Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion

by Jonathan Sumption

  Perhaps the most curious reminders of past miracles were the ex-voto offerings which are still a characteristic feature of modern pilgrimages in Italy and France. These were offered by pilgrims to commemorate a miraculous cure, and were usually wax models of whatever part of the body had been healed. Ex-voto offerings were also made by those who had not been cured but hoped to be. As early as the fifth century, visitors to eastern shrines left ‘pictures of their eyes or models of their feet or hands. Some are made of wood, others of gold. The Lord accepts them all, great or small…. These objects are kept as evidence of countless miraculous cures, mementoes offered by people who have recovered their health.’ Models of part of the human body were much the most common ex-voto offerings. A pilgrim cured of a continuous head-ache by St. Martial left a wax model of his head. Another, with an abscess on her nose, presented a silver nose to the church of Notre-Dame de Rocamadour. Occasionally, sick men sent full-size models of themselves to a local shrine in the hope of hastening their recovery. One Adam of Yarmouth sent a wax model as tall and broad as himself to Norwich cathedral in the late twelfth century, but extravagant gestures like this remained uncommon until the close of the middle ages. John Paston was one of the many well-to-do persons who sent wax models to Our Lady of Walsingham in the fifteenth century. Between 1535 and 1538 the commissioners for the dissolution of the monasteries constantly refer to the accumulation of such models in English sanctuaries. At Canterbury, gruesome relics of afflictions cured were to be found in the piles of ex-voto offerings. Henry of Maldon’s tapeworm was hung up in the cathedral as an ex-voto. Iselda of Longueville, in gratitude for the recovery of her hearing, made an offering of part of her hair. A shepherd from Durham left his withered finger on the altar in the hope that another would grow in its place. So many wax models hung in the church of Rocamadour that at least one pilgrim accused the monks of making them themselves. In general, however, such offerings were a useful advertisement for the healing powers of the church’s relics, and the clergy of the shrine were assiduous in collecting a memento of every cure. The guardian of St. Thomas’s shrine was dismayed when an archdeacon was relieved of a cherry-stone stuck in his nostril, but insisted on taking it home with him.

  Although the sick were responsible for the great majority of ex-voto offerings, in principle any pilgrim could make one. The crew of a Dunwich fishing boat which had been saved from a storm by St. Edmund hung up a wax anchor in his basilica. A knight who had lost his hawk took a wax hawk to the church of Our Lady at Villalcazar de Sirga. Guillaume Bataille, whose house had been preserved from a fire by the Virgin, brought a wax house to Rocamadour. The chains of prisoners liberated by the saint would normally be hung up in his basilica, and at sanctuaries where the saint specialized in this kind of miracle, almost all the ex-voto offerings on display were ruptured chains. This was so as early as the sixth century. A deacon of Tours returning from a visit to Rome in 590 was astonished by the number of chains hanging in the basilica of St. Victor at Marseilles. Later generations ceased to be amazed as knights delivered from the infidel and criminals released from prison became familiar sights on the roads of Europe. The author of the Guide for Pilgrims to Santiago counted several thousand iron chains in the church of St.-Léonard de Noblat, together with various contraptions in which prisoners had been trapped, injured, or tortured. The church of St. Foy at Conques was full of the chains of Spanish crusaders delivered from the Moors; indeed, in the extreme left-hand corner of the celebrated sculpted tympanum, an iron fetter can be seen hanging from a beam behind the figure of St. Foy. In a few sanctuaries the mounting pile of ex-voto offerings posed serious problems. Abbot Geoffrey of Vézelay (d. 1052) had a new set of altar rails made from the chains left behind by pilgrims. Other churches were more ruthless. At Santiago the guardians of the shrine had strict instructions not to accept any incense, bread, staves, crucifixes or ‘models made out of lead or wax’.

