Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion

by Jonathan Sumption

  Notes

  1 Hume: An Essay on Miracles, in An Enquiry concerning human understanding, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, Oxford, 1894, pp. 114, 115–16.

  2 Injunctions of 1536: in Letters of Thomas Cromwell, ed. R. B. Merriman, vol. ii, Oxford, 1902, p. 28.

  Fraud alleged: Hus, De Sanguine Christi, XIV. 45–6, pp. 32–3. More, Dyalogue, I. 14, fols. 18–18vo.

  3 Histrionic contraptions: H. Ellis (ed.), Original letters illustrative of English history, 3rd. series, vol. iii, London, 1846, p. 168. Letters and Papers, vol. xiii (1), p. 120 (no. 348).

  Plague at Melrose: Vita S. Cuthberti, IX, p. 184.

  4 Augustine of Canterbury and miracles: Bede, Hist. Eccl., I. 26, 30, II. see pp. 76, 108, 190. Gregory I, Reg., XI. 36, vol. ii, pp. 305–8. On this, 15, Colgrave.

  St. Martin: Sulpicius Severus, Dialogi, II. 4, pp. 184–5. MGH. Epp. iii. 119–22 (Nizier).

  Augustine on miracles: De vera religione, XXV. 47, PL. xxxiv. 142; Sermo CCCLVI. 7, PL. xxxix. 1577. See D. P. de Vooght, ‘Les Miracles dans la vie de Saint Augustin’, Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Mediévale, xi (1939), pp. 5–16; P. Brown, Augustine of Hippo, London, 1967, pp. 384–6.

  5 Gregory on miracles: Homilia in Evang., XXIX, PL. lxxvi. 1215. Bede on miracles: Vita S. Cuthberti, XXI, p. 224.

  Orderic on miracles: Hist. Eccl., V. 4, VI. 1, ed. Chibnall, vol. iii, pp. 8, 214.

  Survival of missionary attitude to miracles: Gregory of Tours, In Gloria Martyrum, LXXX, pp. 542–3; cf. In Gloria Confessorum, XIV, p. 756. Caesarius, Dial. Mirac, V. 18, vol. i, pp. 296–7 (Besançon heretics). Pierre des Vaux-de-Cernay, Hystoria Albigensis, II. 54, ed. P. Guébin and E. Lyon, SHF, vol. i, Paris, 1926, pp. 47–9; cf. Guillaume de Puylaurens, Chronicon, IX, ed. Beissier, Bibliothèque de la Faculté des Lettres de Paris, XVIII, Paris, 1904, p. 128; the painting is in the Louvre.

  6 Lessons of the miracles of St. Thomas: William, Mirac. S. Thomae, IV. 45, 49, VI. 159, pp. 355–6, 360–1, 534.

  Heretics cannot perform miracles: Lucas of Tuy, De Altera Vita, II. 9, in Magna Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum, vol. iii, Cologne, 1618, pp. 259–61; cf. III. 9, 18, pp. 280–1, 282–3. Calendar of Close Rolls, Henry VI, vol. iii (1435–41), London, 1937, pp. 385–6 (Wyche).

  Moslem miracles: Ricoldo, Liber Peregrinationis, XXXVI, p. 141. Denis, Contra perfidiam Mahometi, II. 3, 4, 9, Dialogus disputationis inter Christianum et Sarracenum, III, in Opera Omnia, vol. xxxvi, Tournai, 1908, pp. 275, 278, 287, 454–5. In 1121, the ambassadors of the Almoravid emir of Cordova, Ali ben Yúsuf, encountered crowds of pilgrims on the road to Santiago, and were impressed by accounts of the miracles of St. James, Hist. Compostellana, II. 50, p. 350.

  7 John of Capistrano: Wadding, Annales Minorum, An. 1452 (no. 25), vol. xii, p. 142. Nicholas of Fara, Vita S. Johannis de Capistrano, VII. 81–4, Aa. Ss. Oct., vol. x, pp. 465–6. See J. Hofer, Johannes von Capestrano. Ein Leben in Kampf um die Reform der Kirche, Innsbruck, 1936, pp. 313–560.

  8 ‘For all chroniclers …’: John of Salisbury, Hist. Pontificalis, prologue, p. 2.

