Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion

by Jonathan Sumption

  In the Chanson de Roland the Basques appear in an extremely sinister light, and the influence of this celebrated poem may well be responsible for the contempt which many pilgrims expressed for them. But this alone will not explain the venom of the Guide, which entertains a remarkably similar opinion of the Gascons, characterizing their way of life as impious, immoral, and ‘in every way detestable’.

  If a Poitevin could write thus of the Gascons, he was unlikely to feel closer in spirit to the Greeks and oriental Christians, let alone to the Arabs. Throughout this period, relations with the Greeks were marked by a bitterness which can only be understood in the light of the tortuous relations of Byzantium with the crusaders. Most Latin Christians despised the Greeks as effeminate schismatics and believed with immovable conviction that they had betrayed the twelfth-century crusades. A guide-book written at the end of the century refers to them characteristically as ‘cunning men who do not bear arms and who err from the true faith…. They also use leaven bread in the Eucharist and do other strange things. They even have an alphabet of their own.’ This mood of suspicion was aggravated by the widespread belief that the Byzantine authorities deliberately obstructed pilgrims passing through Constantinople. The emperor Alexius Comnenus was once described by an eminently sane Latin writer as ‘that great oppressor of pilgrims to Jerusalem who hinders their progress by guile or by force.’ Indeed, it never struck western pilgrims that their habit of helping themselves to whatever they required, and of insulting and attacking local people, might arouse justifiable resentment on the part of their hosts. The importance which Greeks attached to their own traditions was regarded by some Latin pilgrims as nothing less than a calculated insult. Jacques de Vitry denounced them as ‘foul schismatics moved by sinful pride’, and then went on to consider the Jacobite and Armenian Christians, ‘barbarous nations who differ from both Greeks and Latins… and use a peculiar language understood only by the learned.’

  Language was indeed the principal barrier. Few mediaeval men, however cultivated they were, understood more than a few words of any language but their own or Latin. Travelling through regions such as eastern Europe or Egypt, where pilgrims were rare and Latin unknown, was a difficult and dangerous undertaking. Lietbert, bishop of Cambrai, who passed through the Danube valley on the way to Jerusalem in 1054, listed ‘the strange and foreign language of the Huns’ amongst the perils which he had encountered, together with mountains, swamps, and impenetrable forests. During the twelfth century, French was the language of Jerusalem, and this is said to have made difficulties for the Germans. At any rate, one of the reasons given for the foundation of the German hospice in Jerusalem was that ‘in such a place Germans might talk in a language they can understand.’ In Venice the authorities were constantly embarrassed by the activities of sharp traders or shipowners who took advantage of foreigners bound for the Holy Land. ‘It is well-known that many scandalous mistakes have been made of late, on account of the great number of pilgrims boarding ships at Venice’, the senate noted in 1398; ‘for the said pilgrims are of divers tongues … and unless a remedy is found, still greater scandals will follow.’

  It is worth following the Burgundian pilgrim Bertrandon de la Brocquière in his efforts to learn a few words of Turkish. Bertrandon visited the Holy Land in 1432–3, but he avoided the Venetian package tour because he wished to spy out the land at leisure, with a view to planning a crusade. In Damascus he made the acquaintance of a Turk who spoke Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, and Greek. Bertrandon spoke none of these languages, but he had a working knowledge of Italian, and the Turk found a Jew who knew a little Italian and some Turkish. The Jew compiled a list of everything that Bertrandon would require on his journey, in parallel columns of Turkish and Italian. On the first day after leaving Damascus, Bertrandon had occasion to ask a group of peasants for some fodder for his horse. He consulted his piece of paper and made his request, but there was no reaction. He showed the paper to the leading peasant, who began to roar with laughter. The group then gave him an impromptu lesson in Turkish, picking up various articles and pronouncing their names very carefully several times. ‘And when I left them I knew how to ask in Turkish for almost everything I wanted.’

