Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion

by Jonathan Sumption

  The Papal Schism

  In non-Jubilee years the Roman churches depended on the modest indulgences awarded to them by the popes of the thirteenth century. At the death of Nicholas IV, in 1292, no single church in Rome offered an indulgence of more than seven years and seven quarantines, and it required an unusually energetic pilgrim to collect as much as a thousand years of remission in one visit to the city. This proved to be insufficient to draw the pilgrims of the fourteenth century, bored by Rome and enticed by the excitement of the Holy Land. After the Jubilee of 1350, the churches of Rome attempted to revive their fortunes by claiming enormous indulgences, indulgences so large that it is difficult to understand why their authenticity was not challenged before the sixteenth century. ‘Suffice it to say’, wrote the papal secretary of state Signorili, ‘that they exceed in indulgences all other churches in the world combined. Which is why every year an unending throng of pilgrims from every corner of the earth comes to the city of the apostles to pray, to gain the indulgences, and to venerate the holy relics of its churches.’ The first that is heard of these indulgences is the report of Leopold, prior of the Augustinian house in Vienna, who toured the churches of Rome in 1377. Leopold bought a Liber Indulgentiarum, or book of indulgences, from which he learned that seven years of remission were gained when he ascended each of the twenty-nine steps in front of St. Peter’s. Each of the eighty altars in St. Peter’s offered twenty-eight years and five of them were worth thirty-two. At the altar of the sudarium of Veronica ‘I, Leopold, unworthy sinner that I am, spent three sessions of twenty-seven hours in prayer. For you must know that for every hour that a Roman looks on this image of the Lord he gains an indulgence of three thousand years; the Italian gets nine thousand years, and the foreigner twelve thousand years.’ Each visit to the basilica carried twenty-eight years or a third of all one’s sins, whichever was the greater. The high altar apparently offered a plenary indulgence, which was as much as could be obtained by spending fifteen days in Rome in a Jubilee year. The basilica of St. Paul now carried forty-eight years and forty-eight quarantines every day; extra indulgences of a thousand years were available there on the feast of the apostles, and of seven thousand years on the anniversary of the dedication of the basilica. Leopold’s booklet informed him that pope Silvester (d. 335) had declared most of these indulgences, and that they were particularly effective in effacing the sin of anger against one’s parents, so long as one had not actually struck them.

  The Mirabilia no longer satisfied the demands of pilgrims. One of them, who was in Rome in 1344, complained that it was impossible to buy a reliable guide to the churches and monuments. Books of indulgences like Leopold’s began to fill this vacuum towards the end of the fourteenth century. They reproduced some of the more interesting stories from the Mirabilia and added a mass of information about the indulgences of the city’s churches, together with specious accounts of their origins. Forged papal bulls were quoted at length. William Brewyn, the author of an English book of indulgences, proved to his own satisfaction that the indulgences at the altar of the Veronica originated in a bull of Gregory XI. John Capgrave in 1450 read an ‘old legend’ to the effect that the indulgences at the church of St. Lawrence had been personally declared by the saint himself. From the end of the fourteenth century new editions of these works appeared in verse and prose in every major language. An English edition, written in about 1400, begins

  Whoso wol his soule leche

  Listen to me; I wol him teche

  Pardoun. Is the soule bote

  At grete Rome, there is the roote.

  Pardoun a word in Frensch it is

  Forgiveness of thy synnes i-wis.

  Translations often contained slight alterations to suit national tastes. The church of S. Maria Maggiore claimed to possess some relics of the apostle Thomas, but in English versions the relics become those of Thomas Becket. An English pilgrim in Rome in 1344 was shown a picture of the Virgin which Becket, who had never been to Rome, was supposed to have held in special reverence. English guide-books asserted that Becket had been to school in Rome, and the clergy of S. Maria Maggiore displayed his right arm ‘and a parte of his brayne’. John Capgrave believed these fables in 1450 and wrote them down, but on his return home he thought better of it and erased them from his manuscript.

  Those who did not buy hand-books were left in no doubt that plentiful indulgences were to be had. At most churches notices or inscriptions proclaimed what spiritual benefits were available inside. A bill-board outside the church of St. Lawrence promised daily indulgences of seven thousand years and seven thousand quarantines. At the spot where Christ had once appeared to St. Peter an inscription announced remission of two thousand years. In the church of S. Maria Maggiore a list of indulgences was posted at the east end of the church:

  And written it is all there

  On a table at high altere,

  Pardoun there is that men may see

  Graunted of popes that there han be.

  The obvious purpose of these frauds was to re-establish the Roman pilgrimage in rivalry with that of Jerusalem, which was now at the summit of its popularity. The theme which runs through all the Roman hand-books of the period is that greater benefits can be obtained with less trouble at Rome. If men only knew about the indulgences available at Rome, wrote the author of the Stacions of Rome, they would never bother to visit the Holy Land.

  Pope Bonifas telleth this tale

  If men wuste grete and smale

  The pardoun that is at grete Rome

  They wolde tellen in heore home

  It were no need to man in Christiante

  To passe into the Holy Lond over the see

  To Jerusalem ne to St. Katheryne,

  To bring man’s soule out of pyne

  For pardoun ther is without ende.

