Military and religious life in the Middle Ages and at the period of the Renaissance

by P. L. Jacob

The flow of pilgrims into Rome, Jerusalem, and other places was so great towards the close of the fourth century, and still more in the fifth, that it became necessary to regulate this display of devotion by some strict rules of discipline. Many ecclesiastical writers, while deploring the abuses to which it gave rise, were unable to point out any effectual remedy; it being difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, to distinguish the false pilgrims from the true, and to prevent vagabonds, ever ready to rob any wealthy travellers they might fall in with, from assuming the garb of piety and religion.

Fig. 281.—“Count Renier bearing the Body of St. Veronica to the Church of St. Waudru, in Mons.”—After a Miniature in the “Chroniques de Hainaut” (Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century), Burgundian Library, Brussels.

Every church, abbey, and chapel became at this period a place of refuge, ever open for pilgrims, who were certain of being hospitably received there at all hours, for their purse was generally light, and they lived upon alms, if only for the sake of doing penance. Charity devoted itself to the task of sheltering and feeding them during their journeys, whence they often returned ill and weak, and poorer than when they started, but always rich in indulgences, consolations, and relics.

Rome had, from the earliest times, an inexhaustible stock of relics in the Catacombs, which served for the use of the whole Christian world. By one of the canons issued by the fifth Council of Carthage, it was decreed that no church should be consecrated until some well-authenticated relics had been placed beneath the altar. In after-days, it was further required that there should be relics visible at each entrance to the church, on the diptychs fastened to the chapel walls, in the sacraria, in a number of the private oratories, and even on the cover of the books of the mass.

This continual removal of relics from one country to another gave rise to many imposing and touching ceremonies. St. Chrysostom has related, in one of his homilies, all the details concerning the translation of the relics of St. Ignatius, who suffered martyrdom at Rome, to his episcopal residence at Antioch, amidst a vast assemblage of the faithful.

From the seventh century the removal of relics became more and more frequent, and the number of pilgrimages increased accordingly. Sometimes the relics were those of unknown saints. When Pope Boniface IV. (606) was about to dedicate to the Holy Virgin, and to all the martyrs or confessors, the Pantheon of Agrippa, by transforming it into a church, to be called Sancta Maria Rotunda, he caused to be conveyed thither thirty-two chariot loads of bones, taken from the Catacombs. Pope Pascal I. (817) also deposited a vast quantity of saints’ bones in the Church of St. Praxeas at Rome, previous to consecrating it. The names of these saints were not known, but the authenticity of their remains and of their claims to veneration were verified before the ceremony, by a committee appointed for that purpose.

Fig. 282.—Henry I., Emperor of Germany, and one of his Generals, Gautier Von der Hoye.—Equestrian statues in bronze, cast in 948 by order of the Emperor, and placed in the Church of Our Lady at Maurkirchen (Austria), in commemoration of his victory over the Huns. These statues, destroyed in a fire, were re-cast in plaster and placed on the same spot, where they were visible until June 27th, 1865, when the church was burnt to the ground.—After a Woodcut from a work called “Thurnier-Buch,” in gothic folio: printed at Siemern in 1530.

In the course of three centuries, from the ninth to the eleventh, the discovery and the disinterment of saints’ bodies, their solemn removal (Fig. 281), the foundation of monasteries, oratories, and churches in their honour, the institution of anniversary fêtes, and the setting apart of a number of private devotions at services, relating not only to relics, but to holy images, abound in all the annals of the Catholic world. This is supposed to be the epoch when were introduced into Europe those ancient images, in sculpture and in painting, of the Holy Mother of Christ, which were revered in the Middle Ages just as they are in the present day; among these were black virgins, which were, no doubt, of Abyssinian origin; tawny or yellowish virgins, from some country of Africa; and brown and Byzantine virgins, of a stern and hard-featured type, wanting in expression. These images, all of which were very coarsely executed—though the last-mentioned seem to be copied from a picture attributed to St. Luke (Fig. 283)—often peculiar in their expression and character, but most of them of unquestionable antiquity, were common in Italy, Spain, the Mediterranean Isles, and many of the southern provinces of France. They were much rarer in the west of Europe, in Belgium, Germany, and Ireland, where, however, they were looked upon with just as much veneration—as, for instance, the Notre-Dame de Luxembourg, which was tawny. In the North, in Hungary, Poland, and Russia, but especially in Russia (Figs. 284 and 285), there were only the dark and Byzantine images of the Virgin.