The Jubilee of 1423 was a miserable affair. It occurred automatically thirty-three years after that of 1390, but no one troubled to proclaim it, and it was so little publicized that some historians have doubted whether it ever took place. The pope, Martin V, made no special arrangements. This may have been because he was reluctant to revive the controversies which had accompanied the Jubilees of the schism, or perhaps because he was anxious not to set up an indulgence in rivalry with the Hussite crusade. Nevertheless Poggio Bracciolini, then in the service of the papacy, complained that he was ‘oppressed by a monstrous mob of barbarians’ (i.e. non-Italians) who brought with them their dirt and uncouth manners. Perhaps more pilgrims would have attended but for the war which had engulfed northern Italy. John, abbot of St. Albans, waited for several weeks at Siena for a safe-conduct from Filippo-Maria Visconti, duke of Milan, and when at last it was forthcoming he was horrified by the desolation he found north of Rome.
Martin V entered Rome for the first time in his reign in September 1420. With the exception of nine years in the reign of Eugenius IV, the popes resided in Rome for the rest of the fifteenth century. The artistic patronage of the papacy returned to the city for the first time in a century and a half, and with it came some of the vigorous religious life of an earlier age. The arrival of new relics in Rome contributed to the atmosphere of revival. Martin V presided in person over the translation of St. Monica from Ostia. A few relics of Constantinople found their way to Rome after the fall of the city to the Turks in 1453. Thomas Paleologus, despot of the Morea, fled to Italy in 1460 bringing with him the head of St. Andrew and the right arm of St. John. The translation of the first of these relics to St. Peter’s in April 1462 was marked by a formal oration from Pius II and a special plenary indulgence. The Sienese ambassador had not seen so many pilgrims in Rome since the Jubilee of 1450. Thus the last notable item from the greatest collection of relics that the mediaeval world had known, painfully assembled over seven centuries by successive Byzantine emperors, found its place in a Latin church.
The imposing ceremonies which visitors to Rome had missed in the fourteenth century now reappeared. Martin V ordered a new golden tiara from Lorenzo Ghiberti, together with embroidered vestments, banners, and ceremonial swords. Ever-increasing splendour attended the publication of the annual bull In Coena Domini in which the pope solemnly excommunicated the enemies of the Church, followed by cries of ‘so be it, so be it’ from the assembled cardinals. When Arnold von Harff witnessed it in 1497 it took a full hour to read and the watching crowd filled the entire Leonine city. The Easter celebrations of 1437 prompted in one pilgrim the reflection that ‘Rome, which used to be the highest among nations and is now the lowest, yet retains these superb ceremonies from the days when they signified her mastery over all men.’
The sudarium of Veronica reached the zenith of its fame in the fifteenth century. Popular belief attributed miracles to it, and the indulgences attached to it were the largest in Rome, seven thousand years for Romans, ten thousand for Italians, fourteen thousand for foreigners. The ‘vernicle’, which had by now replaced the horse of Constantine as the emblem of Rome, was worn by every returning pilgrim. Langland’s palmer pinned it to his hat, as did Chaucer’s pardoner. Public displays of the Veronica were occasions for mass exhibitions of fierce repentance which astonished more than one visitor to Rome. Francesco Ariosto, a lawyer in the service of the duke of Modena, witnessed one of these ceremonies when he was in Rome on official business in 1471. A thin, fragile, almost transparent veil of silk was brought forward bearing the features of a bearded man. The entire crowd was silent and fell to its knees.
‘It would be well beyond my powers to describe the feelings of devotion and piety which overcame the crowd then, or to tell you what public displays of repentance and humility were to be seen; what beating of breasts, what mental anguish in so many faces; what weeping, crying, and howling broke the silence of the square as sinners humbly begged for pardon; with what anguish they raised their hands to Heaven imploring mercy. They beat themselves repeatedly, causing themselves great pain, for they felt that by their sins, they had inflicted on Christ those wounds whose marks they saw before them; and now they hoped to wash away their guilt with tears, to purge the stains of sin with groans of pain. And from so much weeping and anguish, such general lamentation, there emerged consolation, rejoicing, happiness, and even jubilation at having experienced a spiritual renewal. A sudden change of mood from sorrow to joy overcame the crowd.’
