Chapter III: Pilgrims and Pilgrimages (2)

Setting out again, they went to Boulogne to pray to a miraculous virgin, whose hand still exists enclosed in a reliquary. The statue itself was thrown into a well by the Protestants in 1567, replaced on the altar in 1630, pulled down again at the Revolution and burnt, but one of the faithful saved the hand, which the church of Notre Dame preserves to this day. Chaucer’s travelled gossip, the Wife of Bath, had among other pilgrimages, made this one to Boulogne.[525] People also went to Amiens to venerate the head, or rather one of the heads, of St. John the Baptist.[526] Great was their wonder when, {372} continuing their journey, they fell in with another at Constantinople. Perhaps, let us hope, they were content with remarking as “Mandeville” does: Which is the true one? “I wot nere, but God knowethe; but in what wyse than men worschipen it, the blessed seynt John holt him a-payd.”[527] Then also people went to the shrine of the three kings at Cologne, to Paris where innumerable relics were kept, to Chartres, where, besides a famous statue of the Virgin, was shown the tunic she wore on the day of the Annunciation (preserved in the cathedral since 861),[528] to Vezelay, Tours, Le Puy, and to many other places in France, among which the celebrated and to the present day most frequented church of Our Lady of Rocamadour in Guyenne. The fame of this pilgrimage among Englishmen is attested by Langland, when he advises people belonging to the religious orders to cease pilgrimage-making, and rather practice virtue at home:

“Right so, if thow be religious · renne thou never ferther
To Rome ne to Rochemadore.”[529]

It was a shrine of great renown. Roland, according to a legend, went there before starting for the ill-fated expedition in which he met his death, and a large piece of rusted iron is still shown in the old church as part of the famous Durandal. Henry II of England came there, too, as a pilgrim, as did many other illustrious travellers, Simon de Montfort among them.[530] The place was fortified; it had a part to play in the Hundred Years’ War, {375} and Froissart has told us “howe Sir Robert Carrol and Sir John Chandos . . . toke Guaches, Rochemador, and diuers other townes, the which wer newly turned frenche.”[531]

Then there were Spanish pilgrimages, and especially the world-famous one at Compostela, where English travellers went in large numbers, most of them direct by sea, though some preferred the lengthy, picturesque land road, dotted with famous shrines good for the soul, and where all sorts of adventures might be expected.[532] Licences authorizing the owners and the captain of such or such a ship to carry to St. James’s a fixed number of pilgrims fill pages in Rymer’s “Fœdera.” They were granted pursuant to the before-mentioned statute of Richard II, and are all drawn after one or two models, the text in Latin, with the name of the ship in French, like the one here translated, of the year 1394:

“The king, to all and each of his Admirals, etc., greeting.

“Know you that we have given licence to Oto Chambernoun, William Gilbert, and Richard Gilbert, to receive and embark in the harbour of Dartmouth a hundred pilgrims in a certain ship belonging to the same Oto, William, and Richard, called la Charité de Paynton, of which Peter Cok is captain; and to take them to Saint James’s, there to fulfil their vows, and from thence to bring them back to England, freely and without hindrance, notwithstanding any ordinances to the contrary.”[533] {376}

A few provisos are added, the keeping of which the pilgrims should swear to before leaving England; they must upon their oath bind themselves to do nothing contrary to the obedience and fealty they owe the king; they must not take out of the realm gold or silver in money or bullion beyond what is necessary to their journey, and they must not, it is sometimes added, reveal the secrets of the kingdom.

During the following century these licences became innumerable, or maybe they have been preserved in larger numbers. They show that, in fact, fleets loaded with English pilgrims plied towards St. James’s. We find that “Le Petre de Darthmouth” is allowed to carry sixty pilgrims; “La Marie de Southampton,” a hundred; “La Sainte Marie de Blakney,” sixty; “Le Garlond de Crowemere,” sixty; “La Trinité de Wells,” forty; “Le Thomas de Saltash,” sixty; and so on. Numbers usually vary from thirty to one hundred.[534]

(_From the MS. Harl. 1319._)]

{378}

It must not be thought that these ships, carrying as much as a hundred passengers besides their crew on this rather long journey, were great, well-appointed vessels. They very much resembled the pilgrim-ships of the present day, which carry every year to Jeddah, on the Red Sea, crowds of Arabs on their way to Mecca. The travellers were huddled together in most uncomfortable fashion, and had ample opportunities to do penance and offer their sufferings to the saint. This is no surmise, for one of those English pilgrims duly allowed to go to Galicia, provided they did not reveal the secrets of the realm, has rimed an account of his experiences, so we know what they were. Do not think of laughing, says he, when you go by sea to St. James’s; there is sea-sickness; the sailors push you about under pretext that you hinder the working of the ship; the smell is not pleasant: {379}

“Men may leve alle gamys
That saylen to Seynt Jamys!
Ffor many a man hit gramys (vexes)
When they begin to sayle.

