PILGRIMAGES.

The first Pilgrimages to Jerusalem and Rome.—The Worship of the Martyrs.—Pilgrims’ Hospitals.—Images of the Virgin Mary.—Relics brought from the East by the Crusaders.—Celebrated Pilgrimages of Early Days.—The Roman Basilicas.—St. Nicholas de Bari.—Notre-Dame de Tersatz.—St. Jacques de Compostella.—Notre-Dame du Puy, de Liesse, de Chartres, de Rocamadour.—Pilgrimages in France, Germany, Poland, Russia, and Switzerland.

The first of the Christian pilgrimages were those made to the tomb of Christ, when the apostles, the disciples, the mother of sorrow (mater dolorosa), a few saintly women, and soon, no doubt, many of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, paid their pious visits to the sepulchre which the resurrection had robbed of its prey. Afterwards, when the Gospel became known throughout the countries near Judæa, St. Paul set the example of making a pilgrimage to the holy places—an example which was followed by millions of the faithful in later ages.

Fig. 279.—St. Denis carrying his Head to his place of burial: according to the old legend, he is supported by two angels, and followed by a Christian lady, St. Catulla, who is going to put him in his shroud. In the scene above, the body of the martyr is being prepared for burial.—After a Miniature in the “Vie de Monseigneur Sainct Denis,” Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century (National Library, Paris).

In the third century, but even more so in the fourth, Christian men and women of all nations visited the places mentioned in the Gospel as having been the scenes of some episode in the life of Jesus Christ, from the stable at Bethlehem to the Calvary of Golgotha. Amongst this host of pilgrims, history has handed down to us the names of St. Hilarius, St. Basilius the Great, and his brother St. Gregory of Nyssa, who wrote a discourse concerning the visitors to Jerusalem; St. Jerome also, with the Scriptures in his hand, made the solemn pilgrimage, accompanied by learned theologians such as the Bishop of Gaza, Porphyrius, and Rufinus of Aquileia, and by several saintlywomen, Melanie, Paula, Fabiola, Eustochia, who were scarcely less erudite than the doctors.

We find the proofs of these early pilgrimages in the inscriptions traced with the point of the stylus, or merely with charcoal, upon the plaster of the walls of the Catacombs at Rome. There are many in the cemetery of St. Calixtus which give expression to pious thoughts, touching prayers, and some interesting events. In the crypt of the old church at Montmartre, where, as there is reason to believe, the martyrdom of St. Denis (Fig. 279) and his companions took place, there were found many similar inscriptions, which would seem to indicate that there, as at Rome, the pilgrims have left traces of their visits.

The Catacombs at Rome are full of images of saints, painted in fresco on a groundwork of glass or mosaics in coloured stones; and many of them, some dating from the second and even from the first century of the Church, seem to mark the stations at which the primitive pilgrims halted or knelt or prayed.

The memory of any act which has excited admiration, or has impressed itself vividly, long remains indelible in the heart of the people, to which fact must be attributed the origin and long duration of a number of pilgrimages which date from the early ages of Christianity. The commemorative marks of these pilgrimages remained unknown to posterity, until recourse was had to consecrated standards (signa), to images, and to amulets which generally bore the monogram of Christ or the sign of the redemption. The cross was never of the shape which it assumed in the fourth century, being rather the cross termedcommissaorpatibulata—in the form of the Greek letter tau (T), which, as tradition tells us, corresponded exactly to the shape of the cross upon which our Lord suffered death. This kind of cross is, in fact, to be seen on amulets or reliquaries of the third century; it was embroidered on garments and engraved upon tombs. The cross was thus the symbol of pilgrimage, as it was afterwards the emblem of the Crusades.

Fig. 280.—St. Barbara, a Maiden of Nicomedia, who suffered Martyrdom in the Third Century.—Drawn with the pen and pencil by John Van Eyck, called John of Bruges, in honour of the building of a church dedicated to her.—In the Museum at Antwerp (Fifteenth Century).

The worship of relics, whatever be its origin, was a natural adjunct to the worship of the tombs in which Christ’s confessors were laid, and of the soil where their martyrdom had taken place; thus the smallest fragment of a saint’s body, the most trifling piece of raiment, or most insignificant object (tantillæ reliquiæ) that had belonged to a blessed martyr, and more especially anything which represented a material reminder of the glorious deathwhich a Christian had won in confessing the Gospel, was carefully preserved as a relic. Thus the periods of persecution were the most favourable for the multiplication of these relics. Almost before the martyr’s sufferings were over, a crowd of believers invaded the amphitheatres and arenas, carried off and concealed the mortal remains of the victim, collected his precious blood in sponges, and almost fought for the very sand upon which it was shed; and when the new saint had been laid in some sure resting-place, they vied with each other in sprinkling sweet perfumes over the body, in wrapping it up in white linen, and even in purple and gold. His solemn intermentafterwards took place in some sanctuary (loculum) of the Catacombs, which was afterwards visited by numerous and devout pilgrims who came to pay their pious homage to his memory.

