Pilgrimage in Medieval Europe

Pilgrimage was a major feature of cultural life in medieval Europe.

Christians had been making pilgrimages ever since the earliest period of Christian history. However, it was between the 11^th and 13^th centuries that the phenomenon reached its zenith. During this period, countless thousands of pilgrims travelled across Europe, visiting over 10,000 pilgrimage sites. It was a cultural experience that anyone, from the poorest peasant to richest members of the nobility, could and did participate in.

So, why did so many people embark on pilgrimages in medieval times? What did they hope to achieve? How did they complete what, in some cases, were lengthy and hazardous journeys? And what exactly was it about this period in European history that made pilgrimage such an important cultural movement?

To be a Pilgrim

The word ‘pilgrim’ comes from the Latin ‘peregrinus’ which signifies a traveller from a foreign or distant place. So, to be a pilgrim, you had to travel. You therefore needed to be motivated to travel in the first place and, just as importantly, have the means to reach your destination.

By the 11^th century a perfect storm of events coincided to fuel an explosion in the number of pilgrims:

The number of pilgrimage sites was rapidly increasing. In addition to the obvious major destinations such as Jerusalem and Rome, innumerable smaller shrines and chapels were emerging. Most became pilgrim destinations servicing the ever-growing multitude of medieval saints and their relics.
European economies were growing. This growth was fuelled by and helped pay for improvements in transport networks across the continent. It was, in short, easier to travel, and hence easier to make longer journeys.
The advent of the millennium anniversary of the birth of Christ prompted speculation on a potentially imminent second coming. When coupled with these other factors, it acted as a spur for pilgrimage on a scale not seen before.

An Innumerable Multitude

In 1030, Rodulphus Glaber was prompted to write of this incredible new phenomenon. There had of course been pilgrims prior to Rodulphus’ time but not on the scale that he now witnessed. Prior to the 11^th century, pilgrims had been an infrequent sight on the roads. Such journeys were often only undertaken by the wealthy and their personal retinues. Now, all of a sudden, “an innumerable multitude of people, from the whole world, greater than any man could hope to see, began to travel to the Sepulchre of the Saviour in Jerusalem.” These were not just barons and bishops but ordinary folk as well.

Times were indeed changing.

The explosion in the number of pilgrims is even more incredible when we consider the sacrifices required to go on a pilgrimage. Pilgrimage involved abandoning your home, friends and family, and travelling, potentially over great distances, to visit somewhere you’d likely never been before. It was therefore a huge commitment, especially for the poorer members of medieval society. So, why do it?

Motives

There were many reasons why people went on pilgrimages in medieval Europe. Some people were, of course, genuinely inspired by religious piety. Medieval Christians believed they’d face a period of purgatorial torment before entering heaven when they died. However, they also knew they could reduce the time spent in purgatory if the Church granted them ‘indulgences’. And one way they could earn indulgences was to go on a pilgrimage.

In an age where sickness was common and medical science rudimentary, turning to God for a cure seemed only natural. Many people therefore travelled to pilgrimage sites to pray for sick family members or to seek out a miraculous cure for their own ailments. Others may have made vows to God to go on a pilgrimage should they survive an illness, obtain victory in war or be otherwise delivered from an enemy. Others yet embarked on a pilgrimage to atone for past sins and save their immortal soul. Some simply went because it offered the opportunity to travel and see the world.

Pilgrimage carried dangers of course. You might get robbed or even murdered on the road. And there was always the risk that you might be led astray by worldly temptation. One medieval Spanish proverb warned ‘Leave as a pilgrim, return as a prostitute.’

The Life of a Pilgrim

Of course, it is easy enough to see how a wealthy baron could afford to spend weeks on the road, protected as he was by a well-armed retinue. But for ordinary folk, lacking in such means, how could they afford to leave their livelihood behind and spend several weeks (perhaps months) travelling?

A large part of the answer lies in the fact that religious and secular authorities were highly supportive of pilgrims. A pilgrimage was, after all, a pious venture, which it was the duty of all good Christians to facilitate. Laws were passed to protect the property of pilgrims whilst they were absent on their travels. As a pilgrim you were more likely to receive charity from those you encountered on your journey. Local guilds, monasteries and religious orders might offer pilgrims accommodation and refreshment.

Of course, if you knew a trade, you might get the opportunity to practice it enroute and earn some coin. Also, the fact that you were travelling meant that you could earn money carrying messages along your route. Some pilgrims took some possessions with them to sell along the way. But when all is said and done, life could be very hard for a poor pilgrim.

