The fashion of going on pilgrimage seems to have sprung up in the fourth century. The first object of pilgrimage was the Holy Land. Jerome said, at the outset, the most powerful thing which can be said against it; viz., that the way to heaven is as short from Britain as from Jerusalem—a consolatory reflection to those who were obliged, or who preferred, to stay at home; but it did not succeed in quenching the zeal of those many thousands who desired to see, with their own eyes, the places which had been hallowed by the presence and the deeds of their Lord—to tread, with their own footsteps,
“Those holy fieldsOver whose acres walked those blessed feet,Which “eighteen” hundred years ago were nailedFor our advantage on the bitter cross;”[167]
to kneel down and pray for pardon for their sins upon that very spot where the Great Sacrifice for sin was actually offered up; to stand upon the summit of Mount Olivet, and gaze up into that very pathway through the sky by which He ascended to His kingdom in Heaven.
We should, however, open up too wide a field if we were to enter intothe subject of the early pilgrims to the Holy Land;[168]to trace their route from Britain, usuallyviâRome, by sea and land; to describe how a pilgrim passenger-traffic sprung up, of which adventurous ship-owners took advantage; how hospitals[169]were founded here and there along the road, to give refuge to the weary pilgrims, until they reached the Hospitalpar excellence, which stood beside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; how Saxon kings made treaties to secure their safe conduct through foreigncountries;[170]how the Order of the Knights of the Temple was founded to escort the caravans of pilgrims from one to another of the holy places, and protect them from marauding Saracens and Arabs; how the Crusades were organised partly, no doubt, to stem the course of Mahommedan conquest, but ostensibly to wrest the holy places from the hands of the infidel: this part of the subject of pilgrimage would occupy too much of our space here. Our design is to give a sketch of the less known portion of the subject, which relates to the pilgrimages which sprung up in after-times, when the veneration for the holy places had extended to the shrines of saints; and when, still later, veneration had run wild into the grossest superstition, and crowds of sane men and women flocked to relic-worships, which would be ludicrous if they were not so pitiable and humiliating. This part of the subject forms a chapter in the history of the manners of the Middle Ages, which is little known to any but the antiquarian student; but it is an important chapter to all who desire thoroughly to understand what were the modes of thought and habits of life of our English forefathers in the Middle Ages.
Thirteenth Century Pilgrims(the two Disciples at Emmaus).
The most usual foreign pilgrimages were to the Holy Land, the scene of our Lord’s earthly life; to Rome, the centre of western Christianity; and to the shrine of St. James at Compostella.[171]
The number of pilgrims to these places must have been comparatively limited; for a man who had any regular business or profession could notwell undertake so long an absence from home. The rich of no occupation could afford the leisure and the cost; and the poor who chose to abandon their lawful occupation could make these pilgrimages at the cost of others; for the pilgrim was sure of entertainment at every hospital, or monastery, or priory, probably at every parish priest’s rectory and every gentleman’s hall,[172]on his way; and there were not a few poor men and women who indulged a vagabond humour in a pilgrim’s life. The poor pilgrim repaid his entertainer’s hospitality by bringing the news of the countries[173]through which he had passed, and by amusing the household after supper with marvellous saintly legends, and traveller’s tales. He raised a little money for his inevitable travelling expenses by retailing holy trifles and curiosities, such as were sold wholesale at all the shrines frequented by pilgrims, and which were usually supposed to have some saintly efficacy attached to them. Sometimes the pilgrim would take a bolder flight, and carry with him some fragment of a relic—a joint of a bone, or a pinch of dust, or a nail-paring, or a couple of hairs of the saint, or a rag of his clothing; and the people gladly paid the pilgrim for thus bringing to their doors some of the advantages of the holy shrines which he had visited. Thus Chaucer’s Pardoner—“That strait was comen from the Court of Rome”—
“In his mail[174]he had a pilwebere,[175]Which as he saidé was oure Lady’s veil;He said he had a gobbet of the sailThatte St. Peter had whan that he wentUpon the sea, till Jesu Christ him hent.[176]He had a cross of laton full of stones;[177]And in a glass he haddé piggés bones.[178]But with these relics whanné that he fondA poure parson dwelling upon lond,Upon a day he gat him more monieThan that the parson gat in monthes tweie.And thus with feined flattering and japes,He made the parson and the people his apes.”
In a subsequent chapter, on the Merchants of the Middle Ages, will be found some illustrations of mediæval shipping, which also illustrate the present subject. One is a representation of Sir John Mandeville and his companions in mantle, hat, and staff, just landed at a foreign town on their pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Another represents Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, in mantle, hat, and staff, embarking in his own ship on his departure for a similar pilgrimage. Another illustration in the subsequent chapter on Secular Clergy represents Earl Richard at Rome, being presented to the Pope.