One of the earliest instances of this worship of the martyrs is furnished us in the hagiography of St. Ignatius, who suffered martyrdom at Rome in the reign of Trajan. We see therein how, in spite of the armed attendants and heathen crowds which filled the amphitheatre where the execution had taken place, some courageous Christians, at the risk of their own lives, secured the remains of the prelate in order to convey them to his own church at Antioch. In a letter concerning the martyrdom of St. Polycarp, quoted by Eusebius, it is stated that the faithful carried away his bones, more precious in their eyes than gold and precious stones, and concealed them in a fitting-place (ubi decebat).

The unanimous testimony of St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Leo, St. Cyprian, St. Chrysostom, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, and of all the most illustrious Fathers of the Greek, African, Eastern, Roman, and Gallican Churches, proves that the worship of martyrs, of the places of their nativity (natalia), of their burial-places, and of their relics, was established in the Christian world before the close of the fourth century (Fig. 280). The various liturgies, sacramentaries, missals, and rituals confirm this testimony. Moreover, the primitive Church had, in a measure, joined the worship of relics to the sacrifice of the eucharist by celebrating the latter upon the tombs of the martyrs. This ancient usage was raised into a liturgical law under the pontificate of St. Felix (269), as St. Athanasius affirms in his biography of that saint. When the persecutions had ceased, basilicassub dio, or under the open sky, were raised over the crypts which held the bodies of the martyr-saints.

The enormous sum of five hundred golden sous, representing seven pounds of gold, the price for the body of an obscure martyr in the third century, fails to give an idea of the fabulous sums which were expended at that period to obtain possession of the bodies of the saints. Men hoped, to use an expression borrowed from the Acts of St. Firmus and St. Rusticus, that by so doing they were laying up treasures for the life to come; and this explains why Luitprand, King of the Lombards, purchased the relics of St. Augustine for their weight in gold.

The flow of pilgrims into Rome, Jerusalem, and other places was so great towards the close of the fourth century, and still more in the fifth, that itbecame necessary to regulate this display of devotion by some strict rules of discipline. Many ecclesiastical writers, while deploring the abuses to which it gave rise, were unable to point out any effectual remedy; it being difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, to distinguish the false pilgrims from the true, and to prevent vagabonds, ever ready to rob any wealthy travellers they might fall in with, from assuming the garb of piety and religion.

Fig. 281.—“Count Renier bearing the Body of St. Veronica to the Church of St. Waudru, in Mons.”—After a Miniature in the “Chroniques de Hainaut” (Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century), Burgundian Library, Brussels.

Every church, abbey, and chapel became at this period a place of refuge, ever open for pilgrims, who were certain of being hospitably received there at all hours, for their purse was generally light, and they lived upon alms, if only for the sake of doing penance. Charity devoted itself to the task of sheltering and feeding them during their journeys, whence they often returned ill and weak, and poorer than when they started, but always rich in indulgences, consolations, and relics.

Rome had, from the earliest times, an inexhaustible stock of relics in the Catacombs, which served for the use of the whole Christian world. By one of the canons issued by the fifth Council of Carthage, it was decreed that no church should be consecrated until some well-authenticated relics had been placed beneath the altar. In after-days, it was further required that there should be relics visible at each entrance to the church, on the diptychs fastened to the chapel walls, in the sacraria, in a number of the private oratories, and even on the cover of the books of the mass.

This continual removal of relics from one country to another gave rise to many imposing and touching ceremonies. St. Chrysostom has related, in one of his homilies, all the details concerning the translation of the relics of St. Ignatius, who suffered martyrdom at Rome, to his episcopal residence at Antioch, amidst a vast assemblage of the faithful.

From the seventh century the removal of relics became more and more frequent, and the number of pilgrimages increased accordingly. Sometimes the relics were those of unknown saints. When Pope Boniface IV. (606) was about to dedicate to the Holy Virgin, and to all the martyrs or confessors, the Pantheon of Agrippa, by transforming it into a church, to be called Sancta Maria Rotunda, he caused to be conveyed thither thirty-two chariot loads of bones, taken from the Catacombs. Pope Pascal I. (817) also deposited a vast quantity of saints’ bones in the Church of St. Praxeas at Rome, previous to consecrating it. The names of these saints were not known, but the authenticity of their remains and of their claims to veneration were verified before the ceremony, by a committee appointed for that purpose.

