The spirit that animated the Crusader animated the pilgrim. Piety,
curiosity, the love of God and the love of adventure, the natural
sentiment which makes one spot of ground more hallowed than another,--a
sentiment as old as religion,--the natural restlessness of the human
heart,--a restlessness as old as humanity. With the decay of the
Crusades began the passion for pilgrimages, which reached its height
in the fourteenth century, but which at a much earlier period had
begun to send men wandering from land to land, and from sea to sea,
broadening their outlook, sharpening their intelligence, uniting them
in a common bond of faith and sympathy, teaching them to observe the
virtues of hospitality, courtesy, and kindness. Much has been urged
against the pilgrim, even the genuine pilgrim; but it counts for little
when contrasted with his merits. His was not the wisdom of Franklin. He
spent time, strength, and money with reckless prodigality. He neglected
duties near at hand; he ran sharp risks of shipwreck, robbers, and
pestilence. But he was lifted, for a time at least, out of the common
round of life; he aspired, however lamely, after spiritual growth; and
he assisted the slow progress of civilization by breaking through the
barriers which divided nation from nation in the remoteness of the
Middle Ages.
The universality of a custom is pledge of its worth. Pious Egyptians
speeding along the waterways to the temple of Bubastis; pious Hindoos
following from hermitage to hermitage the footsteps of the exiled Rama;
pious Moslems making their painful journey to Mecca; pious Christians
turning their rapt faces to Palestine,--from the dawn of history to the
present day we see the long procession of pilgrims moving to and fro
over the little earth, linking shore to shore and century to century.
Never without disaster, never without privations, never without the
echoes of disparagement, never wholly discouraged nor abashed, the
procession winds brokenly along. The pilgrims who visit Lourdes in this
year of grace are not mere victims of a spasmodic enthusiasm. They are
the inheritors of the world’s traditions and of the world’s emotions.
Alexander, Bishop of Cappadocia, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in
the year 202. He was by no means the first ecclesiastic to undertake
the journey, but the records that survive from this period of limited
authorship are few and far between. It was not until a century later
that the Empress Helena stirred the hearts of Christendom, and gave the
impetus that sent thousands of pilgrims to follow the footsteps of the
Redeemer. Many who could not reach Palestine travelled as far as Rome,
to pray at the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul. From time to time the
church gently checked an enthusiasm which overstepped the bounds of
reason. Women, then condemned to much staying at home, showed an ardour
for pilgrimage as natural as it was disconcerting. Nuns joyously
welcomed the opportunity to leave, without broken vows, their convent
walls, and tread for a time the beaten paths of earth. They found
shelter on the road in other houses of religion, where all such devout
wanderers were lodged and generously entertained.
For the virtues which blossomed most fairly along the pilgrim’s track
were chivalry and hospitality. For him a brotherhood of knights guarded
the robber-haunted forests of Germany. For him the Spanish nobles kept
watch and ward over their mountain passes. For him the galleys of
St. John swept the Mediterranean in search of Algerine pirates. For
him the Hospitalers built their first asylum. For him rang out the
Templar’s battle-cry, “Beauceant! Beauceant!” as the dreaded banner of
black and white bore down into the fray. The pilgrim paid no tithes
nor tolls. Monasteries opened to him their gates. In every seaport,
and in many a royal burgh, houses were erected and maintained for his
accommodation. In Calais stood the old Maison Dieu, with its wide,
hospitable doors. Coventry was the first of English towns to provide a
similar shelter. These houses were either endowed by pious benefactors
or were supported by the strong and wealthy guilds. In Lincoln, the
Guild of the Resurrection, founded in 1374, had the following rule:
“If any brother wishes to make a pilgrimage to Rome, to Saint James of
Galicia, or to the Holy Land, he shall forewarn the Guild; and all the
members shall go with him to the city gate, and each shall give him at
least a half-penny.” Other guilds lent weightier service. Turn where we
may, we see on every side the animosities of nations softened and the
self-seeking of the human heart subdued by the force of that _esprit de
corps_ which bound hard-fighting Christendom together.
Rivalry there was in plenty, as shrine after shrine rose into fame
and fortune. Palestine lay far away, and the journey thither was
beset by difficulties and dangers. Rome held the great relics which
from earliest years had drawn thousands of pilgrims to worship at
her altars. Spain came next in degree, with the famous shrine of
Compostella in Galicia, where lay the bones of her patron, St.
James. So popular was this pilgrimage that in the year 1434 no less
than 2460 licenses were granted in England to travellers bound for
Compostella. Cologne claimed the relics of the Magi; France, the Holy
Coat of Trèves, the shrine of St. Martin of Tours, and the beautiful
pilgrimage churches of Boulogne and Rocamadour. The last, fair still in
its decay, was one of the most celebrated in Europe. Great kings and
greater soldiers, Simon de Montfort among them, had come as penitents
to its rock-built sanctuary; and so many English were counted among
its visitors that we find that arch-grumbler, Piers Plowman, bitterly
conjuring his countrymen to stay away.