But those who could not spare time or money to go to Jerusalem, or Rome, or Compostella, could spare both for a shorter expedition; and pilgrimages to English shrines appear to have been very common. By far the most popular of our English pilgrimages was to the shrine of St. Thomas-à-Becket, at Canterbury, and it was popular not only in England, but all over Europe. The one which stood next in popular estimation, was the pilgrimage to Our Lady of Walsingham. But nearly every cathedral and great monastery, and many a parish church besides, had its famous saint to whom the people resorted. There was St. Cuthbert at Durham, and St. William at York, and little St. William at Norwich, and St. Hugh at Lincoln, and St. Edward Confessor at Westminster, and St. Erkenwald in the cathedral of London, and St. Wulstan at Worcester, and St. Swithin at Winchester, and St. Edmund at Bury, and SS. Etheldredaand Withburga at Ely, and many more, whose remains were esteemed holy relics, and whose shrines were frequented by the devout. Some came to pray at the tomb for the intercession of the saint in their behalf; or to seek the cure of disease by the touch of the relic; or to offer up thanks for deliverance believed to have been vouchsafed in time of peril through the saint’s prayers; or to obtain the number of days’ pardon—i.e.of remission of their time in purgatory—offered by Papal bulls to those who should pray at the tomb. Then there were famous roods, the Rood of Chester and of Bromholme; and statues of the Virgin, as Our Lady of Wilsden, and of Boxley, and of this, that, and the other place. There were scores of holy wells besides, under saintly invocations, of which St. Winifred’s well with her chapel over it still remains an excellent example.[179]Some of these were springs of medicinal water, and were doubtless of some efficacy in the cures for which they were noted; in others a saint had baptized his converts; others had simply afforded water to a saint in his neighbouring cell.[180]
Before any man[181]went on pilgrimage, he first went to his church, and received the Church’s blessing on his pious enterprise, and her prayers for his good success and safe return. The office of pilgrims (officium peregrinorum) may be found in the old service-books. We give a few notes of it from a Sarum missal, date 1554, in the British Museum.[182]The pilgrim ispreviously to have confessed. At the opening of the service he lies prostrate before the altar, while the priest and choir sing over him certain appropriate psalms, viz. the 24th, 50th, and 90th. Then follow some versicles, and three collects, for safety, &c., in which the pilgrim is mentioned by name, “thy servant, N.” Then he rises, and there follows the benediction of his scrip and staff; and the priest sprinkles the scrip with holy water, and places it on the neck of the pilgrim, saying, “In the name of, &c., take this scrip, the habit of your pilgrimage, that, corrected and saved, you may be worthy to reach the thresholds of the saints to which you desire to go, and, your journey done, may return to us in safety.” Then the priest delivers the staff, saying, “Take this staff, the support of your journey, and of the labour of your pilgrimage, that you may be able to conquer all the bands of the enemy, and to come safely to the threshold of the saints to which you desire to go, and, your journey obediently performed, return to us with joy.” If any one of the pilgrims present is going to Jerusalem, he is to bring a habit signed with the cross, and the priest blesses it:—“... we pray that Thou wilt vouchsafe to bless this cross, that the banner of the sacred cross, whose figure is signed upon him, may be to Thy servant an invincible strength against the evil temptations of the old enemy, a defence by the way, a protection in Thy house, and may be to us everywhere a guard, through our Lord, &c.” Then he sprinkles the habit with holy water, and gives it to the pilgrim, saying, “Take this habit, signed with the cross of the Lord our Saviour, that by it you may come safely to his sepulchre, who, with theFather,” &c. Then follows mass; and after mass, certain prayers over the pilgrims, prostrate at the altar; then, “let them communicate, and so depart in the name of the Lord.” The service runs in the plural, as if there were usually a number of pilgrims to be dispatched together.
Lydgate’s Pilgrim.
There was a certain costume appropriate to the pilgrim, which old writers speak of under the title of pilgrims’ weeds; the illustrations of this paper will give examples of it. It consisted of a robe and hat, a staff and scrip. The robe calledsclavinaby Du Cange, and other writers, is said to have been always of wool, and sometimes of shaggy stuff, like that represented in the accompanying woodcut of the latter part of the fourteenth century, from the Harleian MS., 4,826. It seems intended to represent St. John Baptist’s robe of camel’s hair. Its colour does not appear in the illuminations, but old writers speak of it as grey. The hat seems to be commonly a round hat, of felt, and, apparently, does not differ from the hats which travellers not uncommonly wore over their hoods in those days.[183]
The pilgrim who was sent on pilgrimage as a penance seems usually to have been ordered to go barefoot, and probably many others voluntarily inflicted this hardship upon themselves in order to heighten the merit and efficacy of their good deed. They often also made a vow not to cut the hair or beard until the pilgrimage had been accomplished. But the special insignia of a pilgrim were the staff and scrip. In the religious service with which the pilgrims initiated their journey, we have seen that the staff and scrip are the only insignia mentioned, except in the case of one going to the Holy Land, who has a robe signed with the cross; the staff and the scrip were specially blessed by the priest, and the pilgrim formally invested with them by his hands.
The staff, or bourdon, was not of an invariable shape. On a fourteenth-century grave-stone at Haltwhistle, Northumberland, it is like a rather long walking-stick, with a natural knob at the top. In the cut from Erasmus’s “Praise of Folly,” which forms the frontispiece of Mr. Nichols’s “Pilgrimages of Canterbury and Walsingham,” it is a similar walking-stick;but, usually, it was a long staff, some five, six, or seven feet long, turned in the lathe, with a knob at the top, and another about a foot lower down. Sometimes a little below the lower knob there is a hook, or a staple, to which we occasionally find a water-bottle or a small bundle attached. The hook is seen on the staff of Lydgate’s pilgrim (p. 163). Sir John Hawkins tells us[184]that the staff was sometimes hollowed out into a kind of flute, on which the pilgrim could play. The same kind of staff we find in illuminated MSS. in the hands of beggars and shepherds, as well as pilgrims.
The scrip was a small bag, slung at the side by a cord over the shoulder, to contain the pilgrim’s food and his few necessaries.[185]Sometimes it was made of leather; but probably the material varied according to the taste and wealth of the pilgrim. We find it of different shape and size in different examples. In the monumental effigy of a pilgrim of rank at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, the scrip is rather long, widest at bottom, and is ornamented with three tassels at the bottom, something like the bag in which the Lord Chancellor carries the great seal, and it has scallop shells fixed upon its front. In the grave-stone of a knight at Haltwhistle, already alluded to, the knight’s arms, sculptured upon the shield on one side of his grave cross, are afessbetween threegarbs(i.e.wheat-sheaves); and agarbis represented upon his scrip, which is square and otherwise plain. The tomb of Abbot Chillenham, at Tewkesbury, has the pilgrim’s staff and scrip sculptured upon it as an architectural ornament; the scrip islike the mediæval purse, with a scallop shell on the front of it, very like that on p. 163.[186]The pilgrim is sometimes represented with a bottle, often with a rosary, and sometimes with other conveniences for travelling or helps to devotion. There is a very good example in Hans Burgmaier’s “Images de Saints, &c., of the Familly of the Emp. Maximilian I.” fol. 112.
Pilgrim, from Erasmus’s “Praise of Folly.”
But though the conventional pilgrim is always represented with robe, and hat, and staff, and scrip, the actual pilgrim seems sometimes to have dispensed with some, if not with all, of these insignia. For example, Chaucer minutely describes the costume of the principal personages in his company of Canterbury Pilgrims, and he not only does not describe what would have been so marked and picturesque features in their appearance, but his description seems to preclude the pilgrim’s robe and hat. His knight is described in the ordinary jupon,
“Of fustian he wered a jupon.”
And the squire—
“Short was his gowne with sleves long and wide.”
And the yeoman—
“Was clad in cote and hood of green.”
