Re: Letter of Recommendation
tyrrek said:
Out of interest, what was it? Was it some kind of permission from your local landowner/church etc to go away on pilgrimage or something like that? Buen Camino!
No, it's the same thing as the one that is included on the official
credenciales -- its purpose is to identify the bearer as a pilgrim (which the
credencial provides anyway), and to express a request for assistance to you from your signatory (which the
credencial provides anyway), typically your parish priest, but also possibly your Bishop, your Rector, your Abbot or Abbess, the local Santiago Pilgrims Confraternity, etc. It *does* officially attach you as a pilgrim to the parish, diocese, Abbey, etc providing it, though this is only very rarely relevant even in those very rare cases where such a Letter may still be useful in the 21st century.
Of course, to obtain it, you did sometimes need to get permission from these (or they wouldn't provide it), but this has always been considered as an abuse of their ecclesial powers, and the Holy See has occasionally needed to remind Bishops that no undue impediment to the desire to go on holy pilgrimage is acceptable.
In fact, IIRC, the fact that today's
credenciales are provided mainly by the Confraternities originally developed as a response to the overly great difficulties that some pilgrims had been encountering getting their Letters of Recommendation from their local churches, particularly over the course of the 17th to 19th centuries, during which period foot pilgrimages were being semi-officially discouraged by many priests and Bishops. The Confraternities started providing their own Letters of Recommendation in order to help aspiring pilgrims start on the Way, which is the direct origin of the current well-oiled
credencial system.
erm, I'd guess that such a Letter of Recommendation would be more important if you were yourself a priest or religious, as you'd need to obtain permission from your Ordinary or your Superior before being able to go on a foot pilgrimage in the first place.