Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion

by Jonathan Sumption

  Some early indulgences expressly require the pilgrimage church to offer hospitality to visitors. The indulgence which Urban II conceded to St. Nicholas of Angers in 1096 included a condition that on the day of the indulgence the monks were to feed a hundred poor people. Most monasteries, even when their duties were not explicitly laid down in this fashion, offered food and shelter as the Benedictine rule required. This might impose a serious strain on the abbey’s finances, as it did at the mountainous Catalonian shrine of Montserrat in the fourteenth century. There, the preacher would remind pilgrims of the difficulty and expense of carting provisions up the steep mountain tracks to the church, and ask them to bring their own food unless they were poor or disabled. Another mountain shrine, Notre-Dame de Rocamadour, was driven deeply into debt by the number of pilgrims; in 1181, when the church was at the pinnacle of its fame, the monks were obliged to pawn the tapestries and curtains to moneylenders of the town. An inquest into the revenues of the abbey of Mont-St.-Michel in 1338 established that the monks received 1,100 livres a year in offerings, about one-sixth of their total income. But far from bringing joy to the abbot, the mass of pilgrims was a source of deep anxiety ‘for the abbey is situated on the borders of Normandy, Brittany, Anjou and Maine, wherefore it receives enormous numbers of pilgrims passing to and fro. Many of them have to be accommodated in the monastery and this costs the monastery so much that other equally important charges on our revenues have to be neglected.’

  The nearest approach to a balance sheet comes from Canterbury, where a number of account books survive. These show that the allowance made to the cellarer, who was the official responsible for entertaining pilgrims, rose and fell in tune with the income from offerings. In 1220, the year of the translation of St. Thomas to the choir, the offerings received rose from £227 to £1,142, while the expenses of the cellarer rose from £422 to £1,155. Pilgrims, of course, did not account for all the cellarer’s expenses, and if testamentary bequests made by pilgrims are taken into account, there was probably a small surplus in both years. But as popular interest in St. Thomas declined, the surplus became a deficit. The four Canterbury Jubilees of the late middle ages drew large crowds of pilgrims but the great and wealthy stayed away. The declining social status of pilgrims was a general phenomenon of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and its immediate effect was to reduce the income from offerings while increasing the number of visitors who needed free food and board. The first Jubilee, in 1320, brought in offerings of £671, but left the monastery with an overall deficit of £83. Thereafter the years in which offerings were highest were usually years of deficit.

  Even the Vatican basilica, without doubt the most visited church in Europe over the whole mediaeval period, was sometimes in deficit. At the end of the twelfth century the pope received three-quarters of the offerings made at the high altar and the confessio of St. Peter. Out of this came the cost of several thousand candles burned every day in the basilica, of repairs to the fabric, and of the stipends of non-canonical priests. Innocent III, according to his biographer, devoted all that was left to alms for the poor and hospitality for pilgrims. Alexander IV, half a century later, devoted a quarter of his share of the offerings to alms. Innocent was indeed extremely sensitive to accusations of profiteering. In 1212 he announced to pilgrims gathered in Rome that all the offerings received at St. Peter’s were devoted to the maintenance of the basilica and the entertainment of its visitors and he asked them to publicize the fact in their own countries. It seems unlikely that pilgrims to St. Peter’s were a significant source of revenue before the age of the great Jubilee indulgences.

  The clergy of the sanctuaries were undoubtedly ambitious. However, what they wanted was status rather than money. Status for themselves, and above all for their patron saint. This was more than mere vainglory, for a great deal of ecclesiastical power ultimately rested on status. The possession of St. Peter’s body was cited as the basis of Rome’s spiritual authority from Leo I in the fifth century to Innocent IV in the thirteenth. Jerusalem itself had achieved metropolitan status in the fifth century owing largely to its importance as a pilgrimage centre. In 969 Benevento was erected into an archbishopric with twelve diocesan bishops ‘because it is a holy place where St. Bartholomew lies and is therefore entitled to much greater respect than it has hitherto received.’ Salerno became the seat of an archbishop after acquiring the remains of St. Matthew.

