“Nay,” replies the much-travelled pilgrim—
“‘Nay, so me God helpe,
I saw nevere palmere with pyke and with scrippe
Ask after hym, ever til now in this place.’”
CHAPTER II.
OUR LADY OF WALSINGHAM AND ST. THOMAS OF CANTERBURY.
e shall not wonder that these various pilgrimages were so popular as they were, when we learn that there were not only physical panaceas to be obtained, and spiritual pardons and immunities to be procured at the shrines of the saints, but that moreover the journey to them was often made a very pleasant holiday excursion.
Far be it from us to deny that there was many a pilgrim who undertook his pilgrimage in anything but a holiday spirit, and who made it anything but a gay excursion; many a man who sought, howbeit mistakenly, to atone for wrong done, by making himself an outcast upon earth, and submitting to the privations of mendicant pilgrimage; many a one who sought thus to escape out of reach of the stings of remorse; many a one who tore himself from home and the knowledge of friends, and went to foreign countries to hide his shame from the eyes of those who knew him. Certainly, here and there, might have been met a man or a woman, whose coarse sackcloth robe, girded to the naked skin, and unshod feet, were signs of real if mistaken penitence; and who carried grievous memories and a sad heart through every mile of his weary way. We give here, from Hans Burgmaier’s “Images de Saints, &c., de la Famille de l’Empereur Maximilian I.,” a very excellent illustration of a pilgrim of this class. But this was not the general character of the home pilgrimages of which we are especially speaking. In the great majority of cases they seem to have been little more than a pleasant religious holiday.[211] No doubt the general intention was devotional; very likely it was often in a moment of religious fervour that the vow was taken; the religious ceremony with which the journey was begun, must have had a solemnising effect; and doubtless when the pilgrim knelt at the shrine, an unquestioning faith in all the tales which he had heard of its sanctity and occasional miraculous power, and the imposing effect of the scene, would affect his mind with an unusual religious warmth and exaltation. But between the beginning and the end of the pilgrimage there was a long interval, which we say—not in a censorious spirit—was usually occupied by a very pleasant excursion. The same fine work which has supplied us with so excellent an illustration of an ascetic pilgrim, affords another equally valuable companion-picture of a pilgrim of the more usual class. He travels on foot, indeed, staff in hand, but he is comfortably shod and clad; and while the one girds his sackcloth shirt to his bare body with an iron chain, the other has his belt well furnished with little conveniences of travel. It is quite clear that the journey was not necessarily on foot, the voluntary pilgrims might ride if they preferred it.[212] Nor did they beg their bread as penitential pilgrims did; but put good store of money in their purse at starting, and ambled easily along the green roads, and lived well at the comfortable inns along their way.
