CHAPTER III PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES

I

In spite of the merits of physicians, soothsayers, and sorcerers, maladies sometimes resisted the best remedies, and the patient would then vow to go on a pilgrimage, ride, walk, or have himself carried there, and pray for his cure. He went to our Lady of Walsingham, for example, or to St. Thomas of Canterbury, whose medical powers were considered, beyond comparison, the best of all: “Optimus egrorum, medicus fit Thomas bonorum,” was the motto stamped on some of the pewter ampullæ, with miraculous water in them, which pilgrims brought back as a souvenir from Canterbury: “For good people that are sick, Thomas is the best of physicians.” And surely praying at his shrine, after an open-air journey on foot or horseback, was a better way of preserving one’s health than swallowing the black beetles and fat bats of John of Gaddesden, the court physician. {339}

Pilgrimages were incessant; they were made to fulfil a vow as in cases of illness or of great peril, or in expiation of sins. Confessors frequently gave the going on a pilgrimage as penance, and sometimes ordered that the traveller should go barefoot or in his shirt. “Commune penaunce,” says Chaucer’s parson in his great sermon, speaking of atonement which must be public, “commune,” because the sin has been public too, “is that prestes enjoynen men comunly in certeyn caas, as for to goon, peradventure, naked in pilgrimage or barfot,” that is to say, naked in their shirts. In accordance with a vow made during a tempest, Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, later Pope Pius II, walked ten miles barefoot on the frozen ground, to White Kirk, near North Berwick, and had, on his return, “to be born, rather than led by his servants.”[463]

Another motive for pilgrimages, and, more than any other, characteristic of the times, was to annoy the king. Thus in the fourteenth century English people flocked to the tomb of the selfish, narrow-minded and vengeful Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, of whom popular prejudice had made a saint.[464] The crowd hastened through a spirit of opposition to Pontefract, where the rebel had been decapitated, by order of his relative, King Edward II, and the pilgrims became every year more numerous, to the great scandal of the sovereign and of the Archbishop of York. A letter of this prelate shows the uselessness of the {340} prohibitions: the idea of a semblance of persecution of believers devised by an archbishop only excited zeal and devotion; men hoped to please the martyr by allowing themselves to be slightly martyred. Thus, while awaiting a canonization that never came, though insisted upon by the next king, crowds collected near the tomb, so numerous and tumultuous that there happened “homicides and mortal wounds, . . . and that greater dangers yet and doubtless most imminent are to be feared.”[465]

All this began the very year after the execution of the “saint.” The official was enjoined to hinder these meetings by any means, and to disperse them until the Pope should pronounce. But the gatherings continued, and Henry of Lancaster wrote in 1327 to the Archbishop of York asking him to refer the matter to the Sovereign Pontiff, and “bear witness to the fame of the miracles which God works by our very dear lord and brother.”[466] The same year the Commons took the question in hand and petitioned for the canonization of the same Thomas, which was scarcely parliamentary business.[467] In 1338, a London pepperer had for sale a mazer bowl ornamented with an “image of St. Thomas of Lancester.”[468] Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, who died in 1361, bequeathed money for pious men to make a variety of pilgrimages on his behalf, and he specially recommended that “a good man and true” should be {341} hired and charged to go to “Pountfreyt and to offer there, at the tomb of Thomas, late earl of Lancaster, 40s.”[469]

To make a saint of a rebel was the most energetic means of protesting against the king, and the people would not miss this opportunity under some of their sovereigns. Henry III, in 1266, had been obliged to forbid Simon de Montfort being considered as a saint, although Simon having died under excommunication, as was represented to the king by the bishops and barons, authors of the petitions comprised in the “Dictum de Kenilworth,”[470] had little chance of ever being canonized. Latin hymns were nevertheless composed in his honour, as for a saint.[471]

The rebel was hardly dead than popular feeling, often unfavourable to him during his life, forthwith recognized in him nothing else than the hero who had fought against a tyrant, and, through sympathy for the man, or antipathy for the king, assigned therefore to him a place in heaven. The active revolt, rudely interrupted {342} by punishment, continued thus in the latent state, and every one came to see God Himself take the part of the oppressed, and proclaim the injustice of the ruler by working miracles at the tomb of his victim. The sovereign defended himself as he could; he dispersed the rabble and prohibited the miracles.

De par le Roi, défense à Dieu

De faire miracle en ce lieu,

read an ironical distich written in France in the “Diacre Paris” days. Similarly disposed, Edward II, on October 2, 1323, wrote “to his faithful John de Stonore and John de Bousser,” ordering an inquiry which would be followed by graver measures. He recalled to them that “a little time ago Henry de Montfort and Henry de Wylynton, our enemies and rebels, on the advice of the royal Court, were drawn and hanged at Bristol, and it had been decided that their bodies should remain attached to the gibbet, so that others might abstain from similar crimes and misdeeds against us.” But on the contrary, the people made relics of these bloody and mutilated remains, and surrounded them with respect. Reginald de Montfort, William de Clyf, William Curteys, and John his brother, and some others, in order to render the king odious to the people, had organized false miracles at the gibbet where the corpses of these rebels were still hanging, which was nothing short of “idolatry.”

Severe measures were required in several places at the same time; while these bodies were venerated at Bristol, a mere image of Thomas of Lancaster, in the Cathedral of London, was attracting pilgrims and working miracles. In this same year, 1323, on June 28th, Edward II is found writing with great irritation to the Bishop of London:

“It has come to our ears—and it is very displeasing to us—that many among the people of God, confided to your charge, victims of a diabolical trickery, crowd round {343} a panel placed in your church of St. Paul’s, where are to be seen statues, sculptures, or images, and among others that of Thomas, late Earl of Lancaster, a rebel, our enemy. Silly visitors, without any authorization from the Roman Church, venerate and worship this image as a holy thing, and affirm that it there works miracles: this is a disgrace for the whole Church, a shame for us and for you, a manifest danger for the souls of the aforesaid people, and a dangerous example to others.”[472]

The bishop knows it, continues the king, and secretly encourages these practices without any other motive than that of profiting by the offerings, thus making “shameful gains. . . . By which,” adds Edward II, “we are deeply afflicted.” The usual prohibitions follow.[473]

These were occasional pilgrimages. Others were in favour for a much longer time owing to the reputation of the departed for sanctity, and not to political motives. For many years crowds came, as we have seen, to visit the tomb of Richard Rolle, the hermit of Hampole. Even in this, fashion ruled; some relics or tombs of hermits or of saints enjoyed for a period universal favour; then all of a sudden, through some great miracle, another saint rose to pre-eminence, and the others, by degrees, sank into obscurity.

Convents, which had neither relics nor bodies of illustrious saints to attract pilgrims, nor a marvellous thorn-tree like that of Glastonbury, would have sometimes a pious artist to fabricate an image fit to draw visitors; it would be inaugurated with solemnity, work miracles, it was hoped, and enjoy a more or less wide fame. Thomas of Burton, Abbot of Meaux, near Beverley, relates in the chronicle of his rich monastery, written by himself at the end of the fourteenth century, one of the most remarkable facts of this kind. Abbot Hugh of Leven, one of his {344} predecessors, had in the first half of the century ordered a new crucifix for the choir of the chapel: “And the artist never worked at any fine and important part, except on Fridays, fasting on bread and water. And he had all the time a naked man under his eyes, and he laboured to give to his crucifix the beauty of the model. By the means of this crucifix, the Almighty worked open miracles continually. It was then thought that if access to this crucifix were allowed to women, the common devotion would be increased and great advantages would result from it for our monastery. Upon which the Abbot of Citeaux, by our request, granted us leave to let men and honest women approach the said crucifix, provided, however, that the women did not enter the cloister, the dormitory, and other parts of the monastery. . . . But profiting by this license, to our misfortune, women began to come in increasing numbers to the said crucifix, while in them devotion is cool, and all they want is to see the church, and they increase our expenses by our having to receive them.”[474]

This naïve complaint is interesting from several points of view; it plainly shows what was done to bring such or such a sanctuary into favour with the pilgrims;[475] in the present case the effort did not succeed, the prodigies do not seem to have long responded to the expectation, {345} and people came only from curiosity to visit the church and the fine crucifix of the monastery. From the artistic point of view the fact is still more important, for this is the most ancient example of sculpture from the nude living model to be found in mediæval England; and this anonymous sculptor ought to be remembered, which he is not, as one of the precursors of the Renaissance in his country.

Another attempt to make a chapel popular had been tried in the parochial church of Foston; but the Archbishop of York, William Grenefeld, was scandalized, and by a letter full of good sense put an end to the “great concourse of simple people who came to visit a certain image of the Holy Virgin recently placed in the church, as if this image had something more divine than any other images of the sort.”[476]

The fact was, as may be noticed even in our days, that, with or without the co-operation of the clergy, some statues had a far better reputation than others; wonders were expected of them, and they were worshipped accordingly; the same vicissitudes were observable for images as for relics and tombs of saints. This statue had healed sick people without number, and that one was known to have moved, to have made a sign, to have spoken a word. Pictures of miracles worked by statues constantly recur in manuscripts; one, for instance, is to be found in several English books of the fourteenth century.[477] It shows how a poor painter, being busy colouring and gilding {346} a statue of the Virgin, with a most ugly devil under her feet, the Evil One, angry at such an unflattering portrait, came and broke the ladder on which the artist was standing; but as he was falling and about to be killed, the stone Virgin bent towards him, and extending her arm held him safe until help came.

Statues did not always act so graciously, but were guided by circumstances, as was seen in the church of St. Paul-extra-muros at Rome. A visitor, according to the relation of the learned Thomas Gascoigne, chancellor of Oxford, had insulted the image of the saint, saying: “ ‘Why hast thou got a sword, I mean to have thy sword,’ and he was trying to take it out of the hands of the statue. But through God’s doing, the statue raised its sword on the impious man, and clove his head to the chin; and then death followed. This happened at the time when Eugene IV was Pope of Rome, and a witness of the scene reported it to me; this witness was a beadel of the said Pope, called Master Erasmus Fullar, a priest of the kingdom of Hungary.”[478]

II

Apart from pilgrimages, in fashion but for a time, English people usually went to Durham to visit the tomb of the holy Confessor Cuthbert, and the place where was kept his ever-victorious banner; to the shrine of King Edward the Confessor in Westminster; to St. Albans, St. Edmund’s Bury, St. David’s, on account of the saints after whom these towns are named; to Chichester, to worship the body of St. Richard the Bishop; to Glastonbury, with its holy thorn-tree, and its church founded {347} by St. Joseph of Arimathea; to Waltham, where a cross of black marble had been miraculously found in the time of King Knut. Lincoln, York, Peterborough, Hayles with its Holy Blood, Winchester (for St. Swithin, who, among other merits, had had that of being a bridge builder), Holywell, Beverley with its St. John, and a number of other places,[479] shrines and miraculous and wishing wells had also attractions for the pilgrim; but none could stand comparison with Walsingham and Canterbury.

At Walsingham there were a church and a chapel, now destroyed, the latter with a miraculous bejewelled statue of the Virgin, and some of her milk, the chapel being exactly similar, it was said, to the Santa Casa of Loretto, which was a wonder in itself, for the English copy had been built in the eleventh century, long before the Casa was heard of. Owing to innumerable gifts the place was resplendent with gold and precious stones. Visiting Cologne and the famous shrine of the wise men of the East, Roger Ascham writes: “The three kings be not so rich, I believe, as was the Lady of Walsingham.”[480] People came in crowds; many among the British kings came too;[481] the road leading to Walsingham was called the palmers’ way, and chapels were built along its line. The town was full of inns, hospitals, and religious buildings, as was usually the case with the more famous of these places.

