Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion

by Jonathan Sumption

  Pilgrims were advised to bring mattresses and warm clothes with them. Frescobaldi, Gucci, and Sigoli, the three Italians who travelled together in 1384, brought several mattresses, a large number of shirts, a barrel of Malmsey wine, a Bible in several volumes, a copy of the Moralia of St. Gregory, a silver cup, ‘and other delicate things’. Santo Brasca, who did the journey in 1480, recommended a long thick coat, and also suggested some provisions which every pilgrim would need to supplement the ship’s meagre diet: a good supply of Lombard cheese, sausages, salted meat, white biscuits, sugar loaves, and sweetmeats. He should also bring some strong spices for curing indigestion and sea-sickness, ‘and above all a great quantity of fruit syrup, for this is what keeps a man alive in hot climates.’ William Wey agreed that the prudent pilgrim should arm himself with laxatives, restoratives, ginger, flour, figs, pepper, saffron, cloves, and other ‘confections and comfortaciouns’; it was essential to have half a dozen chickens in a cage ‘for ye schal have need of them many tymes.’ All travellers were agreed on the appalling quality of ship’s food. ‘Sum tymes’, declared William Wey, ‘ye schal have swych feble bred, wyne, and stynkyng water, that ye schal be ful fayne to eate of yowre owne.’

  The manner in which the food was served was not calculated to stimulate the appetite. At the sound of a trumpet the passengers separated into two groups, those whose fare included food, and those who were seeing to their own wants. Members of the first group then scrambled for a place at one of three small tables in the poop. After dinner another trumpet signalled for the diners to retire, while their place was taken by the ship’s officers and crew. Their food was even more frugal than that of the pilgrims, but it was served with great pomp on silver dishes, and their wine was tasted before it was offered to them. The galley was a scene of unending chaos. ‘Three or four hot-tempered cooks struggle with the food in a narrow passage lined with pots and pans and provisions, while a fire crackles away in the middle. Sounds of angry shouting issue forth from the room while, outside, crowds of passengers shout each other down in the effort to order special meals from the cooks.’

  After hunger and sleeplessness, boredom was the principal problem of the passengers. ‘Unless a man knows how to occupy himself, he will find the hours very long and tedious’, Felix Faber observed. Saxons and Flemings, ‘and other men of low class’, usually passed the days drinking. Others played dice or cards. Chess was very common. Communal singing went on in the background all the time. A small group of contemplative pilgrims gathered in a corner to read or pray. Others slept day and night. Many wrote travel diaries. A number of pilgrims, Faber remarked with contempt, amused themselves by running up and down the rigging, jumping up and down on the spot, or weight-lifting. ‘But most people simply sit about looking on blankly, passing their eyes from one group to another, and thence to the open sea.’ During Faber’s first pilgrimage, in 1480, the news of Turkish naval activity in the eastern Mediterranean caused the passengers to agree on measures of moral reform which would preserve them from capture. All games were forbidden, together with quarrels, oaths, and blasphemies. Disputes between the French and the Germans were to cease, and the bishop of Orléans promised to give up gambling. Extra litanies were added to the daily service.

  Sermons were the only organized recreation. The company who travelled with canon Casola in 1494 were fortunate enough to have amongst them one Francesco Tivulzio, ‘a holy friar with a wonderful library in his head’. Whenever the ship was becalmed, he would rise and deliver an elaborate and learned sermon, many hours in length. On the eve of the feast of St. John, he delivered a sermon on the merits of that saint in nine parts which lasted from 5 p.m. to sunset, and promised to deliver the rest of it on the following day. While waiting for permission to disembark at Joppa, the pilgrims listened to another sermon from friar Tivulzio on the allegorical significance of sailing ships, followed, a few hours later, by ‘a beautiful sermon on trade’. Such discourses, however, were not always received in rapturous silence. On Faber’s first pilgrimage his preaching was repeatedly interrupted by inane laughter, after which he refused to utter again. On his second pilgrimage the company was more polite, and he favoured them with regular sermons. Even so, a number of noblemen disliked his preaching, which Faber attributed to the fact that they practised the vices that he castigated, ‘and truth ever begets hatred.’