  Sceptics punished: Gregory of Tours, In Gloria Martyrum, XXIV, p. 502. Mirac. S. Joannis Beverlacensis, proem. 1. Aa. Ss. May, vol. ii, p. 172 (saec. xii–xiii). Mirac. S. Wulfstani, II. 5, I. 18, pp. 151–2, 125 (saec. xiii).

  9 Educated men more sceptical: Mirac. S. Gengulphi, XV, MGH. SS. xv. 793. Herman, De Mirac. S. Eadmundi, XLIV, p. 86. Capitula de Mirac. S. Cuthberti, VII. 7–11, pp. 254–9. Walter Daniel, Ep. ad Mauricium, ed. F. M. Powicke, Walter Daniel’s Life of Ailred of Rievaulx, London, 1950, p. 67. William, Mirac. S. Thomae, III. 41, 4, pp. 298, 262.

  Surfeit of miracles wearisome: William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontiftcum, II. 75, p. 168 (St. Swithin). William, Mirac. S. Thomae, IV. 45, p. 355. Thomas of Monmouth, Mirac. S. Willelmi, V. 12, pp. 202–3.

  Miracles as means of monastic self-aggrandisement: Theobald, Vita S. Gummari, XXII, Aa. Ss. Oct., vol. v, pp. 687–8 (saec. xii). Mirac. S. Dionysii, III. 4, Aa. Ss. OSB., vol. iv, p. 364; Detectio Corporis S. Dionysii, XI, p. 170. Mirac. S. Fidis, 1. 13, 7, pp. 46, 31. The use of relics as a means of psychological influence is found in other churches; compare, for example, a miracle of St. James at Reading (MS. Gloucester cathedral 1, fol. 173) with the Reading cartulary (Brit. Mus., MS. Cotton Vespasian E. V, fols. 24–31, 58–60vo, 75vo, 77). The effect of monastic acquisitiveness on lay society in the Mâconnais has been studied by Duby, pp. 61–2, 68–73.

  10 Miracles of St. Thomas as political phenomenon: William, Mirac. S. Thomae, III. 41, 4, pp. 298, 262.

  11 Miracles investigated: Mirac. S. Benedicti, III. 15, 17–18, pp. 161–2, 164–6. Philip, Mirac. S. Frideswidae, LXXIII, p. 582. Benedict, Mirac. S. Thomae, III. 51, IV. 2, 6, 65, pp. 153–5, 181, 183–5, 236–7; William, op. cit., VI. 3–5, pp. 410–13. Mirac. S. Wulfstani, II. 12, 15, pp. 161, 167; cf. II. 21, p. 179.

  Spurious ones rejected: Foréville (ed.) Livre de S. Gilbert, p. 10. On Mont.-St.-Michel, Huynes, vol. i, pp. 109, 126–7. Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, Miracles de S. Louis, XIV, p. 49.

  12 Caesarius’s definition: Dial. Mirac., X. 1, vol. ii, p. 217.

  Augustine on the physical world: De Quantitate animae, XXXI. 62–3, PL. xxxii. 1069–70; De Civitate Dei, XXL 4, vol. ii, p. 519; De nuptiis et concupiscentia, I. 19. PL. xliv. 426; Ep. CXXXVII. 10–11, vol. ii, pp. 109–11; Contra Faustum, XXVI. 3, ed. J. Zycha, CSEL. xxv, Vienna, 1891, pp. 730–1.

  13 ‘These things are indeed …’: Samson, De Mirac. S. Eadmundi, I. 12, p. 143.

  Natural explanations discarded for supernatural: Gregory of Tours, De Virtut. S. Martini, III. praefat., p. 632; cf. II. 60, IV. 1, pp. 629–30, 649–50. Hist. Versifié de Fécamp, 11. 3645–70, pp. 186–7. William, Mirac. S. Thomae, III. 24, pp. 282–3.

  14 Miraculous escapes from captivity: Mirac. S. Fidis, I. 31, p. 76. Mirac. B. Egidii, II, VI, X–XII, XV, MGH. SS. xii. 317, 319, 320–2, An, Boll ix (1890), pp. 394–6, 399–404. Liber S. Jacobi, II. 1, 22, pp. 261–2, 286–7. Guide, VIII, p. 54 (St. Leonard). Mirac. S. Martialis, passim. Salimbene, Chron., MGH. SS. xxxii. 522 (Mary Magdalene).