The milk and the image, as most of the pilgrimage statues, were destroyed at the Reformation, some of the wooden ones being burnt like the heretics, or with them, at Smithfield, as happened when Friar Forest died at {348} the stake.[482] The gold and silver ones were turned to more practical uses. “I have pullyd down,” Dr. London, one of the Visitors of religious houses, writes to Thomas Cromwell, “the image of our Lady at Caversham, wherunto wasse great pilgremage. The image ys platyd over with sylver, and I have putte yt in a cheste fast lackyd (locked) and naylyd uppe, and by the next bardge that commyth from Redyng to London yt shall be browght to your Lordeschippe. I have also pullyd down the place she stode in with all other ceremonyes, as lights, schrds (shrouds), crowchys (crosses), and imagies of wex hangyng about the chapel, and have defacyed the same thorowly in exchuyng of any farther resortt thedyr. . . . At Caversham ys a propre lodginge wher the chanon lay, with a fayer garden and an orchard mete to be bestowed upon som frynde of your lordeschip’s in thees parties.”[483]

In especially large numbers people hired horses at Southwark, with relays at Rochester, and set out for St. Thomas of Canterbury. This was the highroad to the continent; a regular service of hired horses had been established along it. Twelvepence was paid from Southwark to Rochester, twelvepence from Rochester to Canterbury, sixpence from Canterbury to Dover. The horses were branded in a prominent manner, so that unscrupulous travellers should not be tempted to quit the road and appropriate their steeds.[484] The sanctuary of St. Thomas had, indeed, a world-wide reputation.

We can scarcely realize now the thrill of horror that went throughout Christendom, as far as the Levant, as far as Iceland, when the news came that Archbishop {349} Thomas Becket,[485] Legate of the Pope, former chancellor of England, had been massacred in his cathedral of Canterbury by four knights of Henry II, on the evening of Tuesday, December 29, 1170, his brain and blood splashing the pavement. Everything combined to increase the enormity of the crime; the holiness of the place, which should have afforded sanctuary, even to a murderer, the rank of the victim in the hierarchy of the Church, the dying man’s brave and pious words, the presence of the cross born at his side by his assistant, Edward Grim, himself severely wounded, and, above all, the fame and character of the prelate, an archbishop Turpin of real life, who, like the companion of Roland, and while already engaged in holy orders, had proved a plucky military leader, unimpeachable, moreover, from the moral point of view, and fearless throughout his life. Like the Archbishop of Reims of the “Song of Roland,” whose brain had flowed down his face,[486] he had died at the hands of barbarians, who had not, however, the excuse of being infidels.

Rarely did a single act cause such universal indignation. Public opinion proclaimed Thomas a saint even before the Pope could take action, which he did, however, with a promptitude rare in such cases, canonization being proclaimed in February, 1173. The body was scarcely buried in the crypt of the cathedral,[487] than pilgrims came to it, their numbers ceaselessly increasing. The life of the archbishop was the subject of numberless miniatures,[488] {350} sculptures,[489] painted windows. Some of the latter, dating back to the thirteenth century, still remain at Canterbury, Sens, Chartres, and other places. Matthew Paris wrote and illuminated with his own hand, Walsingham tells us, a biography of the archbishop; churches dedicated to him multiplied in England and out of England: “On the heights of Fourvières,” wrote Dean Stanley, “overlooking the city of Lyons, is a chapel dedicated to Saint Thomas of Canterbury. Four years before his death, it is said, he was walking on the terraced bank of the river underneath, and being asked to whom the chapel should be dedicated, he replied, ‘To the next martyr,’ on which his companion remarked, ‘Perhaps, then, to you.’”[490]

The prophecy was fulfilled. Entirely renovated, and forming now part of the pilgrimage church at Fourvières, such a chapel still exists, still dedicated to St. Thomas; it has been allotted to the fraternity of “Notre Dame de Compassion” for their exercises, which consist chiefly in praying for the conversion of England. On the threshold are engraved four riming Latin lines: “Happy the place, happy the church where Thomas’s memory survives; happy the land which gave birth to the prelate, happy that which received him, an exile.”[491]

Churches dedicated to him were especially numerous in Normandy, from which his family came, a chapel at {351} Caen bearing the grim name of “Saint Thomas l’Abattu” (the stricken down). His life was told in verse and prose, in Latin, French, Icelandic, the most noteworthy of those lives being that in French verse by Garnier de Pont-Sainte-Maxence, as remarkable for its literary as for its historical value, the author, a contemporary, having taken as much pains to ascertain the truth as would the most conscientious of the historians of to-day.[492] He had begun writing two years after the event, and had remodelled several times his poem because new documents, of which several are versified into his text, or new facts had come to his knowledge. He established himself at “Chantorbire,” where every man, every stone had been a witness, and he appealed, in order to learn the truth, to the friends, the servants, the sister of Saint Thomas. His work was thereby delayed, but he preferred that:

A Chantorbire alai; la vérité oï;

Des amis saint Thoma la vérité cuilli,

Et de cels ki l’aveient dès l’enfance servi,

D’oster et de remettre le travail en suffri.

Proud of the trouble he had taken, he was proud also of the good French he spoke, far better, of course, than that of ordinary Anglo-Norman writers: “My language is good, for I was born in France.” He thereupon submits to the custom, not yet quite obsolete, of abusing those who write on the same subject. Don’t forget, he says to his readers in the first lines of his poem, that “all physicians are not good healers; and it is not all clerks who know how to well sing and well read. . . . Some claim to be the best, and are in reality the worst.” He, however, claims to be the best; and though his boast may incline us to be the more critical, yet we must needs grant that it is not groundless, considering his accuracy, {352} the excellence of his French, the lifelike vividness of his scenes and dialogues, the interest of the views and sentiments, at times very liberal, expressed by him: “God loves the humble and the poor, who live by their work, whose every day is a hard one . . . and who lead clean lives; God will exalt them.”

To the mass of pilgrims who from the earliest moment had begun to visit Canterbury, Garnier, “standing by the tomb, a number of times read his sermon about Saint Thomas the martyr and his passion. And they heard nothing but truth absolute.”[493]

Great and small, by land and by sea, from every part of Christendom, “men of foreign countries, of a variety of languages,” says Garnier, flocked henceforth to the place in such numbers, that the road, followed by pilgrims from the West of England, or by foreigners from abroad, landing at Southampton, to reach Canterbury by way of Winchester, was, and is still, called “The Pilgrims’ Way.”[494]

Kings and emperors came with the rest; first of all, the cause of the tragedy, Henry II, who, to avoid excommunication, after a first penance at Avranches, in the course of which he had promised to go on a pilgrimage, at the Pope’s choice, to Rome, Jerusalem, or St. James’s, appeared for a severer test at the shrine of his dead enemy, on July 12, 1174. Walking the streets barefoot, dressed in haircloth and a woollen shirt, looking a “mendif” (beggar), having fasted for days on bread and water, the bells in the minster tolling a funeral knell, he kissed the {353} pavement of the cathedral at the place where Thomas had fallen. Led, then, to the crypt, the proud Plantagenet, the ruler of England and of half of France, conqueror of Ireland, suzerain of Scotland, was flogged on his bare shoulders by the prelates present, beginning with Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London:

“Li evesques de Lundres tint el puing le balai.”

Thus, “beaten and punished,” he spent the night, on the cold pavement, “in psalms and orisons,” before the tomb, and gave to the sister of the saint a mill, well worth ten marks of revenue—

“Bien valt dis mars par an la rente qu’ele en a.”[495]

Henry’s rival and suzerain, the King of France, the former crusader, brave, pious and inefficient Louis VII, came shortly after; a prodigious and unparalleled event, the first time a king of France had ever set foot on British soil. Feeling that for him death was near, and having had, although three times married, only one son, he decided in 1179 to have the young prince crowned at once, but before the ceremony, Philip, aged fourteen, while boar hunting, lost his way in the forest of Compiègne, and, separated from his companions, endured for days such hardships before a charcoal-burner found him and led him out of the maze that his life was despaired of. The king, in his anguish, had at night a vision of St. Thomas Becket, whom he had well known, promising life for his son if he himself went to Canterbury as a pilgrim. Louis’s advisers recommended not to risk a journey which would place him at the mercy of his enemy, the Plantagenet king. But again, and yet again, St. Thomas appeared at night, now threatening disaster. Louis started then with a brilliant retinue, and no untoward event marred the journey. Henry II, on the contrary, very meek {354} now when his former chancellor was in question, came to meet the French monarch at Dover; both went together to Canterbury; Louis remained two days in prayer, and offered the monks a gold cup and a magnificent gem shown henceforth to pilgrims as the “regale of France.” By a special charter he granted them, besides, one hundred casks of wine to be taken yearly for ever, at vintage time, from his cellars of Poissy-sur-Seine.

He returned to find his son on the way to recovery; and, having had him crowned, died within a year. The son, one of whose first acts was to confirm his father’s hundred casks’ charter, was that famous Philip August whose victory at Bouvines, in 1214, settled the fate of France and made it certain that she would be a great nation.[496]

It became henceforth a sort of tradition for British kings to make this pilgrimage. Back from Palestine and his Austrian prison, Richard Cœur-de-Lion went, on his return, to Canterbury out of gratitude for his recovered freedom. When king in his turn, his brother, John, went too; so did Henry III, Edward I, and nearly all English monarchs; so did the French king, John the Good, when a prisoner in England[497]; so did, in {355} December 1400, Manuel II, Palæologus, emperor of Constantinople[498]; so did, in 1416, Emperor Sigismund, grandson of the blind King Jean de Luxembourg, who had been killed at Crécy, himself then the dominant figure in Europe, a quick-witted and, for the time, liberal-minded sovereign, who, present one day in the Paris Parliament, when justice was being rendered, and seeing a plebeian about to lose his suit simply because he was a plebeian, rose from his seat, and, to the wonder of the assembly, touching him with his sword, made him a knight. A remarkable man was that Canterbury pilgrim, as a man as well as an emperor.

Accompanied by another emperor, Charles V, King Henry VIII came too, but having changed his mind later about a great many matters, he ordered every shrine to be destroyed, showing especial vindictiveness towards all that recalled Thomas Becket. If alive, he thought, the archbishop would have probably been, just as the recently beheaded More and Fisher, opposed to the new dogma of the royal supremacy: most probably, indeed. No mercy should therefore be shown to his bones and to that shrine, where Henry must have seen in former days a silver image of his own father bequeathed to be placed as near the tomb as it could possibly be. The monument was razed with particular care, and the long venerated bones scattered. Having appointed himself Head of the Church, Henry considered that he was free to undo what another Head of the Church, a Pope of long ago, had done, and, if it so pleased him, to un-canonize a saint. While, therefore, allowing many other British saints to remain on the calendar, he issued in 1539 “certain injunctions,” in which, after having informed his {356} priests that if they continued to marry he would send them to jail, he reviewed the life of Becket, showed to his own satisfaction that he was no saint, but rather “a rebel and a traitor to his prince,” that “he gave opprobious names to the gentlemen which then counselled him to leave his stubornness,” that a scuffle ensued with these “gentlemen,” and so “in the throng Becket was slain.”

The King, therefore, commands English people to cease calling the most famous of all the saints they had a saint, “and that his images, and pictures, through the whole realm . . . be plucked down . . . to the intent his grace’s loving subjects shall be no longer blindly lead and abused to commit idolatry”; if they persist, they will go to jail, “at his grace’s pleasure.”[499] In the same way had they been recommended shortly before not to call this one, or that one, of their loving sovereign’s daughters legitimate, so long as he himself chose to call them bastards; there was a gradation in the penalties, and in the case of the daughters it was death.

Equally inimical dispositions were shown during the next reign by Archbishop Cranmer towards his predecessor, and one of the articles of his “Visitation to be had within the diocese of Canterbury” had for its object to ascertain “whether they have put out of their church books this word Papa and the name and service of Thomas Becket.”[500]

Times had changed. But,

“Whan that Aprille, with his showres swoote,”

had long before, in the year 1388, caused spring flowers {357} to bloom, matters were different, and, as all know who can read English,

“from every schires end

Of England, to Canterbury they wende,

The holy blissful martir for to seeke,

That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.”