Ffor when they have take the see,
At Sandwych or at Wynchylsee,
At Bristow, or where that hit bee,
Theyr hertes begyn to fayle.”

The mocking remarks of the seamen are painful to bear. Says the captain:

“Some ar lyke to cowgh and grone
Or hit be full mydnyght;”

and then turning to his men:

“‘Hale the bowelyne! now, vere the shete!
Cooke, make redy anoon our mete,
Our pylgryms have no lust to ete,
I pray God yeve hem rest!’

‘Go to the helm! what, howe! no nere?
Steward, felow! A pot of bere!’—
‘Ye shalle have sir, with good chere,
Anon alle of the best.’”

Sick pilgrims could not eat, and were jeered at, they found the time long; some, with a book on their knees, tried to read, but then they felt as if their head would burst:

“Som layde theyr bookys on theyr kne,
And rad so long they myght nat se;—
‘Allas! myne hede wolle cleve on thre!’”

When at their worst, comes a facetious sailor to bawl out in their ears: Cheer up, in a moment we shall be in a storm! {380}

“Then cometh oone and seyth: ‘Be mery;
Ye shall have a storme or a pery’ (a squall)
* * * * *
Thys mene whyle the pylgryms ly
And have theyr bowlys (basins) fast theym by,
And cry after hot malvesy.”

In short, they were very unhappy, and as the narrator said at first, little inclined to games and laughter.[535]

Votive offerings plentifully adorned venerated sanctuaries; if, by striking a wax statuette while making appropriate incantations an enemy might do you great harm, on the other hand, by placing your image in the chapel of a saint, great favours might be gained for you, especially in cases of sickness.[536] Thus were to be seen prisoners’ irons, warriors’ swords, cripples’ crutches, jewels and precious stones, sculpted or painted images representing devotees or actual miracles performed for them, tablets and offerings of all sorts.[537] At Rocamadour tresses of women’s hair were shown as a threat as well as an admonition. “They were,” relates the knight of La Tour Landry, those of “ladies and gentille women that had be[en] wasshe in wyne, and in other thinges for to make the here of colour otherwise thanne God made {383} it, the whiche ladies and gentille women that aught (owned) the tresses were comynge thedirward on pilgrimage, but they may never have powere to come withinne the chirche dore unto the tyme that thei hadde cutte of the tresses of her here,”[538] which, says he, were still there in his day.

Another story to the same effect is told by Miélot, who reports how a very fair lady, who had led an ill life, lost her sight as a punishment, through the will of Heaven. She went on a pilgrimage to Rocamadour, prayed to the Virgin, and was healed, but could not, however, enter the sanctuaries. She then confessed on the spot to a priest, who, “looking at her fair face,” said: “Dear friend, I well know that with these fair tresses of your hair you have done great hurt to those to whom you have shown them. I decide that they must be cut off in honour of God and of our Lady.” This was done; “the tresses were cut, and the priest had them carried inside the church on a pole, on which were placed the tresses of women who would be saved.” Then the lady was able to enter the church, and she praised the Virgin. But as she was going away she could not help thinking “of her fair hair that she had left,” and she exclaimed: “Holy Mary, my heart is sorrowful for my hair that I leave you, and I cannot well make up my mind to it.” She had scarcely spoken when the tresses were at once restored to her “as fair as they were before;” but the blindness came back too, and blind she remained for ever, which is a good example, “ung bel exemplaire,” for ladies that “seek false pleasures in their fine waists and faces.”[539]