And the serjeant of the law—
“Rode but homely in a medlee cote,Girt with a seint[187]of silk with barres small.”
The merchant was in motley—
“And on his hed a Flaundrish bever hat.”
And so with all the rest, they are clearly described in the ordinary dress of their class, which the pilgrim’s robe would have concealed. It seems very doubtful whether they even bore the especial insignia of staff and scrip. Perhaps when men and women went their pilgrimage on horseback, they did not go through the mere form of carrying a long walking-staff. The equestrian pilgrim, of whom we shall give a woodcut hereafter, though he is very correctly habited in robe and hat, with pilgrim signs on each, and his rosary round his neck, does not carry the bourdon. The only trace of pilgrim costume about Chaucer’s Pilgrims, is in the Pardoner—
“A vernicle hadde he sewed in his cappe”—
but that was a sign of a former pilgrimage to Rome; and it is enough to prove—if proof were needed—that Chaucer did not forget to clothe his personages in pilgrim weeds, but that they did not wear them.
But besides the ordinary insignia of pilgrimage, every pilgrimage had its special signs, which the pilgrim on his return wore conspicuously upon his hat or his scrip, or hanging round his neck, in token that he had accomplished that particular pilgrimage. The pilgrim who had made a long pilgrimage, paying his devotions at every shrine in his way, might come back as thickly decorated with signs as a modern soldier, who has been through a stirring campaign, with medals and clasps.
The pilgrim to the Holy Land had this distinction above all others, that he wore a special sign from the very hour that he took the vow upon him to make that most honourable pilgrimage. This sign was a cross, formed of two strips of coloured cloth sewn upon the shoulder of the robe; the English pilgrim wore the cross of white, the French of red, the Flemish of green. Some, in their fierce earnestness, had the sacred sign cut into their flesh; in the romance of “Sir Isumbras,” we read—
“With a sharpe knyfe he shareA cross upon his shoulder bare.”
Others had it branded upon them with a hot iron; one pilgrim in the “Mirac. de S. Thomæ” of Abbot Benedict gives the obvious reason, that though his clothes should be torn away, no one should be able to tear the cross from his breast. At the end of theOfficium peregrinorum, which we have described, we find a rubric calling attention to the fact, that burning the cross in the flesh is forbidden by the canon law on pain of the greater excommunication; the prohibition is proof enough that at one time it was a not uncommon practice. But when the pilgrim reached the Holy Land, and had visited the usual round of the holy places, he became entitled to wear the palm in token of his accomplishment of that great pilgrimage; and from this badge he derived the name of Palmer. How the palm was borne does not quite certainly appear; some say that it was a branch of palm, which the returning pilgrim bore in his hand or affixedto the top of his staff;[188]but probably in the general case it was in the shape of sprigs of palm sewn crosswise upon the hat and scrip.
The Roman pilgrimage seems always to have ranked next in popular estimation to that of the Holy Land;[189]and with reason, for Rome was then the great centre of the religion and the civilization of Western Christendom. The plenary indulgence which Boniface VIII. published in 1300, to all who should make the Jubilee pilgrimage to Rome, no doubt had its effect in popularizing this pilgrimagead limina apostolorum. Two hundred thousand pilgrims, it is said, visited Rome in one month during the first Jubilee; and succeeding popes shortened the interval between these great spiritual fairs, first to fifty, then to thirty-three, and lastly to twenty-five years. The pilgrim to Rome doubtless visited many shrines in that great Christian capital, and was entitled to wear as many signs; but the chief signs of the Roman pilgrimage were a badge with the effigies of St. Peter and St. Paul, the cross-keys, and the vernicle. Concerning the first, there is a grant from Innocent III. to the arch-priest and canons of St. Peter’s at Rome,[190]which confirms to them (or to those to whom they shall concede it) the right to cast and to sell the lead or pewter signs, bearing the effigies of the Apostles Peter and Paul, with which those who have visited their threshold decorate themselves for the increase of their devotion and a testimony of their pilgrimage. Dr. Rock says[191]“that a friend of his has one of these Roman pilgrim signs, which was dug up at Launde Abbey, Leicestershire. It is of copper, in the shape of a quatrefoil, one and three-quarter inches in diameter, and has the cross-keys on one side, the other side being plain.” An equestrian pilgrim represented in Hans Burgmaier’s “Der Weise Kœnige,” seems to bear on his cloak and his hat the cross-keys. The vernicle was the kerchief of Veronica, with which,said a very popular legend, she wiped the brow of the Saviour, when he fainted under His cross in the Via Dolorosa, and which was found to have had miraculously transferred to it an imprint of the sacred countenance. Chaucer’s Pardoner, as we have already seen—
“Strait was comen from the Court of Rome,”
and, therefore,
“A vernicle had he sewed upon his cap.”
The sign of the Compostella pilgrimage was the scallop shell.[192]The legend which the old Spanish writers give in explanation of the badge is this:—When the body of the saint was being miraculously conveyed in a ship without sails or oars, from Joppa to Galicia, it passed the village of Bonzas, on the coast of Portugal, on the day that a marriage had been celebrated there. The bridegroom with his friends were amusing themselves on horseback on the sands, when his horse became unmanageable and plunged into the sea; whereupon the miraculous ship stopped in its voyage, and presently the bridegroom emerged, horse and man, close beside it. A conversation ensued between the knight and the saint’s disciples on board, in which they apprised him that it was the saint who had saved him from a watery grave, and explained the Christian religion to him. He believed, and was baptized there and then. And immediately the ship resumed its voyage, and the knight came galloping back over the sea to rejoin his astonished friends. He told them all that had happened, and they too were converted, and the knight baptized his bride with his own hand. Now, when the knight emerged from the sea, both his dress and the trappings of his horse were covered with scallop shells; and, therefore, the Galicians took the scallop shell as the sign of St. James. The legend is found represented in churches dedicated to St. James, and in ancient illuminated MSS.[193]The scallop shell is not unfrequently found in armorial bearings. It is hardly probable that it would be given to aman merely because he had made the common pilgrimage to Compostella; perhaps it was earned by service under the banner of Santiago, against the Moors in the Spanish crusades. The Popes Alexander III., Gregory IX., and Clement V., granted a faculty to the Archbishops of Compostella, to excommunicate those who sell these shells to pilgrims anywhere except in the city of Santiago, and they assign this reason, because the shells are the badge of the Apostle Santiago.[194]The badge was not always an actual shell, but sometimes a jewel made in the shape of a scallop shell. In the “Journal of the Archæological Association,” iii. 126, is a woodcut of a scallop shell of silver gilt, with a circular piece of jet set in the middle, on which is carved an equestrian figure of Santiago.