  The church of Santiago was perhaps more successful than any other in making use of its pilgrimage as a means of ecclesiastical aggrandisement. In the tenth century its bishops were already employing the title ‘bishops of the apostolic see’ and signing themselves ‘servus servorum domini’ after the fashion of the popes. These pretensions were encouraged by the kings of León, who were claiming the imperial dignity for themselves and may have hoped that Santiago would become to them what Rome was to the German emperors. As the fame of St. James expanded, so did the ambitions of his bishops. The episcopal official who greeted the papal legate at Santiago in c. 1065 had been instructed to give him no greater honour than he received in return. The incident is said to have inspired in pope Alexander II the fear that Santiago ‘would shortly assume a dignity appropriate to its possession of the body of an apostle; that is, that it would dominate the churches of the Spanish kingdoms by virtue of St. James, just as Rome dominates other kingdoms by virtue of St. Peter.’ Whether Alexander or his successors ever entertained any such fear is open to doubt, but these words precisely describe the ambitions of the formidable Diego Gelmirez. Gelmirez, who was consecrated as bishop in 1101 and completed the existing cathedral, went as far along this path as he dared. He called his canons cardinals, gave them mitres, and enforced surplices, copes, and shaving on them (formerly they had entered the church booted and spurred and with three days’ growth of beard). Finally, in 1120, he persuaded an unwilling pope to erect Santiago into a metropolitan see. Three centuries before, Santiago had not even been the seat of a bishop.

  The offerings at Santiago must have been considerable, but the active promotion of the pilgrimage by successive bishops and archbishops cannot be explained by offerings alone. Ecclesiastical status was their constant obsession, and they spent their offerings on a visible symbol of their status, the superb cathedral of St. James. In doing this they exemplified the ambitions of almost every sanctuary in Europe. In financial terms those who profited most from the pilgrimage to St. James were not the clergy but the citizens of Santiago. Their city, which had scarcely existed in the ninth century, was one of the major entrepôts of Spain in the twelfth. The camino de Santiago became a thriving commercial highway. In 1130 a merchant train carrying silver worth 22,000 marks was attacked by robbers at Padrón. Carrión de los Condes is now a wretched little town, dusty and decayed, but eight hundred years ago it was a station on the road to Santiago, described in the Guide for Pilgrims as ‘industrious and prosperous, rich in bread and wine and every kind of meat’. This was the true revolution worked by the rise of a great sanctuary, and many travellers must have agreed with the German mathematician Hieronymus Munzer, who left Santiago in 1494 with the reflection that its citizens were ‘fat as pigs and slothful at that, for they have no need to cultivate the soil when they can live off the pilgrims instead.’

  Notes

  1 ‘A young man of low …’: Guibert, De Pignoribus, I. 2, col. 621.

  2 Normans in England: Eadmer, Vita Anselmi, I. 30, p. 51 (Lanfranc). Gesta Abbatum S. Albani, ed. H. T. Riley, RS., London, 1876–9, vol. i, p. 62. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, V. 265, pp. 421–2.

  Elevation: Bede, Eccl. Hist., IV. 30, pp. 442–4 (Cuthbert). Delehaye (8), pp. 184–5. Kemp, pp. 37–40.

  3 Relics of Brogne: De Virtut. S. Eugenii Bronii Ostensis, I–VI, MGH. SS. xv. 647–9. On the date, G. Morin, ‘De translatione S. Eugenii’, An. Boll., v (1886), p. 386.

  Udalric: Aa. Ss. May, vol. i, p. 283. Fontanini (ed.), Codex, vol. i, pp. 2–3. Delehaye (8), pp. 185–9.

  Urban’s canon
izations: Aa. Ss. June, vol. i, p. 249; Fontanini (ed.), Codex, vol. v, p. 9. On abbot of Quimperlé, Aa. Ss. OSB., vol. ix, p. 109.

  4 Long delays: Kemp, pp. 86–9 (Becket). MD. Thes., vol. iii, col. 1851 (Edmund). Toynbee, pp. 149–205 (Louis). Lit. Cant., vol. iii, pp. 400–1 (Winchelsea).

  ‘It is my belief …’: H-F. Delaborde (ed.), ‘Fragments de l’enquête faite à St.-Denis en vue de la canonisation de S. Louis’, Mems. de la Soc. de l’Histoire de Paris, xxiii (1896), p. 62.