  One pilgrim remarked that the road from the Lateran to St. Peter’s was called the Via Sacra ‘because from one end to the other there are as many indulgences to be had as can be won by a voyage to Jerusalem.’

  The attitude of the papacy to these claims was somewhat equivocal. An official memorandum of 1382 is remarkably reticent, contenting itself in most cases with the observation that the remission to be had was ‘very great’. Some of the books of indulgences gave the impression the popes had acquiesced in the claims of the Roman churches. The Stacions of Rome says as much of Boniface IX, who was almost certainly alive when it was written. After the beginning of the great schism, in 1378, the Roman popes would have found it hard to protest even had they wished to. They were too heavily dependent on the prestige of Rome to indulge in damaging quarrels with its clergy on a matter which so closely touched that prestige.

  The Avignon anti-popes were acutely conscious that their rivals enjoyed a considerable advantage in the actual possession of Rome. Pilgrimages to Rome reinforced the prestige of the Roman pope, and. in countries loyal to Avignon sporadic attempts were made to suppress them. In 1382 the Avignon pope, Clement VII, took the extraordinary step of transferring the indulgences of the major basilicas of Rome to the churches of Marseilles. The indulgences of St. Peter’s on the feast of the apostles were transferred to Marseilles cathedral, while those of S. Maria Maggiore were awarded to the abbey church of St. Victor. The Franciscan church of Marseilles received the indulgences of the Lateran on the grounds that all Italy was in the hands of ‘that pestiferous and tyrannical schismatic’, Urban VI. The Roman pope, for his part, made the maximum use of his possession of the city by bringing forward the Jubilee of 1400. One of the last acts of Urban VI before his death was to declare that Jubilees would henceforth be held at intervals of thirty-three years, in honour of the thirty-three years of Christ’s life on earth. A fourth church, the basilica of S. Maria Maggiore, was added to those that must be visited. The bull was issued in April 1389 and the next Jubilee was announced for 1390. The anti-pope immediately the Jubilee as having no validity and forbade all the faithful within his obedience (it consisted of little more than Fra
nce and Spain) to attend it. In this strident document, Clement castigated the Roman pope as a pseudoprophet and a serpent, his Jubilee as ‘a fraud, concocted under the false colours of piety and clemency in the hope of enticing the faithful into his detestable obedience, … and thus into the jaws of Hell.’ The contest which followed gravely damaged the prestige of the Roman Jubilee. As in 1350, requests were made for the benefit of the indulgence without the burden of going to Rome and Boniface IX, who was elected pope in Rome in November 1389, was in no position to resist them. He could not afford to offend princes like the duke of Bavaria, who was awarded the indulgence, together with his wife and family, before the Jubilee had even begun. But Boniface’s generosity was by no means confined to princes. Some bishops were empowered to grant the indulgence to any of their diocesans whom they chose. Countless unimportant individuals like the mayor of Berwick-on-Tweed applied for the indulgence and got it. Boniface undoubtedly hoped to placate his friends and win over his enemies, and in this policy he enjoyed a measure of success. The municipal authorities of Cologne appear to have been won over to his cause by the promise of a Jubilee indulgence. In Spain, Boniface’s agents were instructed to offer the indulgence to all who would convert to his obedience.

  Boniface IX was not only diplomatically weak but chronically short of money, and it was he who first transformed the Jubilee into an instrument of financial policy. He appropriated half the offerings made at all the Roman basilicas including St. Paul’s and S. Maria Maggiore which he did not directly control. Special representatives were installed at these churches, to ensure that he got his share, and the management of the Jubilee receipts was placed in the hands of the banking firm of Michael de Guinigi. As soon as the Roman Jubilee was over, Boniface sold the indulgence to those who had been unable to attend. This had been done in a small way by Clement VI in 1350, but Clement had not attempted to market the indulgence far and wide. Boniface on the other hand set up an elaborate organization to sell the Jubilee indulgence north of the Alps. One of his bitterest critics described his agents as extracting large sums from the rich and simple-minded. One province alone was said to have yielded 100,000 florins. ‘And so these agents with painted faces and fat bloated stomachs made their way to Rome with their trains of servants and fine horses … and poured their spoils into Boniface’s coffers.’ In most parts of Europe pilgrims were permitted to gain the Jubilee indulgence by making fifteen visits to a local church and paying whatever sum they would have expended on a journey to Rome. At Milan six thousand florins were raised, part of which went to the cathedral building fund. Other local Jubilees were declared in Germany at Munich, Prague, Meissen, Magdeburg, and Constance.