Right so, if thou be Religious, renne thou never ferther
To Rome ne to Rochemadore.
In good truth there were shrines in plenty at home. Glastonbury, the
resting-place of Joseph of Arimathea, where grew the holy thorn-tree;
Bury Saint Edmunds, where all might see the standard of the martyred
king, and where, to keep it company, Cœur de Lion sent the captured
banner of the king of Cyprus; Waltham, or Holy Cross Abbey, founded by
that devout and warlike Dane, Tovi, to guard the mysterious cross of
black marble, of which none knew the history; Edward the Confessor’s
tomb at Westminster; Our Lady of Walsingham, the best-loved church
in England; and the ever-famous shrine of St. Thomas à Becket at
Canterbury. “Optimus aegrorum medicus fit Thomas Bonorum,” was the
motto engraved on the little pewter flasks brought back by Canterbury
pilgrims. “For good people who are ill, Thomas is the best of
physicians.”
Miracles apart, it was well to take the open road, and to live for a
few days, or for a few weeks, in rain and sunshine. It was well to
escape the dreadful ministrations of doctors, and trust to St. Thomas,
who at all events would not bleed and purge his patient’s life away.
It was well to quit the foulness of the towns, to push aside the
engrossing cares of life, and to see the fair face of an English summer.
I think the long ride in the open air,
That pilgrimage over stocks and stones,
In the miracle must come in for a share!
Many a cure was wrought before the shrine was gained, and a hopeful
heart is ever a tonic for body and soul together. The most constant
and the most curious reproach cast by reformers at the pilgrims is
that they were cheerful, even merry, and that they went their way in
what seems to have been an irritating spirit of enjoyment. One Master
William Thorpe, a sour and godly man, protested sternly in 1407 against
the number of “men and women that go on pilgrimages to Canterbury, to
Beverley, to Karlington, to Walsinghame, or to any such other places”!
His accusations were three in number. The pilgrims spent “their goodes
in waste,”--which was true. They boasted, not always truthfully, of
what they had seen,--a reprehensible habit of travellers since man
first roamed the earth. And, worst of all, they sang, rang little
bells,--the Canterbury bells,--and made a joyous clatter on the road.
To this, Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, deeming light hearts
as near to grace as sad ones, stoutly replied that pilgrims did well
to sing and be as cheerful as the hardships of the way permitted. If
a man’s foot were cut and bleeding, it were better for him to sing
than to be silent, “for with soche solace the travell and wearinesse of
pylgremes is lightely and merily broughte forthe.”
Not all pilgrimages, however, were undertaken in this jocund spirit.
Figures terrible and tragic loom up in the darkness of history. Fulk
Nerra, the black Count of Anjou, driven like Orestes by the stings
of conscience, wandered from shrine to shrine, seeking pardon for
nameless crimes. By his own command he was dragged barefooted through
the streets of Jerusalem, his blood running down beneath the pitiless
strokes of the scourge. From Guyenne to Picardy walked two noble Breton
brothers, their heavy chains eating into their flesh, their heavier
hearts burdened with unendurable remorse. Even less sinful men were
sometimes inclined to penitence. The Lord of Joinville, before setting
forth with St. Louis on the Seventh Crusade, walked in his shirt to
every shrine within twenty leagues of his castle, imploring strength
of arm and grace of soul. In blither mood, the Viscount De Werchin,
Seneschal of Hainault, started upon a pilgrimage to St. James of
Compostella. The journey was long, and by way of diversifying it, the
good Seneschal despatched messengers announcing his readiness to meet
any knight, French, English, or Spanish, who would engage with him in a
friendly passage of arms. That none who coveted this distinction might
be so unfortunate as to lose it, he gave his itinerary with great care,
and even offered to turn aside from his road as far as twenty leagues,
for the felicity of a little fighting. Surely St. James, the patron of
soldiers, who has himself turned the tide of more than one hard-fought
battle, must have smiled kindly upon that brave and pious pilgrim, when
he knelt in his battered armour before the glittering shrine.
Kings and princes frequently went upon pilgrimages. The sprig of
broom, the _planta genistae_, destined to give its name to a great
and royal line, was worn by Geoffrey of Anjou--some said in token of
humility--when he journeyed to the Holy Land. Henry the Second of
England travelled piously to Rocamadour, and four English Edwards knelt
in turn at the feet of Our Lady of Walsingham. Jusserand tells us that
the royal fee on such occasions was seven shillings; the ordinances of
Edward the Second make especial mention of the sum. It does not seem
munificent, when we remember that Canute took off his crown and laid
it on St. Edmund’s shrine; but there were occasions when even seven
shillings were notably lacking. The Chronicles of Jocelin of Brakelond,
quoted by Carlyle in “Past and Present,” relate minutely how King John
came to St. Edmundsbury with a large retinue, how he gave the abbot
thirteen pence, beseeching in return a Mass, and presented to the
shrine a silken cloak, which was carried promptly away by one of his
followers, so that the monks beheld it no more. When Henry the Eighth
and Catharine of Aragon visited Walsingham, the king hung around the
statue’s neck a string of pearls and golden beads, and perhaps was not
unmoved subsequently by a desire to have it back again.