  Lots drawn: Reginald, De B. Cuthberti Virtut., XIX, CXV, pp. 38–9, 260. William, Mirac. S. Thomae, II. 82, p. 244.

  5 Wulfstan ‘the new saint’: Mirac. S. Wulfstani, I. 37, p. 137.

  Cult of St. Thomas sporadic: William of Canterbury, Mirac. S. Thomae, III. 33, 48, pp. 290, 304. Philip, Mirac. S. Frideswidae, LXXVI, p. 583 (c. 1190). Caesarius, Dial. Mirac., VIII. 69, vol. ii, p. 139 (c. 1223).

  Ralph of Coggeshall, Chron. Anglicanum, ed. J. Stephenson, RS., London, 1875, pp. 202–3 (Bromholm). Lit. Cant., vol. iii, pp. 26–8 (fourteenth-century miracle). On Canterbury Jubilees, Foréville, pp. 41, 47–81.

  6 Fame of miracles: Mirac. S. Eutropii, IV. 29–30, III. 19, pp. 742–3, 740. Guibert, De Vita Sua, III. 20, pp. 228–30 (canons of Laon). Mirac. S. Egidii, Vni–IX, MGH. SS. xii. 320–1.

  Libelli miraculorum: Delehaye (6). Sulpicius’s influence can be seen in Benedict, Mirac. S. Thomae, II. 1, IV. 58, pp. 119–20, 224–5; and in Mirac. S. Fidis, I. 34, pp. 84–5.

  Duty to record miracles: Benedict, op. cit., VI. 4, pp. 269–70. MS. Gloucester cathedral 1, fols. 171–171vo (Reading monk).

  7 Efficacy of saints compared: Chron. Evesham, p. 47. William of Canterbury, II. 75, pp. 238–9.

  Rivals of Canterbury: Reginald, De B. Cuthberti Virtut., CXII, CXIV–CXVI, CXXVI, pp. 251–2, 256, 260–1, 271. Philip, Mirac. S. Frideswidae, XII, LXXVI, pp. 570, 583. MS. Gloucester cathedral 1, fols. 174–174vo, cf. fol. 173 (Reading). Advertisement: Becket Materials, vol. ii, p. 49, vol. vii, pp. 564–6.

  Kajava (ed.), Etudes, p. 98 (Fécamp). Carmen de translations S. Bartholomaei, p. 574: loosely translated, ‘everyone knows that Rome alone has the tomb, Rome alone has the body; deceit will not benefit Benevento; a curse on Benevento’. Rémy, p. 122 (Liège). Sachet, vol. i, pp. 519–23 (Lyon).

  8 Packaging: Translatio SS. Chrysanti et Dariae, IX, Aa. Ss. OSB., vol. v, p. 613 (Prüm). Baraut (ed.), Llibre Vermeil, pp. 28–9 (Montserrat). Elton, p. 16 (Canterbury. A hostile report).

  9 Decoration of sanctuaries: John Chrysostom, In Ep. II ad Corinthios, XXVI, PG. lxi. 582; E. Bishop, Liturgica Historica, Oxford, 1918, pp. 25–6. On the Holy Sepulchre, Eusebius, Vita Constantini, III. 40, ed. I. A. Heikel, Eusebius Werke, vol. i, Leipzig, 1902, pp. 94–5; Antoninus, Itin., XVIII, p. 171. On Nola, Paulinus of Nola, Carmina, XIV. 98–103, p. 49. On St.-Denis, Suger, De Admin. Sua, pp. 192–3, 200–1; Vita Lodovici VI, X, p. 54. On Canterbury, An Italian relation of England about the year 1500, ed. C. A. Sneyd, Camden Soc., vol. xxxvii, London, 1847, pp. 30–i; Letters and papers, vol. xiii (2), p. 49 (no. 133), cf. vol. xiii (2), p. 155 (nos. 401–2).

  10 Expensive shrines criticized: Guibert, De Pignoribus, I. 4, IV. 1, cols. 626, 666. Bernard, Apologia ad Guillelmum, XII. 28, in Opera, ed. J. Leclercq and H. M. Rochais, vol. iii, Rome, 1963, pp. 104–6.