III

In those holy journeys, as in Chaucer’s book, all ranks of society were mingled together. The majority of these pilgrims were sincere and in good faith; they had made a vow and came to fulfil it. With such dispositions, the knight who found a pilgrim like himself upon the road would not be inclined to keep haughtily aloof; besides, if the distances were great between class and class at this period, familiarity was still greater. The distance has indeed diminished at the present day, and familiarity also, as though in compensation. The noble felt himself sufficiently raised above the common people not to be afraid of using a kind of jovial intimacy with them on occasion; at the present time, when superiority of rank is of less importance, many are more attentive and take care not to overstep a limit which is not now so patent as before.

Arrived at the end of the journey, all prayed; prayed with fervour in the humblest posture. The soul was filled with religious emotion when from the end of the majestic alley formed by the great pillars of the church, through the coloured twilight of the nave, the heart divined, rather than the eye saw, the mysterious object of veneration for which such a distance had been traversed at the cost of such fatigue. Though the practical man galloping up to bargain with the saint for the favour of God, though the emissary sent to make offering in the name of his master might keep a dry and clear eye, tears {358} coursed down the cheeks of the poor and simple in heart; he tasted fully of the pious emotion he had come to seek, the peace of heaven descended into his bosom, and he went away consoled.

Such was the happy lot of humble devout souls. Pilgrims, however, were undoubtedly a very mixed race; no reader of Chaucer needs to be reminded that the talk on the way was not limited to edifying subjects, and that pilgrims themselves, even allowing the greater number to have been sincere, were not all of them vessels of election. Some went like gypsies to a fair and tried to gather money by begging; some went for the pleasures of the journey and the merriments of the road; so that reformers and satirists, paying more attention to the abuse than to the less visible good that came along with it, began to raise a cry which grew louder and louder until, at the time of the Reformation, it was something like a storm. Whom did Langland see on Palmers’ way, near Walsingham? Those same false hermits we have already met by the highroads and at the corner of bridges, and in what objectionable company!

“Eremytes on an hep · with hokede staves,

Wenten to Walsyngham · and hure (their) wenches after:

Grete lobies and longe · that loth were to swynke,

Clothede hem in copis · to be knowe fro othere,

And made hem-selve eremytes · hure eise to have.”[501]

Wyclif denounced pilgrimages most persistently, so much so that, when later some of his followers had to renounce their heresies, belief in the usefulness and sanctity of pilgrimages was one of the articles they had to subscribe. Thus, in his vow of abjuration, the Lollard William Dynet of Nottingham, on December 1, 1395, swears in these words: “Fro this day forthwarde I shall worshipe ymages, with praying and offering unto hem, in the {359} worschepe of the seintes that they be made after; and also I shal nevermore despyse pylgremage.”[502]

But other Lollards refused to recant. Questioned by Archbishop Arundel the irreconcilable enemy of his sect, William Thorpe confesses in 1407 having preached against that passion “to seek and visit the bones or images . . . of this saint and of that,” so uncontrollable that, “ofttimes divers men and women of these runners thus madly hither and thither into pilgrimage, borrow hereto other men’s goods (yea, and sometimes they steal men’s goods hereto), and they pay them never again.”[503]

For “divers men and women” those journeys being chiefly pleasure trips, nothing, Thorpe continues, is forgotten that may make them more pleasurable, “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 with them bagpipes: so that every town they come through, what with the noise of their singing, and with the sound of their piping, and with the jangling of their Canterbury bells, and with the barking out of dogs after them, they make more noise than if the king came there away, with all his clarions and many other minstrels.”

Chaucer’s pilgrims had not, perhaps, quite so magnificent a record, and when they crossed Dartford or Rochester did not outnoise the king himself; they had, in any case, no women singers; but their miller was provided with a sonorous bagpipe:

“A baggepype wel coude he blowe and sowne,

And ther-with-al he broghte us out of towne.”

Their monk’s bridle was heard jingling “as loude as {360} dooth the chapel-belle”; they talked boisterously, wrangled, and made merry,

“For trewely, confort ne mirthe is noon

To ryde by the weye doumb as a stoon,”

and dogs, of course, did not remain “doumb” for them any more than for the king.

One more objection of Thorpe’s to those journeys was that, “if these men and women be a month out in their pilgrimage, many of them shall be, a half-year after, great janglers, tale-tellers, and liars.” Chaucer’s pilgrims were certainly, in their way, and no one nowadays objects, great “tale-tellers.”

Archbishop Arundel, who seems at times to be the one interrogated (but we must not forget that we have only Thorpe’s version, unrevised by the other party), makes a more picturesque than telling answer: “Lewd losell! thou seest not far enough in this matter! for thou considerest not the great travail of pilgrims. . . . I say to thee that it is right well done, that pilgrims have with them both singers and also pipers: that when one of them that goeth barefoot striketh his toe upon a stone, and hurteth him sore and maketh him to bleed, it is well done that he or his fellow begin then a song or else take out of his bosom a bagpipe to drive away with such mirth the hurt of his fellow.”

Lay writers of a reforming mind objected to pilgrimages, not so much on account of the worship of images, but because they thought these travels an encouragement to laziness and idle living. We know the opinion of Langland. The same views are expressed by an author of a quite different turn of mind, the one who wrote the “Roman de Renart,” and who has a special chapter to inform us “of the pilgrimage of Reynard and how he went to Rome.” Reynard cannot but consider that he has greatly {361} and many a time sinned, and feeling some anxiety about his misdeeds, goes to a hermit and confesses himself. Such are the faults he has to declare that the holy man does not dare absolve him, but advises him to go to Rome and ask the absolution of the Pope. Reynard accordingly “takes his scrip and burdon [that is, his wallet and staff, as did all pilgrims], and begins to move on, and takes his way; he looks quite like a pilgrim, his scrip fits his neck beautifully.” But travelling alone is not pleasant; he meets Belin the Sheep, and persuades him to come with him, and a little farther “Bernart the arch-priest,” a donkey, who was eating thistles in a ditch; he also secures this new companion.

As night is coming, the three, finding themselves near the house of Primaut the Wolf, enter without ceremony and make themselves at home, while the owner of the place is away. They find there “salted meat, cheese, and eggs . . . and good ale. Belin drinks so much that he loses his head, and then begins to sing, and the arch-priest to organ-bray, and Master Reynard sings in falsetto.” But their merriment is soon at an end. The alarm has been given; Ysengrin, Hersent, and a number of other wolves, relations, friends, compeers of Primaut, who all of them owe grudges to Reynard, come round and besiege the pilgrims. They escape with great difficulty. Ill-pleased with these grievous adventures, they agree not to go to Rome at all, and Reynard, to whom, rather against likelihood, the author here lends his own thoughts, winds up the enterprise with a speech: “ ‘My lords,’ says he, ‘by my head, this wandering is loathsome and tiring. There is in the world many a good man that has never been to Rome; such an one has come back from the Seven Saints who is worse than he ever was. I mean to take my way home, and I shall live by my labour and seek honest earnings; I shall be charitable to poor people.’ Then they cried, ‘Be it so, {362} be it so,’ and they betook themselves homewards,” converts to better lives, for a time.[504]

The same mode of reasoning was used later on, at the time of the Renaissance, by no less a man than Erasmus, who has described in his most satirical vein the vanities of pilgrims and pilgrimages. He supposes a meeting of two friends, Menedemus and Ogygyus, the latter just back from Compostela, and, what is more interesting for us, from Walsingham, “the most holy name in all England. . . . The towne is almost susteynyd by the resort of pylgrymes.” The faithful believer Ogygyus goes on describing the wonders of the place, the gold and silver and precious stones offered to the miraculous statue of our Lady, the marvels worked at the holy wells, the miracle of the knight towards whom the portal of the church stretched out, the beautiful relics, and especially the crystal phial containing the Virgin’s milk. “Whan ye sexten sawe us, he dyd runne to the aultre, and put apon hym his surplese and his stole about his nekke, knelyd downe relygyously and worshipyd it, and streghtforthe dyd offre the mylke to us to kysse.” The same ceremony with surplice and kneeling, though it has disappeared at Walsingham with the phial itself, may still be seen elsewhere any day, in Milan, for example, at the tomb of San Carlo Borromeo.

Ogygyus and his friends make their offerings, not without remarking that some unscrupulous visitors, by a clever trick, pick money out of the plate instead of leaving in it any of their own: a trick which, as we have seen, was used by Panurge on a certain day when he was somewhat “escorné et taciturne” for lack of pence.

Erasmus ends his dialogue in the same strain as the author of “Reynard”: {363}

“I have enough to do,” says sceptical Menedemus, “with my statyons of Rome.

“Ogygyus. Of Rome, that dyd never see Rome?

“Menedemus. I wyll tell you, thus I go my statyons at home. I go in to the parler, and I se unto the chast lyvynge of my doughters; agayne frome thense I go in to my shope, I beholde what my servauntes, bothe men and women, be doynge. From thense into the kytchyn, lokynge abowt, if ther nede any of my cownsell; frome thense hyther and thyther, observynge howe my chylderne be occupyed, what my wyffe dothe, beynge carefull that every thynge be in ordre: these be statyons of Rome.

“Ogygyus. But these thynges saynt James wold dow for yow.

“Menedemus. That I shuld se unto these thynges holy Scripture commaundethe; that I shuld commyt the charge to sayntes I dyd rede yt never commaunded.”[505]

Thus far Menedemus, whose task in life seems to have consisted in seeing to it that others fulfilled theirs. The friend of Erasmus, Sir Thomas More, took the opposite view, and wrote a dialogue in defence of images, relics, and pilgrimages, but in vain.[506] The time of the Reformation had come; doubt was becoming general, and from peasant to baron all the people assimilated arguments like those of Latimer:

“What thinke ye of these images that are had more then their felowes in reputation? that are gone unto with such labour and werines of the body, frequented {364} with such our cost, sought out and visited with such confidence? what say ye by these images, that are so famous, so noble, so noted, beying of them so many and so divers in England. Do you thinke that this preferryng of picture to picture, image to image, is the right use, and not rather the abuse of images?”[507]

These times were yet to be. In the Middle Ages pilgrims came to offer their prayers, and also money, each one according to his means. When the king, in his perpetual goings and comings, turned aside to visit a revered shrine, he usually gave seven shillings, as shown by the ordinances of Edward II for his household.[508]

Before going away the pilgrims, who had admired, besides the shrine and its jewels, the stained glass of the church, the monumental curiosities of the place and sometimes its fortifications,[509] bought, just as now, medals or signs as remembrances of their journey.[510] The author of the supplement to the “Canterbury Tales” at the beginning of the fifteenth century, shows the pilgrims purchasing in the town various sorts of sygnys or brochis, so {365} that people who saw them might know where they had been:

“Then, as manere and custom is, signes there they boughte,

Ffor men of contre shulde know whom they hadde ~~oughte.”[511]~~

They were of lead or pewter, and perforated to be more easily sewn on the breast or cap, like those sold at the present day at St. Anne d’Auray in Brittany, but larger. At Canterbury they represented St. Thomas, or were in the shape of an ampulla or tiny flask, containing water from the miraculous well; at St. James’s they represented shells; at Amiens the head of St. John the Baptist: “Ecce signum faciei beati Johannis Baptiste”; at Rome the holy sudary, called the vernicle;[512] at Rocamadour the Holy Virgin.[513] The right of selling these signs was a source of profit, and it sometimes belonged exclusively to a convent or to a private family. At Rocamadour this {366} right had been conceded in return, it seems, for military services, to the De Valon family, lords of Thegra.[514] They and the Bishop of Tulle appointed a deputy to superintend the sale, and the product was divided by halves between them and the bishop. Such were the benefits derived from these sales that clandestine manufactories of pewter medals were established by the inhabitants, who sold numbers of them, to the great detriment of the authorized shop and in defiance of ever-recurring prohibitions. Once, however, in 1425, free sale was allowed to all the people of the place; the country had been reduced to such poverty that the bishop renounced his privilege for two years, out of charity and for the benefit of his flock.

