Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion

by Jonathan Sumption

Cult of saints attacked at Constance: Henry of Langenstein, Consilium pacis de unione Ecclesiae, in H. von der Hardt, Consilium Constantiense Oecumenicum, vol. ii, Frankfurt, 1697, col. 56; cf. vol. iii (1698), cols. 30, 33, 35–6. Pierre d’Ailly, De reformatione Ecclesiae in concilio Constantiensi, III, in Gerson, Opera, ed. du Pin, vol. ii, col. 911. Nicholas of Clamanges, De novis celebritatibus non instituendis, p. 153.

  Gerson on miracles: Contra impugnantes ordinis Carthusiensium, ed. du Pin, vol. ii, cols. 711–14.

  Attempt to suppress unproven miracles: The rolls and register of bishop Oliver Sutton, ed. R. M. T. Hill, vol. v (Lincoln Record Soc, lx), Hereford, 1965, pp. 143–4; vol. vi (ibid., lxiv), Hereford, 1969, pp. 103–4, 186–7. Grandison, Reg., pp. 941–2.

  8 Nicholas of Clamanges on miracles: Ep. LXI, p. 175.

  John of Trittenheim on miracles: De Mirac. B.V.M. Helbrunnensis, I. 3, II. 1, pp. 1136–9, 1158.

  9 Legend of Theophilus: principal text in C. Neuhaus, Adgars Marienlegenden, Heilbronn, 1886, pp. 79–115. On its dissemination, H. Lundgren, Studier över Theophiluslegendens romanska varianter, Uppsala, 1913; Beissel (2), pp. 97–9; introduction to Ruteboeuf, Le miracle de Théophile, ed. G. Frank, Paris, 1969, pp. xii–xiv; E. Mâle, Religious art in France of the thirteenth century, tr. D. Nussey, London, 1913, pp. 260–1.

  ‘Tu mater es…’: U. Chevalier, Poésies liturgiques traditionelle de l’ Eglise catholique en occident, Tournai, 1893, p. 134.

  ‘Mother of mercy’ in early miracle stories: Kjellman (ed.), Miracles de la Vierge, VIII, XI, XIII, LI, pp. 27–30, 44–5, 60–1, 219–20. Monk inscribed among elect: Étienne de Bourbon, Anecdotes, II. 139, pp. 119–20. On dates and origins, Southern.

  10 Gambler enriched: Jacques de Vitry, Exempla, CCXCVI, pp. 124–5. ‘Only one thing…’: Etienne de Bourbon, Anecdotes, II. 117, p. 101.

  Essones: Suger, De Administratione sua, XX, pp. 177–82.

  Ergotism: see above, p. 75.

  ‘Building crusades’: on Chartres (1145), see Robert of Torigny, Chron., vol. i, pp. 238–9; letter of Hugh, archbishop of Rouen, in RHF. xiv. 319. On S. Pierre-sur-Dive, Haimoin, Lettre, esp. I–IV, pp 121–5. On Chartres (post 1194), Mirac. S. Mariae Carnotensis, M–V, IX–X, pp. 514–17, 521–2.

  11 Procession at Issigny: Mirac. Eccl. Constantiensis, VI, pp. 370–2.

  Statues of Virgin: Ibid., praefat., XIV, pp. 367–8, 376 (Coutances). DHGE., vol. xii, col. 551 (Chartres). Visio monachi, XLVII, p. 304 (Eynsham dream). On the black Virgin of Rocamadour, which still survives, see Rupin, pp. 114, 291. On that of Le Puy, which is known from drawings, A. Chassaing, Chroniques d’Étienne Medicis, vol. i, Le Puy, 1869, p. 29n.; Chron. Lemovicense, RHF. xxi. 768 (disaster of 1255), cf. GC., vol. ii, p. 716.

