Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion

by Jonathan Sumption

  To Santiago livres 12– 0–0

  To Rome livres 12– 0–0

  To St. Julian of Brioude livres 4– 0–0

  To St. Simeon of Paris livres 0–40–0

  To St. Martin of Tours etc. livres 3–10–0

  The sum required varied considerably from place to place. A pilgrimage to Rocamadour could be bought off for five livres at Alost, while at Ypres it cost seven; Oudenarde charged eight livres and Limburg ten gold florins. Occasionally a court would refuse to allow commutation at all in serious cases. At Maestricht, for instance, murderers were allowed to buy their way out of a pilgrimage if it was imposed to the profit of the victim’s family, but if it was imposed on behalf of the town it had to be performed. In general it was assumed that the malefactor would pay if he could afford to. After the sentence had been announced there was usually a pause of several weeks during which he would try to raise the money from friends or moneylenders. If the money was not paid, the victim or his family would then apply for a court order enforcing the sentence. Many French towns enjoyed royal privileges which entitled citizens to buy off pilgrimages as of right. In confirming the privileges of Corvins and Epinoy in 1371, Charles V found it necessary to warn them that the pilgrimage must be enforced if the offender could or would not pay. Similar privileges were granted to Bergues, Furnes, and several other towns of Flanders, Artois, and Brabant.

  Pilgrimages were imposed not only by law courts and arbitrators, but by any corporation which exercised a quasi-judicial authority over its members. Universities, guilds, and similar corporations were all entitled to send recalcitrant members to distant parts and often did so. For breaking a minor rule, the armourer’s guild at Malines sent one of its members, barefoot, bareheaded, and fasting on bread and water to the shrine of Battel. The draper’s guild at Malines had been known to send rebellious members as far as Rocamadour. Contemporaries appreciated the humiliation which was thus inflicted on the victim. For this reason pilgrimages were commonly inflicted on whole towns after an unsuccessful war or rebellion. At the treaty of Arques (1326), which marked the defeat of the Flemish towns in their revolt against Charles of France, Bruges and Courtrai were required to send a hundred prominent citizens to Santiago, a hundred to St.-Gilles, and a hundred to Rocamadour. On this occasion the offending towns commuted the penalty to a payment of 10,000 livres, but they were not always let off so lightly. Robert de Cassel paid for his part in the same rebellion by visiting Santiago, Rocamadour, Le Puy, and St.-Gilles, and bringing back testimonials to prove it. Sixty citizens of Bruges performed a civic pilgrimage to Avignon in 1309, and in 1393 dignitaries of the town were sent to Rome and Jerusalem after an unsuccessful quarrel with the Hanseatic League. In 1468 a hundred inhabitants of Haut-Pont presented themselves at Notre-Dame de Boulogne bearing wax candles weighing three pounds each in penance for their seditious designs against Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy.

  Enforcement

  The solemn and exemplary character of a judicial pilgrimage was emphasized by the way in which it was performed. The practice of sending the convict on his way loaded with chains belongs to the Merovingian and Carolingian periods, but it did not altogether die out until the end of the twelfth century. Even in 1319 the murderer of the bishop of Fricento was despatched to Rome and Santiago with an iron collar round his neck. Fetters were attached to the convict’s arms and sometimes to his legs, neck, and waist as well. In the case of murderers it was usual to hang the murder weapon from one of the fetters as a permanent advertisement of the crime. In the early mediaeval period these awful wanderers were a familiar sight in every part of Europe, but in the eleventh and twelfth centuries most of the victims came from southern France, Germany, or Scotland. When chained convicts are reported at English shrines they are almost invariably foreigners. A pilgrim who came to Norwich priory in the 1150s ‘clothed in a coat of mail on his bare flesh, fettered with his own sword’ was a nobleman of Lorraine. Scottish convicts were constantly arriving at the shrine of St. Cuthbert at Durham. In 1164, great interest was aroused by the appearance of a murderer wearing an iron girdle made of the sword with which he had killed his victim. Another Scotsman had been fettered by the arm, waist, and neck, and had already been to the Holy Land and St. Martial of Limoges before coming to Durham. At each place part of his load had broken away, ‘and thus’, explained Reginald of Durham, ‘St. Cuthbert can free the body from its chains just as he frees the soul from the bonds of sin.’