  Offerings

  Offerings were an essential ingredient in the rise of a great shrine because they paid for the imposing church which housed it. A pilgrim was expected to be as generous as his means would allow, and there were some who asserted that without an offering a pilgrimage was of no value. The authors of the miracle stories were foremost in putting forward this proposition. ‘Come to my shrine at Conques and give me all your gold bracelets’, St. Foy is said to have told the wife of Guillaume Taillefer, count of Toulouse. A woman who bought a valuable ring at Conques and failed to give it to St. Foy was cursed with fevers and nightmares. Another, who emerged from the basilica of Conques with her ring still on her finger, fell ill in a nearby hospice, and did not recover until the ring was removed by one of the guardians of the shrine and placed in the abbey treasury. Perhaps the most striking story in this vein was the tale of Sir Jordan Fitz-Eisulf, a knight of Pontefract who had known Thomas Becket in his lifetime. Some time after Becket’s death Fitz-Eizulf and his family were saved from the ravages of the plague by drinking ‘water of St. Thomas’. Fitz-Eisulf put aside four silver pieces to offer at St. Thomas’s shrine, but the pilgrimage was constantly postponed until St. Thomas reminded the knight of his obligations by allowing the plague to return and strike down his eldest son. In the stained glass of the Trinity Chapel at Canterbury Fitz-Eisulf can be seen recovering his health by pouring a great sackful of money onto the shrine. The notion of the offering as an essential part of the pilgrimage received the sanction of the canon law when the popes began to issue occasional indulgences conditional on an appropriate donation being made. An indulgence of 1147 offered remission of seven days to those who visited the chapel of St. Denis at Montmartre ‘and who bestow their alms upon the nuns according to the resources which God has given them.’

  Offerings were frequently described as ‘tribute money’, akin to the services which a vassal owed to his feudal lord. This interesting notion makes its appearance in the tenth century. In his life of St. Gerald of Aurillac, Odo of Cluny remarks that the holy man used to travel to Rome wearing ten silver shillings round his neck as a sign of his vassalage to St. Peter. A charter of 1090 describes an offering made by a pilgrim at the church of St. Vincent of Le Mans as a ‘censum donum’, i.e. feudal tribute. In the twelfth century it became a common practice to vow oneself a ‘perpetual serf’ of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Rudolf count of Pfullendorf did this in 1180 at the abbey of St.-Gall, before departing for the Holy Land. In June 1200 a large group of noblemen of the Breisgau renounced their property and proclaimed themselves ‘vassals of the Holy Sepulchre’ before they in turn left for Jerusalem. Several monarchs of the period, in declaring themselves vassals of God, offered tribute money to one of his saints. Thus the kings of Aragon described their annual gifts to the shrine of Santiago as the ‘tribute which is owed to God and the holy apostle James’. It is this sentiment which explains the iconography of the shrine of the three Magi at Cologne (plate IV. 6). This magnificent gold and jewelled shrine was the gift of the emperor Otto IV, and on the side of it Otto can be seen behind the figures of the three Magi, presenting his offering to Christ. It was characteristic of an age in which feudal imagery constantly intruded into the realm of spiritual practice. By making themselves the ‘serfs’ or ‘vassals’ of a saint, men supposed that they were placing themselves under the saint’s protection. ‘Know then that I am a serf of St. Gilles’, Raymond Feraldo told those who had captured him in the course of a local vendetta; ‘and therefore you have no power to do me ill except in so far as he shall permit.’

  The statutes of Santiago cathedral, dating from the end of the thirteenth century, contain an elaborate ritual for the presentation of offerings, and it is probable that similar formalities were observed at other churches. After the morning mass the sacristan and another priest stood behind the shrine with rods in their hands and with these they would tap each pilgrim on the back or on the arms or legs. A third priest, wearing a surplice, invited them to make an offering, addressing each pilgrim in his own language. Pilgrims were then a
sked whether their offering was for St. James, i.e. for alms and general purposes, in which case it was placed on the altar; or whether it was for the building fund, when it was placed on a side-table. This ceremony marked the moment at which the pilgrim ‘received’ his indulgence. Only cash or jewellery was accepted.

  The more important sanctuaries undoubtedly received very large sums in offerings. The exact amount varied from one year to the next and from sanctuary to sanctuary. Canterbury cathedral, for example, received an average of £426 a year in offerings between 1198 and 1213, although these were troubled years in the history of the monastery. In 1220, the year of the translation of St. Thomas to the choir, the receipts amounted to £1,142, nearly two-thirds of the total income of the monastery. Yet three centuries later, in 1535, offerings accounted for a mere £36. Our Lady of Walsingham, on the other hand, was still getting £260 a year from pilgrims in 1535. Even if one takes the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as the heyday of pilgrimages, it is clear that no English shrine could match the prosperity of Canterbury at the height of its fame. St. Edmund’s abbey, for example, received £142 a year from pilgrims at the end of the thirteenth century and was well satisfied with it.

