Pilgrims: the Hand of St James
Mediaeval writers have given us lively accounts of what it was like to be a pilgrim. In the best known a motley gathering sets out on horseback to travel to the shrine of a saint: a nun, a friar, a knight, a cook, a housewife, some two dozen altogether.
They get on together not too badly, telling stories as they go and stopping overnight at way-side inns. These are Chaucer's pilgrims on their way to Canterbury, to the shrine of Thomas Becket, but they could have been a party on its way to Reading to the shrine of the Hand of St James. Chaucer's pilgrims set out in a holiday mood inspired by the start of the summer weather, the sweet showers of April and the time when 'smale fowles maken melodye'.
For pilgrimage in mediaeval life was the nearest thing to our package holidays. The Holy Land and Rome were the primary centres; after that the journey to Santiago de
Composteia by the coast in northern Spain was the most popular. Here the body of St James the Apostle was entombed and pilgrims to his shrine gathered shells from the nearby beach as a sign of their visit. These shells became the emblem of pilgrimage all over Europe.
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Elizabeth Frink's 'Robed Figure' stands in a modern
garden, with the Abbey ruins in the background.
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