  The tedious serenity of a long sea voyage was occasionally disturbed by the appearance of pirates. The law of the sea required all passengers to assist in defending the ship, and although pilgrims were exempt from this obligation on account of their religious calling, they usually fought as hard as any. In 1408, a Venetian galley returning from the Holy Land was attacked by a Turkish pirate in the gulf of Satalia. The captain was found to have no cross-bows on board, and it was only after the pilgrims had beaten off their assailants in fierce hand-to-hand fighting that the ship escaped capture. In consequence, the Venetian senate enacted that a proper supply of bows, arrows, and lances was to be carried on every pilgrim-ship.

  The pilgrim’s troubles did not end with his arrival at Joppa. After the fall of Acre to the Arabs (1291), Joppa was the point at which almost all pilgrims disembarked, and it was here that they first encountered Arab officialdom. An English pilgrim who was there in 1345 described them as a group of ‘revolting and corpulent men with long beards’, mounted on tall horses on the foreshore. The master of the ship gave them a list of the pilgrims’ names and paid a toll of six Venetian gros a head. The column was then escorted by two Arab guides to Jerusalem. This pilgrim was fortunate to find the officials waiting for him. Usually it was necessary to send word to the Arab governor of Jerusalem, and until the arrival of his minions the travellers were incarcerated in three large underground cellars in the ruins of the town. Fifteenth-century pilgrims made a virtue of this necessity by attaching an indulgence of seven years to these comfortless cellars. The Franciscans of Jerusalem, who enjoyed considerable influence with the caliphate, did all they could to ease the pilgrim’s lot. At the beginning of the fifteenth century they even succeeded in taking over the administration of the tolls and the issue of visas. The prior of the Franciscans met the pilgrim-ship at Joppa, clutching a wadge of visas which he had obtained from the governor in advance. He collected the names of the pilgrims and took their money on the governor’s behalf before escorting them inland.

  In addition to the heavy toll which had to be paid before leaving Joppa, the pilgrim was required to pay the poll-tax which Islamic law imposed upon non-Moslems. This was exacted in Jerusalem, usually under the eyes of the governor himself. The English pilgrim of 1345 found the governor at the end of a large hall. In front of him scribes were seated on the floor recording the proceedings with huge quills. At that time the poll-tax stood at four gold florins, but a large sum from the party as a whole was accepted instead, for some of them had come without any money at all. However, the attitude of the Arab authorities was constantly changing. Only a year later, the governor threatened a penniless Franciscan pilgrim with flogging and imprisonment unless he could find someone to pay his poll-tax for him. As relations between Islam and the west deteriorated, the tolls and taxes demanded of pilgrims sharply increased. In 1440, a German pilgrim was asked for one gros from Joppa to Ramleh, one gros from Ramleh to Lydda, two gros at Emmaeus, and five at the gates of Jerusalem. Mariano da Sienna paid thirteen ducats to be exempted from all tolls, though even this did not spare him the payment of the poll-tax. The Dominican writer Guillaume Adam, an early advocate of economic warfare, calculated in 1317 that the sultan received thirty-five gros tournois every time a pilgrim visited the Holy Land, and he suggested to John XXII that this was a good reason for forbidding pilgrimages to the Holy Land altogether. ‘Pilgrims are the only people who freely assist the Saracens without having to fear excommunication.’

  The fact that pilgrims continued to visit the Holy Land in large numbers, in spite of the obstacles in their way, was largely due to the enterprise of the Venetians.
The ship-owners of Venice provided the earliest all-inclusive package tours. Galleys licensed by the republic left for Joppa every year as soon as possible after Ascension Day and returned in the autumn. When the demand for passages was high, two fleets sailed from Venice, one in March and one in September. The fare included food and board throughout the journey as well as in the Holy Land itself; the ship-owner, who was generally the master as well, paid all tolls and taxes, and met the cost of donkeys and pack-horses, guided tours of Jerusalem, and special expeditions to the Jordan. The popularity of these tours was entirely due to the high reputation of Venetian ship-owners. The stiff regulations of the serene republic enforced on them standards of safety and commercial morality which were uncommon in other ports. The anonymous English pilgrim of 1345 was advised by the inhabitants of Brindisi that it was unsafe to travel in any ship but a Venetian one. If he entrusted his life to a Sicilian or a Catalan master ‘he would undoubtedly enjoy eternal rest at the bottom of the sea.’ The ship-owners of Genoa and Pisa were suspected of selling their passengers into slavery at Arab ports. Francesco da Suriano gave four reasons for sailing from Venice in the latter half of the fifteenth century. It was so busy that a traveller never had to wait more than a few days before a ship sailed for his destination; the port was safe from pirates; the Venetian navy patrolled much of the route; and Venetian sailors were ‘the finest travelling companions in Christendom’. He might have added that the Venetian currency was among the most stable in the west, and it was the only one which passed for legal tender in Arab territories. ‘And so’, counselled Santo Brasca, ‘travel via Venice, for it is the most convenient embarkation point in the world.’