Pilgrims when going home were careful to wear prominently sewn on their garments these testimonials of their holy travels. In the above-quoted dialogue of Erasmus, the sceptical Menedemus wonders at the appearance of his friend: “I pray you, what araye is this that you be in; me thynke that you be clothyd with cockle schelles, and be laden on every side with bruches of lead and tynne. And you be pretely garnyshed with wrethes of strawe, and your arme is full of snakes eggs,” thus uncivilly designating the beads of his chaplet. The French king Louis XI, of grim memory, was never without some such pewter medals and brooches, and wore them on his hat. “And truly,” writes his contemporary, Claude de Seyssel, “his devotion seemed more superstitious than religious. For to whatever image or church of God and the saints or of Our Lady that he heard the people were devoted, or where miracles were worked, he went there to make offerings, or sent a man there expressly. He had, besides, his hat quite full of images, mostly of lead or pewter, which he kissed on all occasions when any good or bad news arrived, or that his fancy prompted him; casting himself upon his knees so {367} suddenly at times, in whatever place he might be, that he seemed more like one wounded in his understanding than a rational man.”[515]

Professional pilgrims outshone in this respect all the others. For, beside the occasional pilgrim who came to make an offering to such or such a shrine in accomplishment of a vow and afterwards returned to take up again the course of his ordinary life, there was the pilgrim by calling or by penance (for such a life-long penance was sometimes inflicted), whose whole existence was spent travelling from one sanctuary to another, always on the road, and always begging. With the professional pardoner, the professional palmer, back from many countries, adorned with many tokens, the witness of many wonders, the hero of many adventures, was the most curious type of the religious wayfaring race, with hardly any equivalent in our days. Like the pardoner and the friar, the palmer could not but have a great experience of men and things; he had seen much, and he invented more. He too had to edify the multitude to whom he held out his hand for alms, and the fine stories, in which he rarely missed giving himself a part to play, were his livelihood; failing this, his daily bread failed too. By dint of repeating his tales, he came to almost believing them, then quite; and his voice henceforth took that accent of certitude which alone begets conviction in audiences. Besides, he came from so far that he might indeed have seen marvels; around us, of course, life flows on without prodigies, almost without events in its flat monotony; but it is common knowledge that in distant parts things are quite different. And the best proof is that none of those who have undertaken the journey comes back disappointed, quite the contrary; the {368} pleasure of believing them is moreover innocent enough, why should we deprive ourselves of an enjoyment exhilarating for the mind and good for the soul?

Clever people, poets, men of the world, deprived themselves of this pleasure, and made up for the loss by laughing at pilgrims and story-telling travellers. So did Chaucer, as we have already seen, who held up to ridicule in his “House of Fame,” shipmen and pilgrims, with their bags “brimful of lies.” To the same effect but in graver mood, Langland wrote in his “Visions”:

~~“Pylgrimis and palmers · plyghten hem to-gederes,~~

~~To seche saint Iame · and seyntys of rome,~~

~~Wenten forth in hure (their) way · with meny un-wyse tales,~~

~~And haven leve to lye · al hure lyf-tyme.”[516]~~

The crowd felt otherwise; they listened, laughed perhaps sometimes, but more often recollected themselves and remained attentive. The pilgrim was so interesting! he was a play in himself, a living story, he had on his feet the dust of Rome and of Jerusalem, and brought news of the “worshippers” of Mahomet. He was a picture too, with his bag hung at his side, not for lies, but for provisions, and his staff, at the top of which was a knob and sometimes a piece of metal with an appropriate motto like the device on a bronze ring found at Hitchin, a cross with these words, “Hæc in tute dirigat iter” (“May this safely guide thee on thy way”).[517] The staff had at the other end an iron point, like an alpenstock of the {369} present day; as may be seen in numerous drawings in mediæval manuscripts.

~~63. AN ENGLISH PILGRIM.~~

~~(From the MS. 17 C. xxxviii.)~~

The whole race of wanderers was, however, as we know, looked at askance by the king’s officers; these goings and comings disquieted the sheriff. We have already met labourers who, weary of their lord, left him under pretext of distant pilgrimages, and laid down without scruple the pilgrim’s staff at the door of a new master who would pay them better. False pilgrims were not less numerous than false pardoners and false hermits; they were condemned to repose, under pain of imprisonment, by the same statutes as the beggars and wandering workmen. Henceforward, orders Richard II in 1388, they too must have permits with a special seal affixed by certain worthy men.[518] Those without a permit should be forthwith arrested, unless infirm and incapable of work, for their good faith is then evident, and it is not for the love of vagabondage that they painfully go and visit “optimum ægrorum medicum,” Saint Thomas. Even greater severity was shown when it was a matter of {370} crossing the sea; would-be pilgrims must be furnished with regular passports; and the law applied to “all manner of people, as well clerks as other,” under pain of confiscation of all their goods. The exceptions made by the king show besides that it is wanderers of doubtful status and motives whom he has in view, for there are dispensations for the “lords and other great persons of the realm,” for the “true and notable merchants,” and lastly, for the “king’s soldiers.”[519]

This passport or “licence,” this “special leave of the king,” could only be available at certain ports, namely, London, Sandwich, Dover, Southampton, Plymouth, Dartmouth, Bristol, Yarmouth, Boston, Kingston-upon-Hull, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and the ports of the coast facing Ireland. Heavy penalties were laid on all port wardens, inspectors, ship captains, etc., who were neglectful, or so bold as to show favour to roamers. In the year 1389, the king restrained pilgrims from embarking anywhere else than at Dover or Plymouth. To put to sea elsewhere, an “especial licence from the king himself” was necessary.[520] A number of such licences, as will be seen further, are still in existence.

IV

But the attraction of distant pilgrimages was great,[521] especially the three without equal: Rome, Jerusalem, and St. James’s of Galicia, held so sacred that, while most {371} of the vows taken by the benefactors of the great bridge at Avignon could be remitted on account of their gifts to this useful structure, exception was made if the question was of a pilgrimage to be performed to one of those three places.[522] With or without letters men crossed the Channel, for which they paid sixpence, or if they had a horse, two shillings.[523] They arrived at Calais, stopping there some time in a “Maison-Dieu,” or hospital, which had been built and endowed by pious souls with revenues “for the sustenance of the pilgrims and other poor folks repairing to the said town to rest and refresh them.”[524]

Setting out again, they went to Boulogne to pray to a miraculous virgin, whose hand still exists enclosed in a reliquary. The statue itself was thrown into a well by the Protestants in 1567, replaced on the altar in 1630, pulled down again at the Revolution and burnt, but one of the faithful saved the hand, which the church of Notre Dame preserves to this day. Chaucer’s travelled gossip, the Wife of Bath, had among other pilgrimages, made this one to Boulogne.[525] People also went to Amiens to venerate the head, or rather one of the heads, of St. John the Baptist.[526] Great was their wonder when, {372} continuing their journey, they fell in with another at Constantinople. Perhaps, let us hope, they were content with remarking as “Mandeville” does: Which is the true one? “I wot nere, but God knowethe; but in what wyse than men worschipen it, the blessed seynt John holt him a-payd.”[527] Then also people went to the shrine of the three kings at Cologne, to Paris where innumerable relics were kept, to Chartres, where, besides a famous statue of the Virgin, was shown the tunic she wore on the day of the Annunciation (preserved in the cathedral since 861),[528] to Vezelay, Tours, Le Puy, and to many other places in France, among which the celebrated and to the present day most frequented church of Our Lady of Rocamadour in Guyenne. The fame of this pilgrimage among Englishmen is attested by Langland, when he advises people belonging to the religious orders to cease pilgrimage-making, and rather practice virtue at home:

~~“Right so, if thow be religious · renne thou never ferther~~

~~To Rome ne to Rochemadore.”[529]~~

It was a shrine of great renown. Roland, according to a legend, went there before starting for the ill-fated expedition in which he met his death, and a large piece of rusted iron is still shown in the old church as part of the famous Durandal. Henry II of England came there, too, as a pilgrim, as did many other illustrious travellers, Simon de Montfort among them.[530] The place was fortified; it had a part to play in the Hundred Years’ War, {375} and Froissart has told us “howe Sir Robert Carrol and Sir John Chandos . . . toke Guaches, Rochemador, and diuers other townes, the which wer newly turned frenche.”[531]

~~64. FORTIFIED ENTRANCE TO THE SANCTUARIES OF ROCAMADOUR.~~

~~(Restored.)~~

Then there were Spanish pilgrimages, and especially the world-famous one at Compostela, where English travellers went in large numbers, most of them direct by sea, though some preferred the lengthy, picturesque land road, dotted with famous shrines good for the soul, and where all sorts of adventures might be expected.[532] Licences authorizing the owners and the captain of such or such a ship to carry to St. James’s a fixed number of pilgrims fill pages in Rymer’s “Fœdera.” They were granted pursuant to the before-mentioned statute of Richard II, and are all drawn after one or two models, the text in Latin, with the name of the ship in French, like the one here translated, of the year 1394:

~~“The king, to all and each of his Admirals, etc., greeting.~~

“Know you that we have given licence to Oto Chambernoun, William Gilbert, and Richard Gilbert, to receive and embark in the harbour of Dartmouth a hundred pilgrims in a certain ship belonging to the same Oto, William, and Richard, called la Charité de Paynton, of which Peter Cok is captain; and to take them to Saint James’s, there to fulfil their vows, and from thence to bring them back to England, freely and without hindrance, notwithstanding any ordinances to the contrary.”[533] {376}

A few provisos are added, the keeping of which the pilgrims should swear to before leaving England; they must upon their oath bind themselves to do nothing contrary to the obedience and fealty they owe the king; they must not take out of the realm gold or silver in money or bullion beyond what is necessary to their journey, and they must not, it is sometimes added, reveal the secrets of the kingdom.

During the following century these licences became innumerable, or maybe they have been preserved in larger numbers. They show that, in fact, fleets loaded with English pilgrims plied towards St. James’s. We find that “Le Petre de Darthmouth” is allowed to carry sixty pilgrims; “La Marie de Southampton,” a hundred; “La Sainte Marie de Blakney,” sixty; “Le Garlond de Crowemere,” sixty; “La Trinité de Wells,” forty; “Le Thomas de Saltash,” sixty; and so on. Numbers usually vary from thirty to one hundred.[534]

~~65. TRAVELLING BY SEA IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.~~

~~(From the MS. Harl. 1319.)~~

It must not be thought that these ships, carrying as much as a hundred passengers besides their crew on this rather long journey, were great, well-appointed vessels. They very much resembled the pilgrim-ships of the present day, which carry every year to Jeddah, on the Red Sea, crowds of Arabs on their way to Mecca. The travellers were huddled together in most uncomfortable fashion, and had ample opportunities to do penance and offer their sufferings to the saint. This is no surmise, for one of those English pilgrims duly allowed to go to Galicia, provided they did not reveal the secrets of the realm, has rimed an account of his experiences, so we know what they were. Do not think of laughing, says he, when you go by sea to St. James’s; there is sea-sickness; the sailors push you about under pretext that you hinder the working of the ship; the smell is not pleasant: {379}

~~“Men may leve alle gamys~~

~~That saylen to Seynt Jamys!~~

~~Ffor many a man hit gramys (vexes)~~

~~When they begin to sayle.~~

~~Ffor when they have take the see,~~

~~At Sandwych or at Wynchylsee,~~

~~At Bristow, or where that hit bee,~~

~~Theyr hertes begyn to fayle.”~~

~~The mocking remarks of the seamen are painful to bear. Says the captain:~~

~~“Some ar lyke to cowgh and grone~~

~~Or hit be full mydnyght;”~~

~~and then turning to his men:~~

~~“ ‘Hale the bowelyne! now, vere the shete!~~

~~Cooke, make redy anoon our mete,~~

~~Our pylgryms have no lust to ete,~~

~~I pray God yeve hem rest!’~~

~~‘Go to the helm! what, howe! no nere?~~

~~Steward, felow! A pot of bere!’—~~

~~‘Ye shalle have sir, with good chere,~~

~~Anon alle of the best.’”~~

~~Sick pilgrims could not eat, and were jeered at, they found the time long; some, with a book on their knees, tried to read, but then they felt as if their head would burst:~~