Indulgences were an immense attraction; they had {384} been freely granted on a large scale to every important shrine, and popular imagination still further magnified them. The pilgrim from Rome, back in his village, exaggerated as willingly their amount as that of the marvels which he had seen, or thought he had seen. One such pilgrim, an Englishman of the fourteenth century, dazzled by his recollections, has rimed his impressions of a journey taken by him to Italy. As a poet he does not rank high, but he does not pretend to, and his only aim is to supply precise figures and definite information. His strong narrow devotion allowed him to pay attention to nothing except thousands of bodies of martyrs that he never tires of enumerating. By thousands also are reckoned the years of indulgence which he flashes in the eyes of his stay-at-home countrymen:

“Gif men wuste (knew), grete and smale,
The pardoun that is at grete Rome,
Thei wolde tellen in heore dome (in their opinion),
Hit were no neod to mon in cristiante
To passe in to the holy lond over the see
To Jerusalem, ne to Kateryne.”[540]

His readers will have first a brief and simplified history of Rome; it is a city to which came long ago the Duchess of Troy with her two sons, Romulus and Romulon, who afterwards founded the town. The duchess thus seems to have chosen to settle in a city which did not yet exist, but Rome is a land of wonders. It was pagan, until Peter and Paul (and then the very facts inject their eloquence into our traveller’s lines):

“Hit hedde i-bought,
With gold ne selver, ne with no goode,
Bot with heore flesch and with heore blode.”

The enumeration of the churches thereupon begins, and for each of them are invariably told the amount of {385} indulgences attached to it and of relics kept there. The benefits are proportioned to the merits; thus when a man sees the _vernicle_, that is, the holy sudary which received the image of the Saviour, he gets three thousand years of pardon if he dwells in Rome, nine thousand if he comes from a neighbouring country,

“And thou that passest over the see,
Twelve thousend yer is graunted to the.”

When you enter Sts. Vitus and Modestus, the third of your sins are remitted. Then, you descend into the catacombs:

“But thou most take candel liht,
Elles thou gost merk (dark) as niht,
For under the eorthe most thou wende,
Thou maight not see bifore ne bihynde,
For thider fledde mony men
For drede of deth to saven hem,
And suffrede peynes harde and sore,
In hevene to dwelle for ever more.”

The bodies of martyrs are countless;[541] four thousand of them at Saint Prudence, thirteen hundred at Saint Prassede, seven thousand at Sts. Vitus and Modestus. From time to time a famous name brings up an historic glimpse, such as the account of the foundation of Rome, or an abridged life of Constantine; at first a pagan and a leper,

“In Mahoun was al his thouht.” {386}

But according to our author’s information, he was converted and cured by Pope Sylvester. The church of St. Mary the Round formerly bore another name:

“Agrippa dude hit make
For Sibyl and Neptanes sake. . . .
He gaf hit name Panteon.”

He placed there a magnificent golden idol sitting, of a peculiar form:

“Hit looked forth as a cat,
He called it Neptan.”

This idol had a cap or cover of brass which was one day blown off by the wind, and carried to the church of St. Peter. Then Pope Boniface asked the Emperor Julian to give him the Pantheon, to which that prince consented; and one year, on November 1st, the hatless cat having been removed, the sovereign pontiff consecrated the building, and baptized it St. Mary the Round.

As for relics, there are few objects mentioned in Holy Writ which have not been recovered, and may not be venerated at Rome.[542] The table of the Last Supper is there, as well as Aaron’s rod, fragments of the multiplied loaves and fishes, hay from the stall at Bethlehem, a swaddling-cloth of the infant Jesus, and several other things, some of which are strange enough. Part of these relics are still in the same churches, for instance, at Santa Maria Maggiore,[543] “Seinte Marie the Maiour,” the portrait {387} of the Virgin painted by St. Luke. This is not, however, according to our pilgrim, a picture really made by St. Luke; he was going to do it, and had prepared his colours, when he suddenly found the portrait before him, finished by the hands of angels:

“Seint Luik while he lived in londe,
Wolde have peynted hit with his honde,
And whon he hedde ordeyned so
Alle colours that schulde ther to,
He fond an ymage al a-pert,
Non such ther was middelert,
Mad with angel hond and not with his
As men in Rome witnesseth this.”[544]

