Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion

by Jonathan Sumption

  The imagery is old and the moral conventional. But the idea of performing a pilgrimage in the daily passage of life was capable of being used as a powerful argument against all external observances. ‘We ben pilgrims when that we ben born …’, a Lollard pamphlet, the Lanterne of Light, proclaimed; ‘every citizen of the heavenly country is a pilgrim of this world for all time of this present life, and when we travailen sore to keep God’s feasts, then we do our pilgrimage.’ ‘I call them true pilgrims’, agreed William Thorpe at his interrogation, ‘which travel towards the bliss of heaven … hating and fleeing all the seven deadly sins.’ The Lanterne of Light was once described by a mayor of London as ‘the worst and most perverse thing that ever I did read or see’; no less than fifteen heretical propositions were extracted from it by archbishop Chichele. But there is nothing intrinsically heretical about the ideas expressed here, all of which were openly expounded at the council of Constance. They are strongly represented in the poetry of Jean Gerson, whose Meditations on the true pilgrim were read with pleasure by Charles of Orléans and recommended to Charles VII of France by his confessor.

  These allegorical sermons, though intended as a summons to a more spiritual life, in fact replaced one ritual by another. A new kind of devotional handbook became popular in the fifteenth century, which explained to the reader how to follow each stage of an imaginary pilgrimage in his own home, and gain the same benefits. A Franciscan manuscript from St.-Trond (it is the earliest example known) begins by pointing out that one can win all the indulgences of the Holy Land without leaving one’s house, if one is prepared to follow in spirit every stage of Christ’s passion, reciting thirty-three Pater Nosters for each halt on the road to Calvary. It is in fact a sort of mental ‘stations of the cross’. An even more original product of its kind was written, probably at Oxford, for the benefit of those who could not or would not attend the Roman Jubilee of 1423. Here the frustrated pilgrim is invited to say the Pater Noster ten times daily to represent the ten leagues which he could expect to cover each day of his journey to Rome. When he had notionally arrived in the city, let him visit a local church once a day and distribute alms equal to the offerings which he would have made in Rome. ‘And it is my belief that by doing all this he will gain as much or more than he would have done by going physically to Rome.’ Many hundreds of such works, some of them of extreme naïvety, circulated in northern Europe in the fifteenth century.

  The theme was enthusiastically taken up by popular preachers, who openly recommended it as a less irksome alternative to pilgrimage. Preaching in Strasbourg cathedral during the Roman Jubilee of 1500, Johann Geiler addressed himself to the question whether a prisoner, locked up in a dungeon and unable to go to Rome, was thereby excluded from the benefits of the Jubilee indulgence. Calculating that it would take twenty-one days to reach Rome, another seven to visit the churches, and twenty-one to return, Geiler suggested that the prisoner could walk round his cell for forty-two days and devote himself to prayer for seven. Erasmus had this kind of exercise in mind when he poked fun at contemporaries who liked to acquire the indulgences of the Roman ‘stations’ without actually going to Rome.

  ‘I walk about my house. I go to my study. I check on my daughter’s chastity. Then I go to my shop and see what my servants are doing. Then into the kitchen to make sure that nothing is amiss there. And so from one place to another to see that my wife and children are all right and every one is at his business. These are my Roman stations.’

  Even when the taunts of satirists and the impact of the Reformation had sharply reduced the popularity of real pilgrimages, imaginary ones showed no signs of dying the same death. The most elaborate of them all, the work of Jan van Paesschen (d. 1532), outlined a course of prayer extending over 365 days of the year and corresponding to every stage of a journey to the Holy Land. This manual was published posthumously at Louvain in 1563 and immediately went into several editions. A French translation appeared three years later, and in c. 1605 there was even an anonymously printed version in English.

  The continuing popularity of these works testifies to the extraordinary resilience of late mediaeval piety. Erasmus believed that few offerings were made at the sanctuaries in his day, and that the pilgrimage to Santiago was nearly forgotten ‘on account of the new opinion that has been spread throughout the world’. That conservative Frenchman Gréffin Affagart agreed in blaming the decline of the great sanctuaries on the Reformation and particularly on ‘that evil knave Luther and his band of accomplices like Erasmus, with his Colloquies and Enchiridion’.

