Afterwards
“They set their signys upon their hedes, and some upon their capp,
And sith to the dynerward they gan for to stapp.”
Erasmus makes Menedemus ask, “What kind of attire is this that thou wearest? Thou art bedizened with semicircular shells, each full of images of tin and lead, and adorned with straw chains, and thy arm is girt with a bracelet of beads.” The reply is that he has been to certain shrines on pilgrimage.
Besides the ordinary insignia of pilgrimage (see Skeat’s Notes to Piers Plowman), every pilgrimage had its special signs, which the pilgrim on his return wore conspicuously upon his hat or his scrip, or hanging round his neck, in token that he had accomplished that particular pilgrimage. Thus the ampullæ were the special signs of the Canterbury pilgrimage; the scallop-shell was the sign of the pilgrimage to Compostella (shrine of St. James in Galicia); whilst the signs of the Roman pilgrimage were a badge with the effigies of St. Peter and St. Paul, the cross-keys (keys-of-Rome) and the vernicle. The vernicle was a copy of the handkerchief of St. Veronica, which was miraculously impressed with the features of our Lord.
The late Dr. Hugo communicated to the Society of Antiquaries a paper on this subject, accompanied by several specimens found on the banks of the Thames. Remember, in examining these, that the greater number of people went about the streets adorned with these emblems. (Archæologia, xxxviii.)
We might expect that, as was the custom with one of the duties required of the faithful, so it would happen with others. Thus, since the soul was saved by means of prayer and praise, it mattered little who sang or said those prayers, and a rich man could endow a priest in perpetuity to say prayers for his soul every day. In the same way, since a pilgrimage was in itself a most meritorious action, and equal to many masses, a man might pay others to go on a pilgrimage for him. This, in fact, was done. We find bequests of money for pilgrimages. One merchant of London bequeathed sixty gold scudi to be given to some one who would undertake, in the name of the testator, and for the good of the testator’s soul, to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre and the sacred places of Jerusalem. Another left money with the object of getting credit for going to the convent of Mount Sinai: while many left smaller sums for pilgrimages to Santiago di Compostella and the Blessed Virgin of Walsingham. Were there, one asks, professional pilgrims? Did men painfully work through the exercises at shrine after shrine, all for the good of souls stranger to themselves? Was there no way by which they might divert the intention of the testator and reap for the benefit of their own souls these accumulations of merits and good deeds?
When we think of a London pilgrim, one of two pictures presents itself. We either see the companies assembling at the Tabard Inn bound for the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury, or we see the smaller and more serious party bound for the Holy Sepulchre and the sacred places of Jerusalem. All our views of the mediæval life are curiously narrowed by the influence of Chaucer. So strong and fine is the light thrown upon the Canterbury Pilgrims and those to Palestine that we have forgotten the many other shrines to which the pilgrim fared in search of a blessing and the remission of his sins.
