Four Pilgrims

by William Boulting

Whoever he was, Sæwulf’s early manhood was spent in a disordered land among a dejected people. During the reign of William Rufus, England was visited by tempest and famine and even by severe earthquake; rebellion was rife; the Welsh over-ran the county of Chester and part of Shropshire, leaving them waste; Magnus, King of Norway, swooped down the Irish Sea, occupied Anglesea, and threatened the mainland; the common people were oppressed by their foreign masters and illegally taxed; “the courtiers preyed upon the property of the country people and consumed their substance,” says William of Malmesbury, and Eadmer of Canterbury, our best authority on the period, confirms his statement: “As to their cruelty towards their hosts,” he writes, “or their unseemly conduct towards their wives and daughters, it is shameful even to remember”; the royal progresses through England were a travelling Sodom and Gomorrah. And we may judge of the tender mercies of the time when we read that traitors to the King, or innocent men deemed to be such, “were deprived of their sight and manhood.” These inhumanities also disgraced the far more civilized Byzantine Empire. No wonder that men’s hearts yearned for a “City of God,” or that their hearts were set on the peace of the convent, or that they disdained the mere perils of pilgrimage!

The existing fragment of Sæwulf’s narrative begins with his departure from Southern Italy; but we know, from other sources, what were the conditions and prescribed forms of pilgrimage, and how an English pilgrim would reach Apulia.

First, he had to get the consent of near relatives, in order that the interests of his family or dependents might be protected. To make sure that the would-be pilgrim was moved by devotion or penitence, and not by vain desire to see the world, he was also required to secure the sanction of his bishop, who made investigation into his life and character before granting it. The enquiry was a very searching one in the case of a monk; for his real motive might be to escape from conventual discipline. If satisfied, the Bishop or his delegate solemnly presented him with a pilgrim’s staff and wallet, and bestowed his benediction at Mass in the church of the parish in which the pilgrim resided. He was furnished with a document which exhorted all monasteries, priests, and faithful Christians to give him aid and relief on his journey. He was now bound to set off without delay, under penalty of being dealt with as a backslider and perjurer. When the day of departure arrived, a procession of relatives, friends, and pious people accompanied him some little distance, and then, having been blessed by the clergy present, clad in white linen with the cross marked on it, and duly sprinkled with holy water, he went on his way alone.

The long and hazardous sea-voyage to the Mediterranean was shunned. Despite the perturbed state of the Continent, it was safer to make for the heel of Italy by the overland route. All men who bore arms were under the obligation to defend him; no robber-baron might demand a toll from him—nay the castle welcomed him, and he was seated at table beside the house-priest. The bishop of every town and the abbot or prior of every monastery gave him shelter and hospitality; alms were specially devoted to the relief of the poor pilgrim and the support of monasteries along the pilgrim’s path. If he were ill, the doors of whatever hospital might be near were open to him, or he was cordially received into the Infirmary of every convent. A pilgrim’s hospice, founded in the first half of the ninth century by Louis the Pious, stood amid the snowy wastes of Mont Cénis to shelter him from its bitter blasts. He would pass through Italy, little affected by the unceasing and bloody conflict of noble with bishop, bishop with city, city with noble, and every one of a thousand petty communes and fiefs with its neighbours; for the charitable monastery would prove a ready asylum. Arrived at a convenient port, a greatly reduced passage-money was required of a pilgrim to the Holy Land; and there were some ports where ships belonging to them were compelled to carry pilgrims free of all charge.

Mediterranean shipping was not notably different in build and badness from that of Northern waters; but was often of larger size. Nearly all that we know about it is derived from the uncouth paintings, coins, and arms of maritime towns of a somewhat later period, which are rather symbols than representations. The sailing-ship was shorter than the galley, which was rowed as well as sailed; it was shaped somewhat like a half-moon and was very broad in the beam. It could sail only before the wind. There was rarely more than a single mast; the sails were square; and the yards could be lowered to the deck like those of a modern barge. These ships were not unlike the clumsy coasters still to be met with off Norway. Passengers were very uncomfortably crowded together, and must have had a terrible time. The outside planks overlapped, and were held together by iron nails; and the seams were stopped up with oakum. Mediæval vessels were crazy craft, and frequently went to pieces when wind and wave ran high: he was a bold traveller who tempted Neptune in those days, and especially bold if, after a first experience, he braved the sea god a second time.

Brindisi was the usual place of embarquation; but for some reason, which Sæwulf does not state, he started from Monopoli, a little port midway between Bari and Brindisi. Now there was a general belief in certain days being unlucky; a belief which persisted in spite of the condemnation of the Church. A Christian Calendar of the early part of the 4th century indicates what days are of ill omen, according to the Astrology of Egypt. Popular belief credited the feast-day of St. Mildred the Virgin (a saint of Kent) with this disqualification; and it was on St. Mildred’s day, July 13th, 1102, that Sæwulf set sail in a craft rather crazier than most. A storm came on the very same day the port was left behind, and the ship was wrecked a short distance from the harbour; but, “by Divine Mercy,” all aboard got safely to shore. The passengers went on to Brindisi; their ship, having been patched up in some fashion, sailed thither, and the pilgrims got on board again; but alas! it was another of those unlucky Egyptian days! Corfu was reached in two days (July 24th); but a great storm arose after leaving port and drove the rickety craft before it. However, shelter was gained at another of the Ionian islands—Cephalonia—on August 1st. Here, the company was still further depressed by the death of one of their number. Cephalonia is opposite the Gulf of Lepanto, and, sailing up the gulf, they landed at Patras, which Sæwulf speaks of as a “notable island”; not improperly, the word island being often applied to a port in those days. The ship stopped at Patras for a special purpose—that its passengers and mariners should go on shore and pray to St. Andrew the Apostle at the site of his martyrdom. Corinth was reached on Aug. 9th, and Sæwulf and fellow pilgrims left their wretched craft to avoid the long, stormy passage by Cape Matapan. He finds a resemblance between his experiences and those of St. Paul: both had suffered shipwreck, and Paul met with misadventure at Corinth, where “we suffered many hardships.” When a pilgrim to the Holy Land speaks of hardship, it was probably of an unusually severe kind. Roman Catholics neither loved nor were loved by members of the Greek Communion; and the behaviour of Crusading hosts in Eastern Europe was too recent to be forgotten.