Dressing the Part

It wasn’t long before pilgrims began to adopt their own distinctive form of dress by which people came to identify them. Typically, this would consist of a simple russet cassock, perhaps patched with the sign of the cross. They often wore wide brimmed hats to which they pinned distinctive pewter badges. These badges were produced and sold at the shrines and holy places they visited to serve as mementos of the pilgrimage. Pilgrims typically travelled with a walking staff, a simple scrip or satchel and a gourd. Such individuals must have cut quite a distinctive figure on the road.

Photo of a Canterbury pilgrim badge, 12th century — *A pewter pilgrim’s badge from the shrine of Saint Thomas of Canterbury*

This ‘traditional’ pilgrim’s dress remained popular throughout the High Middle Ages. However, later in the Middle Ages such customs were increasingly seen as anachronistic. By Chaucer’s time (the late fourteenth century) most pilgrims appear to have been comfortable to travel in their everyday clothes.

The Holy Land

The ultimate destination for a pilgrimage was the Holy Land and the various sacred sites to be found there.

Perhaps the most sacred site in all Christendom was the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Here, it was possible to visit the Holy Basilica and to see the actual site of Christ’s tomb. The rock at the entrance of the tomb had been drawn aside during the resurrection. Here, you could touch the sacred rock, see the sacred tomb, and experience the very site where Christ himself had been resurrected. You could also visit the hill at Calvary, the place of the Crucifixion, where the attendant monks would point out a rock, stained with the blood of Christ. Other sacred relics you could see at this extraordinary place included the head of Adam, the stone where Joseph of Arimathea had washed the body of Christ after the crucifixion, the garden where the risen Christ had appeared to Mary Magdalene, the place where the Holy Cross had been buried, and much more.

The pilgrimage route to Jerusalem was disrupted by conflict between the Seljuk Turks and Fatimid Arabs in the late 11^th century. This presented a severe hindrance and very real dangers to pilgrims seeking to visit the Holy Land. It played a major role in prompting the First Crusade in 1095.

Margery Kempe

For some, a visit to Jerusalem was an overwhelming spiritual experience.

Margery Kempe was the daughter of a Kings Lynn merchant living at the turn of the fifteenth century. She lived a fairly ordinary secular life before a spiritual experience inspired her on a more pious path.

Margery became a mystic after receiving visions following the birth of her first child. In 1413 she was inspired to make the great pilgrimage from England to the Holy Land. Although the Holy Land was in Muslim hands by this time, Christian pilgrims were nevertheless permitted to visit the holy sites. When Margery visited the hill of Calvary she fell to the ground, gripped by an ecstatic vision of Christ crucified.

So powerful was the draw of the pilgrimage that it could inspire a pious merchant’s daughter to travel across Europe to the Middle East. It would take her away from her home and her family for nigh on three years.

Henry IV

In the summer of 1392 Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV) travelled to eastern Europe, hoping to join the Teutonic Order on crusade. However, when he arrived, he discovered that peace had been agreed and there was no war to fight.

Not wishing to lose face from a wasted journey, Henry decided to set out on a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

Henry’s pilgrimage would take until January 1393 to complete. On his journey, he visited the courts of Prague, Hungary and Vienna before arriving in Venice to be entertained by the Doge.

From Venice, Henry set out by sea for the Holy Land, eventually making his way to Jerusalem. He was the first English royal to set foot in the Holy Land since Edward I and the first ever to visit the Holy Sepulchre itself.

Henry naturally travelled with an extensive, well-armed, entourage. Being an important dignitary, he was assured of being welcomed and entertained by the nobility of every land through which he travelled. His pilgrimage experience was therefore a good deal more convivial and freer from danger than for someone like Margery.

Rome

Aside from the Holy Land itself, Rome became a key attraction for pilgrims. It was significant in no small part because of the many different relics housed in its churches and shrines. It was a number that was greatly added to as the Middle Ages progressed.

The number of pilgrims making the journey to Rome increased greatly during ‘Holy Years’ at the turn of each century. At these times the popes granted special indulges to pilgrims who were visiting Rome’s holy basilicas.

Churches in Rome grew rich and garnered an increasing reputation for their ostentatious display of wealth. Such sites must have been almost over-awing for some of the poor pilgrims who would, literally, have never seen anything remotely like it before.

Rome may long have ceased to serve as Europe’s secular capital, but the eternal city remained Europe’s spiritual capital throughout the Middle Ages.

Santiago de Compostella

Almost as prestigious as Rome was the shrine of St James in Santiago de Compostella in northwestern Spain. By the 11^th century, Muslim power in Spain was in decline. This made a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella an easier and far less hazardous prospect.