  The best evidence of the wealth which even a short-lived pilgrimage could bring to a church, is to be found in the ambitious enterprises which were financed out of offerings. Under the rule of abbot Gontran (1034–55) miracles began to occur in the monastery of St.-Trond, near Liège. Gontran was a modest man, and he kept the details to himself, but his successor, Adelard, had influential connections and high ambitions for his abbey. He spread the news of the miracles abroad and skilfully promoted a pilgrimage. In time, so many pilgrims arrived at St.-Trond that the small village at the gates of the abbey was unable to contain them. ‘Almost every day’, wrote the chronicler of the abbey, ‘… they filled the roads for half a mile around. Across the fields and meadows came such a crowd of pilgrims, being nobles, freemen, and peasants of both sexes, that they had to be put up in tents, which made them look like a besieging army…. And offerings beyond belief piled on up the altar. Herds of animals were offered every day, palfreys, cows and bulls, pigs, lambs, and sheep. Linen, wax, bread, and cheese arrived, and above all purses full of money.’ So much money was given that in the evening several men were needed to collect it up and put it in a safe place, and a number of monks worked full-time as guardians of the shrine. Indeed, says the chronicler, the offerings exceeded all the other revenues of the abbey combined and continued to do so throughout abbot Adelard’s lifetime. The abbey was able to build itself powerful walls and retain a large body of knights and servants. It bought the seigneurial rights over most of the neighbouring towns and villages and acquired estates as far away as Laon. The monastery was completely rebuilt, and henceforth its servants and officials were treated with respect and fear wherever they went.

  The story of St.-Trond was repeated in countless churches and abbeys across the face of Europe. Many French churches made their fortunes in the religious revival of the eleventh century. The flood of relics which reached the Latin west after the fall of Constantinople in 1204 drew immense sums of money from pilgrims. The cathedrals of Amiens and Troyes were among the great churches built on their offerings. The bishop of Chalons-sur-Marne, who had acquired the elbow of St. Stephen in Constantinople, felt confident enough to pawn all his future revenues to pay for the completion of his cathedral ‘in view of the great numbers of people who will certainly come to venerate such a relic.’ The astonishing growth of devotion to the Virgin in the fifteenth century produced a very similar result. Shrines of the Virgin in isolated places like Avioth and Notre-Dame de l’Epine were suddenly covered by great flamboyant Gothic churches. ‘Do you see this spacious and beautiful church, perfect in its elegance and style (except for the tower which is being restored)?’ asked the parish priest of Bollezeel in Flanders of a pilgrim who visited it in 1483; ‘all this was paid for out of the offerings of pilgrims who appeared in droves, receiving consolation from our Blessed Lady and buying badges at the door.’

  But while offerings could bring unheard-of wealth to minor sanctuaries in the space of a few weeks, churches which depended too heavily on the generosity of pilgrims might see their revenues dry up as suddenly as they had first appeared. The most distinguished sanctuary to suffer this fate was the abbey of St.-Gilles in Provence. The abbey had seen its greatest days between about 1050 and 1250, when its position on one of the most frequented routes to Santiago had brought it very considerable wealth. Much of this wealth had been invested in magnificent buildings. But at the opening of the fifteenth century the roof had partly collapsed, the bell-tower was only half-completed, and the fabric of the church was in a dangerous state of disrepair. The rival armies of the Hundred Years War, the undisciplined bands of routiers, and a succession of savage epidemics, had combined to drive pilgrims onto roads passing well north of St.-Gilles. In 1417 the monks addressed a petition for help to the emperor Sigismund. In it they lamented that ‘the devotion of Christians to St.-Gilles has altogether ceased and the faithful no longer come to visit his tomb. In former times the great affluence of pilgrims was a wonderful boon to the abbey and town of St.-Gilles, but now the place is deserted and impoverished.’ The population of the town had fallen to eighteen taxable families and the number of monks to twenty-six. The abbey’s income, which had once stood at four thousand gold francs a year, was now so small that the monks could not afford food or winter clothing. The story of St.-Gilles exactly balances that of St.-Trond. Today the church is partially ruined, but the noble crypt and fine sculpted façade survive as monuments of its departed greatness.

