Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion

by Jonathan Sumption

  35 Jubilee of 1450: what follows is based on Paolo dello Mastro, Memoriale, LIV, pp. 95–7; Manetti, Vita Nicolai V, II, RISS (1). iii (2). 924–5. Olivier de la Marche, Mémoires, ed. H. Beaune and J. d’Arbaumont, SHF, vol. ii, Paris, 1884, p. 162; Pastor, vol. ii, pp. 74–137, 500–2.

  Jubilee bull: partial text in Raynald, Ann. Eccl., An. 1449 (no. 15), vol. ix, p. 543.

  Rucellai: Giubileo, pp. 564–79.

  36 Capgrave: Solace, preface, I. 14, II. 4, 9, 47, pp. 1, 33, 73, 87–8, 146–7. Shops on bridge destroyed: Dietrich of Niem, De Scismate, II. 37, p. 192.

  37 Indulgence without journey: C. Gärtner, Salzburgische gelehrte Unterhaltungen, vol. i, Salzburg, 1812, p. 114. Fredericq (ed.), Codex, pp. 80–2, 119–21, 132–6. Paulus (2), vol. ii, pp. 47, 188. C. Witz (ed.), ‘Bullen und Breven aus italienischen Archiven’, Quellen zur Schweitzer Geschichte, xxi, Basel, 1902, p. 517. CPR. Letters, vol. x, pp. 169–70. Amort, De Origine Indulgentiarum, vol. i, pp. 87–9. Bull. Vat., vol. ii, p. 137. Henry VI’s comment in Rymer, Foedera, vol. x, pp. 263–6, vol. xi, pp. 252–4.

  38 Results of the Jubilee: Manetti, Vita Nicolai V, II, RISS (1). iii (2). 924–5. Dati, Opera, Venice, 1516, fol. 177.

  CHAPTER XIV

  THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 1

  ‘Light-Minded and Inquisitive Persons’

  Tourists

  Rome was the principal tourist resort of the middle ages, but it was far from being the only one. ‘Some light-minded and inquisitive persons’, Jacques de Vitry remarked, ‘go on pilgrimages not out of devotion, but out of mere curiosity and love of novelty. All they want to do is travel through unknown lands to investigate the absurd, exaggerated stories they have heard about the east.’ As travelling became easier and cheaper, tourism, lightly disguised as pilgrimage, became extremely popular. It would be a gross exaggeration to suggest that simple curiosity had displaced the intensely spiritual feelings of an earlier age, but in the fifteen century, it was certainly the predominant motive of many pilgrims.

  This new interest is reflected in their guide-books. The guide-books of twelfth-century pilgrims in the Holy Land were condensed, factual and turgid; most of their topographical information was still derived from the seventh-century writings of Bede and Adamnan. A few pilgrims supplemented these arid tomes by writing travel diaries. Soon after the first crusade an Englishman called Saewulf wrote a long personal account of his experiences in the Holy Land. Four years later the Russian abbot Daniel composed another, having found it impossible to buy a good guide-book in Jerusalem. Pilgrims were still complaining about the inadequacy of guide-books in the 1160s, when John of Wurzburg observed that the city had been largely rebuilt since the beginning of the eleventh century, and Bede was no longer a useful companion. ‘For this reason’, he thought, ‘my own detailed description will not be found superfluous.’ Even more interesting are the accounts of thirteenth-century travellers, some of whom penetrated to Damascus or Baghdad and recorded their impressions of Islamic society. Exactly what audience they had in mind when writing these lengthy ‘itineraries’ is not at all clear. Dietrich, bishop of Wurzburg, declared that his itinerary, written in c. 1172, was intended to ‘satisfy the desires of those who cannot go there themselves’. But in this it was plainly unsuccessful for, like almost every other account of this period, it was read by a few friends of the author, and then allowed to gather dust in a monastic library. The only itinerary which was much read at the time was the Jerusalem History of Jacques de Vitry, a book more interesting for its pungently expressed prejudices than for its information.