  But cultural change is seldom as straightforward as this. Progress is ragged. Successive periods overlap. A major intellectual transformation may alter the climate of opinion but old ideas have a habit of persisting. ‘Superstitions’ were condemned with such vehemence by the Protestant reformers, that it is easy to forget how, even in Protestant societies, pilgrimages and shrines, relics and miracles, survived the Reformation by more than a century. Writing in the 1520s, Erasmus looked forward to the rapid demise of the pilgrimage to Santiago. Yet the great Galician sanctuary was probably more prosperous in the seventeenth century than it had ever been in the middle ages. The offerings of the eleventh century had built the great Romanesque façade of St. James’s cathedral; the offerings of the eighteenth century tore it down and replaced it with the Baroque extravagances of Casas y Nóvoa. In Catholic Europe of the eighteenth century, obscure shrines rose to fame with the same facility as their fifteenth-century ancestors. Vierzehnheiligen was to Baroque Christianity what Notre-Dame de l’Epine had been to Gothic.

  Pilgrimage did not mean the same thing to every generation. But it was practised in one form or another from late antiquity to the Reformation, and has maintained a fitful existence ever since. It affords a unique reflection of mediaeval religion at every stage of its complicated development. Almsgiving has a longer history, but its practice was confined to the relatively rich. It was, moreover, a spiritual duty to give alms, and although some religions (notably Islam) insist on pilgrimages, Christianity is not amongst them. If Christians have at times travelled long distances to venerate the remains of spiritual heroes, then it was because in doing so they satisfied an emotional need.

  Notes

  1 Latimer on Hailes: Sermons and remains, ed. G. E. Corrie, Parker Soc., iii, London, 1844–5, vol. ii, p. 364.

  Cone. Châlons: MC. xiv. 96. Cf. Boniface, Ep. L, pp. 83–5.

  Licence to sin: Langland, Piers Plowman, B. prol. 46–52, p. 3. Poitevin author quoted in E. Ginot, Dix siècles de pèlerinage à Compostelle. Les chemins de Saint-Jacques en Poitou, Poitiers, 1912, p. 40.

  Criticized by moral reformers: Berthold, Predigten, XXVIII, vol. i, pp. 459–60. A. Franz (ed.), Drei deutscher Minoriten-prediger aus dem 13 und 14 Jahrhundert, Freiburg i. B., 1907, p. 69 (‘did any of you try …’). Giordano da Rivalto, Prediche inedite, Bologna, 1867, p. 109; cf. Prediche recitate in Firenze dal MCCCIII al MCCCVI, vol. i, Firenze, 1831, pp. 252–3. See also Samouillan, pp. 306–8.

  2 Langland: Piers Plowman, B.V. 57–8, 514–612, pp. 57–8, 85–9. Gascoigne on indulgences: Loci e libro veritatum, ed. J. E. Thorold Rogers, Oxford, 1881, p. 123.

  3 Petitions from French churches: collected in Denifle, vol. i.

  Sale of crusading indulgence: Hist. Compostellana, iI. 78, p. 429 (synod of 1125); William of Newburgh, Hist, rerum Anglicanum, III. 24, ed. R. Howlett, Chronicles of the reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, RS., vol. i, London, 1884, pp. 274–5. On commutation of vows, see above, ch. IX. On sale of Roman Jubilee indulgence, see above, ch. XIII.

  Sale of right to commute vows: CPR. Letters, vol. v, pp. 548–9 (Mattersley), but it was almost immediately cancelled, ibid., p. 549. Lit. Cant., vol. iii, p. 255 (no. 1064) (Canterbury in 1470).

  4 Sale of dispensations for Rome, Santiago, etc.: Walsingham, Hist. Anglicana, ed. H. T. Riley, RS., London, 1863–4, vol. i, p. 452. Arch. Vat. Reg. Vat. 347, fols. 132–4 (Germany, 1390). Arch. Vat. Reg. Vat. 313, fol.
48 (Castile, 1391).