~~“Som layde theyr bookys on theyr kne,~~

~~And rad so long they myght nat se;—~~

~~‘Allas! myne hede wolle cleve on thre!’”~~

~~When at their worst, comes a facetious sailor to bawl out in their ears: Cheer up, in a moment we shall be in a storm! {380}~~

~~“Then cometh oone and seyth: ‘Be mery;~~

~~Ye shall have a storme or a pery’ (a squall)~~

~~•••••~~

~~Thys mene whyle the pylgryms ly~~

~~And have theyr bowlys (basins) fast theym by,~~

~~And cry after hot malvesy.”~~

~~In short, they were very unhappy, and as the narrator said at first, little inclined to games and laughter.[535]~~

Votive offerings plentifully adorned venerated sanctuaries; if, by striking a wax statuette while making appropriate incantations an enemy might do you great harm, on the other hand, by placing your image in the chapel of a saint, great favours might be gained for you, especially in cases of sickness.[536] Thus were to be seen prisoners’ irons, warriors’ swords, cripples’ crutches, jewels and precious stones, sculpted or painted images representing devotees or actual miracles performed for them, tablets and offerings of all sorts.[537] At Rocamadour tresses of women’s hair were shown as a threat as well as an admonition. “They were,” relates the knight of La Tour Landry, those of “ladies and gentille women that had be[en] wasshe in wyne, and in other thinges for to make the here of colour otherwise thanne God made {383} it, the whiche ladies and gentille women that aught (owned) the tresses were comynge thedirward on pilgrimage, but they may never have powere to come withinne the chirche dore unto the tyme that thei hadde cutte of the tresses of her here,”[538] which, says he, were still there in his day.

~~66. THE SOUTHERN ENTRANCE TO SAINT JAMES OF COMPOSTELA.~~

~~Twelfth Century.~~

Another story to the same effect is told by Miélot, who reports how a very fair lady, who had led an ill life, lost her sight as a punishment, through the will of Heaven. She went on a pilgrimage to Rocamadour, prayed to the Virgin, and was healed, but could not, however, enter the sanctuaries. She then confessed on the spot to a priest, who, “looking at her fair face,” said: “Dear friend, I well know that with these fair tresses of your hair you have done great hurt to those to whom you have shown them. I decide that they must be cut off in honour of God and of our Lady.” This was done; “the tresses were cut, and the priest had them carried inside the church on a pole, on which were placed the tresses of women who would be saved.” Then the lady was able to enter the church, and she praised the Virgin. But as she was going away she could not help thinking “of her fair hair that she had left,” and she exclaimed: “Holy Mary, my heart is sorrowful for my hair that I leave you, and I cannot well make up my mind to it.” She had scarcely spoken when the tresses were at once restored to her “as fair as they were before;” but the blindness came back too, and blind she remained for ever, which is a good example, “ung bel exemplaire,” for ladies that “seek false pleasures in their fine waists and faces.”[539]

Indulgences were an immense attraction; they had {384} been freely granted on a large scale to every important shrine, and popular imagination still further magnified them. The pilgrim from Rome, back in his village, exaggerated as willingly their amount as that of the marvels which he had seen, or thought he had seen. One such pilgrim, an Englishman of the fourteenth century, dazzled by his recollections, has rimed his impressions of a journey taken by him to Italy. As a poet he does not rank high, but he does not pretend to, and his only aim is to supply precise figures and definite information. His strong narrow devotion allowed him to pay attention to nothing except thousands of bodies of martyrs that he never tires of enumerating. By thousands also are reckoned the years of indulgence which he flashes in the eyes of his stay-at-home countrymen:

~~“Gif men wuste (knew), grete and smale,~~

~~The pardoun that is at grete Rome,~~

~~Thei wolde tellen in heore dome (in their opinion),~~

~~Hit were no neod to mon in cristiante~~

~~To passe in to the holy lond over the see~~

~~To Jerusalem, ne to Kateryne.”[540]~~

His readers will have first a brief and simplified history of Rome; it is a city to which came long ago the Duchess of Troy with her two sons, Romulus and Romulon, who afterwards founded the town. The duchess thus seems to have chosen to settle in a city which did not yet exist, but Rome is a land of wonders. It was pagan, until Peter and Paul (and then the very facts inject their eloquence into our traveller’s lines):

~~“Hit hedde i-bought,~~

~~With gold ne selver, ne with no goode,~~

~~Bot with heore flesch and with heore blode.”~~

The enumeration of the churches thereupon begins, and for each of them are invariably told the amount of {385} indulgences attached to it and of relics kept there. The benefits are proportioned to the merits; thus when a man sees the vernicle, that is, the holy sudary which received the image of the Saviour, he gets three thousand years of pardon if he dwells in Rome, nine thousand if he comes from a neighbouring country,

~~“And thou that passest over the see,~~

~~Twelve thousend yer is graunted to the.”~~

~~When you enter Sts. Vitus and Modestus, the third of your sins are remitted. Then, you descend into the catacombs:~~

~~“But thou most take candel liht,~~

~~Elles thou gost merk (dark) as niht,~~

~~For under the eorthe most thou wende,~~

~~Thou maight not see bifore ne bihynde,~~

~~For thider fledde mony men~~

~~For drede of deth to saven hem,~~

~~And suffrede peynes harde and sore,~~

~~In hevene to dwelle for ever more.”~~

The bodies of martyrs are countless;[541] four thousand of them at Saint Prudence, thirteen hundred at Saint Prassede, seven thousand at Sts. Vitus and Modestus. From time to time a famous name brings up an historic glimpse, such as the account of the foundation of Rome, or an abridged life of Constantine; at first a pagan and a leper,

~~“In Mahoun was al his thouht.”~~

~~But according to our author’s information, he was converted and cured by Pope Sylvester. The church of St. Mary the Round formerly bore another name:~~

~~“Agrippa dude hit make~~

~~For Sibyl and Neptanes sake. . . .~~

~~He gaf hit name Panteon.”~~

~~He placed there a magnificent golden idol sitting, of a peculiar form:~~

~~“Hit looked forth as a cat,~~

~~He called it Neptan.”~~

This idol had a cap or cover of brass which was one day blown off by the wind, and carried to the church of St. Peter. Then Pope Boniface asked the Emperor Julian to give him the Pantheon, to which that prince consented; and one year, on November 1st, the hatless cat having been removed, the sovereign pontiff consecrated the building, and baptized it St. Mary the Round.

As for relics, there are few objects mentioned in Holy Writ which have not been recovered, and may not be venerated at Rome.[542] The table of the Last Supper is there, as well as Aaron’s rod, fragments of the multiplied loaves and fishes, hay from the stall at Bethlehem, a swaddling-cloth of the infant Jesus, and several other things, some of which are strange enough. Part of these relics are still in the same churches, for instance, at Santa Maria Maggiore,[543] “Seinte Marie the Maiour,” the portrait {387} of the Virgin painted by St. Luke. This is not, however, according to our pilgrim, a picture really made by St. Luke; he was going to do it, and had prepared his colours, when he suddenly found the portrait before him, finished by the hands of angels:

~~“Seint Luik while he lived in londe,~~

~~Wolde have peynted hit with his honde,~~

~~And whon he hedde ordeyned so~~

~~Alle colours that schulde ther to,~~

~~He fond an ymage al a-pert,~~

~~Non such ther was middelert,~~

~~Mad with angel hond and not with his~~

~~As men in Rome witnesseth this.”[544]~~

More complete and conscientious in his descriptions, an educated Englishman of the following century, a voracious reader, and active writer, of books, no other than the chronicler and theologian, John Capgrave, prior of King’s Lynn, having gone to Rome on a pilgrimage, about the year 1450, composed, on his return, a “Solace of Pilgrimes,” wanting to imitate, he said, Pythagoras, Plato, St. Jerome, Marco Polo, and him whom he considered as his compatriot, the then unmasked Mandeville, who, all of them, having travelled, wrote of their journeys: {388} “Also there was a man of Venys whech they called Marcus Paulus; he laboured all the Soudane’s londe and descryved on to us the nature of the cuntre, the condiciones of the men and the stately aray of the great Cane (khan) houshold. Eke Jon Maundevyle Knyth of Yngland, aftir his laboure, made a book ful solacious on to his nacyoun. After all these grete cryeris of many wonderfull thingis I wyl folow with a smal pypyng of such straunge sitis (sights) as I have seyn and swech straunge thingis as I have herd.”[545]

This justice must be rendered him that, while his book is full of “straunge thingis,” he never adds any of his own invention; when he says, this I have seen, it can, if not afterwards destroyed, still be seen to-day; when he copies an inscription, his copy, as can be easily verified, is accurate. But, fond of books, he believed in them; who ever failed to believe in what he loved? The “Mirabilia Romæ” are the guide of this guide-book maker;[546] so that to the enumeration of the holy places with their relics and indulgences, and his description of the ancient, now vanished, church of St. Peter, and all the famous sanctuaries of the papal city, he adds the wonders of fabulous Rome, with the temple on Capitol hill, and in it, “a mervelous craft, that of every region of the world stood an ymage made all of tre and in his hand a lytil belle; as often as ony of these regiones was in purpos to rebelle a geyn the grete mageste of Rome, a non this ymage that was assigned to that regioun schulde knylle his bell.” This device, so celebrated in the middle ages, was due to that great enchanter “Virgil,” the magic of whose lines had been appreciated for different motives in Roman days. {389}

The attractions of Rome were, for the pilgrim, without peer in Italy, but other cities could almost rival it; Venice especially was full of wonders, and was admired and visited accordingly, witness, for example, the travelling notes of a troop of French pilgrims in the year 1395. In this “most excellent, noble, great and fine town all seated in the sea,” may be seen, they aver, the arm of “our Lord St. George,” the burdon (staff) of St. Nicholas, one of the water-pots of Cana, one ear of St. Paul, some of the “roasted flesh of St. Lawrence turned to powder,” three of the stones thrown at St. Stephen, the body of St. Mark, “which is a very fine and noble thing.” There is, besides, “in the Maison-Dieu of Venice one of the molar teeth of a giant that was called Goliath, which giant David killed, and know you that this tooth is more than half a foot long and weighs twelve pounds.”[547]

Thus did returning travellers relate their recollections, to the delighted wonderment of their countrymen. The wish to set out in their turn was awakened in them, and those who remained in their village associated themselves to the pious journey by their prayers and some small gift of money. All along his road the pilgrim found similar dispositions; to receive and help him was to share in his merits, and thus it was that people in the humblest ranks, assisted from place to place,[548] could accomplish distant pilgrimages. The rules of several gilds provided for the case of a member setting out to fulfil a vow. In order to participate in his good work, all the “bretheren and sisteren” accompanied him out of the town, and on bidding him farewell offered him their gift. {390} They watched their friend go off with his deliberate step, beginning a journey across many countries, to last many months, sometimes several years. They returned to the town, and the elders, who knew the world, no doubt told what strange things their friend was like to see in those distant lands, and what subjects for edification he would meet with on his way.

The gild of the Resurrection at Lincoln, founded in 1374, had among its rules, “If any brother or sister wishes to make pilgrimage to Rome, St. James of Galicia, or the Holy Land, he shall forewarn the gild; and all the bretheren and sisteren shall go with him to the city gate, and each shall give him a half-penny at least.” The same rule was observed by the Fullers’ gild of Lincoln, founded in 1297; the pilgrim going to Rome was accompanied as far as Queen’s Cross, outside the town, if he left on a Sunday or a feast-day; and if he could let them know of his return, and it were not a working day, all went to meet him at the same place and accompanied him to the monastery. The tailors of the same city also gave a half-penny to him among them who was going to Rome or St. James, and a penny to him who went to the Holy Land. The ordinances of the Gild of the Virgin, founded at Hull in 1357, had: “If any brother or sister of the gild wishes, at any time, to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, then, in order that all the gild may share in his pilgrimage, he shall be fully released from his yearly payment until his return.”

