Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion

by Jonathan Sumption

  Jerome was well aware that his austere views were visibly rejected by most pilgrims of his own day. But they are worth dwelling on, because Jerome bequeathed a tradition to mediaeval Christianity, and his works were on the book-lists of serious pilgrims for ten centuries after his death. The monastic ideal remained for many years inseparable from contemporary notions of pilgrimage, though Egypt lost its fascination for western pilgrims after the fifth century. During the monastic revival of the eighth century, pilgrims regarded Rome in much the same light as they had once seen Egypt and Palestine. Four Anglo-Saxon kings retired to die there in the space of fifty years. The Lombard king Ratchis walked to Rome with his wife and children in 749 and accepted the monastic habit at the pope’s hands. Just as in the fifth century the empress Eudoxia, estranged wife of Theodosius II, had exiled herself to Jerusalem to escape her enemies, so in the eighth century Pippin’s brother Karloman left the Frankish court and settled in a Roman monastery on Monte Soracte.

  Jerome’s attitude to pilgrimage as an escape from civilization was unconsciously revived by the Irish. Their distinctive contribution to the spiritual life of the ‘dark ages’ was the idea of the aimless wanderer whose renunciation of the world was the most complete of which man could conceive, far more austere than the principles of Benedictine monasticism. In the wandering Irish hermits of the sixth and seventh centuries, western Europe came as near as it would ever do to those ‘athletes of Christ’, the desert fathers of Egypt and Syria in late antiquity. By wandering freely without destination, the Irish hermit felt that he had cut himself off from every material accessory to life. In his eighth sermon St. Columban dwells on the transitory nature of life, and declares: ‘I know that if this earthly tent of mine is taken down, I shall get a new home from God made by no human hands. It makes me sigh, this longing for the shelter of my heavenly habitation … for I know that while I am in my body I am travelling away from God.’ The notion of a specific destination did not enter into Columban’s thinking; his only destination was the heavenly Jerusalem. The spirit of Columban’s teaching was precisely expressed by an Irish pilgrim of the twelfth century, who quoted with approval Jerome’s strictures against ‘Babylon’ (i.e. Rome) and urged his hearers to ‘be exiles for God’s sake, and go not only to Jerusalem but everywhere, for God himself is everywhere.’ The same conviction brought three Irishmen to the court of king Alfred in 891 ‘in a boat without any oars, because they wished for the love of God to be in foreign lands, they cared not where.’ Only in the ninth century did some Irish begin to regard Rome as a place of special spiritual merit, and even then a marginal annotation in an Irish hymn-book informs us that ‘going to Rome involves great effort and little reward, for the King whom you seek there you will not find unless you bring him with you.’

  Bede has left us the spiritual portrait of an Englishman of his own day, the Northumbrian monk Egbert, who passed much of his early life in Ireland and became deeply imbued with Irish spiritual values. According to Bede’s informant, Egbert had once suffered from a serious illness during which he became terrifyingly conscious of his own sinfulness. He persuaded himself that even the slender material ties which kept him in an Irish monastery were dragging him to perdition. He determined to become an aimless wanderer fulfilling in exile the daily rituals of the monastic life. ‘He would live in exile and never return to his native Britain. In addition to the solemn psalmody of the canonical offices, he would recite the entire psalter in praise of God, unless prevented by illness. Every week he would fast for a day and a night.’

  Religious wandering was recognized by contemporaries as a peculiarly Irish practice. ‘Why is it’, asked the hagiographer Heiric in a letter to Charles the Bald, ‘that almost the entire population of Ireland, contemptuous of the perils of the sea, has migrated to our shores with a great crowd of teachers? The more learned they are the more distant their chosen place of exile.’ ‘Wandering is an ineradicable habit of the Irish race,’ observed a ninth-century monk of St.-Gall. The popularity of aimless pilgrimage in the seventh and eighth centuries on the continent can usually be traced to Celtic influence. Irish missionaries spread their ideas amongst the Anglo-Saxons, many of whom exiled themselves to monasteries in Ireland. St. Colman built a monastery in Mayo in 667 exclusively for their use, and Englishmen were still living there more than a century later. St. Cyran (d. 697), founder of the abbey of Lonrey, was converted to the wandering life by an Irish hermit whom he encountered. When the Norman monk Wandrille was commanded in a vision to abandon his home and friends, he made straight for the Irish monastery at Bobbio in northern Italy. Some Irish wanderers, like St. Cadroe at the beginning of the eleventh century, were joined by ever-growing bands of disciples as they trod their erratic paths across western Europe.