  12 Fitzralph’s sermon: Owst, pp. 140–1.

  Abrupt origins of pilgrimages to statues: Mirac. B.V.M. in Beverne, in Anecdota Gielemans, III. 3, pp. 102–3. De Imagine B.V.M. in sabulo Bruxellensi, in ihid., III. 14, p. 363 (Antwerp statue repainted). Chartulary of Bridlington, pp. 448–9 (Kernetby). Concilia Magnae Britaniae, ed. D. Wilkins, vol. ii, London, 1737, pp. 423–4 (Foston). John of Trittenheim, De Mirac. B.V.M. prope Dietelbach, I. 6, p. 1084 (Trier). John of Trittenheim, De Mirac. B.V.M. Helbrunnensis, II. 2–4, pp. 1160–2.

  13 Legends follow: DHGE., vol. x, cols. 92–4 (Boulogne). Toussaert, pp. 269–70 (Rozebeke). Misset, pp. 6, 43 (l’Épine).

  Wurzburg sanctuaries: John of Trittenheim, De Mirac. B.V.M. prope Dietelbach, I. 6, 8, pp. 1083, 1087–8.

  ‘Simple people of Christ’: Ibid., I. 9, 12, pp. 1091–2, 1097.

  Walsingham offerings: Savine, p. 103. Wright (ed.), Letters, p. 138.

  Buxton and Cardigan: Wright, op. cit., pp. 143, 186.

  14 Gregory VII: Reg., VIII. 21, p. 559.

  St. Charlemagne: see R. Folz, Etudes sur le culte liturgique de Charlemagne dans les eglises de l’Empire, Paris, 1951.

  St. Canute: Aa. Ss. July, vol. iii, pp. 118–49. Kemp, pp. 69–70.

  15 St. Leger: DACL., vol. viii, cols. 2487–93. Guibert, De Vita sua, III. 20, pp. 231–2.

  Thomas of Lancaster: J. R. Madicott, Thomas of Lancaster, 1307–1322, Oxford, 1970, pp. 329–30.

  Edward II: The diplomatic correspondance of Richard II, ed. E. Perroy, Camden Soc., 3rd. series, vol. xlviii, London, 1933, pp. 62–3 (no. 95). E. Perroy, L’Angleterre et le grand schisme d’occident, Paris, 1933, pp. 330, 341–2.

  Simon de Montfort: Stubbs, Charters, p. 409 (dictum of Kenilworth). Mirac. Simonis de Montford, ed. J. O. Halliwell, Camden Soc, O.S., vol. xv, London, 1840, pp. 67–110, esp. pp. 83–4.

  16 Crowds at Gloucester: Hist. mon. S. Petri Gloucestriae, ed. W. H. Hart, vol. i, RS., London, 1863, pp. 44–5, 46.

  Wilsnack legend: oldest (15th-cent.) version ed. P. Heitz and W. L. Schreiber, Das Wunderblut zu Wilsnack, Strassburg, 1904, pp. 8–9.

  ‘Sought from many a country…’: Book of Margery Kempe, II. 4, p. 232. Wilsnack was popular with English pilgrims, see Lit. Cant., vol. iii, pp. 191–2; Testamenta vetusta, vol. i, p. 196.

  Indulgences of 1384: Riedel (OS), pp. 140–3.

  Mass-pilgrimage of 1387: Riddageshus, Chron., ed. G. W. Liebnitz, Scriptores rerum Brunswicensium, vol. ii, Hannover, 1710, p. 81.

  Wilsnack investigated: Concilia Pragensia, 1333–1413, ed. C. Höfler, Prague, 1862, p. 47. Concilia Germaniae, ed. J. F. Hartzheim, vol. v, Köln, 1763, pp. 35–6 (Magdeburg).

  17 Disputes of 1446–51: indulgence of 1446 in Riedel (OS), pp. 149–51. Report in Breest, pp. 297–300. Citizens’ complaint in Riedel (OS), pp. 144–5. Bull of 1451 in ibid., pp. 152–6. Children at Wilsnack: in 1475, Stolle, Chron., pp. 376–9, In 1487 and after, Matthias Doring, Chron., in F. A. Riedel, Codex diplomaticus Brandenburgensis, vol. iv (1), Berlin, 1862, p. 248.

  18 ‘And men knew not …’: Stolle, Chron., pp. 377–8.