The catacombs experienced a revival in the fifteenth century. They had never been entirely forgotten, but in the absence of the popes, the continual work of repair had been neglected. Several of the galleries had fallen in and some of the altars had been looted. A commission was appointed in 1424 to survey them. Repairs were undertaken, and pilgrims were once again reminded of these curious survivals from the earliest age of the Christian Church. The most famous were those on the Appian Way, which were entered from the church of St. Sebastian. The Florentine Giovanni Rucellai explored them in 1450 and reported that the bodies of St. Fabian and St. Sebastian carried a plenary indulgence. John Capgrave’s first impression was of a ‘grete pitte, for we go down thereto on 28 steps’. When his eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, he found himself in ‘a cave or ellis a myre under the ground…. The cymytery is thus long that if a man tary not in the chapeles but go rit forth he schal walk it by the time that he hath said four times the miserere mei Deus. In this place were buried 46 popes and eche of them gave grete indulgence to the same place…. The comoun opinion is there of this place that who so evyr out of synne visit it … clene shreve and contrite, he is assoiled as clene as a man may be by the power of the Church.’ As for the other catacombs, they were now ‘desolate for horrible darknesse and disuse of peple’, and few pilgrims visited them.
When they were not visiting the churches pilgrims amused themselves in various ways. Arnold von Harff saw a passion play performed at the Colosseum in which ‘everything was acted by living people, even the scourging, the crucifixion, and the death of Judas.’ The actors were all children of the well-to-do ‘and therefore it was fittingly and richly performed.’ Some of the more discerning pilgrims visited the Vatican library, recently refounded by Nicholas V and Sixtus IV largely on the proceeds of the Jubilee of 1450. The Burgundian pilgrim Georges Lengherand explored it in 1485, and found five large rooms full of books, of which one was available for private study, the rest reserved for curial officials.
The pilgrims brought prosperity to Rome, and to no one more than to its innkeepers. Alberghi multiplied prodigiously in the fifteenth century, and according to one pilgrim there were 1,022 of them functioning in 1450. Some of them achieved international repute, like the Albergo della Luna, where Francesco da Carrara stayed during the imperial coronation of 1355. Most of them were too expensive for the ordinary pilgrim. When the retinue of Borso d’Este were accommodated in Rome at the pope’s expense in 1471, the bill came to seven thousand gold florins. Those who had to pay their own bills preferred to hire a room in a private house or else to bring an introduction to some compatriot living in Rome. Arnold von Harff was accommodated by one Johann Payll, a German doctor who kept a small guest-house for German pilgrims and offered his services as a guide. Large parties were well advised to arrange their accommodation in advance, especially at Easter and the feast of the apostles. There was no room for Otto, duke of Bavaria, when he arrived unexpectedly in the city in 1489, and he was obliged to withdraw to the villages of the Campagna. On the whole the hoteliers of Rome were an unpopular group of men. Erasmus thought their chances of salvation limited. Villon’s friend Guillaume Bouchet derived the word ‘host’ from the Latin ‘hostes’ for they were all enemies to him.
Towards the end of the middle ages the resources of private enterprise were supplemented by national hostels. National hostels had existed before, but none had survived the decline of the Roman sanctuaries in the thirteenth century. The English house, whic
h had been the last to disappear was the first to be revived. Opposite the church of St. Thomas on the Via Monserrato, now the site of the Venerable English College, stood a small house belonging to one John Shepherd, an English rosary-seller living in Rome. He sold it in 1362 to the ‘community and society of the English in the city, … for the benefit of the poor, infirm, needy, and wretched people coming from England to the city, and for their convenience and utility.’ Shepherd and his wife Alice stayed on to run the hospice at a wage, and thus was born the English hospital of the Holy Trinity and St. Thomas. In the course of three decades it expanded into neighbouring houses, and by the end of the sixteenth century it could accommodate sixty pilgrims. A second English hospice was founded in 1396 by a wealthy London merchant, and became the hospital of the Holy Trinity and St. Edmund, king and martyr.