  Italian was the only European language known to a significant number of Arabs. Pilgrims who visited Mount Sinai via Egypt could usually find an Italian-speaking interpreter at Alexandria or Cairo, but this was an expensive luxury of which few travellers availed themselves. In 1384 Lionardo Frescobaldi’s party spent more than forty-nine ducats on interpreters between Alexandria and Damascus. In addition, one of their interpreters stole eight ducats from them, and another was in league with a group of Bedouin bandits. More than a hundred ducats was spent on bribing the personal interpreters of various Arab officials to present their requests for safe-conducts in a favourable way.

  Phrase-books, then as now, were the simplest way to overcome the language difficulty. As early as the ninth century, we find a phrase-book entitled Old High-German Conversations (Altdeutsche Gespräche) being used by Franks travelling in Germany. It consists of orders to servants, requests for information, and demands for hospitality such as ‘I want a drink’:

  ‘Erro, e guille trenchen; id est, ego volo bibere.’

  A number of early phrase books of Greek and Hebrew survive, most of which were clearly intended for the use of pilgrims to the Holy Land. The abbey of Mont-St.-Michel had, in the eleventh century, a Greek phrase-book containing useful demands like

  ‘Da mihi panem: DOS ME PSOML.’

  An interesting manual for crusaders, dating from the twelfth century, includes such tactful requests as ‘What is the news about the Greek emperor? What is he doing? He is being kind to the Franks. What good things does he give them? Much money and weapons.’ During the period of mass-pilgrimages in the late middle ages, an immense number of phrase-books was available, some of them very comprehensive. The library of Charles V of France contained a manual for pilgrims entitled How to ask in Arabic for the necessities of life. Another French-Arabic phrase-book, preserved in the Swiss abbey of St.-Gall, has a long section on how to ask one’s way in a strange town.

  Some pilgrims found oriental alphabets a source of limitless fascination. Mandeville’s Travels, that strange mixture of fact and fantasy, sets out the Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian alphabets, though they contain many mistakes and the Hebrew one is incomprehensible. Johann Schiltberger appended to the account of his travels the Pater Noster in Armenian and Turkish. But the most proficient linguist amongst the pilgrims of the fifteenth century was certainly Arnold von Harff, a wealthy young nobleman of Cologne who, between 1496 and 1499, travelled through Italy, Syria, Egypt, Arabia, Ethiopia, Nubia, Palestine, Turkey, and Spain. He was a worldly pilgrim of the type mocked in the Canterbury Tales and the Quinze Joies de Mariage, but he took a genuine interest in the people of each country and particularly in their languages. Von Harff collected alphabets. His memoirs contain many oriental alphabets (some of them are undecipherable), as well as useful phrases in nine different languages, Croatian, Albanian, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Hungarian, Basque, and Breton. He was a cultivated man, a gallant knight and an aristocrat whose range of phrases was broader than that of most conventional pilgrims. Thus, ‘Wash my shirt for me – I do not understand – Will you sell me that? – How much is this? – Madam shall I marry you? – Madam shall I sleep with you? – Good woman, I am already in your bed,’

  But Arnold von Harff was scarcely typical even of his own worldly age. He was an acute observer who was interested in such diverse matters as wild animals in the Nile valley, and the Mamluk system of government. He doubted the authenticity of the body of St. James at Santiago, and openly disputed the claims of several Roman relics. He considered the Turks closer to the spirit of Christianity than the Spanish. A more faithful reflection of the mentality of pilgrims is found in the account of the Arab way of life in the travel diary of one of Frescobaldi’s companions, which begins, ‘now let me tell you of
their bestial habits.’