Fig. 282.—Henry I., Emperor of Germany, and one of his Generals, Gautier Von der Hoye.—Equestrian statues in bronze, cast in 948 by order of the Emperor, and placed in the Church of Our Lady at Maurkirchen (Austria), in commemoration of his victory over the Huns. These statues, destroyed in a fire, were re-cast in plaster and placed on the same spot, where they were visible until June 27th, 1865, when the church was burnt to the ground.—After a Woodcut from a work called “Thurnier-Buch,” in gothic folio: printed at Siemern in 1530.

In the course of three centuries, from the ninth to the eleventh, the discovery and the disinterment of saints’ bodies, their solemn removal (Fig. 281), the foundation of monasteries, oratories, and churches in their honour, the institution of anniversary fêtes, and the setting apart of a number of private devotions at services, relating not only to relics, but to holy images, abound in all the annals of the Catholic world. This is supposed to be the epoch when were introduced into Europe those ancient images, in sculpture and in painting, of the Holy Mother of Christ, which were revered in the Middle Ages just as they are in the present day; among these were black virgins, which were, no doubt, of Abyssinian origin; tawny or yellowish virgins, from some country of Africa; and brown and Byzantine virgins, ofa stern and hard-featured type, wanting in expression. These images, all of which were very coarsely executed—though the last-mentioned seem to be copied from a picture attributed to St. Luke (Fig. 283)—often peculiar in their expression and character, but most of them of unquestionable antiquity, were common in Italy, Spain, the Mediterranean Isles, and many of the southern provinces of France. They were much rarer in the west of Europe,in Belgium, Germany, and Ireland, where, however, they were looked upon with just as much veneration—as, for instance, the Notre-Dame de Luxembourg, which was tawny. In the North, in Hungary, Poland, and Russia, but especially in Russia (Figs. 284 and 285), there were only the dark and Byzantine images of the Virgin.

Fig. 283.—The Virgin of St. Luke (so called).—An image painted on wood, placed in the Church of Sta. Maria Maggiore, now San Paolo-fuor-gli-Muri, at Rome, in the Fourth or Fifth Century.

Fig. 284.—GreekPanagia, or Image of the Holy Virgin, with a Portrait of Jesus Christ upon her bosom.—From the “Antiquities of Russia,” by Sevastianof (Thirteenth Century).

The worship of relics, as well as that of miraculous images, had, beyond question, sometimes degenerated into superstition; but it is impossible to deny the services which it rendered to Christianity in these ages of barbarism. The people, without anything to restrain or to guide them, were in a state of perpetual commotion, easily tempted to evil, a prey to the first adventurer who could show them some ready road to plunder, impatient of all social restraint, moving about from place to place, and dead to all family ties and love of country. Amidst all this disorder, preaching unaccompanied by grand religious spectacles would have been fruitless, and thus the Church revived the worship of relics. Search was made in every direction for the bodies ofsaints; the bishops themselves journeyed to Italy, to Africa, and to the East to collect the precious remains of those who had sealed their testimony with their blood. When these relics arrived at the place for which they were destined, the people went out to meet them and escort them back. Their transfer to the sanctuary, in which they were solemnly laid, was made the occasion for ornate ceremonies and for numerous pilgrimages (Figs. 286 and 287); and so devotion brought together hostile races which had long been separated by bitter warfare. The deeds done by the saint, who seemed as if present and visible to the eyes of the faithful, were read from the pulpit; the miracles which he had wrought might always be renewed under theinfluence of fervent prayer; a few cures were soon worked in proximity to his shrine, or upon his tomb. The pilgrims continually increased in number, and the priests gradually regained the moral authority which they had allowed to slip away from them.

Fig. 285.—Miraculous Image of Our Lady of Vladimir, the goal of one of the most famous pilgrimages in Russia.—From the “Antiquities of Russia,” by Sevastianof. (Twelfth Century.)

Fig. 286.—Coffer containing the Hair-cloths of St. Louis, presented by Philippe le Bel, his grandson, to the Abbey of Notre-Dame-du-Lis, near Melun.—The chest is in beech-wood, covered with metal, and with painted designs of the royal insignia of France and Castille, and various allegorical subjects.—Work of the Thirteenth Century, in the Louvre, Paris.