More complete and conscientious in his descriptions, an educated Englishman of the following century, a voracious reader, and active writer, of books, no other than the chronicler and theologian, John Capgrave, prior of King’s Lynn, having gone to Rome on a pilgrimage, about the year 1450, composed, on his return, a “Solace of Pilgrimes,” wanting to imitate, he said, Pythagoras, Plato, St. Jerome, Marco Polo, and him whom he considered as his compatriot, the then unmasked Mandeville, who, all of them, having travelled, wrote of their journeys: {388} “Also there was a man of Venys whech they called Marcus Paulus; he laboured all the Soudane’s londe and descryved on to us the nature of the cuntre, the condiciones of the men and the stately aray of the great Cane (khan) houshold. Eke Jon Maundevyle Knyth of Yngland, aftir his laboure, made a book ful solacious on to his nacyoun. After all these grete cryeris of many wonderfull thingis I wyl folow with a smal pypyng of such straunge sitis (sights) as I have seyn and swech straunge thingis as I have herd.”[545]

This justice must be rendered him that, while his book is full of “straunge thingis,” he never adds any of his own invention; when he says, this I have seen, it can, if not afterwards destroyed, still be seen to-day; when he copies an inscription, his copy, as can be easily verified, is accurate. But, fond of books, he believed in them; who ever failed to believe in what he loved? The “Mirabilia Romæ” are the guide of this guide-book maker;[546] so that to the enumeration of the holy places with their relics and indulgences, and his description of the ancient, now vanished, church of St. Peter, and all the famous sanctuaries of the papal city, he adds the wonders of fabulous Rome, with the temple on Capitol hill, and in it, “a mervelous craft, that of every region of the world stood an ymage made all of tre and in his hand a lytil belle; as often as ony of these regiones was in purpos to rebelle a geyn the grete mageste of Rome, a non this ymage that was assigned to that regioun schulde knylle his bell.” This device, so celebrated in the middle ages, was due to that great enchanter “Virgil,” the magic of whose lines had been appreciated for different motives in Roman days. {389}

The attractions of Rome were, for the pilgrim, without peer in Italy, but other cities could almost rival it; Venice especially was full of wonders, and was admired and visited accordingly, witness, for example, the travelling notes of a troop of French pilgrims in the year 1395. In this “most excellent, noble, great and fine town all seated in the sea,” may be seen, they aver, the arm of “our Lord St. George,” the burdon (staff) of St. Nicholas, one of the water-pots of Cana, one ear of St. Paul, some of the “roasted flesh of St. Lawrence turned to powder,” three of the stones thrown at St. Stephen, the body of St. Mark, “which is a very fine and noble thing.” There is, besides, “in the Maison-Dieu of Venice one of the molar teeth of a giant that was called Goliath, which giant David killed, and know you that this tooth is more than half a foot long and weighs twelve pounds.”[547]

Thus did returning travellers relate their recollections, to the delighted wonderment of their countrymen. The wish to set out in their turn was awakened in them, and those who remained in their village associated themselves to the pious journey by their prayers and some small gift of money. All along his road the pilgrim found similar dispositions; to receive and help him was to share in his merits, and thus it was that people in the humblest ranks, assisted from place to place,[548] could accomplish distant pilgrimages. The rules of several gilds provided for the case of a member setting out to fulfil a vow. In order to participate in his good work, all the “bretheren and sisteren” accompanied him out of the town, and on bidding him farewell offered him their gift. {390} They watched their friend go off with his deliberate step, beginning a journey across many countries, to last many months, sometimes several years. They returned to the town, and the elders, who knew the world, no doubt told what strange things their friend was like to see in those distant lands, and what subjects for edification he would meet with on his way.

The gild of the Resurrection at Lincoln, founded in 1374, had among its rules, “If any brother or sister wishes to make pilgrimage to Rome, St. James of Galicia, or the Holy Land, he shall forewarn the gild; and all the bretheren and sisteren shall go with him to the city gate, and each shall give him a half-penny at least.” The same rule was observed by the Fullers’ gild of Lincoln, founded in 1297; the pilgrim going to Rome was accompanied as far as Queen’s Cross, outside the town, if he left on a Sunday or a feast-day; and if he could let them know of his return, and it were not a working day, all went to meet him at the same place and accompanied him to the monastery. The tailors of the same city also gave a half-penny to him among them who was going to Rome or St. James, and a penny to him who went to the Holy Land. The ordinances of the Gild of the Virgin, founded at Hull in 1357, had: “If any brother or sister of the gild wishes, at any time, to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, then, in order that all the gild may share in his pilgrimage, he shall be fully released from his yearly payment until his return.”