St James emerged as Spain’s patron saint since the Spanish had frequently invoked the aid of this saint in their wars with Muslim neighbours. All this had greatly enhanced St James’ reputation as a martial saint. The idea of St James as a soldier saint is not immediately obvious. The real St James had been, after all, a fisherman before he became an apostle. This discrepancy was even pointed out by a bewildered visiting Greek Bishop (who was happily reassured after apparently receiving a vision from the saint himself).

St James acquired a reputation for acting as an intercessor for those who were guilty even of the gravest of sins. Such sinners would be told to make the pilgrimage to his shrine, perhaps as the only means by which their soul might be saved.

It became a tradition to bring back a cockle shell as a mark of this pilgrimage. These were sold in the local market and, in time, cast in lead and sold as badges for pilgrims to wear on their hats.

Canterbury

For those who were reluctant to travel abroad, the most prestigious English pilgrimage destination was surely Canterbury.

Canterbury’s Cathedral and its shrine to its martyred archbishop, Thomas Becket, drew a constant flow of pilgrims. The shrine itself was truly magnificent, lavishly decorated with gold plate, and studded with precious jewels, including a particularly large ruby. An impressive site indeed for a poor pilgrim.

Illustration of the murder of Thomas A Becket in Canterbury Cathedral — *Canterbury became the most important pilgrimage site in England thanks to its martyred saint, Thomas Becket*

Visitors could buy small sacred vessels containing holy water mixed with a tiny drop of the martyred saint’s blood. These sacred vessels were said to have beneficial healing powers. You could also buy pewter badge souvenirs depicting scenes and images of the martyr’s death. Unsurprisingly, with 200,000 visiting pilgrims a year, the income for the cathedral was significant.

Walsingham Priory

The second most popular holy site in England was Walsingham Priory. It famously contained a shrine to Mother Mary and a replica hut that was supposed to be an exact copy of the house the holy family had lived in at Nazareth. Even though it was a replica and not the original, this was still enough to mark it out as a holy place.

Visiting pilgrims underwent a lengthy religious ritual experience. They would first arrive at a small chapel, around mile and a half away. There, after praying, they would remove their shoes and make the rest of the journey barefoot. On arrival at the Priory, they would make an offering before kissing the finger bone of Saint Peter. They would then visit the sacred Nazarene hut for further prayer and meditation, perhaps drinking from one of the two holy wells there. Here, or so it was said, drinking the holy waters had the power to grant a pilgrim whatever he or she truly desired. Finally, pilgrims would visit the sacred shrine of Mother Mary herself. There they would pay their respects to the most sacred relic in the priory – the Holy Milk of the Virgin Mary.

Just as was the case at Canterbury, Walsingham Priory generated an enormous income from visiting pilgrims.

Glistening with Gold

Needless to say, shrines and churches capable of attracting a significant number of pilgrims became very rich. This wealth was often spent on lavish decorations in the form of gold and jewels to beautify these places. And this naturally had the effect of making the pilgrimage site even more prestigious, impressive and thereby attracted even more pilgrims.

Of course, the worldliness implied by such ostentatious displays of wealth could be taken as a sign of greed and perhaps even corruption. Few, however, criticised or even questioned the phenomenon for most of the Middle Ages.

This is not to say, however, that there were no dissenting voices. Guibert, the abbot of Nogent-sous-Coucy bewailed the fact that some monks “seduced by the gifts which pilgrims frequently brought with them, allowed fake miracles to occur.”

St Bernard of Clairvaux was even more sceptical and railed against what he saw as money-grabbing worldliness. Too many churches, he claimed, are “glistening with gold while the poor are starving and naked outside.”

By and large, such critics were loan voices. There would be no serious cultural backlash against these shrines until the Reformation of the Early Modern Age.

Decline

The phenomenon of the pilgrimage reached a zenith in terms of its cultural popularity between the 11^th and 13^th centuries. During the late Middle Ages, after the Holy Land was lost to Islam, pilgrimages to the Middle East became more difficult. This was especially true during times of conflict and tension between Islamic powers and European Christians.

However, the early modern Reformation would bring about a significant shift in cultural attitudes during the 16^th century. Zealous Protestants denounced the old culture of saints, martyrs and the veneration of relics. Even Catholics increasingly sought to curb some of the more extravagant excesses of the old saints’ cults.

Problems that had been swept under the carpet for centuries could no longer be ignored. It could not be right, for example, that there were several separate holy sites claiming to possess the head of John the Baptist. Hagiographies of saints were revisited and revised to edit out material of dubious provenance. Relics of dubious provenance likewise came under suspicion in a way that simply had not happened in medieval times.

Pilgrimage, as a cultural phenomenon, did not die out. But from now on it would be an altogether more reserved and sober affair. The roads of early modern Europe would no longer be filled with the innumerable multitudes that had so astonished Rodulphus Glaber in 1030.

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