  Child-pilgrims to Wilsnack criticized: pamphlet On foolish people in Wattenbach (ed.), ‘Beiträge’, pp. 605–7. Erfurt Augustinian in ibid., pp. 607–8. Das Tagebuch des Rathmeisters Marcus Spickendorff, ed. J. O. Opel, Halle, 1872, p. 19.

  Hosts burned: Kaweran, p. 350.

  19 Children at S. Pierre-sur-Dive: Haimoin, Lettre, II, pp. 122–3. On children in popular religion, Alphandéry, vol. ii, pp. 135–48.

  Children’s crusade: Alphandéry, vol. ii, pp. 115–35.

  ‘Many people …’: Annales Marbacenses, p. 82.

  Children at Mont-St.-Michel in 1333: Huynes, vol. i, pp. 98–114. On the pastoureaux of 1320, see Cohn, pp. 102–4.

  20 In 1393 and 1441–2: Chomel, pp. 230–9.

  In 1457: Jacques de Clercq, Mémoires (1448–67), ed. A. Reiffenberg, vol. ii, Brussels, 1823, p. 276; John of Trittenheim, Annales, vol. ii, p. 431; Huynes, vol. i, pp. 123–7; Ekkehart Artzt, Chron. Weissenburgense, ed. C. Hoffman, Quellen und Erörterungen zur bayerischen und deutschen Geschichte, vol. ii, Munchen, 1862, pp. 147–8. On the children in Regensburg, Dupont (2), pp. 26–7. On hostile pamphlets, Delisle (2), p. 392.

  Children at Monte Gargano: Haupt, pp. 673–4.

  Nicklashausen: John of Trittenheim, Annales, vol. ii, pp. 486–91. Stolle, Chron., pp. 380–3. Lorenz Fries, Historie der Bischoffen zu Wurzburg, Frankfurt, 1713, pp. 852–4. Documents in Barack (OS), pp. 50–2 (early history of statue), 53–4 (report of bishop’s informer), 59, 66–79, 97–100 (prohibitions, interdict), 104–5 (destruction of church).

  21 ‘Simple unlettered folk …’: John of Trittenheim, Mirac. B.V.M. prope Dietelbach, I. 6, pp. 1083–4.

  CHAPTER XVI

  MEDIAEVAL CHRISTIANITY

  Religion to Ritual

  The progression from private austerity to popular enthusiasm and thence to abstract ritual, is a recurring theme in the religious life of the middle ages. The Catholic moralists of the fifteenth century and the Protestant reformers of the sixteenth had in common a strong dislike of the overpowering element of ritual in the religion of the late middle ages. Commenting on the popularity of the blood of Christ at Hailes, the English reformer Hugh Lati
mer complained that ‘the sight of it with their bodily eye doth certify them, and putteth them out of doubt that they be in clean life and in state of salvation without spot of sin.’ The roots of this situation penetrated very deep into the soil of mediaeval religion. The reduction of dogma to literal images, the localization of God’s power in a few sanctuaries, the hope of automatic salvation, these were not novel ‘superstitions’ in 1533 when Latimer was writing. It might have surprised him to know that the second council of Chalons in 813 had protested, in terms very similar to his, against the ‘simple-minded notion that sinners need only catch sight of the shrines of the saints and their sins will be absolved.’

  Pilgrimage, like almsgiving, had begun as an accessory to the moral teaching of the Church, and ended as an alternative. In extreme cases it could be regarded as a licence to sin. The pilgrims in William Langland’s dream ‘had leave to lie all their life after’. ‘He who goes to St. James and then kills his father commits no mortal sin,’ asserted a Poitevin contemporary of Langland’s. It was this attitude, and less extreme variants of it, which disturbed moral reformers of the late middle ages. Berthold of Regensberg once took the occasion of a sermon against the pious excesses of women to launch into a diatribe against pilgrims who pursued the illusion of the ritual purgation of sin. Another German Franciscan of the thirteenth century conjured up before his audience an image of the pilgrims standing at the brink of Hell and calling out to those below, ‘did any of you try going to Rome when you were alive?’ and the thousands replied, ‘yes, we all went to Rome, but much good did it do us…. You who are still living, put not your trust in almsgiving, pilgrimages, or chantries, for they are all vain without true contrition. At the seat of judgement it will avail you nothing that you have been to the tombs of the apostles.’ ‘All these journeys’, echoed the Italian friar Giordano da Rivalta, ‘I hold for nothing worth.’