Some gilds kept open house for pilgrims, always with the same object of having a part thereby in the merits of the traveller. Thus the gild-merchant of Coventry, founded in 1340, maintained “a common lodging-house of thirteen beds,” to receive poor travellers who cross the country going on pilgrimage or from any other pious motive. This hostelry was managed by a governor, aided by a woman who washed the feet of the {391} guests and took care of them. The annual expenditure on this foundation was ten pounds sterling.[549]

When one of the king’s servants had a pilgrimage to make, the prince, in consideration of his motive, willingly authorized him to depart, and even helped him with money. Edward III gave to William Clerk, one of his messengers, one pound six shillings and eightpence, to help him in his expenses during the pilgrimage undertaken by him to Jerusalem and Mount Sinai.[550] If the man were of great importance, and especially if he intended to fight the unbelievers, public prayers were offered for his journey, his “triumphal fighting,” and his safe return, as was done when Henry of Lancaster, cousin to Edward III, went “to the parts beyond sea with certain great and noble men of this realm” to attack the enemies of the cross, in this case, the pagans of Prussia. The prayers were prescribed for Sundays and fête days, when there would be “the greatest multitude of people in the churches.”[551]

All this in spite of the fourteenth century’s not being, as we have seen, an age of deep and true devotion. The Popes lived at Avignon, their prestige was declining, particularly in England; even bishops showed at times scant respect for the Roman Court. Nowhere can be found, not even in Wyclif, more daring accusations and more scandalous anecdotes concerning the Pope than in the chronicle written by Thomas of Burton, Abbot of Meaux, near Beverley. He even speaks with a tinge of irony of indulgences. As a special favour to the faithful who died during a pilgrimage to Rome, Clement VI “ordered the angels of Paradise,” writes the abbot, “to lead their souls straight to the gates of heaven without {392} making them pass through purgatory.” The same Pope granted what the pilgrim of the “Stacions” seems to have ignored, that those who looked upon the holy sudary should return to the state they were in before baptism. Lastly, “he confirmed all the indulgences granted by two hundred sovereign pontiffs his predecessors, which are innumerable.”[552] Clement was, indeed, the two hundredth.

At the period when monastic chroniclers did not scruple to record anecdotes on the Roman Court like those in Thomas of Burton’s, general devotion was not merely lessened, it was disorganized, unbalanced. The chroniclers show, indeed, that excesses of impiety coexisted with excesses of fervour; the false pardoner, retailer of the merits of the saints, fell in upon the highway with the bleeding flagellant.[553] The papacy might show commendable good sense by its condemnations of both;[554] its decrees did not suffice to restore the equilibrium of {393} men’s minds, and the bounds of reason were continually being passed; in ardent piety as in impious revolt men went to the verge of madness. The account of the repulsive sacrileges committed in York Cathedral by the partisans of the Bishop of Durham seems unbelievable, yet the facts cannot be doubted, being reported by the archbishop himself.[555] Faith weakened or went astray; men became at once sceptical and intolerant. It was not in them the modern, serenely cold and imperturbable scepticism, but a violent movement of the entire being, impelled to burn what it adores. The man acts by fits; he doubts his doubt, his burst of laughter dazes him; he has had his revel and his orgy, and when the white light of morning comes he will be the prey of despair, shed tears, be racked with anguish, proclaim his conversion and vow maybe to go on a pilgrimage. Walsingham sees one of the causes of the peasants’ revolt in the incredulity of the barons: “Some among them believe, it is said, that there is no God, they deny the sacrament of the altar and resurrection after death, and consider that as is the end of the beast of burden, so is the end of man himself.”[556]

Such incredulity did not exclude superstitious practices. To go straight forward was the privilege of the happy few; the many, instead of opening the gates of heaven with their own hands, imagined they could have it done by that of others; they had Paradise gained for them by the neighbouring monastery, as they had their {394} lands tilled for them by their tenants; eternal welfare had become a matter of commerce and could be bought with the letters of fraternity of the mendicant friars and the lying indulgences of false pardoners. Men lived at their ease, and when the sad hour came, made pious donations in their wills, as if they could, according to the strong words of the French historian, Claude de Seyssel, “corrupt and win over by gifts God and the saints, whom we ought to appease by good works and by penitence for our sins.”[557] Very instructive reading is that of the last wills and testaments of the rich lords of the fourteenth century. Pages are filled with devotional bequests; gifts are left to shrines, convents, chapels, and hermits; testators who had abstained from going in their lifetime, made pilgrimages by proxy after their death, paying the proxy. The same Humphrey Bohun who sent “a good man and true” to the tomb of Thomas of Lancaster, also ordered that after his demise a priest should be sent to Jerusalem, “chiefly,” said he, “for my lady mother, and for my lord father, and for ourselves,” with the obligation to say masses at all the chapels which he might meet on his way.[558] Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady Clare, ordered by her will, that five men-at-arms should fight in her name in case there should be a “comune vyage,” otherwise a crusade, within seven years following her death. They would receive one hundred marks each, and the merit of their fights would accrue to their employer, and not to themselves, their own recompense being of this world, and consisting in the hundred marks.[559] {395}

V

Most difficult and holiest of all, the pilgrimage to Jerusalem remained, in spite of so many indulgences attached by the Popes to the churches in Rome, the one without peer, as well as it was the oldest established; it dated back, indeed, from, at least, the days of Constantine. Settled in Palestine during the fourth century, St. Jerome writes to Paulinus: “From all the world people are flocking here. The whole of mankind fills the city.”[560]

This is confirmed by his friend the enthusiastic Paula, in whose veins flowed the ardent blood of the Scipios and the Gracchi, and who trying to persuade her beloved Marcella, a rich and pious Roman matron, to join them there, tells her that all the greatest and best, those from Gaul, those from Britain, “divisus ab orbe nostro Britannus” (for she, too, knows those classics whom Jerome constantly quotes), without speaking of the Persians, the Armenians, and all the East, are to be met in the Holy Land: “A variety of languages, but one only religion.” There are “so many places of prayer that one cannot visit them all in one day.” And such places! “What sentences, what words would be appropriate to tell you of the cave of our Saviour? and of that stable where, as a babe, He cried: a spot to be honoured rather by silence than by inadequate words. Where are the vast porticoes, the gilt canopies? . . . In this poor earthly place the Maker of heaven was born; here He was wrapped in swadling clothes, here seen by the shepherds, here revealed by a star, here adored by the Magi.” Come, Oh come! “Will not the moment arrive when a breathless traveller shall announce to us that our Marcella has reached Palestine . . . Will not the day come when we can visit together the Saviour’s grotto, {396} weep at His tomb, kiss the wood of the cross, and be raised in our minds with the rising Lord on the Mount of Olives?”[561]

But even then, thoughtful, level-headed St. Jerome feared that enthusiasm might be carried too far, and everyday duties neglected for the excitement of the Palestine journey. It was, of course, in itself a pious and laudable thing, if one could properly do so, to come and venerate “the places where the feet of our Lord had stood, and the almost recent traces left of His nativity and His passion.” But this should not be considered a Christian’s chief duty: “Do not think that something is lacking in your faith because you have not seen Jerusalem. I do not consider myself any better because I live here.” To lead a good life is the chief thing: “What is praiseworthy is not to have been at Jerusalem, but to have lived righteously there. . . . The places where the cross was and the Resurrection occurred, benefit those who bear their cross and who, with Christ, rise again every day. . . . The palace of heaven is just as accessible from Britain as from Jerusalem.” To thousands who have never seen the holy city “the gate of paradise is wide open. . . . A grand thing it is to be a Christian, not to seem one.”[562]

The movement, however, once started never stopped. On the contrary, it gathered strength; hospices for pilgrims going to Jerusalem dotted the roads leading to their usual places of embarkation (chiefly Marseilles and Venice), several being built at the principal crossings of the Alps, the Great and the Little Saint Bernard, the St. Gothard, Mount Cenis, etc. A “Confrérie des Pélerins {397} de la Terre Sainte” had been founded in Paris for them by Louis, first Duke of Bourbon, who, greatly interested, like his grand father Saint Louis, in the freeing of the Holy Sepulchre, and bearing for a time the empty title of King of Thessalonica, had been chosen as leader of one of those numerous crusades that never took place.[563]

During a period of two hundred years pilgrimages to Jerusalem had had, indeed, for their object a conquest and not simply an inspection of the holy places. All nations had taken part, from the first of those prodigious attempts, the crusades, in 1096, to the last one in 1270, in which St. Louis died before the walls of Tunis, while his companion, young Edward of England, loth to give up, had sworn not to go home without having struck a blow at the Saracens in Holy Land, and returned as King Edward I, wounded, but having occupied Acre and kept his word.

The crusade, after those great expeditions, eight in number, continued to be talked about as much as ever; mere talk, it is true, in most cases. In the midst of their wars the kings of France and of England berated each other for being the only hindrance to the departure of the Christians, for neither would go, leaving his rival behind, free to act in his absence. Philip VI of Valois and Edward III both protest that, but for the other, they would go and fight the Saracen. “It is the fault of the English,” writes Philip, “that the holy journey beyond sea has been hindered.” It is the doing of the King of {398} France, solemnly proclaims Edward III to the world, which has turned him from the “sancto passagio transmarino.”[564]

The utmost that was usually attempted,[565] now consisted in small, ineffectual expeditions, so ill-conceived at times as to cause the wonderment and even the merriment of the infidel: such as the Franco-Anglo-Genoese crusade of 1390, with Louis, third Duke of Bourbon, as commander-in-chief, and which, on the recommendation of the Genoese, who suffered more than any from the inroads of the Barbaresques, went to lay siege, of all places, to the city of Mahdia, the “Aufrike” of Froissart,[566] on the east coast of Tunisia. The French were apparently the most numerous, but, says Froissart, “Also the Duke of Lancastre had a bastarde sonne called Henry of Lancastre: he had devocion to go in the same voyage, and he provided him of good knightes and squiers of Englande that accompanyed him in that voyage.” The comte de Foix had also, ready at hand, a “bastarde sonne” of his own, whom he sent with a large retinue. The English prince was not, however, the future Henry IV, who was no bastard, but his half-brother, John Beaufort, who being an adulterine son well answered to the description. Henry had intended to go, hence Froissart’s mistake, but he went instead to fight the pagans in Prussia and Lithuania, and, being fond of pilgrimages and shrines, performed, as a pilgrim, the journeys to Rome and Jerusalem, before he assumed the crown and had, in spite of his religious dispositions, his cousin Richard assassinated. {399}

The start from Genoa for the new Tunisian expedition was splendid to see; so the starts usually were: “Great pleasure it was,” says Froissart, “to beholde their departynge, and to se their standardes, getornes (banners) and penons, wavynge in the wynde, shynynge against the sonne, and to here the trompettes and claryons sowning in the ayre with other mynstrelsy,” so that the whole sea rang with the music.[567]

The Saracens were dumbfounded at this visit: what had they done, and what could be the object? That the Genoese had grudges against them was natural enough; but what ailed the others? Ready for the stoutest defence of their walled Mahdia, they were, however, curious to ascertain the reason, and they sent one of their number, who spoke Italian, to explain “howe we have in nothynge trespassed them; of a trouthe, afore this tyme, there hath been warre bytwene us and the Genovoys,” but that does not concern Christians from “farre countreys.” The Genoese “are our neighbours, they take of us and we of them; we have been auncyente enemyes and shall be, excepte whan treuce is betwene us.” But why are the others interfering?