  11 Reliquaries as cash reserves: Glaber, Hist., I. 4, p. 11 (Cluny). William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, V. 271, p. 432. Dugdale (ed.), Monasticon, vol. iv, p. 44 (Reading). See Duby, p. 52.

  Saints thought of as rich: Theofrid, Flores Epitaphiorum, II. 6, cols. 356–7. Reginald, De B. Cuthberti Virtut., LXVIII, p. 140. The Life of Christina of Markyate, ed. C. H. Talbot, Oxford, 1959, p. 186.

  Accounts of miracles available at shrines: Mirac. S. Michaelis, p. 880 (saec. xi). Lit. Cant., vol. iii, p. 398.

  12 ‘Pictures of their eyes …’: Theodoret of Cyrus, Graecarum Ajfectionum Curatio, VIII, col. 1032.

  Ex-votos: Examples can be found in almost every miracle collection. Those quoted are from: Mirac. S. Martialis, LI, pp. 433–4; Miracles de Rocamadour, I. 25, III. 11, pp. 116, 288–9; Thomas of Monmouth, Mirac. Willelmi Norwicensis, V. 19, pp. 210–11; Wright (ed.), Letters, pp. 143, 221, 224 (monastic commissioners). William, Mirac. S. Thomae, VI. 12, p. 424; Benedict, Mirac. S. Thomae, II. 60, 64, III. 36, pp. 105, 109, 143.

  13 Unusual ex-votos: Mirac. S. Eadmundi (MS. Bodley 240), I, p. 367. Alfonso X, Cantigas, CCXXXII, vol. ii, pp. 321–2 (Villalcazar). Miracles de Rocamadour, III. 16, p. 297.

  Ruptured chains: Gregory of Tours, Vitae Patrum, VIII. 6, p. 697. Guide, VIII, p. 54.

  Problem of disposal: Mirac. S. Mariae Magdalenae Magdalenae Viziliaci Facta, IX, in Faillon (ed.), Monuments inédits, vol. ii, p. 739. Instructions of Santiago guardians in Lopez-Ferreiro, vol. iv, p. 67 (appendix XXV). Offering obligatory: Mirac. S. Fidis, I. 18–20, pp. 54–8. On Fitz-Eisulf, Benedict, Mirac. S, Thomae, IV. 64, pp. 229–34; William, Mirac. S. Thomae, II. 5, pp. 160–2; Rackham, pp. 99–100. On St. Denis of Montmartre, Eugenius III, Reg. CXCIV, PL. clxxx. 1242, as corrected by Paulus (2), vol. i, p. 163.

  14 Offering as tribute money: Odo, Vita S. Geraldi, II. 17, col. 680 (‘decem solidos ad proprium collum dependentes, tamquam supplex servus domino suo quasi censum deferred’). Cartulaire de S. Vincent du Mans, no. 342, ed. R. Charles and M. d’Elbenne, Le Mans, 1913, cols. 204–205; see Du Cange, Glossarium, vol. ii, p. 257. Notae Sangallenses, MGH. SS. i. 71 (‘se perpetualiter S. Sepulchri servitio dicavit’). On the Breisgau pilgrims, Annales Marbacenses, p. 75 (‘perpetuo servicio sancti Sepulchri devoverunt’). Aragonese gifts to St. James: Celestine III, Reg., CLXXXI, PL. ccvi. 1067 (‘quasi tributa quae Deo et beato Jacobo apostolo in Hispania… exsolvenda’). On the Cologne reliquary, P. E. Schramm, Denkmale der deutsche Könige und Kaiser, Munchen, 1962, pp. 187–8, and pl. 192. Mirac. S. Egidii, XIII, An. Boll., ix (1880), p. 396 (Raymond Ferraldo).

  15 Santiago offerings ritual: in Lopez Ferreiro, vol. v, pp. 64–7 (appendix XXV).

  Canterbury accounts: Woodruff, pp. 16–18. Savine, p. 103. Bury St. Edmunds receipts: Chron. Buriensis, in Arnold (ed.), Memorials, vol. iii, p. 32.