  Companions

  The criticism directed at pilgrims at the close of the middle ages owed much of its vehemence to the fact that they generally travelled in large and raucous bands. The carnival atmosphere in which Chaucer’s thirty pilgrims left Southwark, piped out of town by the miller, ill-accorded with the spiritual sentiments which they professed. But then, as the host of the Tabard Inn reflected, ‘trewely confort ne mirthe is noon, to ryde by the weye doumb as a stoon’; in fact he ‘ne saugh this yeer so mery a companye.’ William Thorpe, an itinerant Lollard preacher who was examined for heresy in 1407, had this to say about such vulgar gatherings:

  ‘I know well that when divers men and women will go thus after their own wills, and finding out one pilgrimage they will ordain beforehand to have with them both men and women that can well sing wanton songs. And some other pilgrims will have them bagpipes so that every town that they come through shall know of their coming, what with the noise of their singing and the sound of their piping, what with the jangling of their Canterbury bells, and the barking out of dogs after them. They make more noise than if the King came thereaway with all his clarions and many other minstrels.’

  The first pilgrims to travel in bands did so for reasons of self-defence, not amusement. Before the eleventh century, pilgrims generally had two or three companions with them at the most. Indeed, it was thought to be specially virtuous to travel alone. The dangerous state of the roads to Jerusalem forced pilgrims to abandon this prejudice, and by the middle years of the eleventh century the departure of an abbot or a great nobleman was the signal for pilgrims from all the surrounding provinces to gather together and follow in his suite. Richard, abbot of St.-Vannes, who set out from Verdun in 1026, found himself the leader of several hundred Normans and Aquitainians. Each group had picked up hangers-on on their way to Verdun, and as the whole unwieldy column proceeded up the Rhine valley they were constantly joined by new recruits. By the time they left the frontiers of Germany behind them, they were more than seven hundred strong. Robert, duke of Normandy, was followed to Jerusalem in 1035 by an imposing retinue of bishops, abbots, and noblemen, whose expenses he had promised to pay. The ill-fated expedition of Gunther, bishop of Bamberg, was estimated at seven thousand.

  Few pilgrims travelled alone after the eleventh century, whatever their destination. The growing popularity of pilgrimages made it easy to find companions. Indeed, on the busy roads to Rome and Santiago it was impossible to avoid them. Pilgrims were exhorted to choose their friends with care, for there were regular reports of travellers killed or robbed by their companions. Particularly notorious was the stretch of the road to Santiago which ran from Saintes to the Pyrenees. Here, theft was a well-organized industry. In one incident a blind man was robbed by his companions of his money, his horse, and all his luggage, and left without a guide at the side of the road. The ‘companions’ were of course professional thieves of the sort described in the Liber Sancti Jacobi, who dressed as pilgrims or priests in order to gain the confidence of their victims. ‘Take care, then, not to join up with bad companions’, warned the French jurist Beaumanoir, after telling of a pilgrim who was hanged as a felon on being found in the company of thieves; ‘for however pleasant they appear, you never know what evil will befall you.’

  Even if he was honest a companion might well be quarrelsome or a bore. He might walk too fast, as Margery Kempe’s companion did on the road to Wilsnack. He might talk too much, as Margery herself was inclined to do. Her visit to the Holy Land in 1413 is a classic illustration of the difficulty of living up to high spiritual ideals in the company of a happy band of Chaucerian pilgrims. As a woman, she could not travel alone, and so she fell in with a group of English pilgrims of somewhat conventional piety. These were embarrassed by her constant fasting, weeping, and lamentation, and her long sessions in prayer. They left Constance without her, but she caught them up again at Bologna, where an agreement was made in an effort to restore harmony. ‘Ye shall not speak of the Gospel when we come,’ they warned her, ‘but ye shall sit still and make merry as we do.’ At Venice, her habit of quoting passages from the Bible brought about another rupture. In Jerusalem her trances and visions caused them intense discomfort. ‘Some shunned her; some wished she had been left in the haven; some would she had been at sea in a bottomless boat; and so each man as him thought.’ The Franciscans of Jerusalem, however, were impressed, by her piety. So, strange to say, were the Arabs, who provided her with an escort about the Holy Places.

  Hospitality

  A pilgrim, according to an eighth-century text, was entitled to a roof over his head, a fire, wholesome water, and fresh bread. The principle of free hospitality, though often honoured in the breach, remained throughout the mediaeval period a corner-stone of Christian charity. The Guide for Pilgrims to Santiago ends with a collection of stories illustrating the unwisdom of refusing hospitality to a pilgrim of St. James. ‘For all pilgrims, rich or poor, who go to St. James ought to be received with charity by all. Whoever receives them receives St. James and God himself.’