The pilgrims crossed the isthmus to Livadrostro, and, some riding asses, the rest on foot, reached Thebes. They would find Thebes inhabited chiefly by Jews, who were “the most skilled artificers in silk and purple cloth of all Greece.” Sixty-four years later, a Spanish Jew, Benjamin of Tudela on the Ebro, who visited the settlements of his race in many lands and reported on their condition, found 300 Jews at Corinth and no fewer than about 2,000 at Thebes, “many of them being learned scholars, not to be equalled in the land of Greece, save in the city of Constantinople.” Leaving Thebes the travellers arrived next day at Negropont (Aug. 23rd). This land-journey had proved untoward; the Greeks were so inhospitable and so suspicious of them that often they had to pass the night in deserted huts and sheds. No wonder that they do not go a little out of their way to visit Athens, in spite of the fact that “in the Church of the Blessed Virgin there is a lamp which is ever burning with miraculously replenished oil,” and that Scripture records how St. Paul preached there and “certain men clave unto him and believed.” Among these converts was Dionysius, the Areopagite. It may be true that Dionysius “was born and got his learning there”: we are indebted to Sæwulf for the information.

At Negropont, the band of pilgrims took passage in a tramp-trader, which first touched at one of the islands of Petali, hard by Marathon; but what Englishman of the year of grace 1102, even if he were an educated monk, knew aught of the “glory which was Greece?” The voyagers now made for Naxos, touching at various islands on their way; their mediæval minds sightless to the classic lustre of the Cyclades. Sæwulf does indeed speak of Naxos as being “near to Crete, that memorable island”; memorable because his own lively experience of what it means to “go down to the sea in ships” recalls the “tempestuous wind” which caught St. Paul off Crete; for certain, he had never heard of that Epimenides of whom the Apostle makes such vigorous use. Patmos is reached, where the Beloved Apostle, banished by Domitian, “entered his tomb alive.” Other islands are touched at, among them Cos, and here our author exhibits his learning: it is the birthplace of Galen, “the most famous physician among the Greeks.” However, Hippocrates and Galen were both physicians, and that is near enough. On the trader goes, changing its course, now north, now south; and the pilgrim associates every place visited with some pious legend. Rhodes is reached, and history is again rescued from oblivion: the Colossus was “an idol, 125 feet high; the Persians destroyed it together with almost the whole Roman province on their way to Spain.” Sæwulf, or tradition, has confused the first conquering onrush of the Arabs with the Persian advance; but the Colossus was destroyed, not by Persians but by earthquake, nine centuries before Sæwulf’s time. Yet there is a basis for his story; its fragments were removed for building purposes about the time of the first Arab conquests. Sæwulf falls into a widespread blunder of his unlettered age when he assumes that the inhabitants of Rhodes drew their name from the Colossus, and that the Epistles to the Colossians were directed to them.

Leaving Rhodes, a great storm drove the ship straight before it; but the sailors got her into the harbour of Patara, “and, by next day, the storm had abated, and we came to Long Island.” Here was a ruined city which had been the refuge of exiles, escaped from the Turk. Myra, on the mainland, was now reached; and Sæwulf states that it is “the port of the Adriatic Sea; as Constantinople is of the Ægean”: either his geography is not quite accurate, or he would imply that, in his time, Myra received the main Eastern traffic from the Adriatic, and Constantinople from the Ægean. At Myra, he worshipped at the empty tomb of St. Nicholas. Favourable winds bore the ship thence to an island called “Sixty oars,” on account of the force of the sea and the effort required to overcome it. A discursion, out of sight of land, brought the pilgrims to Paphos in Cyprus. We do not expect any reference to the Cyprian Venus; but we are a trifle surprised to find that our author now confuses two separate chapters of “Acts” in one jumbled statement.

Leaving Cyprus “we were tossed about by violent storms seven days’ space before we could reach our haven; and one night a fierce contrary wind drove us back towards Cyprus; but Divine Mercy, Who is close at hand to those who truly call on Him, vouchsafed no small pity for us afflicted souls, and we resumed our proper course. Yet, during seven nights, we were overwhelmed by such a tempest and were in such peril that almost all hope left us. Nevertheless, at the rising of the sun, behold! the coast of Joppa lay before our eyes; and even as the turbulence of our peril had made our hearts to sink within us, so joy, unexpected and unhoped for, lifted them up an hundredfold more. And so it came to pass that, thirteen weeks after our departure from Monopoli, the sea having been our home, or deserted hovels in the islands (the Greeks not being hospitable), we made the harbour of Joppa, filled with joy and thanksgiving.” Sæwulf gives no dates; but many have been fixed by the industry of a French scholar, who compared feast days mentioned in the narrative with the calendar, and its events with ascertained dates. Sæwulf reached the Holy Land, Oct. 12th, 1102.