  15 Bohemond: Mirac. S. Leonardi, II. 2, Aa. Ss. Nov., vol. iii, pp. 160–8. Albert of Aix, Hist. Hierosolymitana, IX. 33–6, pp. 610–12. Orderic, Hist. Eccl, X. 23, XI. 12, ed. Prévost, vol. iv, pp. 156, 210–11.

  Gregory of Tarsus: Benedict (interpolated), Mirac. S. Thomae, VI. 6, pp. 273–9.

  Hus on escape miracles: De Sanguine Christi, X. 35, pp. 26–7. Yet such a conclusion, though morally repulsive, would not be logically absurd; see the sensible observations of E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Theories of primitive religion, Oxford, 1965, pp. 89–91.

  Vain pilgrims hope for miracle: Guibert, De Pignoribus, III. 5, col. 663. Baraut (ed.), Llibre Vermell, p. 35 (Montserrat, saec. xiv). Benedict, Mirac. S. Thomae, IV. 33, p. 206. Samson, De Mirac. S. Eadmundi, II. 7, p. 178.

  16 Miracles proclaimed to crowd: Mirac. S. Egidii, IV, MGH. SS. xii. 318–19. Mirac. S. Mariae Magdalenae, Viziliaci Facta, ed. alt., I, CCH. (Paris), vol. ii, pp. 292–3 (no. 2).

  Mason injured at Fleury: Mirac. S. Benedicti, VIII. 30, p. 328.

  17 Miracles proof of sanctity: Fontanini (ed.), Codex, pp. 37–8 (St. Cunegonde).

  Case of Becket: William, Mirac. S. Thomae, I. 12, II. 91, pp. 152, 251–2. Benedict, Mirac. S. Thomae, II. 50, III. 64, IV. 75, pp. 91, 162–3, 245. Letter of Peter of La Celle in Becket Materials, vol. vii, p. 566 (lost service-book). Caesarius, Dial. Mirac., VIII. 54, vol. ii, pp. 127–8 (Paris debate).

  18 This view criticized: Odo, Sermo de S. Benedicto, Collationes, I. 23–4, III. 39, De combustione Basilicae S. Martini, in Bibliotheca Cluniacensis, cols. 139, 175, 240, 147. Guibert, De Pignoribus, I. 1, III. 5, cols. 615–16, 662–3. Wyclif, De Ecclesia, II, XIX, pp. 45, 465; Sermones, II. 22, vol. ii, p. 164. Gerson, Contra Impugnantes Ordinis Carthusiensium, ed. Du Pin, vol. ii, cols. 711–14. Examination of William Thorpe, p. 137.

  ‘It may be peradventure …’: Canterbury Tales, p. 607. The same argument is found in Pecock’s Repressor, II. 4, pp. 155–6, i
n defence of the veneration of images.

  19 False miracles of St. Thomas: Benedict, Mirac. S. Thomae, IV. 32, III. 31, pp. 305, 140. William, Mirac. S. Thomae, IV. 34, VI. 139, pp. 346–7, 524.

  CHAPTER V

  THE MEDICINE OF THE SICK

  Mediaeval Afflictions and Their Treatment

  Mediaeval men were pathetically vulnerable to the hazards which contemporary life held for their health. Their sense of impotence before the forces of nature was at no time stronger than during the great famines and epidemics of the middle ages. ‘Neither by bleeding nor by clysters nor by any precautions could anyone who had once caught this plague escape it, except by death‚’ recorded a Parisian diarist during an epidemic in 1433. ‘In Florence’, Boccaccio wrote at the time of the Black Death, ‘all human wisdom was unable to avert the onset of the terrible disease. The city had been cleansed and sick folk kept outside the walls…. But nonetheless, towards the beginning of spring, the first appalling symptoms of the plague began to appear…. Which plague set at naught the skill of the physicians and the virtues of their science.’ The incidence of disease, unpredictable, irresistible, bred a kind of fatalism which inclined men to look to the supernatural for their only hope of relief.