  The early Church placed this obligation squarely on the shoulders of the bishops. But although some bishops, such as John Chrysostom and Augustine of Hippo, took their duties seriously, it was from the very first the monasteries who bore most of the burden. In the earliest monastic rules of the eastern Church, monks are required to receive pilgrims, and in the western Church this tradition was incorporated into the Benedictine rule. In this form, it survived for as long as the monasteries themselves. In the great restatement of the Benedictine rule at the beginning of the ninth century the importance of hospitality was, if anything, increased, and monasteries were expected to put aside a fixed proportion of their revenues to it. Naturally, in the succeeding centuries this rule was unevenly observed, but there were some monasteries justly famous for their hospitality. The chronicler of Evesham abbey remarks that abbot Agelwy was known as far afield as Ireland and Aquitaine for his habit of washing the feet of pilgrims in person, a practice which was required by the rule but had been abandoned in some houses. The hospitality dispensed at Maria Laach outside Bonn was described in c. 1225 as ‘unequalled’.

  On busy roads it proved impossible to accommodate the droves of pilgrims in the monastery itself, and instead large guest halls were built for the purpose. Abbot Otmar built one at St.-Gall as early as the eighth century. Another, dating from the thirteenth, can be seen today at Battle abbey. The logical extension of this policy was the foundation of independent hospices away from the monasteries, governed by small autonomous communities of monks or canons. This was first practised on a large scale in the eighth century by Irish monks on the continent. Major Irish hospices sprang up at Péronne, Honau, and elsewhere; others at St. Omer and St.-Gall ultimately became great monastic houses. So important were the Irish houses that their disappearance during the ninth and tenth centuries was a source of genuine concern to successive emperors. The council of Meaux in 845 attributed it to the disordered state of the Frankish dominions, and asked Charles the Bald to do something about it. Charles promised to take measures to halt the decline. What these measures were is not at all clear, but there is no doubt that they were unsuccessful, for a century later most of the hospices of western Europe had entirely disappeared. When, in the eleventh century, pilgrims began to reappear in thousands on the roads of Europe, the task of building hospices to receive them had to be begun anew.

  In the Guide for Pilgrims to Santiago, three hospices are singled out as ‘columns built by God for the support of his poor people’. They were the hospices of Jerusalem, the Great St. Bernard Pass, and St. Christine in the Pyrenees. ‘These hospices have been sited in the places where they are most needed. They are holy places, houses of God himself, ordained for the comfort of pilgrims, the restitution of the needy, the consolation of the sick, the assistance of the living, and the salvation of the dead.’

  There had been a Latin hospice in Jerusalem since the beginning of the nint
h century. Its foundation was traditionally, and probably rightly, ascribed to Charlemagne. The Frankish monk Bernard found much to approve of when he stayed there in 870, at which time it had a chapel, a library, and a vineyard. The tenth century, however, was a troubled period in the history of Jerusalem and the hospice probably ceased to exist shortly after Bernard’s departure. The great hospice referred to by the Guide was the Hospital of St. John, which owed its foundation to the community of merchants of Amalfi, and maintained a precarious existence from about 1060. After the capture of Jerusalem by the first crusade it became the headquarters of a crusading order, but it remained above all a pilgrims’ hospice. The Hospital made a strong impression on visitors if only by its sheer size. One of them, who saw it in about 1165, counted two thousand beds, many of then occupied by the sick. About fifty patients a day died in the Hospital, he casually observed. Their beds were immediately filled by others, and a crowd of pilgrims was perpetually milling about outside the doors waiting for the daily distribution of alms. After the disappearance of the crusading states, the Hospital became a Moslem establishment, but Christian pilgrims were still admitted to it on payment of two Venetian pennies, a courtesy which, in its Christian days, had never been extended to Moslems.