  All this changed in the fourteenth century. If one event deserves to be singled out as a landmark in this change it was the appearance, shortly after 1357, of Mandeville’s Travels. This purported to be an account of the travels of Sir John Mandeville to Palestine, Turkey, Persia, India, and Egypt, but it was in fact a compilation of stories drawn from various itineraries of the previous century with a few colourful fictions added. The author of this audacious literary forgery is still unknown, though the evidence points to Jean d’Outremeuse, a prolific collector of legends, who lived in Liège. Despite his improbable details, the fraudulent ‘Mandeville’ was treated with a respect that was denied to the truthful Marco Polo, whose work was dubbed Il Milione for its supposed exaggerations. Mandeville’s Travels immediately became one of the most popular books of the age. Well over three hundred manuscripts survive. Within half a century it had been translated from the original French into Latin, English, high and low German, Danish, Czech, Italian, Spanish, and Irish. With the advent of printing it appeared in countless editions, and in England alone Wynkyn de Worde printed four different versions before the death of Henry VII. It was the first really popular book to portray travel as an adventure and a romance. For a hundred and fifty years after its appearance the public devoured each new travel book as it was written. ‘Mandeville’ was plagiarized and abridged by lesser writers, while a glut of reminiscences came from the pen of every Holy Land pilgrim with pretensions to literacy. The English Augustinian John Capgrave was inspired to write his account of Rome by reading Marco Polo and ‘Mandeville’. When Felix Faber returned from his round trip to the Holy Land, crowds gathered to listen to his experiences. Most of the annual pilgrim-fleets which sailed from Venice in the fifteenth century carried at least one diarist; there were four on the fleet of 1479 and five on that of 1483. By this time, too, pilgrims’ diaries were issuing in thousands from the printing presses.

  Travel-books both reflect and create interest in the places that they describe. ‘Mandeville’ and his imitators stand at the beginning of the first chapter in the history of mass-travel, and the Travels reflect the growing romanticism and enthusiasm with which men were beginning to look on distant lands. Many pilgrims returned from their travels as little Mandevilles and, as the Lollard William Thorpe observed, ‘if they be a month out in their pilgrimage, many of them shall be an half year after great janglers, tale-tellers, and liars.’ This is the world of Chaucer’s knight, who had ‘ridden no man further, as well in Christendom as hethenesse’. So it was of the Wife of Bath:

  And thryse had she been at Ierusalem.

  She hadde passed many a straunge streem.

  At Rome she hadde been and at Boloigne,

  In Galice at seint Iame and at Coloigne.

  She coude much of wandring by the weye.

  Gat tothed was she, soothly for to seye.

  Official arrangements are now made for tourists for the first time. Information offices appear at Rome and consulates in Egypt and Palestine. The Venetian package tour is at the height of its popularity. Governments begin to encourage tourism. Thus a safe-conduct issued by the Aragonese chancery in 1387 to a band of German travellers and their wives describes their purpose as being ‘to fulfil their pilgrimage and observe the Spanish way of life’. The commercial treaty made between England and France in 1471 envisaged the possibility that English gentlemen might wish to cross the Channel ‘to see and observe the country pour leur plaisance’. The invitation was probably taken up, for John Wyclif believed that the English were especially addicted to pilgrimages on account of their restless curiosity. Gréffin Affagart, on the other hand, thought it a peculiarly German vice. But both were agreed that it was deplorable. ‘Let no man go to the Holy Land just to see the world’, wrote the impeccably orthodox Santo Brasca, ‘or simply to be able to boast “I have been there” and “I have seen that”, and so win the admiration of his friends.’

  In several respects these early tourists behaved exactly like their modern counterparts. They carved graffiti on walls, for example. Noblemen were in the habit of inscribing their coats of arms inside the Holy Sepulchre itself while pretending to be praying, and some of Felix Faber’s companions had brought chisels and mallets with them for the purpose. Ghillebert de Lannoy’s graffiti, carved in the refectory at Mount Sinai, can still be seen. They also bought gaudy souvenirs, like the coral paternosters and shaped semi-precious stones which were on sale out
side the sanctuaries of Le Puy. The nagging wife in the Quinze Joies de Mariage bullied her husband into buying some of these. Nompar de Caumont bought several pieces of fine coloured silk at Jerusalem, together with four pieces of rope the length of the Holy Sepulchre, three silk purses, thirty-three silver rings and twelve silver crucifixes which had touched the Holy Sepulchre, a number of relics of doubtful worth, a bag of Jerusalem soil, a black embroidered purse, two pairs of golden spurs, four roses and a phial of Jordan water. These he distributed amongst his relatives and tenants when he returned.

