The Shell such a symbol

For centuries the Shell, which you can find in the Coast of Galician Sea, is symbol of the Way of St James, and its pilgrims.

In the past pilgrims, when they arrived to its home countries, they wearied on its clothes or in its hat, to demonstrate that they had arrived to Santiago, the objective of the trip.

In French, until the language is the evidence, for its expression Coquille Saing-Jacques (Shell of St James) that means Shell until our days. In France the shell was, from the Middle Age, symbol of all the pilgrims: was wearied by the pilgrims and the people that arrived from the Holy Land and Saint-Michel Mount, since it was a symbol of St Michel too. The French medieval texts cited frequently the “Shell” such a pilgrims symbol in general, while the Shell was be associate on the monuments and places dedicated to St James. In the XVI century a big century for the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, when the naturalist Guillaume Rondelet cited “the Shell of St James” such a possible name of the scallop. In the XVIII century, the French edition of the taxonomy of Linneo fix its common name associated to Compostela.