  The Avignon pope watched the affair in idle frustration. Some members of his own obedience had visited Rome in 1390, but most of them accepted that the next valid Jubilee would be held in accordance with the bull Unigenitus in 1400. Many Frenchmen appeared in Rome in that year and they were joined by members of the Roman obedience who looked forward to the prospect of any Jubilee, even an unofficial one. Indeed, the unofficial Jubilee of 1400 appears to have been more popular than the official one of 1390, and one monk of St. Paul’s asserted that it was the most crowded Jubilee in his experience; the offerings at St. Paul’s, said he, came to 60,000 ducats ‘partly because there were more people and partly because they were more generous’. A more reliable source than the reminiscences of an aging tourist guide suggests that the offerings in the four Jubilee churches combined had reached 16,000 florins by June and may have amounted to about half as much again in the whole year.

  All this presented Boniface IX with a delicate problem. He could not recognize the Jubilee of 1400 without casting doubt on that of 1390. But plainly he could but ignore it, and early in the year he took steps to claim his share of the offerings. In March he announced in somewhat opaque language that all the indulgences of his predecessors for the fiftieth and hundredth years were confirmed. In July, without actually declaring a Jubilee, he conceded a Jubilee indulgence to all who contributed to the rebuilding of the ruinous basilica of St. Paul. His embarrassment was complete when princes whom he could ill-afford to displease wrote to ask for the Jubilee indulgence. The queen of Denmark, who had claimed the indulgence of 1390 now wrote in for that of 1400. Boniface replied cagily to such requests. Without mentioning the Jubilee he offered them ‘the same indulgence and remission as those who visit the basilicas of St. Peter, St. Paul, St. John Lateran, and S. Maria Maggiore in this present year’. The news of these happenings caused dismay in the Avignon obedience. The Carthusians loyal to Avignon heard as early as 1399 that Frenchmen were planning to attend the Jubilee and forbade their members to join them. The French government, which was the principal supporter of Avignon, forbade all pilgrimages to Rome and instructed its officers to prevent them by force if necessary. This was easier said than done. Early in the year reports indicated that the roads were daily covered with nobles, clergy, bourgeois, and peasants on their way to Rome, and royal officials were constantly exhorted to greater diligence. The bailli of Mâcon was threatened with dire penalties. The bailli of Sens was told that droves of pilgrims were passing freely through his jurisdiction, ‘from which it appears that you have ignored our instructions.’ The hospice of St. Didier at Nevers was filled to capacity with pilgrims, and the master had to appeal to the town for a special subsidy.

  The problem of the Avignon obedience was posed in a particularly acute form in Spain. Although the Spanish kingdoms had consistently supported Avignon, their subjects had never altogether accepted this policy, and pilgrimages to Rome had continued throughout the schism. Indeed, a hospice for Catalans in Rome was partially financed by the king of Aragon. But the prospect of a mass pilgrimage to Rome in 1400 stirred the Aragonese government to action. An embassy was sent to Paris, which expressed the opinion that all those who went to Rome were excommunicates, schismatics, and destined for everlasting damnation. The problem of applying these sentiments in practice was underlined by the case of the Cistercian abbey of Poblet in southern Catalonia, where a number of monks had formed the intention of claiming the Jubilee indulgence at Rome. Poblet was a royal monastery. Pedro IV of Aragon was buried there, and Martin I was even then in the process of building a palace in the monastery. The king indicated his displeasure and embarrassment; he was astonished that they were prepared to suffer excommunication at the hands of the true (i.e. Avignon) pope, ‘especially as our lord the pope has proclaimed that monks remaining in their monasteries shall have the same indulgences as those who go to Rome in person, in view of the present situation of the Church.’ Accordingly the abbot was to forbid such pilgrimages and to punish monks who disobeyed. The monks appear to have taken no notice of this letter for, some weeks later, a second letter gave expression to the king’s anger that certain monks had persisted in their intention of going to Rome ‘into the territory of that detestable intruder and to the great detriment of our holy mother the Church’. If the rest of them would promise not to go, he would ask the Avignon pope to nominate some convenient Spanish sanctuary where pilgrims could claim the Jubilee indulgence or else, perhaps, to permit the voyage to Rome. The affair throws an interesting light on the resilience of the Roman pilgrimage in the least creditable period of its history.

  The Return of the Popes

  ‘Pity Rome’, a papal official cried at the beginning of the fifteenth century, ‘once thronged with princes and crowded with palaces, now it is a place of novels, thieves, wolves, and worms.’ In later life, Adam of Usk’s memories of Rome were of wolves howling at night outside his house and fallen buildings blocking the narrow streets. The campanile of St. Peter’s had been struck by lightning in 1352 and the rubble remained for many years strewn across the Vatican Hill. The triumphal arch of Arcadius fell down in the time of Urban V. The last years of the papal schism brought Rome to the nadir of its fortunes. In the absence of the popes the splendid ceremonies were curtailed and finally abandoned. The Neapolitan troops who entered
Rome in 1408 found St. Peter’s abandoned by the canons, and not even on the feast of the apostles could any one be found to celebrate Mass. One of the canons recorded in his diary that there was not enough money to light the candles in the basilica on the feast of the apostles in 1414. ‘At Corpus Christi we celebrated Mass in great poverty on account of the war and the tribulations of St. Peter’s. We carried the Eucharist on foot in a small crystal tabernacle, … lighting our way with six torches … for the canons could not afford any oil.’