The chief sign of the Canterbury pilgrimage was an ampul (ampulla, a flask); we are told all about its origin and meaning by Abbot Benedict, who wrote a book on the miracles of St. Thomas.[195]The monks had carefully collected from the pavement the blood of the martyr which had been shed upon it, and preserved it as one of the precious relics. A sick lady who visited the shrine, begged for a drop of this blood as a medicine; it worked a miraculous cure, and the fame of the miracle spread far and wide, and future pilgrims were not satisfied unless they too might be permitted the same high privilege. A drop of it used to be mixed with a chalice full of water, that the colour and flavour might not offend the senses, and they were allowed to taste of it. It wrought, says the abbot, miraculous cures; and so, not only vast crowds came to take this strange and unheard-of medicine, but those who came were anxious to take some of it home for their sick friends and neighbours. At first they put it into wooden vessels, but these were split by the liquid; and many of the fragments of these vessels were hung up about the martyr’s tomb in token of this wonder. At last it came into the head of a certain young man to cast little flasks—ampullæ—of lead and pewter. And then the miracle of the breaking ceased, and they knew that it was the Divine will that the Canterbury medicine should be carried in these ampullæ throughout the world,and that these ampullæ should be recognised by all the world as the sign of this pilgrimage and these wonderful cures. At first the pilgrims had carried the wooden vases concealed under their clothes; but these ampullæ were carried suspended round the neck; and when the pilgrims reached home, says another authority,[196]they hung these ampullæ in their churches for sacred relics, that the glory of the blessed martyr might be known throughout the world. Some of these curious relics still exist. They are thin, flat on one side, and slightly rounded on the other, with two little ears or loops through which a cord might be passed to suspend them. The mouth might have been closed by solder, or even by folding over the edges of the metal. There is a little flask figured in Gardner’s “History of Dunwich,” pl. iii., which has a T upon the side of it, and which may very probably have been one of these ampullæ. But one of a much more elaborate and interesting type is here engraved, from an example preserved in the museum at York. The principal figure is a somewhat sternrepresentation of the blessed archbishop; above is a rude representation of his shrine; and round the margin is the rhyming legend—“Optimus egrorum: Medicus fit Thoma bonorum” (“Thomas is the best physician for the pious sick”). On the reverse of the ampul is a design whose intention is not very clear; two monks or priests are apparently saying some service out of a book, and one of them is laying down a pastoral staff; perhaps it represents the shrine with its attendants. From the style of art, this design may be of the early part of the thirteenth century. But though this ampul is clearly designated by the monkish writers, whom we have quoted, as the special sign of the Canterbury pilgrimage, there was another sign which seems to have been peculiar to it, and that is a bell. Whether these bells were hand-bells, which the pilgrims carried in their hands, and rang from time to time, or whether they were little bells, like hawks’ bells, fastened to their dress—as such bells sometimes were to a canon’s cope—does not certainly appear. W. Thorpe, in the passage hereafter quoted at length from Fox, speaks of “the noise of their singing and the sound of their piping, and the jangling of their Canterbury bells,” as a body of pilgrims passed through a town. One of the prettiest of our wild-flowers, theCampanula rotundifolia, which has clusters of blue, bell-like flowers, has obtained the common name of Canterbury Bells.[197]There were other religious trinkets also sold and used by pilgrims as mementoes of their visit to the famous shrine. The most common of them seems to have been the head of St. Thomas,[198]cast in various ornamental devices, in silver or pewter; sometimes it was adapted to hang to a rosary,[199]more usually, in the examples which remain to us, it was made into a brooch to be fastened upon the cap or hood, or dress. In Mr. C. R. Smith’s “Collectanea Antiqua,” vol. i. pl. 31, 32, 33, and vol. ii. pl. 16, 17, 18, there are representations of no less than fifty-one English and foreignpilgrims’ signs, of which a considerable proportion are heads of St. Thomas. The whole collection is very curious and interesting.[200]
The Canterbury Ampulla.
The ampul was not confined to St. Thomas of Canterbury. When his ampuls became so very popular, the guardians of the other famous shrines adopted it, and manufactured “waters,” “aquæ reliquiarum,” of their own. The relic of the saint, which they were so fortunate as to possess, was washed with or dipped in holy water, which was thereupon supposed to possess—diluted—the virtues of the relic itself. Thus there was a “Durham water,” being the water in which the incorruptible body of St. Cuthbert had been washed at its last exposure; and Reginald of Durham, in his book on the admirable virtues of the blessed Cuthbert,[201]tells us how it used to be carried away in ampuls, and mentions a special example in which a little of this pleasant medicine poured into the mouth of a sick man, cured him on the spot. The same old writer tells us how the water held in a bowl that once belonged to Editha, queen and saint, in which a little bit of rag, which had once formed part of St. Cuthbert’s garments, was soaked, acquired from these two relics so much virtue that it brought back health and strength to a dying clerk who drank it. In Gardner’s “History of Dunwich” (pl. iii.) we find drawings of ampullæ like those of St. Thomas, one of which has upon its front a W surmounted by a crown, which it is conjectured may be the pilgrim sign of Our Lady of Walsingham, and contained, perhaps, water from the holy wells at Walsingham, hereinafter described. Another has an R surmounted by one of the symbols of the Blessed Virgin, a lily in a pot; the author hazards a conjecture that it may be the sign of St. Richard of Chichester. The pilgrim who brought away one of these flasks of medicine, or one of these blessed relics, we may suppose, did not always hang it up in church as anex voto, but sometimes preserved it carefully in his house for use in time of sickness, and would often be applied to by a sick neighbour for the gift of a portion of the precious fluid out of his ampul, or for a touch of the trinket which had touched the saint. In the “Collectanea Antiqua,” is afacsimile of a piece of paper bearing a rude woodcut of the adoration of the Magi, and an inscription setting forth that “Ces billets ont touché aux troi testes de saints Rois a Cologne: ils sont pour les voyageurs contre les malheurs des chemins, maux de teste, mal caduque, fièures, sorcellerie, toute sorte de malefice, et morte soubite.” It was found upon the person of one William Jackson, who having been sentenced for murder in June, 1748-9, was found dead in prison a few hours before the time of his execution. It was the charmed billet, doubtless, which preserved him from the more ignominious death.