  This plea for a more spiritual religion found its most eloquent supporter in William Langland, the obscure Englishman of the late fourteenth century who wrote The Vision of Piers Plowman. Piers Plowman is much the most powerful of those allegorical dreams of the late middle ages, of which the Roman de la Rose is the best-known example. Langland objected to pilgrimage because it was a ritual which eased the conscience of the sinner without improving the moral quality of his life:

  And ye that seek St. James and saints of Rome,

  Seeketh St. Truth, for he may save you all.

  In their great quest for truth, Christians have been diverted by smooth promises and bright illusions. Hope seizes a horn and blows it. A thousand men throng together hoping to find truth but no one knows where to look, and the blind mass ‘blundered forth as beasts over banks and hills till late was and long’. At last, they meet a pilgrim, wearing his pouch and scarf and carrying badges from all the great sanctuaries. ‘Knowest thou a saint named truth?’ ‘Where dwells he?’, they ask. To which the pilgrim replies, ‘nay, so me God help. I saw never a palmer with pike ne with scrip asking after him till now in this place.’ Piers Plowman then appears and tells them the road to truth. They must go through Meekness till they come to Conscience; next cross the brook called Be-buxom-of-speech by the ford called Honour-your-fathers. Pass by Swear-not-in-vain and Covet-not, by Steal-not and Slay-not, over the bridge of Pray-well where Grace is the gate-keeper and Amend-you his assistant, and thence through the narrow gate to Paradise.

  The Devaluation of Indulgences

  Indulgences were sometimes identified as the sole cause of the preoccupation with external observances at the end of the middle ages. This was an over-simplified view, but an important one, for it came not only from root-and-branch enemies of the ecclesiastical order, but from a vocal element in the council of Constance and from many Catholic reformers. The modern sinner, wrote the outspoken Thomas Gascoigne, says to himself ‘I do not care how many sins I commit for I can easily and speedily have a plenary remission of guilt and punishment, by acquiring a papal indulgence.’ Indulgences, once a valuable stimulus to pilgrimage, had become an alternative. Collecting them was an object in itself, and by the close of the middle ages, few pilgrimages could prosper without them. The almost complete dependence of the cult of the saints on papal indulgences can be seen in the volumes of petitions addressed to successive popes of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by decayed sanctuaries which saw their only hope of revival in the grant of a generous indulgence. Thousands came from French churches ruined in the most destructive phase of the Hundred Years War. St.-Gilles was one of the abbeys which hoped to restore its depleted income with the help of an indulgence. Canterbury was unable to hold its fifth Jubilee pilgrimage in 1520 for lack of money to buy the indulgence from Leo X.

  The sale of indulgences replaced the hardship of the actual journey by a simple payment equal to the cost of making it. It had begun in a very small way in the twelfth century. Crusaders were early allowed to send substitutes to fight in their place and still gain the plenary indulgence. The synod of Santiago (1125) permitted all Spanish crusaders to do this if they were ‘truly confessed and penitent’. A simple money payment, the cost of a mercenary, was almost as good as a substitute. In 1147 Eugenius III offered half a crusading indulgence to those who contributed a tenth of their income and moveables to the cost of the second crusade. A firm stride forward was taken in the thirteenth century when crusaders were allowed to commute their vows for a money payment, and it was not long before commutation was extended to all pilgrimages. The Roman Jubilee of 1350 was the turning point. In 1352 Clement VI allowed the population of Mallorca to claim the Jubilee indulgence without actually going to Rome, in return for a money payment equal to the cost of the journey. The precedent thus established was ruthlessly exploited forty years later by Boniface IX, who stood in dire need of both the money and the popularity which the sale of indulgences brought.