  St.-Trond: Gesta Abbatum S. Trudonensium, I. 9–12, vol. i, pp. 15–22.

  16 St. Stephen’s arm at Châlons: GC. x. 129–30.

  Bollezeel: Mirac. B. V. M. in Bollezeel, in Anecdota Gielemans, III. 20, pp. 395–6.

  17 St.-Gilles: text of petition in Bondurand (OS), pp. 44–4.

  Partition of offerings: RHF. vi. 582 (Tours). Morand, pp. 220–2 (Ste.-Chapelle).

  Disputes at Rome: in general, Fabre. On the incident of 1350, Rodocanachi, p. 163. For disputes in other churches see, e.g., Hist. Compostellana, III. 9, p. 489; Chartulary ofBridlington, pp. 448–9; Sachet, vol. i, pp. 305–7, 502–3.

  18 Papal share: Wily’s instructions in CPR. Letters, vol. xi, p. 685. On Eton indulgence, The Official correspondance of Thomas Bekyngton, ed. G. Williams, RS., vol. ii, London, 1872, pp. 299–303. Lit. Cant., vol. iii, pp. 340, 344–5 (Canterbury negotiations). See W. E. Lunt, Papal revenues in the middle ages, vol. i, N.Y., 1934, pp. 112–13,125–8; L. Celier, Les dataires du xve siècle et les origines de la daterie apostolique, BEFAR., vol. ciii, Paris, 1910, pp. 154–60.

  19 Walsingham refounded: Dickinson, pp. 10–11.

  Expenses against offerings: Urban II, Reg. CLXXV, col. 448. Baraut (ed.), Llibre Vermeil, pp. 34–5 (Montserrat). Robert of Torigny, Chron., vol. ii, pp. 99–100 (Rocamadour). Delisle (ed.), ‘Enquête’, pp. 367–8, 372 (Mont-St.-Michel). Cf. the pilgrims at Meaux in Yorkshire, who ‘gave little and cost much’, Burton, Chron. Mon. Melsa, vol. iii, pp. 35–6.

  Canterbury balance-sheet: Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, 9th. Report, London, 1883, p. 124. Woodruff, pp. 17–24, 26.

  20 Expenses at Vatican: Bull. Vat., vol. i, pp. 96–7, 130, 134–5, 139–41, 156–7. Gesta Innocentii III Papae, CXLIII, PL. ccxiv, introd., p. cxcix. Pilgrims bring status: MC. xix. 19 (Benevento). IS(2)., vii. 363 (Salerno).

  21 Pretensions of S
antiago: Hist. Compostellana, I. 44–5, II. 3, 18, pp. 93–4, 255–8, 296. On the attitude of the kings of León, H. J. Hüffer, La idea imperial Española, Madrid, 1933, p. 20. Until 1095 the bishop’s seat was technically at Iria.

  Wealth of Santiago citizens: on silver-train of 1130, Hist. Compostellana, I. 18, p. 505. Guide, III, p. 7. Itinerarium Hieronymi Monetarii, ed. L. Pfandl, Revue Hispanique, xlviii (1920), p. 94.

  CHAPTER XI

  THE JOURNEY

  Preparations

  ‘He that be a pilgrim’, declared the London preacher Richard Alkerton in 1406, ‘oweth first to pay his debts, afterwards to set his house in governance, and afterwards to array himself and take leave of his neighbours, and so go forth.’

  His first act, if he was a man of substance, was to make his will. Pilgrims enjoyed the special privilege of disposing of their property by will, a privilege which, until the late middle ages, was accorded to very few. As well as naming his heirs, the will would deal with such matters as the administration of his property in his absence and the length of time which was to elapse before he should be presumed dead. In Normandy local custom required every landowner to make a will which would automatically be executed if he did not announce his return within a year and a day. Some pilgrims also made private agreements with their wives as to how long they should leave before remarrying. The Church did what it could to ensure that the terms of a pilgrim’s will were respected. In Spain, for instance, it made his companions responsible for looking after his personal effects. Failing companions, the local clergy were expected to keep them for a year and a day and, if they remained unclaimed, to sell them and apply the money to endowing masses for the repose of the dead pilgrim’s soul.