  Price of dispensation: E. Göller, ‘Die Einnahmen der apostolischen Kammer unter Johann XXII’, Görres-Gesellschaft. Verbindung mit ihrem historischen Institut in Rom, vol. i, Paderborn, 1910, pp. 353, 361 (prices in 1330–1). L. Célier, Les dataires du xve siècle et les origines de la daterie apostolique, BEFAR., ciii, Paris, 1910, p. 153 (late 15th. cent.). Letters and papers illustrative of the reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, ed. J. Gairdner, RS., vol. ii, London, 1863, pp. 97–8.

  Indulgences ad instar: S. Mancherini, Codice diplomatico della Verna e delle SS. Stigmate, Firenze, 1924, pp. 64–8 (no. 48). A. Mercati, ‘Indulgenze della Porzioncola e della Verna concesse fuori dell’ordine francescano’, Archivum franciscanum historicum, xliii (1950), pp. 337–59. CPR. Letters, vol. iv, p. 349, and see index s.v. ‘Indulgences; of the Portiuncula’. On indulgences ad instar those of St. Mark’s see, e.g., Jansen, p. 165 (Meissen, Erfurt, Paderborn, Benedictsbeuren, Bamberg); CPR. Letters, vol. v, pp. 384, 489, 590 (Bromholm, etc.).

  Withdrawn in 1402: T. van Ottenthal, Regulae cancellariae apostolicae, Innsbruck, 1888, p. 76.

  5 Not granted thereafter: This conclusion is based on papal bulls relating to England, the only ones which have been systematically calendared. Two of Boniface’s indulgences ad instar were confirmed by his successors in 1409 and 1411, CPR. Letters, vol. vi, pp. 151, 295. On St. Nicholas of Calais, ibid., vol. xiii, pp. 448–9.

  Effect: Journal d’un bourgeois, p. 384. CJC., Extrav. Comm., V. ix. 4, vol. ii, cols. 1307–8 (bull of 1473).

  Franciscans accused: See, e.g., Simon of Cremona, De indulgentiis Portiunculae, I, pp. 87–8.

  Cologne indulgence: Jansen, pp. 152–4.

  Unauthorized Jubilees: Jean Juvenel des Ursins, Hist, de Charles VI, in Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de France, vol. ii, Paris, 1836, p. 442 (Le Puy). Traité sur le cinquième jubilé de S. Thomas, I. 1, 4, III. 1–2, 5, pp. 119, 121–2, 140, 142.

  6 Pardoners in Spain: J. Goni Gaztambide, ‘Los cuestores en España’, Hispania Sacra, ii (1949), pp. 1–43, 285–310. In England: Jusserand, pp. 175–91; Chichele, Reg., vol. iii, pp. 92–3, 100–1.

  Council of Vienne: decree on pardoners in CJC., Clem., V. ix. 2, vol. ii, cols. 1190–1. Forged bull of 1350: see above, p. 240.

  Bulls displayed: Langland, Piers Plowman, B. prol. 69, p. 4. Bartolus, Tractatus, XVIII, pp. 37–9 (Slavs at Ancona). Cf. Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Pardoner’s tale, ll. 7–16, p. 301.

  Totiens quoties: Paulus (2), vol. i, p. 344. In Rome: Capgrave, Solace, II. 1, p. 63; Muffel, Beschreihung, p. 19.

  Council of Constance: Hefele, vol. vii, pp. 503, 548.

  7 Boniface criticized: Gobelinus Persona, Cosmidromius, ed. M. Jansen, Munster, 1900, pp. 144–6. Neuss chronicler quoted in Fredericq (ed.), Codex, p. 22.

  Canterbury petition: Foréville, p. 191 (P. J. XXX).

  Indulgences transferable: Liber exemplorum ad usum praedicantium, ed. A. G. Little, Aberdeen, 1908, pp. 98–9 (Ulsterman). Bartolus, Tractatus, XXIX, pp. 57–8.