  Primitive postcards were sold at the more popular sanctuaries. In Rome pictures of the sudarium of Veronica, painted on pieces of stiffened paper torn out of old books, were mass-produced and sold to pilgrims in the streets. Bernard van Breidenbach, dean of Mainz cathedral, brought a professional painter with him to Jerusalem in 1483 ‘to record all the principal cities from Venice onwards, which he did in a masterly and accurate fashion.’ These drawings were reproduced in the earliest edition of Breidenbach’s account of his journey, a beautiful octavo volume printed in Mainz in 1486. They include ‘pull-out’ drawings of Venice and Rhodes, the west front of the basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, and several animals which the artist claimed to have seen in Palestine, amongst them a unicorn and a strange hairy-looking man with a frog-like face. The French edition, printed in Lyon in 1489, is the earliest known example of copper-plate printing in France.

  Books like Breidenbach’s were probably read at leisure at home, not carried about on long journeys. Felix Faber, it is true, took a small library with him to the Holy Land, but he was an unusually thorough tourist. Most of the books carried by pilgrims in their hip-bags would have been route-books, like the Guide for Pilgrims to Santiago or the curious Anglo-Saxon guide to the sanctuaries of England, which dates from the eleventh century. Route-books did not vary much through the years, but as the routes became better-organized after the thirteenth century they passed out of fashion and were replaced by books of indulgences. The Pilgrimages and Pardons of Acre, written in French in about 1280, is an early example, altogether typical of its species. The Mirabilia Urbis Romae comes nearest, perhaps, to our own concept of a guide-book. In the Holy Land there were eight anonymous ‘descriptions’, all but one dating from the twelfth century, but they were cursory and inaccurate and, although much used, they were found wanting even by the uncritical pilgrims of the twelfth century.

  Pilgrims who were not satisfied with these sketchy hand-books were obliged to hire a local guide. Professional guides had been found in Jerusalem as early as the fourth century, when their inaccuracies and exaggerations had earned them the implacable hostility of St. Jerome. The Russian abbot Daniel, in 1106, was lucky enough to find an ‘old man, extremely learned’ who spoke Greek and accompanied him on expeditions to all the outlying parts of Palestine. John of Wurzburg was guided round the Jacobite convent of St. Mary Magdalene by a monk who proclaimed the scriptural associations of the place with dramatic emphasis and many flamboyant gestures. In some cities, guides were licensed and organized. Venice, with its bureaucratic tradition, was naturally one of these. The republic provided guides whose duties included showing visitors the sights, finding them lodgings, helping them with their shopping, and introducing them to shipowners.

  It is a measure of the greater sophistication of late mediaeval pilgrims, more critical and better-read than their predecessors, that they listened with suspicion to the untruths peddled by guides. Felix Faber was a devout man, but not a naive one. He prepared for his second pilgrimage to the Holy Land by reading every pilgrim’s account he could lay hands on, numerous histories of the crusades, and the writings of St. Jerome. He doubted whether the Lord’s Sepulchre was ‘really his own, or another, built afterwards’. He did not believe the Arab guides who told him that the bodies of the Holy Innocents were preserved at Bethlehem. Arnold von Harff, who was neither naïve nor particularly devout, was caustic in his remarks on the ‘confusions’ of the clergy on the subject of relics. He ‘did not know’ whether the tablets at S. Spirito in Rome were those which Moses received on Mount Horeb. Although von Harff did not question the value of relics as such, he had seen arms of St. Thomas at Rhodes, Rome, and Maestrich, as well as in India; heads of St. James the Less had been shown to him at Santiago and Venice. On being told that St. Matthew the apostle was buried in Rome he recalled that he had seen shrines of St. Matthew in Padua and in Lombardy ‘and they tell me that his head is at Trier in Germany, so I will leave it to God to resolve the confusions of these priests.’ ‘On the right hand side of the altar I was told that there lies St. Jerome, but was he not buried in Bethlehem and subsequently carried off to Constantinople? How he came to be in Rome as well, I shall leave to the learned to decide.’ It was no more than Guibert de Nogent had said four centuries before, but the growing popularity of travel was bringing these disconcerting truths to a wider audience.