The leaders of the army agreed that a reply should be sent; they held council, twelve of them, “in the duke of Burbons tent,” and gave an answer to the effect that the reason why they made this war “was bycause the Sonne of God, called Jesu Chryst . . . by their lyne and generacyon, was put to deth and crucyfyed,” and also because the Saracens did not believe in baptism, nor “in the Virgyn Mary, Mother to Jhesu Cryst. . . .”

“At this aunswere the Sarazyns dyd nothinge but laugh and sayd howe that aunswere was nothynge {400} reasonable, for it was the Jewes that put Chryst to dethe and not they. Thus the siege still endured.”[568]

The usual ally of the infidel did not fail him: sickness, fevers, and epidemics worked havoc among the besiegers, who had, of all months, selected July for their attempt. They tried to storm the city, but were repulsed with great loss, and after some eight weeks of fruitless labour, brilliant combats, and many deaths, accepted a patched-up treaty granting the Genoese some slight advantage; raised the siege, and returned home, with probably less “trompettes and claryons sowning in the ayre” than when they had started.

The acceptance of a discussion with the infidel during this abortive crusade was characteristic of the time. More prone than before to examine inherited beliefs, a good many men were found in the fourteenth century to question the very principle of the crusade. We crush the infidel, why not convert him? Is it not wiser, more reasonable, and even more conformable to the religion of Christ? Were the apostles whom He sent to us Gentiles covered with armour and provided with swords? Reflections like these occur in the works, not only of reforming minds like Wyclif or Langland,[569] but of pious well-meaning conservative thinkers like Gower, who says in his “Confessio Amantis”:

~~“To sleen and fighten they us bidde~~

~~Hem whom they shuld, as the boke saith,~~

~~Converten unto Cristes feith.~~

~~But herof have I great merveile~~

~~How they wol bidde me traveile;~~

~~A Saracen if I slee shall,~~

~~I slee the soule forth withall,~~

~~And that was never Cristes lore.”~~

Failing crusades, then, just as before those great military undertakings had begun, small troops of pilgrims, privately formed, started on the road to Jerusalem, still in their eyes, in spite of all St. Jerome might have said, the best road to heaven. They were, however, many of them, inspired by mixed motives, for this was also the road to adventure, and there, again, were very apparent the chivalric and restless instincts of the period.

A good number of such caravans came from England; the English were already, and had been even before, and continue to this day, great travellers. They were to be met everywhere, and their knowledge of French stood them in good stead in most of the countries they went through. This was, as “Mandeville” states, the common language of the upper classes everywhere;[570] it was also that spoken in the East by the European, the “Frank.” Trevisa, finding that the English were forgetting that language, deplores it; how will they do if they go abroad? “That is harme for hem and they schulle passe the see and travaille in straunge landes and in many other places.”[571] They tried to acquire notions of it before setting out on their travels, and employed competent persons to compose manuals of conversation for them to learn, in the words {402} of the author of one such work, an Englishman of the fourteenth century, “how to speak and pronounce well, and to write correctly sweet French, which is the finest and most graceful language, the noblest to speak of any in the world after Latin of the schools, and is better prized and loved than any other by all men; for God made it so sweet and lovable chiefly to His own praise and honour. And therefore it may well compare with the language of the angels in heaven, on account of its great sweetness and beauty.” So spoke this teacher of what he had to teach.[572]

The English went much abroad; every author who draws their portrait lays stress on their taste for moving about, and their love of distant travel; the moon is considered, in consequence, as their planet. According to Gower, the moon’s influence is the cause why they visit so many far-off countries:

~~“Bot what man under his [i.e., the moon’s] pouer~~

~~Is bore, he schall his place change~~

~~And seche manye londes strange;~~

~~And as of this condicion~~

~~The Mones disposicion~~

~~Upon the lond of Alemaigne~~

~~Is set, and ek upon Bretaigne,~~

~~Which nou is cleped Engelond,~~

~~For thei travaile in every lond.”[573]~~

Wyclif places them under the patronage of the same planet, but draws different conclusions therefrom;[574] {403} Ralph Higden the chronicler expresses himself in these terms, most of which seem prophetic, they have proved so exact: “That people are curious enough that they may know and tell the wonders that they have seen; they cultivate other regions, and succeed still better in distant countries than in their own, . . . wherefore it is that they are spread so wide through the earth, considering every other land that they inhabit as their own country. They are a race able for every industry.”[575]

A number of those adventure seekers were established in Italy, where they had become condottieri, and went fighting up and down the peninsula according to the will of whomsoever paid them. Such were John Hawkwood, whose tomb still adorns the cathedral at Florence,[576] William Gold, and several others. Fierce folk they were, with ardent passions, ready sometimes, as in Homeric days, to do and sacrifice as much to recover a fugitive girl as to take a town. One letter of William Gold may give an idea of the temper of these bellicose wanderers. On August 9, 1378, he wrote to Louis Gonzaga, lord of Mantua, concerning the girl Jeannette, of France:

“. . . Let her be detained at my suit, for if you should have a thousand golden florins spent for her, I will pay them without delay; for if I should have to follow her to Avignon I will obtain this woman. Now, my lord, should I be asking a trifle contrary to law, yet ought you not to cross me in this, for some day I shall do more for you than a thousand united French women could effect; {404} and if there be need of me in a matter of greater import, you shall have for the asking a thousand spears at my back. Therefore, in conclusion, again and again, I entreat that this Janet may be put in a safe place unknown to anybody, and there kept until I send some servant of mine for her with a letter from myself, for I would do more for you in greater matters. And I pray you, thwart me not about putting her in a safe place, for you alone, and no one else are lord in Mantua.

~~“The Camp under Verona, August 9, 1378.~~

~~“P.S.—I beseech by all means that [the] said Janet may not quit Mantua, but be in safe custody, and so you will have obliged me for ever.”~~

No less determined as a warrior than as a lover, and accustomed, as it seems, in both cases, to put people to flight, William Gold was made a citizen of Venice in recognition of his services on April 27, 1380, and in July of the same year received from the Doge Andrea Contarini a pension of 500 gold ducats for life.[577]

Thinking less of the Jeannettes to be met on the way, troops of pilgrims sailed from England, beginning their long journey towards the Holy Land, usually provided with letters from their sovereign, to serve both as passports and as recommendations in case of need. The tenor of these documents, written in French or in Latin, was usually similar to that of the following letter granted by Edward III in 1354 to one who, it is true, was more of a fighter than a pilgrim: “Know all men that the noble Jean le Meingre, knight, otherwise Bussigand [Boucicaut], our prisoner, is about to set forth, duly licensed by us, with twelve knights to St. James, and thence to march against the enemies of Christ in the Holy Land; and that we have taken him and his twelve companions, {405} their servants, horses, and harnesses under our protection and safe conduct.”[578]

Such travellers were well received by the French King of Cyprus, of the famous Lusignan family; they brought him news of the outer world, with them came variety and hope; they also were sometimes able to actually assist him in his difficulties, which were ceaseless, and the king showed his pleasure in his letters. Thus James I of Lusignan, “King of Jerusalem and Cyprus,” writes from Nicosia, in 1393, to Richard II, that a knight has no need of a personal recommendation to be welcome in the island; his subjects always are. It was for him an honour and delight to be visited by “your noble relative the lord Henry Percy.”[579] In the same manner the troop of French pilgrims, to which belonged the lord of Anglure, was welcomed in Cyprus, by the same king, in 1396. They reached the island on their way home, after a fearful storm, in which they nearly lost their lives.[580] As soon as James heard of their having landed he sent to them {406} provisions in plenty: a hundred chickens, twenty sheep, two oxen, much good red wine and good white bread. Then he asked them to his Court, where they were delightfully entertained by him, by the queen, and their four sons and five daughters. Being himself a great huntsman, James asked them to go hunting with him, a pleasant offer after so many trials, and one not to be refused.

Combats, hunts, storms, encounters of all sorts, in a word, adventure, were thus associated with the idea of the voyage, the holiness of which sometimes disappeared in the midst of so many profane incidents. Well may one wonder whether Saint James was the real attraction, for a De Werchin, Seneschal de Hainaut, who, about to start on a pilgrimage to the shrine of this saint, in 1402, would make it publicly known that, “in the name of God, of our Lord St. George, and of his own lady,” he would accept during his whole journey the friendly combat of arms with any knight for whom he should not have to turn from his road more than 20 leagues. He announced his itinerary beforehand, so that any one might make ready.[581]

The strange man, Jean de Bourgogne by name, who chose to sign his book of travels “Jean de Mandeville,”[582] {407} gives somewhat similar reasons to explain why he undertook his journey to the East in 1322 through perilous seas and countries—or rather, according to modern discoveries—through the books of his library. He started, or, anyhow, he studied and wrote, partly, says he, to sanctify himself, partly to know the world and its wonders, and to be able to speak of them; for many persons, he observes, are much pleased with hearing the marvels of distant regions described. The reason he publishes his impressions is, first, because numbers of people like stories of the Holy Land, and find great consolation and comfort in them; and, secondly, to make a guide, in order that small companies or caravans, like that of Boucicaut and others, may profit by his knowledge.

His ideas as to the road to be followed are not unreasonable. Thus, “to go the direct way” from England to Palestine, he advises the following itinerary: France, Burgundy, Lombardy, Venice, Famagusta in Cyprus, Jaffa, Jerusalem. Very often people went to Jerusalem by way of Egypt. It was a tradition of long standing that the greater part of the difficulties concerning the Holy Land had their root in Egypt; many tombs of saints also attracted the pilgrims there, so that crusaders, or mere pilgrims, often took that road to Jerusalem. “Mandeville” says he himself followed this itinerary. In 1422 Gilbert de Lannoy wrote, “at the behest of King Henry of England, heir and Regent of France,” that is, Henry V, a description in French of the places through which a crusade might be led against the infidels, for this prince, like his predecessors, continued dreaming of a crusade. Lannoy, a practical soldier and diplomat, who speaks only of what he has seen, gives a detailed account of all towns, stating which are protected by walls, {408} towers and ditches; he notices the Venetians’ warehouses for cotton at Acre, and the presence at Beirut of a great number of Christian merchants, Venetians, Genoese, Greeks, and others. He carefully mentions what sorts of provisions in wood, water, etc., may be found in each part of the country, in what plains an army can be easily arrayed, in what ports a fleet shall be safe. He pays the greatest attention to Egypt, and describes its several cities: “Item. There is Cairo, the chief town of Egypt, on the river Nile which comes from Paradise.”[583] But the crusade, in anticipation of which he wrote, never took place, and the next military expedition to reach Syria through Egypt was destined to be a French one, headed by that extraordinary pilgrim, Bonaparte.

Besides his account of a journey to Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Central Asia, and China, “Mandeville” gives a description of a number of countries peopled by imaginary monsters. This fantastic part of his work, where he anticipated no less famous a traveller than Gulliver himself, did not diminish its success, quite the contrary; it was translated into several languages, and above three hundred MSS. of it now remain. But we, less confiding than our fathers, are loth to accept the excuse he gives as a guarantee of, at least, his good faith: “Things that are long past away from sight fall into oblivion, and the memory of man cannot all retain and comprehend.”[584]

Many books, beginning with that of Lannoy, came after his, more practical, less fantastic, and, of course, less famous.[585] While the renewal of the crusades became {409} less and less probable, the number of individual pilgrimages was on the increase. The word of the priest which could no longer uproot and set on the move entire nations, still detached here and there little groups of pious men or adventure seekers, who went to visit the holy places under favour of the Saracen’s tolerant and practical spirit. For the mass of them no longer set out to fight the infidel, but to ask his permission to see Jerusalem, which was the more readily granted that it had to be paid for.