  It is difficult to know what to make of these stories of the spontaneous bursting of iron chains, especially when they are reported by those who claim to have been present. Thomas of Monmouth complained that some of his contemporaries were inclined to doubt them, ascribing them to fraud or rust, but Thomas asserted that he had watched with his own eyes as the fetters of Philip of Lorraine fell to the ground. A high proportion of these stories must have been pure fiction, Thomas’s own tales among them. But many of the pilgrims who clanked their chains along the roads of Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries had probably put them on voluntarily and may have removed them themselves as soon as they felt that God had pardoned them. In such cases the ‘miracle’ consisted of the sudden relief of their feelings of guilt, a circumstance which it is rather easier to visualize. A penitent who arrived at Fleury at the end of the eleventh century is stated to have confessed his crimes out of fear of God’s vengeance and then placed the fetters on his own arms ‘in the firm conviction that as soon as God deigned to remit his sins the chains would fall away of their own accord.’ A pilgrim released at the shrine of St. Egwin of Evesham had loaded himself with chains. So had a fratricide of Cologne who confessed his sin to the archbishop and then wandered for seven years from shrine to shrine. It was an extreme form of mortification of the flesh, following an ancient and still powerful tradition. A twelfth-century penitent called Bernard, who ended his days in the abbey of St. Bertin at St.-Omer, had committed the most trivial of crimes. His biographer does not reveal what it was, but observes that ‘no one would think ill of him even if the stories were true. He had done nothing particularly vile or bestial, nothing we would consider sinful nowadays. But it is the mark of a saint to look upon everything worldly as loathsome.’ Accordingly Bernard had condemned himself to wander for seven years with seven tight irons around his limbs and neck. It seems likely that by this time the majority of fettered pilgrims seen at the great shrines had chosen to add thus to the discomforts of their penance.

  Those who had been sentenced by the Inquisition were not chained and fettered, but they were required to wear on their back and front two large crosses made of saffron-coloured cloth, and there were severe penalties for tearing them off. It is quite probable that these crosses subjected the wearer to scourging at each of the shrines he visited. Certainly the crosses were regarded as the most humiliating part of the penance. Those who wore them were ostracized by their fellow-travellers and excluded from inns and hospices, in spite of the orders of the inquisitors that they should be sheltered like any other pilgrim. Some complained that they found it hard to marry off their daughters, others that the stigma attached to wearing crosses lasted for many years after the pilgrimage had been completed. Even those convicted by civil courts found that the worst part of the sentence was the public humiliation which accompanied it. In the fifteenth century a rich man like Joos Pieterseune, who was ordered to Rocamadour for involuntary manslaughter, could do the journey in six months; but his conviction was quashed on appeal on the ground that judicial pilgrims were known as amadours and generally regarded as men of evil repute, a stigma which, it was felt, the unfortunate Pieterseune did not deserve.

  The problems of enforcing compulsory pilgrimages were considerable. Successful evasions must have been frequent though it is, on the whole, the unsuccessful ones which are recorded. Convicts who pleaded illness were required to prove it. Bodechon de Bourges, who was convicted by the magistrates of Namur in 1413, produced a posse of witnesses to testify that he could scarce
ly lift himself from his bed. He was allowed to put off his departure for forty days, but six months later he was still in Namur trying to borrow the money to buy his release. Victims of the Inquisition were constantly being reminded of their unperformed pilgrimages, and in 1251 the inquisitors of Carcassonne issued a general warning of the awful consequences of leaving a pilgrimage unperformed. Corporations which punished their members by despatching them to distant shrines often had some difficulty in enforcing their sentences. Much of the acta of the university of Louvain for the year 1448 are taken up with the transgressions of one Jan Vogel van der Elst, a servant of the mayor of Louvain who had conceived a virulent hatred of the university, and had repeatedly assaulted its students and dignitaries. For this he was ordered by the rector of the university to go on a pilgrimage to Milan cathedral. Vogel’s reaction was to insult the rector loudly, and declare that he would not go to Milan unless he was tied to a cart and driven there by force. He then stood outside the university hall as the officers of the university passed by, and shouted ‘Where is the cart? Is it not ready yet?’ Vogel was ultimately arrested for his contumacy and was only released on the understanding that future assaults on students would result in his execution or perpetual banishment. He did not, however, go to Milan.