  Isolated examples of this eccentric behaviour can be found in Germany well into the twelfth century, but as a way of life it had died more than two hundred years earlier. As the missions conquered paganism in central and northern Europe, formal Churches were established with the hierarchical organization familiar to older Christian lands. The wandering of priests across diocesan boundaries and the departure of monks from their monasteries were discouraged by St. Boniface after the 740s, and strenuously condemned by his successors. The reorganization of the monastic life in the ninth century, which is associated with the name of Benedict of Aniane, reinforced the hostility of the authorities to wandering monks. A Frankish synod forbade them to go without permission to Rome ‘or anywhere else’ as early as 751. The same prohibition was embodied in the capitularies of Charlemagne, which rehearsed that these unauthorized wanderings were destructive of ecclesiastical discipline and instrumental in spreading ‘unnecessary doubts’ among the people. The spiritual ideals of the Irish thus found themselves in conflict with the tendency of the Carolingians to make use of Benedictine monasticism as a stabilizing force, a propagator of what one might call the ‘cultural colonialism’ of the ninth century. Henceforth renunciation of the world was to mean entering a monastery or a fixed hermitage. Itinerant clerics were to find themselves condemned even by such fierce ascetics as Peter Damian. When Everard de Breteuil, vicomte of Chartres, suddenly renounced the world in 1073, he became a hermit living a ‘life of freedom’, and earned his living by burning charcoal; he was persuaded, however, that the irregularity of his life was unpleasing to God, and so entered the monastery of Marmoutiers.

  Notes

  1 Scholars at Jerusalem: Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., IV. xxvi. 13–14, VI. xx. 1, xxvii, pp. 386–8, 566, 580. Jerome, De Viris Illustribus, LIV, LXII, PL. xxiii. 664–8, 673.

  ‘Footsteps of the Master’: Origen, In Joannem, VI. 24, PG. xiv. 269.

  ‘No other sentiment…’: Paulinus, Ep. XLIV. 14, pp. 402–3.

  2 Etheria: see her Peregr., III. 5–6, X. 7, XXIII. 5, pp. 40, 52, 70. Holy Week services: Ibid., XXIV–XLIX, pp. 71–101.

  Jerome and Paula: Jerome, In Lib. Paralipomenon, praefat., PL. xxix. 401; Epp. XLVI. 9, LVII. 2, CVm. 9–10, vol. i, pp. 339, 529, vol. ii, pp. 314–18.

  3 Footprints preserved: Paulinus, Epp. XLIX. 14, XXXI. 4, pp. 402–3, 271–2. Adamnan, De Locis Sanctis, I. xxiii. 3–5, p. 247.

  4 Following Gospels in Holy Land: Bede, Hist. Eccl., V. 15, p. 506; Adamnan, op. cit., I. xxv. 1–8, pp. 251–3 (Arculf). BBB., i. 151 (thirteenth-century Franciscan). Faber, Evagatorium, vol. i, pp. 25–6.

  Meditation on humanity of Christ: Vita Richardi Abbatis, XVIII, pp. 288–9; cf. Hugh of Flavigny, Chron., XVIII, p. 393. Antenoris, Vita S. Silvini, I. 6–9, p. 30 (not historically reliable). Benincasa, Vita S. Rayneri, IV. 48, p. 436.

  5 ‘Imitatio Christi’: Hugh of Flavigny, Chron., XXI, pp. 395–6 (Richard of St.-Vannes). Benincasa, op. cit., IV. 47, p. 436. On baptism in the Jordan, see infra. Vita S. Bonae, I. 13, Aa. Ss. May, vol. vii, p. 149. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, III. 235, pp. 292–3 (Fulk Nerra). Theoderic of Wurzburg, De Locis Sanctis, XXV, p. 63 (flagellation on Mt. Sion). Robert of Torigny, Chron., vol. ii, p. 51 (Henry II).


  Stations of the Cross: Ernoul, Chron., XVII, p. 206 (1231). Ricoldo, Liber Peregrinationis, VI, p. 112. Ogier d’Anglure, Saint Voyage, pp. 13–14.

  Sacchetti’s allegory: in Sermoni, LXVIII, pp. 165–6.

  6 ‘enter into the mind…’: Thomas of Celano, De Mirac. B. Francisci, II. 2, Analecta Franciscana, vol. x, Quaracchi, 1926–41, p. 273.

  Pilgrimage as escape from civilization: Jerome, Contra Joannem, XLI, PL. xxiii. 393. Vie de S. Mélanie, II. 19, p. 168. Jerome, Ep. XLVI. 12, vol. i, pp. 342–3.

  Impact of Life of St. Anthony: Augustine, Confessions, VIII. vi. 14–15, ed. P. Knoll, CSEL. xxxiii, Vienna, 1896, pp. 181–3.