We find a description of a pilgrim in full costume, and decorated with signs, in “Piers Ploughman’s Vision.” He was apparelled—
“In pilgrym’s wise.He bare a burdoun[202]y-bounde with a broad list,In a withwinde-wise y-wounden about;A bolle[203]and a bagge he bare by his side,An hundred of ampulles; on his hat setenSignes of Synay[204]and shells of Galice,[205]And many a crouche[206]on his cloke and keys of Rome,And the vernicle before, for men sholde knowe,And se bi his signes, whom he sought hadde.These folk prayed[207]hym first fro whence he came?‘From Synay,’ he seide, ‘and from our Lordes Sepulcre:In Bethlem and in Babiloyne I have ben in bothe;In Armonye[208]and Alesaundre, in many other places.Ye may se by my signes, that sitten in my hat,That I have walked ful wide in weet and in drye,And sought good seintes for my soules helthe.’”
The little bit of satire, for the sake of which this model pilgrim is introduced, is too telling—especially after the wretched superstitions which we have been noticing—to be omitted here. “Knowest thou?” asks the Ploughman—
“‘Kondest thou aught a cor-saint[209]that men calle Truthe?Canst thou aught weten[210]us the way where that wight dwelleth?’”
“Nay,” replies the much-travelled pilgrim—
“‘Nay, so me God helpe,I saw nevere palmere with pyke and with scrippeAsk after hym, ever til now in this place.’”
OUR LADY OF WALSINGHAM AND ST. THOMAS OF CANTERBURY.
We shall not wonder that these various pilgrimages were so popular as they were, when we learn that there were not only physical panaceas to be obtained, and spiritual pardons and immunities to be procured at the shrines of the saints, but that moreover the journey to them was often made a very pleasant holiday excursion.
Far be it from us to deny that there was many a pilgrim who undertook his pilgrimage in anything but a holiday spirit, and who made it anything but a gay excursion; many a man who sought, howbeit mistakenly, to atone for wrong done, by making himself an outcast upon earth, and submitting to the privations of mendicant pilgrimage; many a one who sought thus to escape out of reach of the stings of remorse; many a one who tore himself from home and the knowledge of friends, and went to foreign countries to hide his shame from the eyes of those who knew him. Certainly, here and there, might have been met a man or a woman, whose coarse sackcloth robe, girded to the naked skin, and unshod feet, were signs of real if mistaken penitence; and who carried grievous memories and a sad heart through every mile of his weary way. We give here, from Hans Burgmaier’s “Images de Saints, &c., de la Famille de l’Empereur Maximilian I.,” a very excellent illustration of a pilgrim of this class. But this was not the general character of the home pilgrimages of which we are especially speaking. In the great majority of cases they seem to have been little more than a pleasant religious holiday.[211]No doubt the generalintention was devotional; very likely it was often in a moment of religious fervour that the vow was taken; the religious ceremony with which the journey was begun, must have had a solemnising effect; and doubtless when the pilgrim knelt at the shrine, an unquestioning faith in all the tales which he had heard of its sanctity and occasional miraculous power, and the imposing effect of the scene, would affect his mind with an unusual religious warmth and exaltation. But between the beginning and the end of the pilgrimage there was a long interval, which we say—not in a censorious spirit—was usually occupied by a very pleasant excursion. The same fine work which has supplied us with so excellent an illustration of an ascetic pilgrim, affords another equally valuable companion-picture of a pilgrim of the more usual class. He travels on foot, indeed, staff in hand, but he is comfortably shod and clad; and while the one girds his sackcloth shirt to his bare body with an iron chain, the other has his belt well furnished with little conveniences of travel. It is quite clear that the journey was not necessarily on foot, the voluntary pilgrims might ride if they preferred it.[212]Nor did they beg their bread as penitential pilgrims did; but put good store ofmoney in their purse at starting, and ambled easily along the green roads, and lived well at the comfortable inns along their way.
Pilgrim in Hair Shirt and Cloak.
In many instances when the time of pilgrimage is mentioned, we find that it was the spring; Chaucer’s pilgrims started—
“When that April with his showerés soteThe drouth of March had perced to the root;”
and Fosbroke “apprehends that Lent was the usual time for these pilgrimages.”
It was the custom for the pilgrims to associate in companies; indeed, since they travelled the same roads, about the same time of year, and stopped at the same inns and hospitals, it was inevitable; and they seem to have taken pains to make the journey agreeable to one another. Chaucer’s “hoste of the Tabard” says to his guests:—
“Ye go to Canterbury: God you speed,The blisful martyr quité you your mede;And well I wot, as ye go by the way,Ye shapen you to talken and to play;For trewely comfort and worthe is none,To riden by the way dumb as a stone.”
Even the poor penitential pilgrim who travelled barefoot did not travel, all the way at least, on the hard and rough highway. Special roads seem to have been made to the great shrines. Thus the “Pilgrim’s Road” may still be traced across Kent, almost from London to Canterbury; and if the Londoner wishes for a pleasant and interesting home excursion, he may put a scrip on his back, and take a bourdon in his hand, and make a summer’s pilgrimage on the track of Chaucer’s pilgrims. The pilgrim’s road to Walsingham is still known as the “Palmer’s Way” and the “Walsingham Green Way.” It may be traced along the principal part of its course for sixty miles in the diocese of Norwich. The common people used to call the Milky Way the Walsingham Way.