  Bread was the chief source of the B vitamins and almost the only source of carbohydrates. Its supply depended on an agricultural system whose productivity was low at the best of times. A yield of ten bushels an acre was considered exceptional, and in most regions a normal harvest did little more than feed the immediate locality. Grain was difficult to transport and expensive to store, with the result that a bad harvest might threaten a whole region with starvation. It was thus possible for a traveller to pass in the space of a single day from an area of plenty to one where fodder was unobtainable and men were dying of starvation at the side of the road; such was the experience of John, bishop of Norwich, when travelling through central France in 1176. After the end of the thirteenth century, certain climatic changes occurred in western Europe, and famines followed each other with increasing frequency, with the consequent weakening of men’s resistance to petty illnesses and major epidemics alike.

  Even in times of plenty, the diet of both rich and poor was far from healthy. A shortage of green vegetables and fresh fruit in winter was responsible for a serious deficiency of vitamin C which manifested itself in muscular pains and mild scurvy. Mediaeval men depended chiefly on milk, eggs, and fish for vitamin A. Fish was often scarce in inland areas, and in winter the low quality of the feed given to cows and hens must have caused a progressive fall in the intake of vitamin A by all classes. In the towns, where milk was almost impossible to keep, this problem presented itself throughout the year. Thus arose the most characteristic of mediaeval maladies. Stone in the bladder and urinary tract was probably due to a deficiency of vitamin A combined with a very high intake of calcium, while the same dietary deficiencies weakened resistance to infections and caused the appearance of skin lesions. The widespread complaints of sore eyes and fading sight (xeropthalmia) have the same ultimate origin.

  The result was that men suffered from an interminable succession of minor afflictions as well as the occasional major one. Indeed a sense of complete physical well-being was probably extremely rare. Gregory of Tours tells us that he constantly suffered from headaches, inflammations of the ears and throat, sore eyes, and muscular pains. The letters of Peter the Venerable perpetually refer to his ill-health and physical discomfort; he was often constipated and afflicted throughout his life by what appears to have been a mild form of malaria. Digestive problems were common complaints. In 1171 Robert, count of Leicester, was reported to have suffered from chronic indigestion ever since a tour of duty in Ireland, while Geoffrey of Binbrooke, a pilgrim to Canterbury in the same year, had never recovered from the effects of eating unwashed fish. Benedict of Peterborough, who took some pride in his medical knowledge, warned against the evil effects of excessive eating and drinking, and reported that female pilgrims at St. Thomas’s shrine were occasionally suffering from an incautious choice of diet during pregnancy or lactation.

  It was in part because so many mediaeval ailments had dietary origins that contemporary medicine was unable to offer a cure or even a good diagnosis. It is true that special diets were prescribed for sick men. They were an essential adjunct to Hippocratic medicine. But their object was not to restore nutritional deficiencies; it was to correct supposed imbalances between the four ‘humours’ in the patient’s body, and when this failed to cure the patient’s afflictions, he tended to look elsewhere for relief. The malady often disappeared quite suddenly when the dietary deficiency had been made good, for example by a journey to another province or a change of season. In these circumstances it seemed plausible to attribute both the original affliction and its ultimate disappearance to divine intervention. The frequent outbreaks of ergotism in northern Europe afford a classic instance of this. Ergotism, which was known to contemporaries as ‘Ignis Sacer’, or ‘Holy Fire’, was caused by eating rye infected by a specific kind of mould or fungus. Outbreaks of it commonly occurred after a wet summer. Large numbers of people were afflicted simultaneously by its alarming symptoms, severe gangrene accompanied by a sharp burning sensation in some cases, convulsions and nervous disorders in others. The most serious epidemics occurred in England and France in the first half of the twelfth century, and the result in almost every case was a mass pilgrimage to one or other of the sanctuaries of the Blessed Virgin.

  ‘This horrible disease’, wrote Hughes Farsit of the epidemic of 1128, ‘spreads beneath the stretched blue skin, separating it from the bones and slowly consuming it. The pain and heat steadily increase until the victims long for death as their only hope of release. As the fever wastes the limbs, a raging fire burns the internal organs, yet it produces no heat and it never abates, however much the wretched victims pour cold liquids over themselves…. It was horrible to behold the sick and the recently cured, the sign of death still visible on their bodies and in their faces. Yet the mercy of God is even greater than the afflictions of men. When no human remedy could be found, … the sick, even as the fire ranged inside them, took refuge in the benevolence and healing power of the ever-virgin Mother of God, and she did not disappoint them in their hopes.’