Other national hospices sprung up in much the same fashion, originating in the generosity of a few rich men and expanding haphazardly into neighbouring houses. In 1389 Dietrich of Niem, a curial official from Westphalia, joined with a merchant of Dortrecht to found the German college of S. Maria dell’ Anima. It consisted originally of three adjoining houses, of which the central one was a chapel and the other two for the accommodation of male and female pilgrims. The college became by far the wealthiest and most celebrated national hospice in Rome. It was continually enriched by bequests from German pilgrims and residents. Successive popes conferred indulgences on its benefactors, and Eugenius IV gave its chaplains the valuable privileges of administering the Eucharist and hearing confessions, privileges normally reserved for parish churches. The Anima rapidly acquired all the surrounding houses and within a few years the three original houses were all used as the chapel, the middle one being the nave and the outer two the aisles. Few Germans of note passed through Rome without visiting it and inscribing their names in the book of benefactors. Among other national groups which could boast their own hospices were the Italians, Portuguese, Swedes, Irish, Castilians, Aragonese, Sicilians, Flemings, Bretons and Hungarians. Not all were organized in the same way and some were richer than others. Some, such as the Portuguese hospice of St. Anthony, were little more than a chapel where the Portuguese of the city worshipped. The German hospice was packed out every night while the Irish one was so little used that it was shortly turned into a seminary for Irish priests. The services they offered to pilgrims depended largely on the extent of their endowment. The Swedish hospital of St. Bridget occupied the palace in which the saint had lived out her last years, and it was operated by the rich Bridgetine order. Pilgrims were allowed to stay there for as long as they liked and were given free bread and wine for the first three days; only the more opulent pilgrims were asked for payment. The impoverished Flemish hospital of St. Julian was more stringent, pilgrims being obliged to leave after three nights. No food was served at all. Vagabonds, soldiers of fortune, and the rich, were altogether excluded. One exception only was made for poor priests who might stay for eight days so long as they promised to say at least two masses in the chapel.
In January 1449 the crisis of the papacy had passed and Nicholas V considered the moment appropriate for the proclamation of the fifth Roman Jubilee, to be held from Christmas 1449 to Christmas 1450. It is probable that more pilgrims attended this Jubilee than any previous one, and the chroniclers competed with one another in devising suitable hyperboles to describe the throngs of travellers. The Sienese diplomat Agostino Dati watched Frenchmen, Germans, Spaniards, Portuguese, Greeks, Armenians, Dalmatians and Italians on the roads to Rome singing hymns in every language. The crowd of Burgundians who joined them was ‘noble et sainte chose et devote a veoir’. The first rush of pilgrims ended in February. ‘The crowds diminished so rapidly that the innkeepers became discontented and every one began to think that it was all over. Then, in the middle of Lent, so many pilgrims appeared that there was no room for them in the inns and many had to sleep out in the vineyards … or beneath the porticoes of the basilicas.’ Pilgrims begged for the love of God to be allowed in for the night at any price. Such was the shortage of food and beds that Nicholas several times reduced the number of days which pilgrims were required to spend in Rome. In the autumn he reduced them to one, on account of the threat of famine, but even so, on Saturdays and Sundays, when relics were displayed at St. Peter’s and the pope gave his benediction, the crowd filled the entire Leonine city and the vineyards and cemeteries beyond. Most of them could see nothing at all. In mid-summer a serious epidemic thinned out the crowds arriving in Rome. Mortality in the city itself was high, and pilgrims fleeing from the crowded streets spread the plague along the roads leading north. Panic gripped the papal court, which made hurried arrangements to depart for Fabriano. The ambassador of the Teutonic Order had it on good authority that Nicholas had forbidden infected persons to come within seven miles of him on pain of excommunication. Nevertheless it was officially estimated that for most of the year 40,000 pilgrims were entering Rome every day, and Giovanni Ricci reckoned that a million were there at Easter.