  As bishops of Rome, the popes could plausibly claim the right to sell Jubilee indulgences to all comers. Very soon after the Jubilee of 1350, they began to sell dispensations from vows to perform other pilgrimages. Minor churches could obtain not only an indulgence for themselves, but the right to commute vows of pilgrimage to major sanctuaries, thus in effect upstaging churches vastly more important than themselves. The Gilbertine church of Mattersley in Yorkshire was allowed to commute vows of pilgrimage to anywhere except Rome or Santiago. The same concession, with the same exceptions, was given to Canterbury cathedral on the occasion of the fourth Jubilee, in 1470. By 1470, however, it was common to offer dispensations even from pilgrim’s vows of Rome and Santiago. Thomas Walsingham recorded with indignation that the cardinal who came to England in 1381 to negotiate the marriage of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia was openly selling dispensations from pilgrimages to Rome, Santiago, and Jerusalem. Ten years later, papal legates were offering the same concessions in Germany and Castile. The price of these dispensations had only the vaguest connection with the cost of the journey. Thus in April 1330, Arnaud Rocelli, of the diocese of Saintes, paid four shillings and twopence to be spared the journey to Rome; but a year later it cost Agnes de Rocquefort 133 gold lambs and five shillings to evade a pilgrimage to Santiago. The difference in price reflected the difference in their social status. At the end of the fifteenth century the papal Datary was using a tariff which was weighted according to the wealth of the applicant and the comfort in which he was thought likely to travel. Even this degree of flexibility was abandoned in the instructions given to the sellers of the Jubilee indulgence of 1500 in England. Here the price was related strictly to the applicant’s income, ranging from one shilling and fourpence for those earning twenty pounds a year or less, to three pounds six shillings and eightpence for those with incomes above two thousand pounds.

  Less direct but equally damaging was the practice of offering indulgences ad instar, that is, of offering the indulgences of major shrines to minor ones. This again began in the fourteenth century with the marketing of the Roman Jubilee indulgence. Most Christians were able to win the
Jubilee indulgence of 1390 at churches within a few miles of their homes. The commonest indulgence ad instar was the indulgence of the Portiuncula which, like the Roman Jubilee indulgence, was reputed to be plenary. Boniface IX began to grant it to other churches in 1392. Franciscan churches, appropriately enough, were the first to benefit, beginning with the church of La Verna where St. Francis had received the stigmata. Subsequently, ninety-five other churches received the indulgence of the Portiuncula. In England some forty churches gained a plenary indulgence by this indirect route, including sanctuaries as obscure as the Gilbertine priory of St. Saviour at Hitchen and the Augustinian priory of Langlete. Indulgences of other churches, notably of St. Mark’s in Venice, were also common. As well as devaluing indulgences as such, Boniface’s policies gave deep offence to important vested interests. In December 1402 he was forced to yield to mounting protests, and issued a bull formally ‘revoking and annulling every indulgence of the Jubilee, of the Holy Sepulchre, of Monte Gargano, of Santiago, St. Mark’s Venice, the Portiuncula, Collemaggio, or any indulgences whatsoever ad instar indulgentiarum of any other church.’ The retraction was impressive, and no doubt humiliating. Although the popes continued to distribute Jubilee indulgences with the same undiscriminating generosity, the indulgences of other great sanctuaries remained inviolate for more than a century. There were no doubt many churches like St. Nicholas of Calais which still advertized their Portiuncula indulgences as if Boniface had never spoken. But the popes themselves scrupulously avoided a return to this questionable experiment.

  Their exact effect in discouraging long journeys to the major shrines thus abused is impossible to measure, but it must have been considerable. Indulgences ad instar could never displace pilgrimage altogether, for there was always the pleasure of travel and the strength of tradition to draw pilgrims to the major sanctuaries. But the fact remained, as a Parisian diarist pointed out, that if Notre-Dame de Pontoise had the indulgences of Rome then it was ‘as good as going to Rome but less time-consuming’. This man cannot have been the only one to draw the obvious conclusion. Sixtus IV recognized as much when he declared in August 1473, that all indulgences ad instar Jubilaei were to be suspended during the actual Roman Jubilee of 1475. The reason given was that so many Jubilee indulgences had been granted to other churches ‘that the rush of pilgrims to Rome may be discouraged and the celebrations of the Jubilee year diminished or even curtailed altogether, to the great detriment of the salvation of souls.’