  Sufferers crowded into Coutances cathedral in the closing years of the eleventh century. In the autumn of 1128 they came from every part of northern France to the church of Notre-Dame at Soissons. In 1132, after another wet summer, several hundred citizens of Beauvais suffering from ergotism trekked in a body to Chartres. Notre-Dame in Paris was the object of a similar mass pilgrimage during the outbreak of 1206. In each case the disease passed away in the course of time and the Virgin acquired a growing reputation as a healer of the sick. ‘She is the sovereign remedy for the sick’, proclaimed the prior of Sauxillanges, ‘for she can obtain from her son all that she desires. She is merciful on our sins and relieves us in all our troubles.’

  There were physicians available throughout the middle ages, and in parts of Europe, such as southern France, they were organized in powerful corporations. But the medicine which they practised was of a somewhat rudimentary and unscientific nature. It was based on the distant influence of Arab science, and on the works of Hippocrates and Galen, manuscripts of which were conserved at Salerno and in many monasteries during the ‘dark ages’. It consisted in examining the patient, particularly his urine, and in diagnosing an imbalance of the four humours, namely blood, phlegm, green bile and black bile. The imbalance could then be corrected by means of purges, blood-letting, special diets, and so forth. Peter the Venerable’s doctor diagnosed in his patient an excess of phlegm, the qualities of which were cold and moist; he therefore prescribed myrrh which was hot and ‘actively wet yet potentially dry’. Even formal medicine of this sort was usually available only to a small number of wealthy and important persons. The medical attention which these persons received was certainly no more effective than the folk medicine of the villages,
and it may in some cases have been positively harmful. Peter the Venerable’s health was not improved by the ‘baths and stoves, fumigations and poultices, pills under the tongue, pills for catarrh, balsam potions, gargles and similar things’ which were recommended to him. William, dean of Coutances, was brought to death’s door by the potions which his doctor prescribed. One John Chadleton made a pilgrimage to St. Frideswide’s, Oxford, in order to recover from the effects of a near-fatal blood-letting, while pilgrims at Rocamadour complained that the hot baths recommended by the celebrated physicians of Montpellier had done grave injury to their health.

  Many of the pilgrims who were cured at the shrine of St. Thomas had already received the best attention that the medical profession could offer. The son of a knight of Surrey was taken to London to see the foremost consultants of the day, but they were unable to cure his liver disease. A ‘copious supply’ of surgeons laboured in vain to remove an arrow-head from Tancard de Carew’s right eye. Robert of Bromton’s physician inspected his urine with great diligence, diagnosed an imbalance of the humours, prescribed pills and potions and laxatives, and finally gave the case up as hopeless. William of Dene was close to death after unwisely entrusting his health to ‘mere human physicians, with whom there is no hope of recovery’. Some doctors, indeed, are alleged to have admitted their shortcomings and advised their patients to go forthwith to Canterbury.

  Consequently the practice of medicine was not held in high esteem, and writers from Sidonius Apollinaris onwards spent their harshest invectives on the ignorance and incompetence of the medical profession. One of them, a canon of St. Frideswide’s, Oxford, stoutly declared that any surgeon who operated for the stone was guilty of murder. Ordinary people preferred to rely on herb doctors, charm-healers and ‘wise women’ of the locality. Although these were normally found in rural areas, their services were much in demand even in the towns. In Langland’s day, Londoners used to resort to witches at Southwark and Shoreditch. These unorthodox physicians probably did more for their clients than most doctors, and what we know of their methods suggests that they were sometimes soundly based on common sense and traditional herbal medicine. A twelfth-century witch at Palinges in the Loire valley used to prescribe ‘herbs and potions, beet or the juice of local plants, or even the fat of various animals’, a mixture which may well have been effective in restoring certain dietary deficiencies. But Raoul Tortaire, who tells us of this lady, had nothing but contempt for her remedies which, he averred, served only to raise false hopes in ignorant people.