  Many offences for which pilgrimages were imposed were capital offences, and this brief period of exile was often a merciful alternative to execution. When Lambert de Soif was sent to Rome in May 1515 for seizing his cousin by the hair and threatening his wife with a razor, the sentence was described as a ‘merciful one, preferable in the circumstances to the full rigour of the law’. If the malefactor failed to perform the pilgrimages the full rigour of the law might be enforced. Pierot the Porter, who left Namur for Santiago after murdering a lawyer in 1405, turned back a few miles outside the town and settled in a quiet suburb. When he was discovered there a few weeks afterwards, he was immediately beheaded. In France, many of the letters of pardon which the crown habitually granted to convicted felons were made conditional on the performance of a pilgrimage. In 1393, for example, two cut-throats of Azay le Brulay (Poitou) escaped death by carrying a candle to Le Puy and buying a hundred masses for the soul of their victim. In urban communities, where evading a sentence was easier to detect, the simplest method of enforcing it was to refuse to let the evil-doer return unless he could prove that he had performed his pilgrimage. At Liège, failure to perform the relatively mild pilgrimage to Walcourt meant banishment for a year; to Vendôme, for two years; to Rocamadour, for four, and to Santiago, for five. When he returned, the convict sent his certificates ahead of him and waited outside the boundaries of the city until the magistrates signified that they were content to readmit him.

  These certificates or ‘testimonials’ were first devised by the Inquisitors of Languedoc, who required their penitents to collect signed documents from the clergy of the shrines they visited, proving that they had been there. Like other Inquisitorial practices, they were quickly adopted by secular judges. Those of Namur, for example, ordered criminals to bring back a certificate ‘showing that they had visited the said places in person without any kind of dishonesty or deceit, and without evading any of the obligations traditionally fulfilled by pilgrims.’ On his return, the penitent showed his testimonials in court, and collected a certificate of acquittal for which he might have to pay a small fee.

  The judicial pilgrimage had always had its opponents. Even in the heyday of the chained pilgrim, there was a substantial body of opinion which doubted how effective it was in reforming the sinner. This view is rehearsed in a capitulary of Charlemagne in 789 and it became in the following century part of the orthodoxy of reforming churchmen such as Rabanus Maurus. Not only did compulsory pilgrimages endanger the salvation of the sinner, but they also set loose upon the roads large numbers of dangerous criminals who terrorized peaceful travellers. This was the reason for Charlemagne’s complaint against them in 789, and it remained a serious problem in later periods. In the thirteenth century Jacques de Vitry had occasion to complain of the hordes of ‘wicked, impious, sacrilegious, thieves, robbers, murderers, parricides, perjurers, adulterers, traitors, corsairs, pirates, whoremongers, drunkards, minstrels, jugglers, and actors’, who were unleashed on the Holy Land by the courts of Europe. A growing appreciation of the force of these arguments is found in writers of the later middle ages. Thomas Aquinas reflected the views of most of his contemporaries when he protested against the imposition of pilgrimages on women or by ordinary parish priests. At the beginning of the fourteenth century Durand de Saint-Pourcain held that their moral effects were disastrous and that they were too often imposed by ignorant parish priests. He proposed to restrict the power of inflicting them to bishops and confessors appointed by them, but in practice pilgrimages were rarely imposed by any spiritual authority after the middle of the fourteenth century. After the gradual decay of the Inquisition of Languedoc the secular courts of northern Europe were the only tribunals which still had recourse to them. This they continued to do until some decades after the Reformation. It was a source of some surprise to count Mansfeld, Philip II’s lieutenant in the Low Countries, to discover in 1592 that convicts were still being sent to Rocamadour and Santiago, in spite of the bitter civil war raging in France. But penances of this kind were not spiritual exercises. For most sinners of the later middle ages the decision as to whether to undertake a pilgrimage was one which the Church was content to leave to their own consciences.

  Notes

  1 Legal distinctions: Peter of Joncels quoted in Du Cange, Glossarium (OS), vol. vi, p. 269. Cf. Alfonso X, Siete Partidas, I. xxiv. 1, vol. i (1), fol. 151vo.

  Early penitential exiles: Jerome, Ep. CXLVII, vol. iii, pp. 312–29. Symeon Metaphrastes, Vita S. Marciani, XIX, PG. cxiv. 452–3 (late). Cf. Kötting (3), p. 330.

  Irish penitentials: G. Le Bras, ‘Pénitenciels’, DTC. xii. 1162–5. Vogel (2), pp. 44–8, 53–6.

  2 Public and private penance: Raymond of Peñafoaforte, Summa, III. xxxiv. 6, Avignon, 1715, pp. 642–3; cf. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III (suppl.), q. xxviii, a. 3, vol. xii, p. 53. Canterbury Tales, p. 572.

  Especially used for clerics or noblemen: Peter Damian, Vita S. Romualdi, VII. 37–8, Aa. Ss. Feb., vol. ii, p. 112; on Damian’s own sentences, Lib. VII, Ep. XVII, PL. cxliv. 455; Opusc. V, PL. cxlv. 98. Bernold, Chron., MGH. SS. v. 428, 429–30 (Thierry).