  Jerome’s circle and the desert hermits: Jerome, Epp. CXXVII. 5, CVIII. 14, vol. iii, pp. 149–50, vol. ii, pp. 324–5 (Paula). Palladius, Hist. Lausiaca, XLVI, vol. ii, pp. 134–5 (elder Melania). Etheria, Peregr., XVII. 2, p. 60. Vie de S. Mélanie, II. 39, p. 200.

  7 Pilgrimage as self-exile: Jerome, Contra Joannem, XLI, PL. xxiii. 393; Ep. LVIII. 2–4, vol. i, pp. 529–33.

  Four Anglo-Saxon kings: Caedwalla of Wessex (Bede, Hist. Eccl., V. 7, pp. 470–2). Ceanred of Mercia and Offa of Wessex (ibid., V. 19, p. 516). Ine of Wessex (Anglo-Saxon Chron., p. 27). Ratchis: Lib. Pont., vol. i, pp. 433–4.

  Karloman: Annales Regni Francorum, pp. 6–7. On Eudoxia, see J. B. Bury, History of the later Roman Empire, London, 1923, vol. i, pp. 226–31.

  8 Irish concept of self-exile: Columban, Sermo VIII, Opera, ed. G. S. M. Walker, Dublin, 1957, pp. 94–6. Dermatius, Exhortatoria, MD. Thes. i. 341–2 (‘be exiles …’). Anglo-Saxon Chron., p. 53 (three pilgrims of 891).

  ‘Going to Rome involves …’: Gougaud, pp. 158–9.

  Egbert: Bede, Hist. Eccl., III. 27, pp. 312–14.

  Wandering peculiarly Irish: Heiric’s letter in RHF. vii. 563. Gozbert, Mirac. S. Galli, II. 47, MGH. SS. ii. 30.

  9 Anglo-Saxons in Ireland: Bede, Hist. Eccl., III. 27, IV. 4, pp. 313, 346–8. Alcuin, Ep. CCLXXXVII, ed. E. Duemmler, MGH. Epp. iv. 445–6.

  Celtic influence: Vita S. Sigiranni, VIII, p. 386 (saec. ix). Vita S.

  Wandregisili, II. 9, Aa. Ss. July, vol. v, p. 274. Vita S. Cadroae, XX, Aa. Ss. OSB., vol. vii, p. 494.

  Wandering forbidden: Capitularia Regum Francorum, vol. i, pp. 35, 102, 133, vol. ii, p. 122.

  Everard de Breteuil: Guibert, De Vita Sua, I. 9, pp. 25–6. Damian’s views are contained in De Contemptu Saeculi (Opusc. XII), IX–XIV, PL. clxv. 260–7. For later criticism of monk-pilgrims, see St. Bernard, Epp. LVI, CCCIC, cols. 162–3, 612–13. Cf. miracle stories with the same moral, e.g. Chron. Mon. Casinensis, II. 11, p. 636; M. Valla, ‘Les Lyonnais à Compostelle’, BHP. (1964), pp. 240–1n.

  CHAPTER VII

  THE PENITENTIAL PILGRIMAGE

  Penance and Pilgrimage

  An age which loved definition and codified religious observances, also divided pilgrims into categories. The lawyers and theologians of the thirteenth century distinguished between voluntary pilgrimages undertaken as an act of personal piety, and compulsory ones imposed by confessors or courts of law. Yet the distinction was unreal, for the need to expiate their sins was common to both classes. In the first centuries of Christianity sinners occasionally exiled themselves voluntarily to Jerusalem as an act of penitence. One of Jerome’s correspondents, a notorious adulterer called Sabinianus, retired to expiate his sins at Bethlehem, though he shortly returned to his old ways. In Constantinople, St. Marcian persuaded several ladies of loose morals to withdraw to the Holy Land at the end of the fifth century. The monasteries of Palestine, like those of Egypt and Syria, drew a large number of penitents.

  Yet the early Church knew neither judicial nor penitential pilgrimage. Rituals and panaceas had little place in a penitential system as strict as that which was known to St. Augustine. The notorious sinner was excluded from the life of the Church, and the conditions on which he was readmitted amounted to a promise to live an almost monastic existence for the rest of his days. Public penance was a ‘second baptism’. Like baptism it could be performed only once in a lifetime, and in practice it was nearly always postponed to the eve of death. Pilgrimages were not imposed on penitents until the sixth century, when the whole notion of penance was transformed by the Irish missionaries. The Irish confessor imposed penances, which varied with the gravity of the sin, in accordance with a penitential ‘tariff’, of which several were already in circulation by the end of the sixth century. Here were found comprehensive lists of sins together with the appropriate penances ranging from short fasts to perpetual exile. Pilgrimage was much favoured by the Irish as a spiritual exercise. As a penance for the more enormous transgressions it was thought especially appropriate. Pilgrimages of varying duration are specified for murder (particularly by clerics), incest, bestiality, and sacrilege. The sins of monks and those of the higher clergy were visited more often with penitential pilgrimages than those of any other class.