From the fourteenth century onwards, a regular service of transports existed at Venice for the use of pilgrims: “It is the rule,” says a traveller of the fourteenth century, “that the Venetians send every year five galleys to the Holy Land. They all reach Beirut, which is the port for Damascus in Syria; thence two of them bring the pilgrims to Jaffa, which is the port for Jerusalem.”[586]

Many particulars about this service of transports, the purchases to make before starting, and the provisions to take, are found in a book written in the following century by William Wey, Fellow of Eton College, an experienced pilgrim with a passion for such journeys. He recommended that the price of the passage be carefully settled before starting, and that a bed with its pillows, sheets, etc., be procured. This was bought at Venice, near St. Mark’s, and cost three ducats; after the journey the whole could be sold back to the vendor for a ducat {410} and a half: “Also when ye com to Venyse ye schal by a bedde by seynt Markys cherche; ye schal have a fedyr bedde, a matres, too pylwys, too peyre schetis and a qwylt, and ye schal pay iij dokettis; and when ye com ayen, bryng the same bedde to the man that ye bowt hit of and ye schal have a doket and halfe ayen, thow hyt be broke and worne.”[587] Such settled customs and fixed prices show better than anything else the frequency of the intercourse.

William Wey is as obliging for his traveller as are modern guide-book makers; he devises mnemonics of names to remember, a vocabulary of the Greek words most important to know, and ready-made questions which our manuals still repeat in more correct language:

“Good morrow.	Calomare.
Welcome.	Calosertys.
Tel me the way.	Dixiximo strata.
Gyff me that.	Doys me tutt.
Woman, haue ye goyd wyne?	Geneca esse calocrasse?
Howe moche?	Posso?”

He does not omit a sentence which must have been, and still is, of especially frequent use: “I understond the not—Apopon kystys.” Wey also gives a table of the rate of exchange for moneys from England to Venice, Crete, Rhodes, Cyprus, and Syria; and a programme for the employment of time, as now very parsimoniously distributed; he only allows “thirteen or fourteen days” to see {411} everything and start back again, specifying what should be seen each day. Lastly, he gives a complete list of the towns to be traversed, with the distance from one to the other, a map of the Holy Land with all the remarkable places duly inscribed thereon,[588] a considerable catalogue of the indulgences to be gained, and full details as to what is sacred or curious in Palestine, or on the way thither, not forgetting the dogs at Rhodes, who keep watch at night outside the castle, know perfectly how to distinguish a Turk from a Christian, and who, if one of their number “sleeps instead of taking his watch at night outside the castle, kill him themselves,”[589] so great is their detestation of a slacker.

Wey foresaw all the disagreeables to which the boorishness of the captain of the galley might subject you; he recommends engaging a berth in the highest part of the boat, “for in the lawyst [stage] under hyt is ryght smolderyng hote and stynkynge.”[590] You must not pay more than forty ducats from Venice to Jaffa, food included, and should stipulate that the captain stop at certain ports to take in fresh provisions. He is bound to give you hot meat at dinner and supper, good wine, pure water, and biscuit; but it is well besides to take provisions for private use, for even at the captain’s table there is great risk of having bad bread and wine. “For thow ye schal {412} be at the tabyl wyth yowre patrone, notwythstondynge, ye schal oft tyme have nede to yowre vytelys, bred, chese, eggys, frute, and bakyn, wyne, and other, to make yowre collasyun; for sum tyme ye schal have febyl bred, wyne and stynkyng water, meny tymes ye schal be ful fayne to ete of yowre owne.” It would even be prudent to take some poultry: “Also by yow a cage for half a dozen of hennys or chekyn to have with yow in the galey;” half a bushel of seed to feed them must not be forgotten, nor what you will want to fry your own bacon and drink your wine: “Also take with you a lytyl cawdren and fryyng pan, dysches, platerrys, sawserys of tre (wood), cuppys of glas, a grater for brede and such nessaryes.” You must also have remedies, “confortatyvys, laxatyvys, restoratyvys,” saffron, pepper, spices.[591]

On arrival at a port it is well to leap ashore one of the first, in order to get served before others, and not to have the leavings; this counsel of practical selfishness often recurs. On land heed must be taken as to the fruits: “beware of dyverse frutys, for they be not acordyng to youre complexioun, and they gender a blody fluxe (dysentery), and yf an Englyschman have that sykenes hyt ys a marvel and scape hyt but he dye thereof.”

Once in Palestine, one must be careful about robbers; beware of Saracens coming to talk familiarly with you: “Also take goyd hede of yowre knyves and other smal thynges that ye ber apon yow, for the Sarsenes wyl go talkyng wyth yow and make goyd chere, but they wyl stele fro yow that ye have and they may.” At Jaffa you must bestir yourself and be quick, in order to have the best donkey, “Also when ye schal take yowre asse at port Jaffe, be not to longe behynde yowre felowys; for and ye com by tyme ye may chese the beste mule, other asse, for ye schal pay no more fore the best then for the worst. And ye must yeve youre asman curtesy {413} a grot.”[592] This last recommendation shows the high antiquity of “pourboires,” one of the best preserved of mediæval traditions. At last the caravan leaves the seaside and proceeds towards the Holy City; and then it is prudent not to straggle too far from your companions for fear of evildoers.

Worthy of notice is the fact that these visits to the Holy Land were in great part performed on donkeys; knights themselves did not disdain mounting these modest animals: “At this said inn did we dismount from our asses,” says the narrator of the travels of the lord of Anglure, who, as we have seen, visited Jerusalem at the end of the fourteenth century; which tends to show that if there was, as there still is, some danger of attacks by robbers, it was not very serious. If there had been any chance of real fight knights would hardly have ventured getting into it on donkey-back. In fact, many of those reports of travels in the Holy Land give the impression of mere tourists’ excursions, and what comes out most clearly from them is the before-mentioned spirit of tolerance, coupled with the spirit of profit, displayed by the Saracen. He did not forbid the entry into Palestine of all these pilgrims, who often came as spies and enemies, and he let their troops do very much as they liked, provided they did not forget to pay.[593] The companions of the lord {414} of Anglure, and half a century later of William Wey, go where they will; returning when it is convenient, and making plans of excursions beforehand as they would do at present. They admire the beauty of the “muscas” or mosques, the quaint appearance of the vaulted streets with light coming from apertures at the top of the vault, and with shops for Saracen merchants on both sides, in other words, the bazaar; they are led by and receive explanations from their “drugemens;” at certain places they meet officers entrusted with the permit of the “Soudan,” as to all affairs concerning foreigners: these officers are called “consulles.” They find European merchants established and doing much trade in the ports of the infidel; they have, in fact, nothing to fear seriously but local wars (about which they were pretty sure to get timely information), or possibly calamitous encounters at sea. William Wey and his companions learn with much uneasiness on their return that a Turkish fleet with dubious purpose is ready to quit Constantinople, but happily they do not meet it.

A comparison between the experiences of both troops of pilgrims, the French and the English, is instructive, precisely because they are, in so many cases, similar. The lord of Anglure[594] had no trouble in reaching Jerusalem, being provided with the proper authorization: “Shortly after, we started thence on foot, and with the license of the lieutenant of the Sultan we entered the holy city of {415} Jerusalem at the hour of vespers, and were all received and lodged in the hospital where it is customary now for pilgrims to stay.” Having bought tents, they travel by land without difficulty from Palestine to Egypt, crossing the desert, noticing the places where Moses performed his miracles, visiting Cairo, which deeply impresses them by its beauty, its greatness, its gardens and monuments, and the immense number of Saracens living there. They go partly by water, partly on camels, observing on their way “two great black-feathered ostriches trotting along,” to the places where St. Anthony had lived with his “porcellet,” and where churches and abbeys prosper under the rule of the unmeddling Saracen. They navigate the Nile, a large river which “comes from Paradise,” and where “live several serpents called cokatrices,” otherwise crocodiles, of which they see one “very great and hideous” that dived into the water when they came near. There only they have a rather narrow escape, being attacked in their boat by “Arab robbers,” and some of their troop are wounded with arrows, but none is killed.

Needless to say that, if Rome was full of relics, there was no want of them in Jerusalem. All the places named in the Gospel, and some others, had been identified with precision: “Item, continuing to go up towards this mountain on the right hand side, there is a house where the sweet Virgin Mary learnt at school.” Near the church of the Holy Sepulchre is a large square “with two big stones on the one of which our Lord used to sit when He preached to His disciples, and our Lady sat opposite on the other.” The place is shown “where St. John the Evangelist sang mass every day in the presence of our Lady after the Ascension of our Lord.” You may see, too, the spot where was roasted the paschal lamb; “even here was warmed the water with which our Lord washed the feet of His apostles.” There is also a cave or well “where King Herod had the Innocents {416} thrown, out of spite.” At Bethlehem is a church of St. Nicholas, “in which place the sweet Virgin Mary hid herself to draw her milk from her worthy breasts when she would fly to Egypt. In this same church is a marble column against which she leaned when she drew her worthy milk, and this pillar continues moist since the time she leaned against it, and when it is wiped, at once it sweats again; and in all places where her worthy milk fell, the earth is still soft and white and has the appearance of curded milk, and whoever likes takes of it, out of devotion.”—Hence the milk at Walsingham?

In Egypt, too, the wonders are numerous, but many are of a different order. Besides the churches and hermitages there are the “granaries of Pharaoh,” namely the pyramids, which seem to the lord of Anglure and his companions “the most marvellous thing they had yet seen in all their travels.” They are cut “in the shape of a fine diamond,” but inside they are full of animals, who stink horribly. Mandeville, who had seen them some years before, gives them the same origin, and utterly discards the belief that they might have been tombs of high personages. He mentions the hieroglyphics, about the only thing in all his book that he does not try to explain; he also has a word for the grim inhabitants of the pyramids: “Thei ben alle fulle of serpentes. And aboven the gernerers with outen ben many scriptures of dyverse languages. And sum men seyn that they ben sepultures of grete Lordes, that weren somtyme; but that is not trewe; for all the comoun rymour and speche is of alle the peple there, bothe far and nere, that thei ben the garneres of Joseph. And so fynden thei in here scriptures and in here cronycles. On that other partie, yif thei werein sepultures, thei scholden not ben voyd with inne. For yee may well knowe that tombes and sepultures ne ben not made of suche gretnesse ne of suche highnesse. Wherfore it is not to beleve that thei {417} ben tombes or sepultures.”[595] This powerful mode of reasoning did not, however, convince such sceptics as Mariette and Maspéro.

Besides the pyramids, the companions of the Lord of Anglure notice and greatly praise the houses with their terraces, the mosques and their “fine lamps,” these same ornamented glass lamps which, after having been admired by our pilgrims in 1395 when they were fresh and new, can be seen now without going so far, in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Egyptian animals, too, are noted by our travellers as being very striking; besides the crocodiles there are the long-necked giraffes, so tall that “they could well take their provender on the highest lances that it is the custom now to use,” and then the elephants. A very strange beast an elephant: “It could never bend to the ground to get its food on account of its great height, but it has in its snout something like a bowel, put at the further end of its snout,” and this bowel “hangs down almost to the ground,” and with it the beast “takes its food and carries it to its mouth.” He uses it also to drink, and “when he blows air through it the noise is greater than that of any buccina,” and the sound “is terrible to those unaccustomed.”

At last the time came when our pilgrims had seen everything, and they had to wend their way homewards. Twice did William Wey undertake the great journey, happy to have seen, fain to see again. When he came back to England for the last time he bequeathed to a chapel, built on the model of the Holy Sepulchre, the souvenirs which he had brought back, that is to say, a stone from Calvary, another from the Sepulchre itself, one from Mount Tabor, one from the place where the cross stood, and other relics. As for the French troop of pilgrims who had left Anglure-sur-Aube on July 16, {418} 1395, they came back in the following year, complete in their numbers but for Simon de Sarrebruck, who had died of fever in Cyprus during the journey home, and lies interred in a church there. “And on Thursday, the twenty-second day of June, and the day before the eve of the feast of St. John the Baptist, in the year of grace of our Lord, 1396, we found ourselves again dining in Anglure.”

~~67. A PILGRIM’S “SIGN,” OUR LADY OF WALSINGHAM.~~

~~(Original in the British Museum.)~~

~~68. A BLIND BEGGAR CHEATED OF HIS DRINK BY HIS BOY.~~

~~(From MS. 10 E. IV.)~~