  Women

  The circle of Latin pilgrims which grew up around St. Jerome at the close of the fourth century was dominated by women. The most celebrated pilgrims of the late classical period, Paula, Etheria, Melania, were all women. Even in the ‘dark ages’ of the west, female pilgrims were a familiar sight on the roads. Their sins and their illnesses are recorded by Gregory of Tours, their restless addiction to travel unequivocally condemned by St. Boniface. For most of the middle ages, however, women were not particularly noted as pilgrims. So much so that the sudden reappearance of large numbers of female pilgrims in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries called for comment, usually hostile comment. Chaucer’s wife of Bath became the epitome of the worldly, pleasure-seeking pilgrim. In the Quinze Joies de Mariage, it is the nagging wife, not her husband, who decides on a pilgrimage to Le Puy, where all rich and fashionable ladies go. Berthold of Regensburg and Giordano da Rivalta both devoted whole sermons to the virulent condemnation of female pilgrims. It is possible that at the close of the middle ages women formed the majority of visitors at many shrines. This was certainly true of several sanctuaries visited by Henry VIII’s monastic commissioners in the course of their travels, notably of Bury St. Edmund’s, where they reported that ‘there was such frequence of women coming and resorting to this monastery as to no place more.’

  The fickle tastes of women seem to have been partly responsible for the abrupt rise of obscure shrines which is such a marked characteristic of the cult of the saints in the late middle ages. At the end of the fourteenth century, the Cistercian abbey of Meaux in Yorkshire commissioned a sculptor to carve a large wooden crucifix for the church. Miracles were reported as soon as the crucifix was completed and local people began to make pilgrimages to it. It was thought’, wrote abbot Thomas Burton, ‘that if women were admitted to the abbey church the general atmosphere of devotion would be greatly increased, which would be most advantageous to our monastery. We therefore requested the abbot of Cîteaux for permission to admit honest men and women to the crucifix, which was granted on condition that the women did not enter the conventual buildings.’ This was, in fact, a common problem at monastic sanctuaries. The monks of St.-Benoit-sur-Loire had solved it by erecting a marquee at the back of their church where much venerated relics could be seen by both sexes on Saturdays. Some important sanctuaries, however, adhered to the letter of the Benedictine rule and excluded female pilgrims altogether. In the first half of the twelfth century, Symeon of Durham boasted that no woman had ever been admitted to the sanctuary of St. Cuthbert and that when Judith, wife of earl Tostig, had tried to enter, she had been paralysed at the door. The same fate befell a chambermaid who tried to enter the sanctuary in the following of king David of Scotland, dressed as a monk.

  A more practical objection to the presence of women was that it was usually members of the weaker sex who were trampled underfoot in the rush to venerate the relics of the church. Most of the casualties at St.-Denis in Suger’s time were women, as they were at other public exhibitions of relics. A pregnant woman was crushed to death in the crowd tha
t gathered to see the head of St. Martial in 1388. In many Roman churches the authorities excluded women for this very reason. This rule originated in the fourteenth century when women first appeared in Rome in large numbers. An anonymous Englishman who visited Rome in 1344 remarked that the women gathered round the shrines were the most devout he had ever seen. Nevertheless, they were not allowed to set foot in the chapel of St. John the Baptist in the Lateran basilica but were directed to gain the indulgence by touching the outside of the door. No women were allowed in the chapel of the Saviour, or even in the Sancta Sanctorum, where the most important relics were housed. Various explanations were advanced. Women, it was alleged, were inclined to vanity, hysteria, or vice. In one of the forbidden chapels of St. Peter’s a rich lady was said to have demanded that a crucifix be washed after a poor woman had kissed it. According to another school of thought, a woman had ‘once uttered such things that she burst asunder’. John Capgrave sagely remarked that the exclusion of women was attributed to ‘many lewd causes to which I wil give no credens’. His own theory probably represents the truth of the matter. ‘All those whech have be at Rome knowe wel that the women there be passing desirous to goo on pilgrimage and to touch and kiss every holy relik. Now in very soothfastness these places which are forbode to them are rit smale…. And uphap some woman in the press, eithir for sikness or with child, be in grete perel there, and for this cause they were forbode the entre of these houses as I suppose.’