The Crusades were in reality but the general application, upon a larger scale, of those pilgrimages to the Holy Land which the inhabitants of Christian Europe had so long been performing. In the rear of the armed hosts marched with unfurled banners a tribe of infirm pilgrims, women, children, and old men (Fig. 288), led by priests in their sacerdotal vestments—undisciplined multitudes, into whose ranks inevitably crept a number of those miscreants who were the real authors of all the misdeeds with which history has reproached the Crusaders. As to the pilgrimages, the immediate result of this great movement of the European population towards Palestine was the creation, along the road which they had to travel, of a number ofreceiving-houses, supported and managed by certain religious and military orders, who entertained the wearied and sick pilgrims, and helped them on their journey.

Fig. 287.—Reliquary in chased copper (front and reverse), with movable Panels, and containing round the Crucifixion Scene, and in the space between the columns, Relics of Apostles, Fathers of the Church, Saints, and Martyrs.—Flemish work of the Thirteenth Century, preserved in the Convent of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, at Mons.

Fig. 288.—Robert I., Duke of Normandy, father of William the Conqueror, seized with illness during his pilgrimage to Jerusalem (1035), is carried in his litter by negroes: hence his jocular saying, “I am being taken by demons into Paradise.”—From a Miniature in the “Chroniques de Normandie,” a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Library of M. Ambroise Firmin Didot.

That model of pilgrims, the good King Louis IX., collected, in the course of his unsuccessful expeditions (1248–1270), a number of relics (Figs. 290 to 293, and 305). These, brought back to France as trophies of the crusade, were offered as gifts to ancient and venerable churches alreadypossessing many valuable relics, or deposited in new churches which were built expressly for their reception, as in the case of the Sainte Chapelle at Paris. And this brought about the increase of pilgrimages throughout Europe, in which the worship, not only of relics but of miraculous images, was ardently pursued. At the end of the thirteenth century, which was undoubtedly the most brilliant as it was the most solemn epoch of Christian art, in respect to the processional and itinerant acts of devotion, there were said to be no less than ten thousand Catholic sanctuaries, all of more or lesscelebrity, and each of which attracted its share of pilgrims, either for its Madonna or Notre-Dame. This was exclusive of the numberless images of Notre-Dame which were occasionally honoured by a special worship, and which were erected at cross-roads, at street-corners, and upon the fronts of houses, as a protection for the wayfarer and for the inhabitants of the locality. Many dioceses, such as those of Soissons and Toul, each contained from sixty to seventy places of pilgrimage.

Fig. 289.—The Pilgrims of Emmaus.—Pilgrim’s dress in the second half of the Thirteenth Century.—Portion of the celebrated Altar-piece of Mareuil-en-Brie, reproduced in its entirety in the article “Liturgy and Ceremonies.”

The authentic titles of the principal pilgrimages, apart from those of Rome and Jerusalem, thus date from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Some, no doubt, were anterior to this period, but their origin, though attested by tradition, cannot be said to rest upon any indisputable evidence. Of this nature are the celebrated devotions of Notre-Dame of Loretto, of our Lord’s robe at Trèves, of the seamless robe of Jesus Christ in the village of Argenteuil, near Paris, of St. Larme at Vendôme, of St. Face at Chambéry, of the blood of St. Januarius at Naples, of the stole of St. Hubert, &c.

Fig. 290.—The Crown of Thorns brought into France.—The three lower compartments represent: 1, the first visit of the king to the Sainte-Chapelle, expressly built to receive the crown of thorns; 2, the reception of the crown, presented by Baldwin II., Emperor of Constantinople, and brought to Paris in 1239; 3, the adoration of the crown in the Sainte-Chapelle by the king and his mother, Blanche of Castille. Above are the Island of Cyprus, the Crusaders’ fleet, and a battle with the Saracens, as recalling the crusade of Louis IX.—In the Burgundian Library, Brussels. (Fifteenth Century.)

Figs. 291 and 292.—1. The Nail used in the Crucifixion of our Lord, preserved in the Church of Santa Croce di Gerusalemme, at Rome. 2. The Holy Bit of Carpentras, brought to that town between 1204 and 1206. This is the bit which St. Helena forged for the horse of the Emperor Constantine from nails which had been driven into the holy cross.—After the Engraving of M. Rohault de Fleury, in his work called “Mémoire sur les Instrumens de la Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ.”

Fig. 293.—The Title or Superscription upon our Lord’s Cross: fragment of the piece of cedar-wood given to the Pope by St. Helena, and preserved in the Church of Santa Croce di Gerusalemme, at Rome.—The Inscription, which signifies “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” was in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, written backwards and in sunken characters; only a third remains.—Fac-simile from M. Rohault de Fleury’s Engraving for his work called “Mémoires sur les Instrumens de la Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ.”

Fig. 294.—Touching the Relics of St. Philip.—Fresco Painting by Andrea del Sarto, in the Cloister of the Church of the Annunziata, at Florence.

