[1161] Jacques de Vitry does not mince his words: “I have seen many pilgrims who, weary of wayfaring, used to drink themselves tipsy.... You will find many harlots and evil women in the inns, who lie in wait for the incautious and reward their guests with evil, even as a mouse in a wallet, a serpent in the bosom.” Etienne de Bourbon has the same tale to tell: “A pilgrimage should be sober, lest the pilgrims be despoiled and slain and turned to scorn, both materially and spiritually. For I have seen a person who had laboured greatly making a pilgrimage overseas lose both his virtue and his money, when drunk and lying with a chambermaid in an inn.” Anecdotes Historiques etc., d’Etienne de Bourbon, ed. Lecoy de la Marche (1877), pp. 167-8. Mine Host’s words to the drunken cook (Manciple’s Prol. II, pp. 15-19) are significant in the light of these quotations. So also are the adventures of “that loose fish the Pardoner” with the tapster Kit at the Chequer Inn. Tale of Beryn, ed. Furnivall and Stone (Chaucer Soc. 1887). See also An Alphabet of Tales (E.E.T.S.), p. 258, No. CCCLXXVI.
[1162] Compare the words of the Lollard William Thorpe in 1407: “Such fond people waste blamefullie Gods goodes in their vaine pilgrimages, spending their goods upon vitious hostelars, which are oft uncleane women of their bodies.... Also, sir, I knowe well that when divers men and women will goe thus after their oun willes and finding, out on pilgrimage, they will ordaine with them before to have with them some men and women that can well sing wanton songes; and some other pilgrimages will have them with bagge-pipes,” etc. This and other information about pilgrimages may be found in Coulton, Chaucer and his England, pp. 138-43. See also The Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry (E.E.T.S.), pp. 47 ff.
The wyff of bath was so wery, she had no will to walk;
She toke the Priores by the hond; “madam, wol ye stalk
Pryuely in-to þe garden, to se the herbis growe?
And aftir, with our hostis wyff, in hir parlour rowe,
I wol gyve ȝewe the wine, and yee shull me also:
ffor tyll wee go to soper, wee have nauȝt ellis to do.”
The Priores, as womman tauȝt of gentil blood and hend,
Assentid to hir counsell; and forthe (tho) gon they wend
Passyng forth (ful) softly in-to the herbery:
ffor many a herbe grewe, for sewe and surgery;
And al the Aleyis fair I-parid, I-ralid and I-makid:
The sauge and the Isope, I-frethid and I-stakid.
Tale of Beryn, p. 10. Cf. p. 6 for the scene with the holy water sprinkler.
[1164] Langland, Piers Plowman, B Text, Passus XII, 36-38.
[1165] “Let it never be permitted to any abbess or any other nun, whosoever she may be, to undertake the journey to Rome or to any other holy places; for it is the Devil, taking the form of an angel of light, who inspires such pilgrimages under a false pretext of piety: and there is no one so foolish and so devoid of reason as not to know how irreligious and blameworthy a thing it is for Virgins vowed to God to hold converse with men, through the necessity of a journey. If after the prohibition of this venerable Council, there be found anyone so bold as to disobey this ordinance, which has been promulgated by unanimous consent, let him be punished according to the rigour of the canons, to wit let him be excommunicated.” Thiers, op. cit. p. 135.
[1166] Wilkins, Concilia, I, p. 502.
[1167] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 172. Compare Bishop Gynewell’s injunction to Heynings in 1351: “Item pur ceo que ascun de les dames de dit mesoun sount trop acustumez de faire auowes de pilgrimage et dautres abstinences, saunz conge de lour souerayn, par quar ils ount souent occasion de les retrer de lour religion; si vous comandoms sur peyn descomengement que nul de vous face tiel maner auowe en destourbance de vostre religion, saunz especial conge de vostre souereyn. Et que nul tiel auowe soit fait par ascun de vous, pur faire paregrinage ou autre abstinence a quel il nest pas tenuz par sa religion, nous lui relessoms tut maner de tel auowe, issint qil se poet doner entirement a sa religion parfaire.” Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell, f. 34d.
[1168] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 172, and Dugdale, Mon. V, p. 654.