  8 Theory of indulgences for dead: Paulus (2), vol. ii, pp. 160–72. On crusading preachers, Conrad of Ursperg, Chron., MGH. SS. xxiii. 379.

  Offered at Portiuncula: Bartolus, Tractatus, XXI, XXIV, pp. 42–3, 45–7; cf. XXII, XXV–XXVI, XXXI–XXXIII, pp. 43–4, 45–54, 61–5.

  9 And elsewhere: Bridget, Rev., VII. 14, p. 550 (Jerusalem). Philip, Liber de Terra Sancta (1377), pp. 522, 524 (Rome).

  Pilgrimages ordered in English wills: Testamenta vetusta, vol. i, p. 51 (William de Beauchamp). Sharpe, Calendar of wills, vol. i, pp. 454, 640–1, 664, 479, vol. ii, pp. 41, 163, 234, 335, etc. Chichele, Reg., vol. ii, pp. 74, 488 (Thomas of Arundel, Thomas Poulton); cf. pp. 104,124, 385, 485, 539. CPR. Letters, vol. iv, pp. 388–9 (Fryng). Gibbons (ed.), Early Lincoln wills, p. 29 (‘Roger, my grandson …’).

  And in foreign wills: ‘Testaments enregistrées au Parlement de Paris dans le règne de Charles VI’, ed. A. Tuetey, in Collection de documents inédits sur l’histoire de France, Mélanges historiques, vol. iii, Paris, 1880, pp. 464, 496, 526, 556–7, 571–2, 577, 588, 622–3, 638. Pastor, vol. iv, p. I5on. (Pressburg). See also Vazquez de Parga et al., vol. i, pp. 120–1; Cartulaire de N-D. de Boulogne, pp. 196–7 (nos. 117, 119).

  10 Papal indulgences for dead: Alonso de Palencia, Crónica de Enrique IV, ed. A. Paz y Melia, Collección de escritores Castellanos, cxxvi, vol. i, Madrid, 1904, pp. 164, 219–21 (crusading indulgence of 1457). Lea (1), vol. iii, p. 593 (Tarragona). Paulus (2), vol. ii, pp. 381–2 (Franciscans). Archives historiques de la Saintonge et de l’Aunis, x (1882), pp. 56–69 (Saintes).

  Vicarious pilgrimages (12th. cent.): William, Mirac. S. Thomae, II. 20, p. 177 (Ralph). Thomas of Monmouth, Mirac. S. Willelmi, IV. 5, p. 170. Benedict, Mirac. S. Thomae, III. 58, p. 158 (nun).

  Cressewyc: CPR. Letters, vol. iv, p. 389. Cf. Gibbons, Early Lincoln wills, p. 62.

  11 Isabel of Bavaria: Jean Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, ed. Vallet de Viriville, Paris, 1858, pp. 276, 279, 284; Forgeais, Plombs historiés, vol. iii, p. 202 (Avallon). On her unusual piety, see Perdrizet, p. 126. No pilgrim, alternative disposition: e.g. Sharpe, Calendar of wills, vol. i, p. 657. ‘Of honest condition’: e.g. Testamenta vetusta, vol. i, p. 68; Sharpe, Calendar of wills, vol. ii, p. 41.

  John of Brittany: H. Morice (ed.), Mémoires pour servir de preuves à l’histoire de Bretagne, vol. ii, Paris, 1744, col. 1068.

  Scandinavian professionals: Riant (3), p. 381.

  Bishop of Lincoln: Book of Margery Kempe, I. 15, p. 36.

  Flagellation and Jubilee: Giles li Muisis, Chron., pp. 353, 361 (flagellant preachers). P. Fredericq, ‘Deux sermons inédits de Jean du Fayt’, Académie Royale de Belgique, Bulletin de la classe des lettres (1903), p. 700. See Delaruelle (1), pp. 141–3.

  12 Deguileville: Le pèlerinage de la vie humaine, ed. J. J. Sturzinger, Roxburghe Club, London, 1893.

  Used as argument against all external observances: Lanterne of light, XII, pp. 85–7. Examination of William Thorpe, p. 138. Similar opinions were expressed by Sir John Oldcastle at his trial, Rymer, Foedera, vol. ix, p. 63. On the condemnation of the Lanterne, Chichele, Reg., vol. iv, pp. 134–7.