Christian Rome, bedewed with the martyrs’ blood and enriched with their relics, has since the first ages of Christianity been the central object of the great majority of pilgrimages. Her three hundred churches have one after another been visited by a host of believers drawn thither by pious recollections, by all kinds of effectual acts of grace or indulgences, by an abundanthospitality, by a pompous ceremonial, and, above all, by the ardour of their faith. On great anniversaries, at jubilees and at theInventionsof the bodies of saints, the number of pilgrims multiplied indefinitely. As many as twelvehundred thousand have been known to have arrived in the course of a single day, from different parts of the world—pious bands which encamped around the walls of the Eternal City, their ranks being constantly added to by fresh arrivals during several consecutive months. Besides the basilica of St. Peter, Rome possessed several privileged sanctuaries which were at all periods the chief haunts of the pilgrims: these were the Church of Sta. Maria Maggiore, where the manger in which our Lord was born was seen; San Praxeas, the basilica which contained two thousand five hundred martyrs; San Giovanni Laterano, in which are thescala santa, the same steps blessed by the blood of Jesus Christ when He was wearing the crown of thorns, and which are only ascended by people upon their knees; San Pietro-in-Montorio, the crypt of which stands upon the spot where that apostle was crucified; San Sebastiano-fuor-gli-Muri, famous for its catacombs; SanPaolo da Tre Fontane—miraculous springs which gushed from the ground with three leaps, just as St. Paul’s head rebounded three times from the ground when he was executed; San Paolo-fuori-le-Muri, where is preserved the crucifix which spoke to St. Bridget; San Lorenzo-fuori-le-Muri, where are interred the bodies of St. Stephen and St. Lawrence; Santa Croce di Gerusalemme (Fig. 293), a basilica founded by the august mother of St. Constantine on her return from a pilgrimage to Palestine; St. Cecilia, a church built upon the site of the house in which that saint lived, and containing the bath-room in which she suffered martyrdom; as well as twenty other churches which have been the cradles of the Christian religion, and which, by their origin, tradition, and relics, command the pious respect of those who visit them. No matter by what road the pilgrims travelled, they passed on their way to Rome a vast number of sanctuaries and stations which were dedicated either to the Virgin Mary or to illustrious saints (Fig. 294). Upon the sea-coast, the church of Our Guardian Lady and of Our Lady of Genesta, the tutelary guardians of the Gulf of Lyons and the Gulf of Genoa; and with them St. Martha and St. Magdalene; St. George, the legend of whose warlike exploit is reproduced in so many pictures; at Lucca, Our Lady of the Rose; in the Neapolitan States, Our Lady of the Commencement,Our Lady of the Conception, Our Lady of the Assumption, Our Lady of Naples, Our Lady of Mount St. Januarius; in Sicily, Our Lady of the Crown, St. Restituta, St. Agatha, but particularly St. Rosalie; towards the eastern shores of the Ionian Sea, several virgins of Byzantine origin, who were worshipped conjointly with St. Nicholas and St. Spiridion; along the Adriatic other Madonnas and other saints, conspicuous among whom, like a precious pearl, shines the celebrated image known as Our Lady of Victory. It was in her honour that an Eastern emperor caused a triumphal car to be constructed, in order that she might be drawn through the streets of Constantinople whenever the empire was threatened with danger. Brought to Venice and deposited in the Church of St. Mark, she was looked upon as the safe-guard of the republic, and, in place of the triumphal car, a magnificent gondola was specially reserved for this image. From the days of Godfroy de Bouillon, who, with a part of the Crusaders, made a pilgrimage to Bari, onthe “soil of Monseigneur St. Nicholas,” before pursuing his journey to Jerusalem, this august sanctuary became the scene of continuous devotions. Joinville, Froissart, Philippe Giraud de Vigneulles, and other chroniclers speak of the number of pilgrims who visited Bari to do honour to the relics of St. Nicholas. The miracles accomplished there through the intercession of the blessed Bishop of Myra, form a rich volume of legends dating from the eleventh century, when forty burghers of the town of Bari went into Asia Minor to rescue his precious body from the violence of the Saracens.

