Pilgrims, too, are good newsmongers. They supply you with tidings from Italy, Germany, Spain, or even the Holy Land. They will carry letters also to foreign parts and transmit verbal messages to kinsmen. They do not always travel alone, but by twos, fives, or even tens. Recently at Dunkirk, where the peasants revolted, the bishop laid upon twenty-five of their leaders the penance that they should spend a year going about in a body to different holy places and joining in religious processions "in twenty-six churches," wearing no clothing save their trousers, going barefoot, and carrying the rods with which they had been disciplined.
Innumerable are the shrines where sinners can profit their souls by a visit. Every important abbey claims to be a pilgrimage resort, and the monks will tell of remarkable miracles wrought by all the saints whose relics they chance to treasure. Probably there are more than a thousand such places whose claims have been somewhat recognized by the Church. Many of these shrines have some famous image of the Madonna, frequently brought from the East by Crusaders, but often very old and, to carnal thinking, ugly, perhaps only a "black virgin," a clumsy doll carved of wood. This matters not, provided it is holy and efficacious. "Our Lady of the Fountain" at Samour, "Our Lady of the Osier" near Grenoble, "Our Lady of Good Hope" at Valenciennes, Our Lady of Chartres, of Liesse, of Rocamadour, of Auray, of Puy—these are merely examples.
Favorite Pilgrim Shrines
The greater the distance the pilgrim must go, the greater his merit ordinarily. Happy the pilgrim who can venerate the bones of an actual apostle, as at Rome. Happiest of all is he who can go to Jerusalem and pray at the Holy Sepulcher. Nevertheless, God has provided very efficacious shrines nearer home. Right at Paris there are the seats of St. Génevieve and the great St. Denis. You can pay your devout homage at Tours to the puissant St. Martin, the ideal of pious warriors. In Normandy, where Mont St. Michel looks across the sands to the tumbling ocean, one can pray best to the mighty archangel nearest to God. It avails much, also, to visit St. Martial of Limoges, St. Sernin of Toulouse, and more still to visit Spain and at Compostella beseech the intercession of St. James the Apostle.
A SHRINE IN THE FORM OF AN ALTAR (THIRTEENTH CENTURY) IN THE CATHEDRAL AT RHEIMS
Assuredly, however, Rome is best (always barring Jerusalem), and on the way thither the pilgrim can lighten his spiritual load by visiting many excellent Italian shrines—such as "Our Guardian Lady" at Genoa, and, at Lucca, "Our Lady of the Rose." In the city of St. Peter itself, time fails to enumerate the three hundred churches worthy of a devout visit. Besides the majestic cathedral of the Prince of the Apostles and the tomb of St. Paul, even the most hurried pilgrim will not fail to repair to St. Maria Maggiore, where is the actual manger in which Christ was born; and St. John Lateran, where are the holy stairs Christ ascended while wearing the crown of thorns; St. Peter in Montorio, where Peter himself was crucified, St. Lawrence Without the Walls, where the blessed martyrs St. Stephen and St. Lawrence are buried; not to mention others. A man must be a master criminal if he cannot deliver his soul by suitable visits to these invaluable shrines in Rome.
As is well known, the blessed saints both in this life and after death wrought many miracles through their relics. These wonders continue to-day, although the iniquities of mankind render them infrequent. Every now and then Heaven still permits some holy man to work undoubted miracles. Thus only recently it is said that when the venerable abbot of St. Germer preached the Fourth Crusade in England, he need only bless a fountain, lo! its waters made the dumb speak, the blind see, and the sick recover. Once (so a pilgrim related in the castle only the other day) when this abbot reached a village which wanted a supply of water, he gathered all the folk in the church. Right in the presence of the people he smote a stone with his staff and water flowed forth—not merely potable, but healing for all maladies.
God also speaks to us in dreams as he did to Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar. He caused St. Thomas à Becket to visit the late king Louis VII and warn him to make a pilgrimage to St. Thomas's new shrine of Canterbury to pray for the recovery of his son Philip, later "Augustus." Henry II of England was Louis' foe, but the king made the solemn pilgrimage unimpeded, and the crown prince duly recovered.