“Of all our Ladyes, I love best our Lady of Walsyngham,” says Sir
Thomas More in one of his “Dyalogues,” reflecting the common sentiment
of the past three hundred years, and defending the ancient custom of
pilgrimages from the raillery of Erasmus. The road to Walsingham, like
the road to Canterbury, was called the “Pilgrims’ Way;” the town was
full of inns and lodgings for the accommodation of the devout, and
“manye faire myracles” were witnessed at the shrine. When the Norman
knight, Sir Raaf de Boitetourt, fled from his burning castle, he sought
refuge at Walsingham, where for seven years he had kept vigil on the
eve of Epiphany. Hard pressed, he reached the doors, and the Virgin,
mindful of faithful service, opened them with her own hands, and drew
him swiftly and gently within her blessed walls.
Frequent mention is made of Walsingham in state papers and in family
chronicles. The Paston letters contain numerous allusions to this
popular shrine. John Paston’s wife, troubled by the news of her
husband’s illness, writes to him lovingly: “My mother behested [vowed]
another image of wax of the weight of you to our Lady of Walsingham;
and she sent four nobles to the four orders of friars at Norwich to
pray for you; and I have behested a pilgrimage to Walsingham and to
St. Leonards for you.” Again, Justice Yelverton thanks John Paston,
“especially for that ye do much for our Lady’s house at Walsingham,
which I trust verily ye do the rather for the great love that ye deem
I have thereto; for truly if I be drawn to any worship or welfare, and
discharge of mine enemies’ danger, I ascribe it unto our Lady.”
In proportion to the piety of the pilgrim flames the wrath of the
reformer. Denunciations from poets of a radical turn, like Langland and
Skelton, echo shrilly through English letters.
Pylgrimis and palmers plyghten hem togederes,
To seken seint James and seintes at Rome,
Wenten forth in hure way with many unwyse tales,
And haven leve to lyen alle hure lyf-tyme.
This sounds like the bitterness of the stay-at-home, resenting with
his whole soul the allurement of travellers’ tales,--tales to which
Chaucer lent a tolerant ear. A century and a half later, when reform
had had its way, when the relics of St. Thomas had been scattered to
the winds, when our Lady’s image had been flung from its altar into
the nearest well, and Cranmer in his “Catechism” had alluded to vows
and pilgrimages as half-forgotten errors, one poor faithful soul was
accused in 1542 of going to Walsingham,--not blithely, indeed, with
song and ringing of bells, but sad, fearful, and forlorn, to pray at
the defaced and empty shrine.
There was a little chapel built on one of the eastern piers of old
London Bridge, and dedicated to St. Thomas à Becket. Hither came
the pilgrims bound for Canterbury, or for the far-off shrines of
Compostella and Rocamadour, to beg a blessing on their journey; and
many were the curious eyes that watched them faring forth. To-day, when
no spot is remote, and nothing is unknown, it is hard to understand
the interest which once attached itself to the wanderer, or to realize
his importance as a link in the human chain. At a time when the mass
of mankind learned orally what it learned at all, when news crept
slowly over the country-side, and rumour passed from one village
ale-house to another, people were preserved from mental stagnation by
the “unwyse tales” which Langland found so reprehensible. They heard
how a fair and famous courtesan, smitten with blindness, travelled to
Rocamadour, beseeching a cure, and how, kneeling outside the walls,
she was withheld by an invisible power from entering the sanctuary.
Then, confessing her sins with tears and lamentations, she cut off her
beautiful hair,--
A net
Wherein no more shall souls be snared and slain,
and offered it to the Virgin in token of amendment. This being done,
the barrier was lifted, she hastened into the church, “giving praise to
the Mother of God,” and sight was restored to her eyes.
Many were the miracles related by pilgrims, and bewildering were
the wonders they described. The zeal for relics having far outrun
discretion, a vast hoard of heterogeneous and apocryphal objects had
been collected in every church, and were reverenced indiscriminately
by the devout. They were less grisly, but hardly less marvellous than
the weapons which Christian found in the house of Prudence, Piety,
and Charity, when these benevolent ladies exhibited to their guest
the “engines with which God’s servants had done wonderful things.”