We must not be astonished at the profanities committed by the Mahometans at the places of pilgrimage in Palestine, since the cessation of the Crusades left these venerable sanctuaries at their mercy. It was to preserve the chapel of Nazareth from these outrages that God commanded his angels to carry it into a Christian country. According to a tradition confirmed by several papal bulls, the angels who carried off this chapel deposited it, on May 10th, 1291, at Rauneza, between Fiume and Tersatz, in Dalmatia. On the same night the Virgin Mary appeared in a dream to a dying priest named Alexander, and told him of the miracle. The chapel transported to Rauneza was no other than the house in which the divine mother of God had been born and had conceived the Redeemer. After her death the apostles had converted it into a chapel; St. Peter had erected an altar in it, and St. Luke had with his own hands carved in cedar a statue of the Virgin for it. The priest who had had the vision rose from his bed cured of his disease, and went to prostrate himself before the holy image previous to making a public announcement of the apparition of the Virgin. The house of Nazareth was there standing to confirm the truth of his story. Then began the pilgrimages to Tersatz. The Emperor Rudolph, on being informed of this marvellous occurrence, sent several persons of distinction into Palestine to see whether the chapel of Nazareth had really been removed. Their report was of the most satisfactory character, and very soon the worship of Our Lady of Tersatz had become very general throughout the Danubian provinces. In order to preserve the treasure with which Providence had endowed this spot, thesanta casawas surrounded by a wooden framework while the church of which it was to form the sanctuary was being built. But after standing for three years in Dalmatia, this holy house disappeared. Contemporary chroniclers relate that, on the 10th ofDecember, 1291, it was carried up into the air by angels and borne across the Adriatic.

It appears that thesanta casa, before taking up its definite position, halted near Recanati, upon a property belonging to two brothers who for eight months disputed its possession. In order to bring about a reconciliation between them, and chiefly, no doubt, because they were unwilling to leave this sanctuary at the mercy of these two jealous rivals, the angels bore it off once more, and finally deposited it in a field belonging to a poor widow of the name of Loreta—whence the denomination Our Lady of Loreta. Here may still be seen thesanta casa, just as it came from Nazareth, but not as it was decorated, endowed, and enriched by the sumptuous devotion of the Middle Ages. Its treasures, valued at several million francs, already much diminished by the religious wars brought about by the great Western schism, ceased to accumulate in the sixteenth century during the struggle of the Church against Protestantism, and they were almost all carried off in 1796 by the pillaging armies of the French Republic. Nevertheless the fervour of the pilgrims was not in the least abated, and the splendid church in which thesanta casawas as it were enshrined, was too small to contain all the votive offerings brought thither from every part of the world. The popes had granted numerous indulgences to those who made this pilgrimage, which was the most celebrated as well as the most frequented of any outside Rome.

The legend of the pilgrimages, as marvellous in Spain as it was in Italy, always associated the worship of St. James with that of the Holy Virgin. After the ascension of our Lord and the descent of the Holy Ghost, Santiago the Iberian—St. James, as we call him—bid adieu to his elder brother St. John the Evangelist, and afterwards went to ask the Virgin for her blessing. She said to him, “Dear son, since thou hast chosen Spain, the country which I love best of all European lands, to preach the Gospel, take care to found there a church dedicated to me, in the town where you convert the greatest number of heathen.” Santiago then left Jerusalem, and crossing the Mediterranean, arrived at Tarragona, where, despite all his efforts, he only succeeded in converting eight persons.

Fig. 295.—Our Lady of Mountserrat, with a Spanish Inscription signifying “Celestial abode of Our Lady of Mountserrat.”—This mountain derives its name from its rocks being shaped like the teeth of a saw (sierra, saw). This symbolical saw is seen in the hands of the Infant Jesus.—Reduced Fac-simile of a Woodcut of the Sixteenth Century, belonging to M. Bertin, publisher, of Paris.

But in the night of February 4th,A.D.36, whilst he and his eight neophytes were sound asleep in the plain upon which Saragossa now stands, they were awaked by celestial music, and this music was the voice of angelscelebrating the praises of the Virgin. Santiago prostrated himself with his face to the ground, and before him he saw the august mother of Christ, standing on a pillar of jasper, surrounded with angels, and with the same smile of ineffable sweetness which he had seen on her features when he left Jerusalem. “James, my son,” she said to him, “you must build me a churchupon this very spot. Take the pillar upon which I am standing, place it, with my image upon its summit, in the midst of a sanctuary dedicated to me, and to the end of time it shall never cease to work miracles.” The apostle at once commenced the work, aided by his disciples, and the church was soon constructed. Such, according to the legend, was the origin of the cathedral and the pilgrimage of Our Lady of the Pillar (Nuestra señora del Pilar).

The Virgin of the Pillar (Virgo del Pilar) was not the only one held in profound veneration by the Spaniards during the Middle Ages; every petty kingdom, every principality, every important town of the Iberian peninsula had its Madonna, itsSeñora, which attracted numerous pilgrims. Amongst them may be mentioned Our Lady of Mountserrat, in Catalonia (Fig. 295), Our Lady of France (la Rena di Francia), half-way between Salamanca and Ciudad Rodrigo, and Our Lady of the Dice (Señora del Dado), in the kingdom of Leon—sanctuaries which stood in the midst of mountainous ranges, and which could only be reached on foot or with mules.