Dr. Rock tells us[213]that “besides its badge, each pilgrimage had also its gathering cry, which the pilgrims shouted out as, at the grey of morn, theyslowly crept through the town or hamlet where they had slept that night.” By calling aloud upon God for help, and begging the intercession of that saint to whose shrine they were wending, they bade all their fellow pilgrims to come forth upon their road and begin another day’s march.[214]
After having said their prayers and told their beads, occasionally did they strive to shorten the weary length of the way by song and music. As often as a crowd of pilgrims started together from one place, they seem always to have hired a few singers and one or two musicians to go with them. Just before reaching any town, they drew themselves up into a line, and thus walked through its streets in procession, singing and ringing their little hand-bells, with a player on the bagpipes at their head. They ought in strictness, perhaps, to have been psalms which they sung, and the tales with which they were accustomed to lighten the way ought to have been saintly legends and godly discourses; but in truth they were of very varied character, according to the character of the individual pilgrims. The songs were often love-songs; and though Chaucer’s poor parson of a town preached a sermon and was listened to, yet the romances of chivalry or the loose faiblieux which were current probably formed the majority of the real “Canterbury tales.” In Foxe’s “Acts and Monuments,” we have a very graphic and amusing little sketch of a company of pilgrims passing through a town:—
W. Thorpe tells Archbishop Arundel, “When diverse men and women will go thus after their own willes, and finding out one pilgrimage, they will order with them before to have with them both men and women that can well synge wanton songs; and some other pilgrims will have with them bagge-pipes, so that every towne they come throwe, what with the noyse of their singing and with the sound of their pipyng, and with the jingling of their Canterbury belles, and with barking out of dogges after them, that they make more noise than if the kinge came there awaye with all his clarions, and many other minstrelles. And if these men and women be a moneth on their pilgrimage, many of them shall be an half year aftergreat janglers, tale-tellers, and liars.” The archbishop defends the fashion, and gives us further information on the subject, saying “that pilgremys have with them both syngers and also pipers, that when one of them that goeth barefoote striketh his toe upon a stone, and hurteth him sore, and maketh him to blede, it is well done that he or his fellow begyn than a songe, or else take out of his bosom a bagge-pipe, for to drive away with such myrthe the hurte of his fellow; for with soche solace the travell and weriness of pylgremes is lightly and merily broughte forth.”
Erasmus’s colloquy entitled “Peregrinatio Religionis ergo,” enables us to accompany the pilgrim to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, and to join him in his devotions at the shrine. We shall throw together the most interesting portions of the narrative from Mr. J. G. Nichols’s translation of it. “It is,” he says, “the most celebrated place throughout all England,[215]nor could you easily find in that island the man who ventures to reckon on prosperity unless he yearly salute her with some small offering according to his ability.” “The town of Walsingham,” he says, “is maintained by scarcely anything else but the number of its visitors.” The shrine of Our Lady was not within the priory church; but on the north side was the wooden chapel dedicated to “Our Lady,” about twenty-three feet by thirteen, enclosed within a chapel of stone forty-eight feet by thirty, which Erasmus describes as unfinished. On the west of the church was another wooden building, in which were two holy wells also dedicated to the Virgin. Erasmus describes these “holy places.” “Within the church, which I have called unfinished, is a small chapel made of wainscot, and admitting the devotees on each side by a narrow little door. The light is small, indeed scarcely any but from the wax lights. A most grateful fragrance meets the nostrils. When you look in, you would say it was the mansion of the saints, so much does it glitter on all sides with jewels, gold, and silver. In the inner chapel one canon attends to receive and take charge of the offerings,” which the pilgrims placed upon the altar. “To the east of this is a chapel full of wonders. Thither I go. Another guide receives me. There we worshipped for a short time. Presently thejoint of a man’s finger is exhibited to us, the largest of three; I kiss it; and then I ask whose relics were these? He says, St. Peter’s. The Apostle? I ask. He said, Yes. Then observing the size of the joint, which might have been that of a giant, I remarked, Peter must have been a man of very large size. At this, one of my companions burst into a laugh; which I certainly took ill, for if he had been quiet the attendant would have shown us all the relics. However, we pacified him by offering a few pence. Before the chapel was a shed, which they say was suddenly, in the winter season, when everything was covered with snow, brought thither from a great distance. Under this shed are two wells full to the brink; they say the spring is sacred to the Holy Virgin. The water is wonderfully cold, and efficacious in curing the pains of the head and stomach. We next turned towards the heavenly milk of the Blessed Virgin” (kept apparently in another chapel); “that milk is kept on the high-altar; in the centre of which is Christ; at his right hand for honour’s sake, his mother; for the milk personifies the mother. As soon as the canon in attendance saw us, he rose, put on his surplice, added the stole to his neck, prostrated himself with due ceremony, and worshipped; anon he stretched forth the thrice-holy milk to be kissed by us. On this, we also, on the lowest step of the altar, religiously fell prostrate; and having first called upon Christ, we addressed the Virgin with a little prayer like this, which I had prepared for the purpose....
“‘A very pious prayer; what reply did she make?’
“Each appeared to assent, if my eyes were not deceived. For the holy milk seemed to leap a little, and the Eucharist shone somewhat brighter. Meanwhile the ministering canon approached us, saying nothing, but holding out a little box, such as are presented by the toll collectors on the bridges in Germany. I gave a few pence, which he offered to the Virgin.”
The visitor on this occasion being a distinguished person, and performing a trifling service for the canons, was presented by the sub-prior with a relic. “He then drew from a bag a fragment of wood, cut from a beam on which the Virgin Mother had been seen to rest. A wonderful fragrance at once proved it to be a thing extremely sacred. For my part, having received so distinguished a present, prostrate and with uncovered head, I kissed itthree or four times with the highest veneration, and placed it in my purse. I would not exchange that fragment, small as it is, for all the gold in the Tagus. I will enclose it in gold, but so that it may shine through crystal.”
He is also shown some relics not shown to ordinary visitors. “Several wax candles are lighted, and a small image is produced, neither excelling in material nor workmanship; but in virtue most efficacious. He then exhibited the golden and silver statues. ‘This one,’ says he, ‘is entirely of gold; this is silver gilt; he added the weight of each, its value, and the name of the donor.[216]Then he drew forth from the altar itself, a world ofadmirable things, the individual articles of which, if I were to proceed to describe, this day would not suffice for the relation. So that pilgrimage terminated most fortunately for me. I was abundantly gratified with sights; and I bring away this inestimable gift, a token bestowed by the Virgin herself.
“‘Have you made no trial of the powers of your wood?’
“I have: in an inn, before the end of three days, I found a man afflictedin mind, for whom charms were then in preparation. This piece of wood was placed under his pillow, unknown to himself; he fell into a sleep equally deep and prolonged; in the morning he rose of whole mind.”
