbolic importance of shells in human consciousness. For the appearance of an inanimate stone object containing a vital living thing inside, appeared as a wondrous thing to our ancestors. They associated it with notions of death and rebirth.

A short distance south of Burgos in Castille, the Benedictine monastery of Santo Domingo de Silos has a double storied cloister which contains on its north eastern pier one of the most sublime images of the pilgrimage roads.

It portrays the story of the New Testament of the Journey to Emmaus. Immediately after the Crucifixion two disciples travelling from Jerusalem chance upon a fellow traveller they call a stranger. Only after they have invited him to join them in breaking bread does the stranger reveal himself as the risen Christ

In Latin, the words “stranger” and “pilgrim” are etymologically synonomous. Is this why Christ is here depicted with all the attributes of a twelfth century pilgrim to Compostela, most notably with a scallop shell sewn onto his bag? In a literal sense Jesus appears to be travelling in pilgrimage to the shrine of his own disciple - a strange and anomalous concept but one which says much about the meaning of the Compostelan pilgrimage in the medieval mind.

Aulnay de Saintonge

The church of Saint-Pierre de la Tour at Aulnay de Saintonge lies south of Poitiers in western France and is one of the best examples of the Aquitainian style of Romanesque. It stands on the Via Turonensis pilgrimage road which came from Paris via the great shrine of Saint Martin of Tours on the way to Santiago de Compostela.

One of the features of Romanesque church building in the Poitou and Saintonge regions is the abundance of parish churches which display a surprisingly high level of sculpted material relative to the seeming importance of the building.

In spite of its name, Aulnay is not actually in the Saintonge but in the Poitou and it is celebrated for the particular richness of its sculptural progamme which dates from about 1140. The clip here shows the south porch which features a succession of concentric arches presenting an Apocalyptic theme. The subject of the outer arch is a vivid Bestiary. It has been suggested that this represents the procession of all living creatures who will appear at the End of Time. The inner arches portray the Twenty-Four Elders of the Book of Revelation and the Old Testament Prophets. The Elders are identifiable by their attributes: the instruments which they use to accompany the songs of praise as they surround the returning Messiah and the phials which contain the accumulated essence of the prayers of the saints.

The undersides of the voussoirs feature atlant figures taken from Greek mythology. They are derived from the faithless who are punished by spending eternity supporting the weight of the heavens.

It was here that the Emperor set out with his armies for Spain

In order to enter Spain, pilgrims had to cross the Pyrenees. The most popular route was the Cize Pass and as the descent into Spanish territory began, the road led through a narrow and heavily wooded defile called Roncevaux. It was here that in the long distant and mythical past, the mother of all battles had taken place between the Christian Franks and the Moors of Spain.

The legend was epic. It told of the betrayal of Charlemagne's Frankish army by the Judas-like Ganelon and the subsequent ambush of the rearguard led by the heroic knight Roland. They were surprised and overwhelmed by a massive Saracen force and Roland tried to recall the main body of the army by sounding his horn, the Oliphant made of elephant tusk, blowing so hard that he burst the vessels of his temple. In a dying gesture, Roland tried to smash his great sword Durendal against a rock rather than have it fall into enemy hands but finding that his stroke was so powerful and the sword so well made that it split the boulder in two. Roland died a martyr's death.

At Blaye, not far from Bordeaux, pilgrims could visit the tomb of Roland in the church of Saint Romanus where he was buried with his famous horn and sword. A little further south at Belin was the burial ground of the fallen Frankish warriors. All along the pilgrim roads jongleurs would recite the epic poem known as the Song of Roland which was but the most famous of a huge repertoire of popular legends centered around Charlemagne and the heroic feats of his twelve paladins

This epic story was based on a real event, but rather than a great battle between the forces of Islam and Christianity it involved a minor skirmish between Franks and a small band of Basques.

The medieval mind made no difference between legend and historical fact - such a distinction was alien. The popular retelling of the oral tradition where subsequent versions added to the old, met the learned, written tradition of the elite. Professor Jacques Chocheyras has observed that because of the rupture in classical culture caused by the collapse of the Latin Western Empire in the sixth century, a process took place whereby each was contaminated by the other. Monasteries were deliberately located in rustic areas where pagan traditions thrived. Correspondingly, the vast body of the illiterate imbued the written Latin word with magical properties and undeniable truth.

Out of this came the simultaneous perpetuation of legendary traditions in both clerical texts and oral tales. And so the legend of Roland has its written Latin version - the Historia Rotholandi et Karoli Magni which was included in the five books of the Codex of Calixtus which set down the tradition of Santiago in manuscript.

In this latter version we find the Apostle James appearing to the Emperor Charlemagne in a vision calling him to liberate his forgotten tomb from the Saracens and the expedition which was then undertaken to do his bidding. Charlemagne not only liberated the shrine of Galicia but also built the first church there and made the road safe for pilgrims to follow. It was when returning victorious but exhausted to France, that the misfortune at Roncevaux took place.

Of the two versions, it is not possible for us to know which came first, but heroic knightly tales and pious lives of saints coexisted comfortably in the age of Pilgrimage and Crusade