In a small town called El Padron—the Monument—which is but the ancientIria, where Santiago, called James the Elder, taught (Fig. 296), and which was for a long time the guardian of his earthly remains, there flowed beneath the high altar of the church, which was dedicated to him, a stream of spring water, the ripple of which, like heavenly music, mingled with the prayers of the pilgrims, who were so numerous that their knees have worn holes in the stone slabs of the sanctuary. The body of the illustrious martyr, when brought from Compostella to Santiago, was laid upon a granite block which was miraculously fashioned into a tomb, and it never emerged therefrom save as a phantom either to appear in vision before kings, prelates, and other pious persons who had invoked it, or to seize a lance and combat the enemies of Christianity. Thus, the legend tells us, he was seen in 946, riding a white horse, holding in his hand a banner emblazoned with a red cross (such as the knights of Santiago wear on the left side of their mantles), and marching at the head of the Christian barons against the Moors or Saracens.

The pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella was famous as early as the ninth century; people came with votive offerings from all parts of the Christian world. The road leading to this sanctuary was perpetually crowded with an army of pilgrims, and such continued to be the case throughout the Middle Ages. On returning to their own country, the pilgrims of “MonseigneurSt. James” formed a regular order of Catholic chivalry; they kept up the pious devotions in which they had engaged during their pilgrimage, and maintained till their lives’ end the spirit of religious fellowship which had united them under the same banner.

Fig. 296.—The Magician Armogenes, in the presence of the Compostella pilgrims, orders devils to bring him the apostle St. James (the legend of the saint gives the contrary version).—After a Miniature from “The Holy Scriptures,” a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (Burgundian Library, Brussels).

France, notwithstanding her warlike spirit, did not pay so much honour to the warlike saints as did Italy and Spain to St. George and St. James, but she seems to have held in highest esteem thehealingsaints, as we may term them, such as St. Martin of Tours, St. Roch, St. Christopher, St. Blaze, St. Lazarus, &c., whose venerated relics have been the object of so many celebrated pilgrimages (Fig. 297). She has also rendered touching homage to certain specially holy women, the worship of whom has become almost national, such as St. Mary Magdalene and St. Martha, St. Barbara, St. Geneviève, &c. But in no country has the worship of the Virgin Mary been more general or more sublime than in France, where the mother of God had so many venerable sanctuaries; such as that of Our Lady of Puy, Our Lady of Liesse, Our Lady of Chartres, Our Lady of Rocamadour, Our Lady of the Thorn, Our Lady of Auray, and Our Lady of Victory, amongst others.

Fig. 297.—Thanksgivings made in a Chapel of Pilgrimage by a family carrying out a vow.—It is believed that this is the chapel in which were preserved the relics of the saint in the Abbey of Mont St. Claude (Franche-Comté).—French Picture of the Fifteenth Century, belonging to M. P. Lacroix.

One of the first altars erected in France to the Virgin Mary was that upon the summit of Mount Anicium, a volcanic rock near Velay, called Le Puy (from the Italianpoggio, high mountain). St. George, bishop of the diocese, came to baptize a lady of the district, who became seriously ill, upon which an unknown voice bid her repair to Mount Anicium. Having obeyed this command, she fell into a quiet sleep, during which shesaw a celestial female figure, wearing a crown of precious stones. “Who is this queen, so beautiful, so noble, and so gracious?” she inquired, addressing herself to one of the angelic host that surrounded her. The answer came: “This is the mother of the Son of God. She has selected this mountain for you to come and make your invocation; she bids you acquaint her faithful servant, Bishop George, of what has taken place. And now awake; you are cured of your illness.” The lady, filled with gratitude and faith, went to the bishop, who, when he had heard her story, prostrated himself to the ground, as if it were the Virgin herself who was speaking. Followed by his clergy, he then repaired to the miraculous rock. It was in the month of July; the sun was very hot, but the snow lay deep upon the table-land of the mountain. Suddenly a stag bounded forward and traced with his feet the plan of the sanctuary which was to be built upon that very spot, and then disappeared. The bishop at once saw that a fresh miracle had been wrought in confirmation of the first; he had the spot enclosed, and made a vow to erect a church there. This vow was executed by St. Evodius, seventh Bishop of Puy, in 223.