Some gilds kept open house for pilgrims, always with the same object of having a part thereby in the merits of the traveller. Thus the gild-merchant of Coventry, founded in 1340, maintained “a common lodging-house of thirteen beds,” to receive poor travellers who cross the country going on pilgrimage or from any other pious motive. This hostelry was managed by a governor, aided by a woman who washed the feet of the {391} guests and took care of them. The annual expenditure on this foundation was ten pounds sterling.[549]

When one of the king’s servants had a pilgrimage to make, the prince, in consideration of his motive, willingly authorized him to depart, and even helped him with money. Edward III gave to William Clerk, one of his messengers, one pound six shillings and eightpence, to help him in his expenses during the pilgrimage undertaken by him to Jerusalem and Mount Sinai.[550] If the man were of great importance, and especially if he intended to fight the unbelievers, public prayers were offered for his journey, his “triumphal fighting,” and his safe return, as was done when Henry of Lancaster, cousin to Edward III, went “to the parts beyond sea with certain great and noble men of this realm” to attack the enemies of the cross, in this case, the pagans of Prussia. The prayers were prescribed for Sundays and fête days, when there would be “the greatest multitude of people in the churches.”[551]

All this in spite of the fourteenth century’s not being, as we have seen, an age of deep and true devotion. The Popes lived at Avignon, their prestige was declining, particularly in England; even bishops showed at times scant respect for the Roman Court. Nowhere can be found, not even in Wyclif, more daring accusations and more scandalous anecdotes concerning the Pope than in the chronicle written by Thomas of Burton, Abbot of Meaux, near Beverley. He even speaks with a tinge of irony of indulgences. As a special favour to the faithful who died during a pilgrimage to Rome, Clement VI “ordered the angels of Paradise,” writes the abbot, “to lead their souls straight to the gates of heaven without {392} making them pass through purgatory.” The same Pope granted what the pilgrim of the “Stacions” seems to have ignored, that those who looked upon the holy sudary should return to the state they were in before baptism. Lastly, “he confirmed all the indulgences granted by two hundred sovereign pontiffs his predecessors, which are innumerable.”[552] Clement was, indeed, the two hundredth.

At the period when monastic chroniclers did not scruple to record anecdotes on the Roman Court like those in Thomas of Burton’s, general devotion was not merely lessened, it was disorganized, unbalanced. The chroniclers show, indeed, that excesses of impiety coexisted with excesses of fervour; the false pardoner, retailer of the merits of the saints, fell in upon the highway with the bleeding flagellant.[553] The papacy might show commendable good sense by its condemnations of both;[554] its decrees did not suffice to restore the equilibrium of {393} men’s minds, and the bounds of reason were continually being passed; in ardent piety as in impious revolt men went to the verge of madness. The account of the repulsive sacrileges committed in York Cathedral by the partisans of the Bishop of Durham seems unbelievable, yet the facts cannot be doubted, being reported by the archbishop himself.[555] Faith weakened or went astray; men became at once sceptical and intolerant. It was not in them the modern, serenely cold and imperturbable scepticism, but a violent movement of the entire being, impelled to burn what it adores. The man acts by fits; he doubts his doubt, his burst of laughter dazes him; he has had his revel and his orgy, and when the white light of morning comes he will be the prey of despair, shed tears, be racked with anguish, proclaim his conversion and vow maybe to go on a pilgrimage. Walsingham sees one of the causes of the peasants’ revolt in the incredulity of the barons: “Some among them believe, it is said, that there is no God, they deny the sacrament of the altar and resurrection after death, and consider that as is the end of the beast of burden, so is the end of man himself.”[556]