The Florentine merchant Giovanni Rucellai had fled his native city to escape the plague and, finding himself in Perugia, he reflected that ‘confession may liberate me from the fires of Hell but only a plenary indulgence can free me from Purgatory as well.’ He departed for Rome with his family and three friends in February. Rucellai was one of the first pilgrims to record his impressions of some of the modern works of art in the city; Giotto’s frescoes in the chapterhouse of St. Paul’s, the gold reliquaries of S. Maria Maggiore, the bronze tomb of Martin V in the Later an, all of which struck this Florentine as ‘extremely fine’. He prayed at all the altars in St. Peter’s, diligently examined the relics proferred for his veneration, and returned satisfied to Perugia less than a month after his departure.
John Capgrave, the Augustinian prior of King’s Lynn, experienced like many others the frustration of having no reliable guide to the city. The Colosseum he pronounced to be ‘a marvellous place whech was made round of schap and grete arches’, but he could find no book to tell him what its function had been. Capgrave wrote his own guide, a scholarly work for its time, in the hope that it would be found ‘ful solacious’ to his countrymen who had never been to Rome. For their benefit he described the relics of each church in extreme anatomical detail. His interest was stirred by a ‘pees of the flesch of seynt Laurens and coals joyned therto rit as thei fried in his passioun’. In Holy Week he inspected the heads of St. Peter and St. Paul in the Lateran. St. Peter, he reported, was ‘brood … with much hair on his berd and that is of grey colour betwixt whit and blak. The hed of Paule is a long face, balled with red hair both berd and hed.’ In the church of St. George the head of the saint was kept in a tabernacle with a removable lid to enable pilgrims to kiss it. Capgrave took part in the many processions of Easter week and stated that they were originally ordained by Christ, the reason given for this opinion being that ‘saynt Austin gevyth us swech a rule in his boke De Moribus Ecclesiae … that when we cannot see hem grounded in scripture we schul suppose that Christ taut hem.’
Towards the end of the Jubilee year the pope’s satisfaction was marred by a serious incident. The Ponte Molle in front of the Castel St. Angelo had caused anxiety to the papal police ever since the first Jubilee of 1300. The narrow bridge was the only means of access from the city to the Vatican. The shops which had once lined both sides were destroyed in the fighting of 1405, thus greatly reducing the crush in Jubilee years. Even so, the crowds of 1450 were too large for it. At Easter, soldiers from the Castel St. Angelo, together with some youthful volunteers, had to drive back the pilgrims with sticks in order to avert a serious accident. Families and friends lost each other in the mêlée and ‘it was pitiful to see pilgrims wandering aimlessly about in search of missing fathers, sons, or companions.’ On another occasion, when the crowds in front of St. Peter’s were so tightly packed that none could move, a messenger on horseback tried to get through the crowd. The horse panicked and reared, killing several pilgrims wit
h his hooves and throwing the rider to his death.
On Saturday 19th December, a week before the end of the Jubilee, the crowds had gathered to attend the weekly display of the Veronica and receive the pope’s blessing. For some reason there was an untoward delay and at four o’clock it was announced that owing to the lateness of the hour the benediction would not take place that day. The unwieldy crowd of pilgrims turned back in disappointment and swarmed across the Ponte Molle into the city. In the middle of the bridge a mule, bearing Pietro Barbi, cardinal of St. Mark, was trying to move in the opposite direction. The narrow bridge was blocked for a few seconds but those behind did not notice and pushed forward, trampling some underfoot and forcing others over the side into the river. With some presence of mind the castellan of St. Angelo recruited some citizens on the spot, closed the bridge, and dispersed some pilgrims on the northern side of it. It took a further hour to clear the mob on the bridge itself and the crushed bodies of 178 pilgrims were recovered. A further seventeen bodies were pulled out of the river at Ostia, some still clutching each others’ clothes for safety. All were taken to the nearby church of St. Celsus for identification. As evening closed appalling scenes were witnessed there as ‘fathers, sons, and brothers wandered among the bodies as if in Hell itself, … pathetically holding candles in their hands and looking through rows of corpses, then collapsing with grief as they recognized those for whom they were looking.’ The Medici agent in Rome was told of the disaster by a servant who had not seen such carnage since his service in the Turkish war. No one was more horrified than Nicholas V who tried to avert a similar disaster in future by clearing some of the buildings at either end of the bridge. Two small chapels were erected near the scene to commemorate the dead and warn those who crossed in future.
Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion Page 39