The statue of Our Lady of Puy, in cedar wood, blackened with age, was the work of the first Christians of Libanus, who executed it after the image of the Egyptian goddess Isis, sitting upright upon a stool, and holding upon her knee the Infant Jesus, swathed in fine linen as if he were a little mummy. This image was brought from the East by St. Louis in 1254.

The origin of the statue of Our Lady of Liesse also dates from the Crusades, which inundated France and the rest of Europe with so many images of the Holy Virgin. Thus, in 1131, Foulques d’Anjou, King of Jerusalem, entrusted the guard of the city of Beersheba to the Knights Hospitallers of St. John, amongst the most distinguished of whom were the three brothers of the house of Eppes, near Laon. These knights having been taken prisoners, the Sultan determined to make them become Mahometans, and imprudently selected his daughter Ismeria to effect the work of conversion. But she forgot the object of her mission, and allowed herself to be converted to Christianity by the arguments of the three knights. She asked them to carve for her an image of the Holy Virgin, and though they were utterly ignorant of the art, they began an image which angels came down from heaven to complete. The Virgin appeared to the Sultan’s daughter, encouraged her in her project to set the three captives at liberty, and advised her to follow them in her flight. At about midnight she went to the prison,the doors of which opened before her, as did those of the city. Ismeria bore in her arms the image of the Virgin, and the sovereign virtue of this talisman overcame all obstacles. The fugitives, who had gone to sleep upon Egyptian soil, woke up to find themselves in front of the Château d’Eppes, and the statuette, sparkling with light, selected the place which it wished to occupy in the middle of a wood. Ismeria caused to be erected upon this very spot a plain chapel, whilst in the town of Laon a cathedral was built, dedicated to Our Lady of Liesse. Since that period the great basilica and the tiny chapel have shared between them the worship of the crowd of pilgrims which the startling miracles have attracted thither. Both structures suffered from the fury of the Huguenots in the sixteenth century, but the miraculous image of the Virgin has always escaped from sacrilegious outrage.

Fig. 298.—Ancient Banner of the City of Strasburg, on which is represented the Image of Our Lady, to whom the city was dedicated about the middle of the Thirteenth Century; the lilies running round it are the emblem of the Virgin’s purity. A Memorial of the Thirteenth Century, burnt during the bombardment of Strasburg in 1870.—From a copy published in the “Dictionnaire du Haut et du Bas-Rhin,” by M. Ristelhuber.

Fig. 299.—Removal, by St. Bodillon and the Chevalier Gérard de Roussillon, of the Body of Mary Magdalene to the Church of Vézelay (Yonne).—After a Miniature in the “Chroniques de Hainaut,” a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Burgundian Library, Brussels.]

There is much analogy between the worship of the patronal Virgin of the country round Chartres and that of the Virgin of the Pillar at Saragossa. The two statues are alike in regard to posture, costume, and general character, and moreover they date back to the same epoch—namely, the fourth or fifth century. The Chartres cathedral, though ancient—for it was in existence during the seventh century—was nevertheless posterior to the first pilgrimages established in honour of “the Virgin who has borne a child,” according to the denomination given to this Notre-Dame by the first apostles who preached Christianity in this district, which was the centre of the Druidical religion. During the whole of the Middle Ages, and down even to our ownday, there have been daily arrivals of pilgrims at Chartres, and their number always increases upon the fête days of the Virgin.

Fig. 300.—Charles VI. fulfilling his vow to Our Lady of Hope (1389).—The king, who was at that time but twenty years of age, having lost his way one night in a forest near Toulouse, made a vow that if he recovered his road he would offer the value of his horse to Our Lady of Hope. In the painting he is represented in the act of carrying out his vow, bareheaded and on horseback, accompanied by his brother, the Constable of Clisson, and other nobles. Above are seen angels with streamers, on which are written the word “Hope.”—After an ancient Fresco in the Cloister of the Carmelite Monastery at Toulon.

The worship of Our Lady of Rocamadour is very possibly contemporaneous with that of Our Lady of Chartres—dating back to the first age of Christianity in Gaul. Nothing is known as to the origin of this devotion, which is supposed to have replaced that of some local divinity. The Virgin of Rocamadour was famous as early as the eighth century, for, if tradition is to be believed, Charlemagne and his brave followers came to pay it homage on their return from an expedition against the Gascons; and the sword of Roland, deposited as an offering upon the altar of the chapel of St. Michael, is still to be seen. Around this sanctuary, dedicated to the Virgin, were seventeen chapels hewn in the rock; they were dedicated to Jesus Christ, to the Twelve Apostles, to St. John the Baptist, to St. Anne, to St. Michael, and to St. Amadour, whose hermitage was here, and who had no doubt brought from the East the black Virgin who has been venerated there for twelve or fifteen centuries.

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