Christian’s delight over the hammer and nail with which Jael killed
Sisera, the sling and stone with which David killed Goliath, the jaw
bone of an ass with which Samson killed the Philistines, and the ox
goad with which Shamgar killed six hundred of his enemies, is but the
reflection of a gentler sentiment which stirred the pilgrim’s heart.
Our ancestors were not wont to reason very distinctly on these or on
other matters; the abnormal offered no obstacle to their credulity; and
the complete absence of an historic background annihilated for them a
dozen and more intervening centuries. The Holy Coat carried them in
spirit to Nazareth, the Veil of Veronica led them to the foot of the
Cross. When told that the head of St. John the Baptist reposed in a
church at Amiens, they neither calculated the probabilities of the case
nor inquired into ways and means. When a few far-travelled pilgrims
heard that the same relic was claimed by a church in Constantinople,
they either became partisans--a natural sentiment--or argued with the
simple sagacity of Sir John Mandeville. Which was the true head he
could not tell. “I wot nere but God knowethe; but in what wyse that men
worschippen it, the blessed seynte John holt him a-payd.”
This is the pith and marrow of the argument. Pilgrims, reaching back
dimly into a shrouded past, grasped at the relic which bridged for
them the chasm, and felt the mysterious blessedness of association. If
it were not what it was believed to be, the saints, well aware both
of men’s fallibility and of their good faith, would undoubtedly “holt
them a-payd.” The same sentiment hallowed countless shrines, and found
expression in the _sygnys_ or medals which then, as now, played a
prominent part in pilgrimages. We know how little such customs change
when we read of the fourteenth-century pilgrims at Rocamadour, and see
the twentieth-century pilgrims at Lourdes. The Rocamadour medals were
made of pewter, stamped with an image of the Virgin, and pierced with
holes so that they could be sewn to the cap or dress. The right to make
and sell them belonged exclusively to the family of De Valon, and had
been granted by the crown in return for military service. So large were
the sales, and so comfortable the profits, that the thrifty townspeople
constantly infringed upon the seignorial privilege, and flooded the
market, in defiance of all authority, with contraband medals,--a
pardonable offence, not without parallel in every age and land.
The Canterbury _sygnys_ were in the shape of little flasks; at
Compostella they were minute cockle-shells; at Amiens they bore the
head of St. John the Baptist: “Ecce signum faciei beati Johannis
Baptistae.” So pleased were pilgrims with these devices, and so proud
to wear the mementoes of their piety,--as the Moslem, returned from
Mecca, wears his green turban,--that we find Erasmus mocking at their
appearance “clothyd with cockle-schelles, and laden on every side with
bunches of lead and tynne.” There is not a shrine in Europe to-day
unprovided with similar tokens. At Auray, medals of St. Anne; at Padua,
medals of St. Anthony; at Avila, medals of St. Theresa; at Prague,
medals of the Holy Infant; at Loretto, medals of the Santa Casa; at
Genazzana, medals of Our Lady of Good Counsel; at Paray-le-Monial,
medals of the Sacred Heart; at the charming old pilgrimage church of
Maria Plain near Salzburg, medals of the Blessed Virgin uncovering the
Divine Child; at Lourdes, more medals and rosaries than one can imagine
all Catholic Christendom buying in the next three hundred years.
Yet bought they are, and could Erasmus behold the pilgrims leaving
Lourdes, he would deem himself once more on the Walsingham way. It
is well to watch the French country people, laden with the heavy
baskets which hold their supply of food, grasping the inevitable
umbrellas, as big and bulky as folded tents, and burdened furthermore
with an assortment of pious souvenirs that require the utmost care in
handling. They move slowly in little groups from image to image in the
lower church. Some scholar of the party spells out the name of each
saint, and then all softly rub their miscellaneous treasures--beads,
scapulars, medals, _bénitiers_--up and down the statue’s robe and
feet. Some old, old, misty notion of the blessedness of touch dwells
confusedly in every mind. Their contentment is beautiful to behold.
They alone know by what sacrifices and privations these days of
pilgrimage were made possible; but we know how much they have gained.
New sensations; the sudden opening of the world’s closed doors,
revealing to them a little corner amid wide mysterious spaces; the
stirring of the heart in the presence of sacred things; one keen
experience in a monotonously bucolic life; one deep breath of a diviner
air; something desired, achieved, and ever to be remembered,--what
generous mind doubts that all this is better than sensibly staying at
home? No observer could have stood at the doors of St. Peter’s in the
spring of 1900, when the pilgrims of every land thronged up the sunlit
steps, without learning once for all the value of emotions. The crowd
stared, jostled, chattered, as it swept along, and then, entering those
vast, harmonious aisles, fell silent, while there came into every face
a look that could never be mistaken nor forgotten. It was the leaping
of the human soul to the ideal. It was an inarticulate _nunc dimittis_,
as the pilgrim entered upon the inheritance of ages.