  Gerson on pilgrimage of life: Super quotidiano peregrini testamento, ed. Glorieux, vol. viii, pp. 5–9. On the popularity of this work, M. Lieberman, ‘Chronologie Gersonienne’, Romania, lxxxi (1960), pp. 359–60.

  St.-Trond MS: ed. A. van d. Wyngaert, ‘Een merkwardige Nederlandsche kruiswegoefening uit de xve eeuw’, Ons geestlijk Erf, ii (1928), pp. 10–41; xii (1933), pp. 322–4.

  13 Oxford tract of 1423: Latin version in Gerson (wrongly attributed), Opera, ed. du Pin, vol. ii, cols. 523–4. French version, ed. E. Vansteenberghe, ‘Pèlerinage spirituelle’, Revue des sciences religieuses, xiv (1934), pp. 387–91. On its origin and date, I follow M. Lieberman, ‘Gersoniana’, Romania, lxxviii (1957), pp. 158–66.

  Geiler: Christlichen Bilgerschaften zum ewigen Vatterland, Basel, 1513, fol. 206vo.

  Erasmus: Peregrinatio religiosa, col. 787.

  Jan van Paesschen: Een devote maniere om gheestelyck pilgrimagie, Louvain, 1563. On editions and translations, see Brit. Mus. Catalogue of printed books, and editions listed in catalogue of Bodleian Library, Oxford and Bibl. Nat., Paris. These are probably by no means complete.

  14 Reformation said to have killed pilgrimage: Erasmus, Peregrinatio religiosa, cols. 774–5. Affagart, Rélation, pp. 20–1.

  Mediaeval survivals in Protestant societies: see Thomas.

  ABBREVIATIONS

  Aa. Ss. Acta sanctorum Bollandiana, ed. J. Bollandus et al., 61 vols., Antwerp, Brussels, etc., 1643– (in progress).

  Aa. Ss. OSB. Acta sanctorum ordinis S. Benedicti, ed. L. d’Achéry and J. Mabillon, 9 vols., Paris, 1668–1701.

  An. Boll. Analecta Bollandiana.

  AOL. Archives de l’orient latin, 2 vols., Geneva, 1881–4.

  Arch. Nat. Archives Nationales de France, Paris.

  Arch. Vat. Archivio Vaticano, Rome.

  ASRSP.
Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria.

  BBB. G. Golubovich, Biblioteca bio-bibliografica della Terra Santa e dell’ oriente Francescano, 5 vols., Florence, 1906–(in progress).

  BEC. Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes.

  BEFAR. Bibliothèque des Écoles Francaises d’Athènes et de Rome.

  BEHE. Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études.

  BHP. Bulletin historique et philologique du Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques.

  Bibl. Bibliothèque de la ville de …

  Bibl. Nat. Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.

  BLVS. Bibliothek des literarischen Vereins in Stuttgart.

  Brit. Mus. British Museum, London.

  CCH (Bruxelles). Corpus codicum hagiographicorum Bibliothecae Regiae Bruxellensis, Pars i: Codices latini membranei, 2 vols., Brussels, 1886–9.

  CCH (Paris). Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum latinorum in Biblio theca Nationali Parisiensi, 3 vols., Brussels, 1889–93.

  CJC. Corpus juris canonici, ed. A. L. Richter and A. Friedberg, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1879–81.

  CPR. Letters. Calendar of entries in the papal registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland. Papal letters, ed. W. H. Bliss et al., 13 vols., London, 1893– (in progress).

  CRH. Comptes rendus des séances de la Commission Royale d’ Histoire.

  CSEL. Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum.

  DACL. Dictionnaire d’archéologie Chrétienne et de liturgie, ed. F. Cabrol, H. Leclercq, et al., 15 vols., Paris, 1907–53.

  DDC. Dictionnaire de droit canonique, ed. R. Naz, 7 vols., Paris, 1935–65.