  3 and for scandalous crimes: Rigaud, Reg. Visitationum, pp. 164, 325–6, 344, 425–6, 477, 579, 665. On Cologne synod of 1279, Hefele, vol. vi, p. 262. Raynald, Annales, An. 1319 (no. 27), vol. v, p. 123 (Roger da Bonito). Clement V, Reg. 7503, Rome, 1884–92, vol. vi, pp. 420–1 (Nogaret).

  Eleventh-century penitential practice: C. Vogel, ‘Les rites de la pénitence publique aux xe et xie siècles’, Mélanges offerts a Réné Crozet, ed. P. Gallais and Y. J. Riou, Poitiers, 1966, vol. i, pp. 137–44. H. E. J. Cowdrey, The Cluniacs and the Gregorian Reform, Oxford, 1970, pp. 122–8, points out the importance of this for the expansion of monasticism. Cf. H. E. Mayer, Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, Stuttgart, 1965, pp. 31–4.

  4 Penitential pilgrims of eleventh century: Helgaud, Vita Roberti Regis, XXX, RHF. x. 114–15. Orderic Vitalis, Hist. Eccl, III, ed. Chibnall, vol. ii, p. 10 (Robert of Normandy). Encomium Emmae, II. 40, ed. A. Campbell, Camden Soc., 3rd. series, vol. lxxii, London, 1949, p. 36 (Canute). Fulk Nerra: Glaber, Hist., II. 4, p. 32. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, III. 235, pp. 292–3. On the complex chronology of his pilgrimages, see K. Norgate, England under the Angevin kings, London, 1887, vol. i, pp. 192–6.

  Penitential pilgrimage as judicial exile: Canones sub Edgaro Rege, X, in MC. xviii. 514 (attribution incorrect). Poenit. S. Columbani, B. 1, in Bieler (ed.), Irish penitentials, p. 98. Cone. Mâcon quoted in Gratian, CJC., vol. ii, p. 195, but this canon is not in MC. M. Bateson (ed.), ‘A Worcester cathedral book of ecclesiastical collections made c. 1000 A.D.’, EHR., x (1895), p. 722; cf. Ivo of Chartres, Deer., XV. 187, col. 897. Twelfth-century preacher: Liber S. Jacobi, I. 17,
p. 154 (‘in peregrinatione propter transgressiones suas a sacerdote suo quasi in exilio mittitur’).

  5 ‘By praying to the saints…’: De Virtut. S. Martini, IV. praefat., p. 649; cf. I. 40, p. 606.

  Chains break: Ibid., I. 23, p. 600 (Willichar). Vita S. Nicetii, XIII–XIV, MGH. Merov., iii. 523–4 (St. Nizier). Gregory of Tours, Vitae Patrum, VIII. 6, p. 697 (Agilulf). Gesta Sanctorum Rotonensium, III. 8, Aa. Ss. OSB., vol. vi, pp. 219–21 (A.D., 868–875).

  6 Salvation found at particular shrines: Vita S. Austregisili, IX, MGH. Merov. iv. 205 (Mestrille). Gregory of Tours, In Gloria Confessorum, p. 803n. (interpolated) on penitent directed to Moutiers-St.-Jean; the story is based on Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Joannis Reomanensis, XX, MGH. Merov. iii. 517 (saec. ix). Mirac. S. Bavonis, III. 4, Aa. Ss. OSB., vol. ii, p. 414. Other ninth-century examples: Alcuin, Vita Willibrordi, XVII, MGH Merov. vii. 136; Mirac. S. Floriani, VIII, MGH. Merov. iii. 70; Wilfrid Strabo (attrib.), Mirac. S. Galli, XXXIV, Aa. Ss. OSB., vol. ii, pp. 264–5; Vita S. Godegrandi, II. 19, Aa. Ss. Sept., vol. i, p. 771. Confessors impose specific pilgrimages: Poenit. Ps.-Egberti, IV. 6, in Wasserschleben (ed.), Bussordnungen, p. 333. Vita et Mirac. S. Frodo-berti, XXXI-XXXII, PL. exxxvii. 616–17 (Ratbert). Aimoin, Vita S. Abbonis, X, cols. 398–9 (‘poenitentiae voto, ante omnes fere in hoc tempore Galliae habitatores coeptum’). Sins erased: Vita S. Egidii, XXXV–XXXVI, An. Boll., viii (1889), pp. 117–18 (attrib. to Fulbert of Chartres). Mirac. S. Mariae Magdalenae Viziliaci Facta (ed. alt.), III, CCH. (Paris), vol. ii, p. 292 (no. 1). Liber S. Jacobi, II. 2, pp. 262–3. Mirac. S. Benedicti, IX. praefat., pp. 357–8 (Hughes de Ste. Marie).