Such incredulity did not exclude superstitious practices. To go straight forward was the privilege of the happy few; the many, instead of opening the gates of heaven with their own hands, imagined they could have it done by that of others; they had Paradise gained for them by the neighbouring monastery, as they had their {394} lands tilled for them by their tenants; eternal welfare had become a matter of commerce and could be bought with the letters of fraternity of the mendicant friars and the lying indulgences of false pardoners. Men lived at their ease, and when the sad hour came, made pious donations in their wills, as if they could, according to the strong words of the French historian, Claude de Seyssel, “corrupt and win over by gifts God and the saints, whom we ought to appease by good works and by penitence for our sins.”[557] Very instructive reading is that of the last wills and testaments of the rich lords of the fourteenth century. Pages are filled with devotional bequests; gifts are left to shrines, convents, chapels, and hermits; testators who had abstained from going in their lifetime, made pilgrimages by proxy after their death, paying the proxy. The same Humphrey Bohun who sent “a good man and true” to the tomb of Thomas of Lancaster, also ordered that after his demise a priest should be sent to Jerusalem, “chiefly,” said he, “for my lady mother, and for my lord father, and for ourselves,” with the obligation to say masses at all the chapels which he might meet on his way.[558] Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady Clare, ordered by her will, that five men-at-arms should fight in her name in case there should be a “comune vyage,” otherwise a crusade, within seven years following her death. They would receive one hundred marks each, and the merit of their fights would accrue to their employer, and not to themselves, their own recompense being of this world, and consisting in the hundred marks.[559] {395}

V

Most difficult and holiest of all, the pilgrimage to Jerusalem remained, in spite of so many indulgences attached by the Popes to the churches in Rome, the one without peer, as well as it was the oldest established; it dated back, indeed, from, at least, the days of Constantine. Settled in Palestine during the fourth century, St. Jerome writes to Paulinus: “From all the world people are flocking here. The whole of mankind fills the city.”[560]

This is confirmed by his friend the enthusiastic Paula, in whose veins flowed the ardent blood of the Scipios and the Gracchi, and who trying to persuade her beloved Marcella, a rich and pious Roman matron, to join them there, tells her that all the greatest and best, those from Gaul, those from Britain, “divisus ab orbe nostro Britannus” (for she, too, knows those classics whom Jerome constantly quotes), without speaking of the Persians, the Armenians, and all the East, are to be met in the Holy Land: “A variety of languages, but one only religion.” There are “so many places of prayer that one cannot visit them all in one day.” And such places! “What sentences, what words would be appropriate to tell you of the cave of our Saviour? and of that stable where, as a babe, He cried: a spot to be honoured rather by silence than by inadequate words. Where are the vast porticoes, the gilt canopies? . . . In this poor earthly place the Maker of heaven was born; here He was wrapped in swadling clothes, here seen by the shepherds, here revealed by a star, here adored by the Magi.” Come, Oh come! “Will not the moment arrive when a breathless traveller shall announce to us that our Marcella has reached Palestine . . . Will not the day come when we can visit together the Saviour’s grotto, {396} weep at His tomb, kiss the wood of the cross, and be raised in our minds with the rising Lord on the Mount of Olives?”[561]

But even then, thoughtful, level-headed St. Jerome feared that enthusiasm might be carried too far, and everyday duties neglected for the excitement of the Palestine journey. It was, of course, in itself a pious and laudable thing, if one could properly do so, to come and venerate “the places where the feet of our Lord had stood, and the almost recent traces left of His nativity and His passion.” But this should not be considered a Christian’s chief duty: “Do not think that something is lacking in your faith because you have not seen Jerusalem. I do not consider myself any better because I live here.” To lead a good life is the chief thing: “What is praiseworthy is not to have been at Jerusalem, but to have lived righteously there. . . . The places where the cross was and the Resurrection occurred, benefit those who bear their cross and who, with Christ, rise again every day. . . . The palace of heaven is just as accessible from Britain as from Jerusalem.” To thousands who have never seen the holy city “the gate of paradise is wide open. . . . A grand thing it is to be a Christian, not to seem one.”[562]

The movement, however, once started never stopped. On the contrary, it gathered strength; hospices for pilgrims going to Jerusalem dotted the roads leading to their usual places of embarkation (chiefly Marseilles and Venice), several being built at the principal crossings of the Alps, the Great and the Little Saint Bernard, the St. Gothard, Mount Cenis, etc. A “Confrérie des Pélerins {397} de la Terre Sainte” had been founded in Paris for them by Louis, first Duke of Bourbon, who, greatly interested, like his grand father Saint Louis, in the freeing of the Holy Sepulchre, and bearing for a time the empty title of King of Thessalonica, had been chosen as leader of one of those numerous crusades that never took place.[563]

During a period of two hundred years pilgrimages to Jerusalem had had, indeed, for their object a conquest and not simply an inspection of the holy places. All nations had taken part, from the first of those prodigious attempts, the crusades, in 1096, to the last one in 1270, in which St. Louis died before the walls of Tunis, while his companion, young Edward of England, loth to give up, had sworn not to go home without having struck a blow at the Saracens in Holy Land, and returned as King Edward I, wounded, but having occupied Acre and kept his word.