  In the Irish penitentials we have the origin of the distinction between ‘public’ and ‘private’ penance, which was defined and elaborated by the thirteenth-century schoolmen. Public penance, which usually meant pilgrimage, was imposed for public sins with overtones of scandal, notably the sexual offences of the clergy. It was a useful penance, wrote the canonist Raymond of Peñaforte, for ‘those scandalous and notorious sins which set the whole town talking’; when they were committed by laymen the penance was described as ‘solemn’, when by clergymen as ‘public’. This idea was still very much alive at the end of the middle ages when Chaucer’s parson explained the distinction to his fellow-travellers: ‘commune penaunce’, the penitentia publica non sollemnis of the schoolmen, was used ‘when a man hath sinned openly, of which sin the fame is openly spoken in the country…. Common penance is that (which) priests enjoin men commonly in certain cases, as for to go, peradventure, naked in pilgrimages or barefoot.’

  The scandalous overtones were obviously stronger in cases involving clerics or noblemen, and it was above all these classes who were wont to be sent on long pilgrimages. The emperor Otto III was advised by St. Romuald to walk barefoot to Monte Gargano after murdering a Roman senator in breach of his safe-conduct. Romuald’s biographer Peter Damian imposed pilgrimages to Rome, Tours, and Santiago on the corrupt and rebellious clergy of Milan; a marquis called Renier he sent to Jerusalem ‘on account of the grave sins which you have confessed to me.’ A pilgrimage was thought the appropriate sentence for count Thierry who murdered the archbishop-elect of Trier in 1066, as it was, more than a century later, for Henry II after the murder of Becket, and for Raymond VI of Toulouse after the death of the papal legate on the steps of the abbey of St.-Gilles. These penances were in no sense voluntary. Even in the cases of kings the pressure of public opinion could be overpowering, and to ignore it would have been politically most unwise, as both Raymond of Toulouse and Henry II discovered to their cost.

  For such notorious crimes the penitential pilgrimage remained in use throughout the later middle ages. During his regular visitations of the province of Rouen, archbishop Odo Rigaud constantly imposed pilgrimages on both clerics and laymen for their sexual indiscretions. Other offences which were punished thus included forgery, breaking sanctuary, and public irreverence towards the services of the Church. For seizing and imprisoning a cleric, Robert de Frechesne, bailli of Rouen, was sent to St. Michael’s church in Rouen, there to recite fifty Pater Nosters and fifty Ave Marias, to fast for three days, and to distribute five shillings to the poor. In the province of Cologne a synod of 1279 recommended pilgrimages in cases involving self-indulgence of any sort. The publicity which long-distance pilgrims drew to themselves made it the obvious penalty for spectacular crimes. Roger da Bonito was sent to Rome, Santiago, and Jerusalem in 1319 for murdering the bishop of Fricento. For his attack on Boniface VIII at Anagni Guillaume de Nogaret, chancellor of the king of France, was ordered to visit Notre-Dame de Vauvert, Rocamadour, Boulogne, Chartres, St.-Gilles, Montmajour, and Santiago, and finally to exile himself to the Holy Land, thou
gh none of this did he actually do.

  For those whose sins were venial or well-concealed, the penitential pilgrimage remained an act of personal piety, voluntarily undertaken. After the end of the tenth century growing numbers of the humble as well as the mighty performed distant pilgrimages to expiate crimes that weighed on their consciences. The reasons for this sudden upsurge are far from clear. Introspection and guilt were not inventions of the eleventh century, and the condition of western Europe at the millennium is not, on its own, enough to account for the phenomenon. There was, however, one aspect of contemporary religious life by which it could hardly fail to have been coloured. The period witnessed radical changes in the role of the sacrament of penance. Two centuries earlier the Carolingian reformers had taken exception to the penitential practices of the Irish which, to their thinking, failed to bring the penitent back to the straight and narrow path. Rabanus Maurus had insisted that penances should be performed under the direct supervision of the confessor who had imposed them, and that the penitent should not be absolved until it had been completed. This had always been the practice of the early Church. It gave a certain finality to the ritual of absolution which marked the sinner’s readmission to the body of the Church. From the end of the tenth century, however, penitents were usually absolved and reconciled with the Church immediately after confession. Thus arose the distinction between sin and punishment: the former was expunged by confession; the latter remained to be suffered in Purgatory. The penitent was reconciled to the Church, but he still had to do satisfaction for his sins, and the view ultimately prevailed that by performing good works in this life he could reduce the punishment that awaited him in the next. Against this background the unprecedented number of monastic foundations and the extraordinary popularity of pilgrimages and the crusades which mark out the eleventh century, become intelligible.