  The Venetian republic began to license and regulate the traffic of pilgrims at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The maritime statutes of 1229 laid down the maximum number of pilgrims which one ship could carry and the date of sailing. At that time there were two fleets per year. The first, which reached the Holy Land in time for Easter, was to return not later than 8th May, while the second was to leave Joppa before 8th November. Further regulations, in 1255, enjoined officers of the republic throughout the eastern Mediterranean to inspect every pilgrim ship calling at their ports and to impose heavy fines if they were overloaded. Mariners were required to swear an oath not to steal more than five shillings from the passengers. The rights and duties of the pilgrim were set out in a lengthy contract, which was signed by both parties. Some of these contracts have survived. The contract between Jan Aerts and the shipowner Agostino Contarini, signed in April 1484, is in every way typical. It permits the pilgrim to go ashore whenever the ship is in port, and to visit Mount Sinai instead of returning with the ship, in which case Contarini will refund ten ducats of his fare. Contarini undertakes not to take on too many passengers or too few crewmen and not to appropriate the pilgrim’s chattels if he dies during the journey; he promises to supply enough arms for twenty-five men in case of attack, and to accompany his passengers wherever they go in Jerusalem. The passengers may elect two of their number to oversee him. But there were no standard forms of contract, and pilgrims occasionally insisted on a special term. A contract dating from 1440 provides for a four-day stop at Nicosia, in Cyprus. William Wey advised English pilgrims to insist on a clause forbidding the owner to call at Famagusta on account of its unhealthy air. Once signed, the contract was lodged with a magistrate in Venice who would hear any disputes that arose. In 1497, for example, pilgrims protested that the space allotted to them was too small; port officials boarded the ship and resolved that each passenger should have one and a half feet of deck on which to sleep. On another occasion, pilgrims complained on their return to Venice that they had been manhandled and ill-fed and that their sleeping-quarters had been filled with cargo. Some of them had refused to return with the ship and had instead taken a passage from Beyrut in a Genoese vessel. The rest returned to Venice in an exceedingly hostile mood and, as they included a number of ‘great lords’, the Senate hastily sequestered the vessel and ordered the owners to refund the fares.

  Disputes had become so common by the early fifteenth century that in 1437 the republic took the extreme step of suspending the annual pilgrim fleets. When they were restored, in 1440, it was on a somewhat different footing. The republic decided to encourage the process by which the pilgrim trade was monopolized by a small group of reputable shipowners. The smaller shipowners were excluded by a new maritime statute forbidding the masters of pilgrim-ships to carry any cargo at all. The number of annual licences issued by the republic was severely restricted, and those were sold for huge sums by public auction. Should any particularly distinguished pilgrims request a passage to the Holy Land, the republic reserved the right to make an extra charge. Thus in 1446, when a number of noblemen arrived with letters of commendation from the duke of Burgundy, the licensees of the year were charged an extra six hundred ducats for the exclusive privilege of fleecing these august personages. For some years after 1440, the traffic was monopolized by the Loredano family. But within ten years they were facing powerful competition from a syndicate headed by the brothers Contarini. The Contarini conducted their business with a degree of professionalism hitherto unheard-of, employing commission agents as far away as the Netherlands. In the last three decades of the fifteenth century, Agostino Contarini enjoyed an unofficial monopoly of the pilgrim traffic which did not end until he was forced to retire in 1497 after frequent complaints of misconduct.