Chaucer left his account of the Canterbury Pilgrimage incomplete; but another author, soon after Chaucer’s death, wrote a supplement to his great work, which, however inferior in genius to the work of the great master, yet admirably serves our purpose of giving a graphic contemporary picture of the doings of a company of pilgrims to St. Thomas, when arrived at their destination. Erasmus, too, in the colloquy already so largely quoted, enables us to add some details to the picture. The pilgrims of Chaucer’s continuator arrived in Canterbury at “mydmorowe.” Erasmus tells us what they saw as they approached the city. “The church dedicated to St. Thomas, erects itself to heaven with such majesty, that even from a distance it strikes religious awe into the beholders.... There are two vast towers that seem to salute the visitor from afar, and make the surrounding country far and wide resound with the wonderful booming of their brazen bells.” Being arrived, they took up their lodgings at the “Chequers.”[217]
“They toke their In and loggit them at midmorowe I troweAtte Cheker of the hope, that many a man doth know.”
And mine host of the “Tabard,” in Southwark, their guide, having given the necessary orders for their dinner, they all proceeded to the cathedral to make their offerings at the shrine of St. Thomas. At the church door they were sprinkled with holy water as they entered. The knight and the better sort of the company went straight to their devotions; but some of the pilgrims of a less educated class, began to wander about the nave of the church, curiously admiring all the objects around them. The miller and his companions entered into a warm discussion concerning the arms in the painted glass windows. At length the host of the “Tabard” called them together and reproved them for their negligence, whereupon they hastened to make their offerings:—
“Then passed they forth boystly gogling with their heddsKneeled down to-fore the shrine, and hertily their beadsThey prayed to St. Thomas, in such wise as they couth;And sith the holy relikes each man with his mouthKissed, as a goodly monk the names told and taught.And sith to other places of holyness they raught,And were in their devocioune tyl service were al done.”
Erasmus gives a very detailed account of these “holy relikes,” and of the “other places of holiness”:—
“On your entrance [by the south porch] the edifice at once displays itself in all its spaciousness and majesty. To that part any one is admitted. There are some books fixed to the pillars, and the monument of I know not whom. The iron screens stop further progress, but yet admit a view of the whole space, from the choir to the end of the church. To the choir you mount by many steps, under which is a passage leading to the north. At that spot is shown a wooden altar, dedicated to the Virgin, but mean, nor remarkable in any respect, unless as a monument of antiquity, putting to shame the extravagance of these times. There the pious old man is said to have breathed his last farewell to the Virgin when his death was at hand. On the altar is the point of the sword with which the head of the most excellent prelate was cleft, and his brain stirred, that he might be the more instantly despatched. The sacred rust of this iron, through love of the martyr, we religiously kissed. Leaving this spot, we descended to the crypt. It has its own priests. There was first exhibited the perforated skull of the martyr, the forehead is left bare to be kissed, while the other parts are covered with silver. At the same time is shown a slip of lead, engraved with his nameThomas Acrensis.[218]There also hang in the dark the hair shirts, the girdles and bandages with which that prelate subdued his flesh; striking horror with their very appearance, and reproaching us with our indulgence and our luxuries. From hence we returned into the choir. On the north side the aumbrics were unlocked. It is wonderful to tell what a quantity of bones was there brought out: skulls, jaw-bones, teeth, hands, fingers, entire arms; on all which we devoutly bestowed our kisses;and the exhibition seemed likely to last for ever, if my somewhat unmanageable companion in that pilgrimage had not interrupted the zeal of the showman.
“‘Did he offend the priest?’
“When an arm was brought forward which had still the bloody flesh adhering, he drew back from kissing it, and even betrayed some weariness. The priest presently shut up his treasures. We next viewed the table of the altar, and its ornaments, and then the articles which are kept under the altar, all most sumptuous; you would say Midas and Crœsus were beggars if you saw that vast assemblage of gold and silver. After this we were led into the sacristy. What a display was there of silken vestments, what an array of golden candlesticks!... From this place we were conducted back to the upper floor, for behind the high-altar you ascend again as into a new church. There, in a little chapel, is shown the whole figure of the excellent man, gilt and adorned with many jewels. Then the head priest (prior) came forward. He opened to us the shrine in which what is left of the body of the holy man is said to rest. A wooden canopy covers the shrine, and when that is drawn up with ropes, inestimable treasures are opened to view. The least valuable part was gold; every part glistened, shone, and sparkled with rare and very large jewels, some of them exceeding the size of a goose’s egg. There some monks stood around with much veneration; the cover being raised we all worshipped. The prior with a white rod pointed out each jewel, telling its name in French, its value, and the name of its donor, for the principal of them were offerings sent by sovereign princes.... From hence we returned to the crypt, where the Virgin Mother has her abode, but a somewhat dark one, being edged in by more than one screen.
“‘What was she afraid of?’
“Nothing, I imagine, but thieves; for I have never seen anything more burdened with riches. When lamps were brought, we beheld a more than royal spectacle.... Lastly we were conducted back to the sacristy; there was brought out a box covered with black leather; it was laid upon the table and opened; immediately all knelt and worshipped.
“‘What was in it?’
“Some torn fragments of linen, and most of them retaining marks of dirt.... After offering us a cup of wine, the prior courteously dismissed us.”
When Chaucer’s pilgrims had seen such of this magnificence as existed in their earlier time, noon approaching, they gathered together and went to their dinner. Before they left the church, however, they bought signs “as the manner was,” to show to all men that they had performed this meritorious act.
“There as manere and custom is, signes there they boughtFor men of contre’ should know whom they had sought.Each man set his silver in such thing as they liked,And in the meen while the miller had y-pikedHis bosom full of signys of Canterbury broches.Others set their signys upon their hedes, and some upon their cap,And sith to dinner-ward they gan for to stapp.”
The appearance of these shrines and their surroundings is brought before our eyes by the pictures in a beautiful volume of Lydgate’s “History of St. Edmund” in the British Museum (Harl. 2,278). At f. 40 is a representation of the shrine of St. Edmund in the abbey church of St. Edmund’s Bury. At f. 9 a still better representation of it, showing the iron grille which enclosed it, a monk worshipping at it, and a clerk with a wand, probably the custodian whose duty it was to show the various jewels and relics—as the prior did to Erasmus at Canterbury. At f. 47 is another shrine, with some people about it who have come in the hope of receiving miraculous cures; still another at f. 100 v., with pilgrims praying round it. At f. 109 a shrine, with two monks in a stall beside it saying an office, a clerk and others present. At f. 10 v. a shrine with a group of monks. Other representations of shrines (all no doubt intended to represent the one shrine of St. Edmund, but differing in details) are to be found at f. 108 v., 117, &c. In the MS. Roman “D’Alexandre,” of the latter half of the fourteenth century, in the Bodleian Library, at f. 2,660, is a very good representation of the shrine of St. Thomas the Apostle, with several people about it, and in front are two pilgrims in rough habits, a broad hat slung over the shoulder, and a staff.