The crusade, after those great expeditions, eight in number, continued to be talked about as much as ever; mere talk, it is true, in most cases. In the midst of their wars the kings of France and of England berated each other for being the only hindrance to the departure of the Christians, for neither would go, leaving his rival behind, free to act in his absence. Philip VI of Valois and Edward III both protest that, but for the other, they would go and fight the Saracen. “It is the fault of the English,” writes Philip, “that the holy journey beyond sea has been hindered.” It is the doing of the King of {398} France, solemnly proclaims Edward III to the world, which has turned him from the “sancto passagio transmarino.”[564]

The utmost that was usually attempted,[565] now consisted in small, ineffectual expeditions, so ill-conceived at times as to cause the wonderment and even the merriment of the infidel: such as the Franco-Anglo-Genoese crusade of 1390, with Louis, third Duke of Bourbon, as commander-in-chief, and which, on the recommendation of the Genoese, who suffered more than any from the inroads of the Barbaresques, went to lay siege, of all places, to the city of Mahdia, the “Aufrike” of Froissart,[566] on the east coast of Tunisia. The French were apparently the most numerous, but, says Froissart, “Also the Duke of Lancastre had a bastarde sonne called Henry of Lancastre: he had devocion to go in the same voyage, and he provided him of good knightes and squiers of Englande that accompanyed him in that voyage.” The comte de Foix had also, ready at hand, a “bastarde sonne” of his own, whom he sent with a large retinue. The English prince was not, however, the future Henry IV, who was no bastard, but his half-brother, John Beaufort, who being an adulterine son well answered to the description. Henry had intended to go, hence Froissart’s mistake, but he went instead to fight the pagans in Prussia and Lithuania, and, being fond of pilgrimages and shrines, performed, as a pilgrim, the journeys to Rome and Jerusalem, before he assumed the crown and had, in spite of his religious dispositions, his cousin Richard assassinated. {399}

The start from Genoa for the new Tunisian expedition was splendid to see; so the starts usually were: “Great pleasure it was,” says Froissart, “to beholde their departynge, and to se their standardes, getornes (banners) and penons, wavynge in the wynde, shynynge against the sonne, and to here the trompettes and claryons sowning in the ayre with other mynstrelsy,” so that the whole sea rang with the music.[567]

The Saracens were dumbfounded at this visit: what had they done, and what could be the object? That the Genoese had grudges against them was natural enough; but what ailed the others? Ready for the stoutest defence of their walled Mahdia, they were, however, curious to ascertain the reason, and they sent one of their number, who spoke Italian, to explain “howe we have in nothynge trespassed them; of a trouthe, afore this tyme, there hath been warre bytwene us and the Genovoys,” but that does not concern Christians from “farre countreys.” The Genoese “are our neighbours, they take of us and we of them; we have been auncyente enemyes and shall be, excepte whan treuce is betwene us.” But why are the others interfering?

The leaders of the army agreed that a reply should be sent; they held council, twelve of them, “in the duke of Burbons tent,” and gave an answer to the effect that the reason why they made this war “was bycause the Sonne of God, called Jesu Chryst . . . by their lyne and generacyon, was put to deth and crucyfyed,” and also because the Saracens did not believe in baptism, nor “in the Virgyn Mary, Mother to Jhesu Cryst. . . .”

“At this aunswere the Sarazyns dyd nothinge but laugh and sayd howe that aunswere was nothynge {400} reasonable, for it was the Jewes that put Chryst to dethe and not they. Thus the siege still endured.”[568]

The usual ally of the infidel did not fail him: sickness, fevers, and epidemics worked havoc among the besiegers, who had, of all months, selected July for their attempt. They tried to storm the city, but were repulsed with great loss, and after some eight weeks of fruitless labour, brilliant combats, and many deaths, accepted a patched-up treaty granting the Genoese some slight advantage; raised the siege, and returned home, with probably less “trompettes and claryons sowning in the ayre” than when they had started.