  But it was not misconduct which brought Agostino Contarini’s career to an end, so much as the disturbed state of the eastern Mediterranean and the increasingly hostile attitude of the Arab authorities in Jerusalem. The Turks attacked Rhodes four times in the 1440s doing considerable damage to the port. William Wey, returning from his first visit to the Holy Land in 1459, saw the ruin left after a recent Turkish descent, and heard stories of fearful atrocities. In 1480 another Turkish attack on Rhodes seriously disrupted the shipping routes. Although Venice had signed a treaty with the Porte only the year before, the pilgrim’s galley of that year had to take refuge for a week in Corfù. Twenty of the pilgrims decided to return to Venice in another ship, and Agostino Contarini had to refund ten ducats to each of them.

  In Palestine, toll-gates multiplied unceasingly and the Arab governor made unpredictable demands on the shipowners which they were unable, by the terms of the contract, to recover from the passengers. In 1479 Agostino Contarini had to pay peace money to Arab officials because another Venetian shipowner had given offence to them in the previous year. The anarchic state of Palestine made it impossible to bathe in the Jordan that year, and the passengers complained bitterly. In 1480 Contarini’s troubles began anew when the pilgrims of his galley demanded that he hire an armed escort to accompany them to the Jordan. They pointed out that a trip to the Jordan was included in the contract. Contarini replied that nothing in the contract obliged him to spend so much extra money and that if he hired an escort it would be at their own expense. The pilgrims finally left in high dudgeon, without an escort. A further dispute broke out when the Arabs forced Contarini to pay more than the customary fee for the hire of donkeys and pack-horses. Contarini refused to allow the pilgrims to re-embark for Venice until they had paid him a further ducat and a half to cover this unforeseen expense. Needless to say, he made large losses in both years.

  It was shortly after these disasters that the Venetian package tour was abandoned and the pilgrimage to the Holy Land suffered a prolonged decline. Pietro Casola learned from the Franciscans of Jerusalem in 1494 that no pilgrims had visited the city for several years. The fleet of 1499 had to be cancelled when war broke out between Venice and the Porte, and the licensee had to refund all the fares which he had received. The news of these events deterred the pilgrims from Italy and northern Europe who had once gathered in crowds for the Ascension Day sailing. In the early years of the sixteenth century the fleet, when it sailed at all, consisted of a single ship. In 1533 the French pilgrim Gréffm Affagart arrived in Venice t
o find that it had not sailed for many years. Interest in the Holy Land had declined, and it was no longer possible for enterprising shipowners to offer cheap passages by filling their decks with human cargo.

  Strange Customs and Foreign Languages

  It would be pleasant to learn that pilgrims returned from their travels with minds broadened by the experience of strange people and unfamiliar customs. But it would be the reverse of the truth. Such exchange of ideas as had occurred in the ‘dark ages’ of the west did not survive the onset of an age of mass-pilgrimage. All too often, those who lived on the pilgrimage roads regarded pilgrims as fair game to be plundered at will. The pilgrims in turn had little incentive to understand their hosts, and viewed them with that uncomprehending contempt which uneducated people commonly accord to foreigners. The impressions of French pilgrims in Spain are a case in point. So loathsome a race as the Basques, thought the author of the Guide for Pilgrims to Santiago, could only have originated in Scotland. After describing their national dress, he goes on to comment on their food and language in the following terms:

  ‘Not only are they badly dressed, but they eat and drink in the most disgusting way. The entire household, including servants, eat out of the same pot and drink from the same cup. Far from using spoons, they eat with their hands, slobbering over the food like any dog or pig. To hear them speaking, you would think they were a pack of hounds barking, for their language is absolutely barbarous. They call God Urcia; bread is orgui and wine ardum, while meat is referred to as aragui and fish araign. … They are in fact a most uncouth race whose customs are quite different from those of any other people. They have dark, evil, ugly faces. They are debauched, perverse, treacherous and disloyal, corrupt and sensual drunkards. They are like fierce savages, dishonest and untrustworthy, impious, common, cruel and quarrelsome people, brought up in vice and iniquity, totally devoid of human feeling…. They will kill you for a penny. Men and women alike warm themselves by the fire, revealing those parts which are better hidden. They fornicate unceasingly, and not only with humans…. That is why they are held in contempt by all decent folk.’