We have hitherto spoken of male pilgrims; but it must be borne inmind that women of all ranks were frequently to be found on pilgrimage;[219]and all that has been said of the costume and habits of the one sex applies equally to the other. We give here a cut of a female pilgrim with scrip, staff, and hat, from Pl. 134 of Strutt’s “Dresses and Habits of the People of England,” who professes to take it from the Harleian MS. 621. We also give a picture of a pilgrim monk (Cotton. MS. Tiberius, A. 7.) who bears the staff and scrip, but is otherwise habited in the proper costume of his order.
Female Pilgrim.(Strutt, pl. 134.)
Pilgrim Monk.
When the pilgrim had returned safely home, it was but natural and proper that as he had been sent forth with the blessing and prayers of the church, he should present himself again in church to give thanks for the accomplishment of his pilgrimage and his safe return. We do not find in the service-books—as we might have expected—any special service for this occasion, but we find sufficient indications that it was the practice. Knighton tells us, for example, of the famous Guy, Earl of Warwick, that on his returnfrom his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, before he took any refreshment, he went to all the churches in the city to return thanks. Du Cange tells us that palmers were received on their return home with ecclesiastical processions; but perhaps this was only in the case of men of some social importance. We have the details of one such occasion on record:[220]William de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, assumed the cross, and after procuring suitable necessaries, took with him a retinue, and among them a chaplain to perform divine offices, for all of whom he kept a daily table. Before he set out he went to Gilbert, Bishop of London, for his license and benediction. He travelled by land as far as Rome, over France, Burgundy, and the Alps, leaving his horse at Mantua. He visited every holy place in Jerusalem and on his route; made his prayers and offerings at each; and so returned. Upon his arrival, he made presents of silk cloths to all the churches of his see, for copes or coverings of the altars. The monks of Walden met him in procession, in albes and copes, singing, “Blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord;” and theearl coming to the high-altar, and there prostrating himself, the prior gave him the benediction. After this he rose, and kneeling, offered some precious relics in an ivory box, which he had obtained in Jerusalem and elsewhere. This offering concluded, he rose, and stood before the altar; the prior and convent singing theTe Deum. Leaving the church he went to the chapter, to give and receive the kiss of peace from the prior and monks. A sumptuous entertainment followed for himself and his suite; and the succeeding days were passed in visits to relatives and friends, who congratulated him on his safe return.
From “Le Pélerinage de la Vie Humaine” (French National Library).
Du Cange says that palmers used to present their scrips and staves to their parish churches. And Coryatt[221]says that he saw cockle and mussel shells, and beads, and other religious relics, hung up over the door of a little chapel in a nunnery, which, says Fosbroke, were offerings made by pilgrims on their return from Compostella.
The illuminated MS., Julius E. VI., illustrates, among other events of the life of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, various scenes of his pilgrimage to Rome and to Jerusalem. In an illumination (subsequently engraved in the chapter on Merchants) he is seen embarking in his own ship; in another, he is presented to the Pope and cardinals at Rome[222](subsequently engraved in the chapter on Secular Clergy); in another, he is worshipping at the Holy Sepulchre, where he hung up his shield in remembrance of his accomplished vow.
The additional MS. 24,189, is part of St. John Mandeville’s history of his travels, and its illuminations in some respects illustrate the voyage of a pilgrim of rank.
Hans Burgmaier’s “Images de Saints,” &c.,—from which we take the figure on the next page,—affords us a very excellent contemporary illustration of a pilgrim of high rank, with his attendants, all in pilgrim costume, and wearing the signs which show us that their pilgrimage has been successfully accomplished.
Those who had taken any of the greater pilgrimages would probably be regarded with a certain respect and reverence by their untravelled neighbours, and the agnomen of Palmer or Pilgrim, which would naturally be added to their Christian name—as William the Palmer, or John the Pilgrim—is doubtless the origin of two sufficiently common surnames. The tokens of pilgrimage sometimes even accompanied a man to his grave, and were sculptured on his monument. Shells have not unfrequently been found in stone coffins, and are taken with great probability to be relics of the pilgrimage, which the deceased had once taken to Compostella, and which as sacred things, and having a certain religious virtue, were strewed over him as he was carried upon his bier in the funeral procession, and were placed with him in his grave. For example, when the grave of Bishop Mayhew, who died in 1516, in Hereford Cathedral, was opened some years ago, there was found lying by his side, a common, rough, hazel wand, between four and five feet long, and about as thick as a man’s finger; and with it a mussel and a few oyster-shells. Four other instances of suchhazel rods, without accompanying shells, buried with ecclesiastics, had previously been observed in the same cathedral.[223]The tomb of Abbot Cheltenham, at Tewkesbury, has the spandrels ornamented with shields charged with scallop shells, and the pilgrim staff and scrip are sculptured on the bosses of the groining of the canopy over the tomb. There is a gravestone at Haltwhistle, Northumberland, to which we have already more than once had occasion to refer,[224]on which is the usual device of a cross sculptured in relief, and on one side of the shaft of the cross are laid a sword and shield, charged with the arms of Blenkinsop, a fess between three garbs, indicating, we presume, that the deceased was a knight; on the other side of the shaft of the cross are laid a palmer’s staff, and a scrip, bearing also garbs, and indicating that the knight had been a pilgrim.
Pilgrim on Horseback.
In the church of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, there is, under a monumental arch in the wall of the north aisle, a recumbent effigy, a good deal defaced, of a man in pilgrim weeds. A tunic or gown reaches half-way down between the knee and ankle, and he has short pointed laced boots; a hat with its margin decorated with scallop-shells lies under his head, his scrip tasselled and charged with scallop-shells is at his right side, and his rosary on his left, and his staff is laid diagonally across the body. The costly style of the monument,[225]the lion at his feet, and above all a collar of SS. round his neck, prove that the person thus commemorated was a person of distinction.