  The clergy of a sanctuary were usually entitled to a share of the offerings, and this was a fertile source of disputes throughout the mediaeval period. Some churches were governed by statutes which laid down with admirable clarity exactly what should be done with the money. The basilica of St. Martin at Tours had an arrangement dating back to 832 whereby one-third of the offerings went to the canons, except for precious fabrics and jewellery, which were used to decorate the church. At the Sainte-Chapelle the proportions destined for the canons and those set aside for administrative expenses were meticulously laid down in the statutes of 1303. At many other churches, however, ill-defined rules based on obscure traditions and notions of fairness were a recurrent source of undignified squabbles. The Vatican basilica in particular was governed by rules of extreme complexity as a result of which the pope, the canons, and the chantors were regularly locked in combat. During the Jubilee of 1350, when exceptionally large sums were being received at the altars, the canons forced the door of the treasury and helped themselves to what they considered to be their due. The offerings at the Vatican were of special importance because of the large sums involved; in 1285–6, during the least prosperous period in the history of the Roman pilgrimage, a total of 1,097 livres was received in the basilica. But even where lesser sums were at stake the fate of the offerings was constantly left to be decided by argument and litigation.

  In principle the papacy was not entitled to any share of the receipts of churches outside Rome itself. Bulls of indulgence, like all bulls, were taxed when they left the papal chancery in accordance with a fixed scale of fees. But the sum raised was negligible and most of it went to the chancery officials. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, however, most sanctuaries came to depend heavily on papal indulgences and the papacy began to exploit them as a source of revenue. By the end of the fifteenth century the cost of a plenary indulgence of a year’s duration was an initial payment of four or five hundred gold florins and a proportion of the proceeds. This proportion was usually a third. The duties of Richard Wily, who became papal receiver in England in 1463, included the collection of one third of the proceeds of papal indulgences. Sometimes the papal share was a high as three-quarters. In May 1442 Eugenius IV granted an indulgence to Eton College which specified that a quarter of the offerings were to go to the fabric fund and three-quarters
to the papacy, nominally for the needs of the Holy Land. To ensure that the pope got his share, the bull provided that all the oblations were to be kept in a chest with two locks, the provost to have one key and the papal collector the other. The exact share claimed by Rome was always a matter to be negotiated between the pope and the church concerned. In the opening years of the sixteenth century, however, the papacy was beginning to price itself out of the market. The monks of Canterbury were unable to get a Jubilee indulgence in 1520 as they had done every fifty years since 1320, because they could no longer afford the cost. Their agent in Rome, Dr. Grig, was informed by cardinal Campeggio that ‘it is not possible that the pope will grant you this for no money or favour.’

  The clergy of the great sanctuaries were accused by their contemporaries as well as by later historians of exploiting pilgrims for their own avaricious purposes. There is some justice in this charge, but it has been considerably over-stated. A clear distinction should be drawn, first of all between the periods before and after the papal schism of the fourteenth century, and secondly between sanctuaries that were served by monks and those that were not. The papal schism, and in particular the pontificate of Boniface IX, marks the beginning of a century and a half of ruthless commercialization which radically altered the character of some of the more popular spiritual exercises of the late middle ages. The fifteenth century also saw a large increase in the number of new sanctuaries, almost all of which were served by the secular clergy, while some of the older monastic sanctuaries began to fall into decay. Some monastic sanctuaries, like Walsingham, were actually refounded as colleges of canons. Monks were not personally entitled to a share of the offerings, whereas secular canons almost invariably were. Monks, moreover, had extremely expensive obligations of hospitality which were, on the whole, respected throughout the mediaeval period. The receipts of a monastic sanctuary might therefore be enormous while the profits remained very modest; when the surplus had been swallowed up by the fabric fund, it was difficult to argue that the monks had made gross gains at the pilgrims’ expense.