The acceptance of a discussion with the infidel during this abortive crusade was characteristic of the time. More prone than before to examine inherited beliefs, a good many men were found in the fourteenth century to question the very principle of the crusade. We crush the infidel, why not convert him? Is it not wiser, more reasonable, and even more conformable to the religion of Christ? Were the apostles whom He sent to us Gentiles covered with armour and provided with swords? Reflections like these occur in the works, not only of reforming minds like Wyclif or Langland,[569] but of pious well-meaning conservative thinkers like Gower, who says in his “Confessio Amantis”:

“To sleen and fighten they us bidde
Hem whom they shuld, as the boke saith, {401}
Converten unto Cristes feith.
But herof have I great merveile
How they wol bidde me traveile;
A Saracen if I slee shall,
I slee the soule forth withall,
And that was never Cristes lore.”

Failing crusades, then, just as before those great military undertakings had begun, small troops of pilgrims, privately formed, started on the road to Jerusalem, still in their eyes, in spite of all St. Jerome might have said, the best road to heaven. They were, however, many of them, inspired by mixed motives, for this was also the road to adventure, and there, again, were very apparent the chivalric and restless instincts of the period.

A good number of such caravans came from England; the English were already, and had been even before, and continue to this day, great travellers. They were to be met everywhere, and their knowledge of French stood them in good stead in most of the countries they went through. This was, as “Mandeville” states, the common language of the upper classes everywhere;[570] it was also that spoken in the East by the European, the “Frank.” Trevisa, finding that the English were forgetting that language, deplores it; how will they do if they go abroad? “That is harme for hem and they schulle passe the see and travaille in straunge landes and in many other places.”[571] They tried to acquire notions of it before setting out on their travels, and employed competent persons to compose manuals of conversation for them to learn, in the words {402} of the author of one such work, an Englishman of the fourteenth century, “how to speak and pronounce well, and to write correctly sweet French, which is the finest and most graceful language, the noblest to speak of any in the world after Latin of the schools, and is better prized and loved than any other by all men; for God made it so sweet and lovable chiefly to His own praise and honour. And therefore it may well compare with the language of the angels in heaven, on account of its great sweetness and beauty.” So spoke this teacher of what he had to teach.[572]

The English went much abroad; every author who draws their portrait lays stress on their taste for moving about, and their love of distant travel; the moon is considered, in consequence, as their planet. According to Gower, the moon’s influence is the cause why they visit so many far-off countries:

“Bot what man under his [_i.e._, the moon’s] pouer
Is bore, he schall his place change
And seche manye londes strange;
And as of this condicion
The Mones disposicion
Upon the lond of Alemaigne
Is set, and ek upon Bretaigne,
Which nou is cleped Engelond,
For thei travaile in every lond.”[573]

Wyclif places them under the patronage of the same planet, but draws different conclusions therefrom;[574] {403} Ralph Higden the chronicler expresses himself in these terms, most of which seem prophetic, they have proved so exact: “That people are curious enough that they may know and tell the wonders that they have seen; they cultivate other regions, and succeed still better in distant countries than in their own, . . . wherefore it is that they are spread so wide through the earth, considering every other land that they inhabit as their own country. They are a race able for every industry.”[575]

A number of those adventure seekers were established in Italy, where they had become _condottieri_, and went fighting up and down the peninsula according to the will of whomsoever paid them. Such were John Hawkwood, whose tomb still adorns the cathedral at Florence,[576] William Gold, and several others. Fierce folk they were, with ardent passions, ready sometimes, as in Homeric days, to do and sacrifice as much to recover a fugitive girl as to take a town. One letter of William Gold may give an idea of the temper of these bellicose wanderers. On August 9, 1378, he wrote to Louis Gonzaga, lord of Mantua, concerning the girl Jeannette, of France:

“. . . Let her be detained at my suit, for if you should have a thousand golden florins spent for her, I will pay them without delay; for if I should have to follow her to Avignon I will obtain this woman. Now, my lord, should I be asking a trifle contrary to law, yet ought you not to cross me in this, for some day I shall do more for you than a thousand united French women could effect; {404} and if there be need of me in a matter of greater import, you shall have for the asking a thousand spears at my back. Therefore, in conclusion, again and again, I entreat that this Janet may be put in a safe place unknown to anybody, and there kept until I send some servant of mine for her with a letter from myself, for I would do more for you in greater matters. And I pray you, thwart me not about putting her in a safe place, for you alone, and no one else are lord in Mantua.

“_The Camp under Verona, August 9, 1378._

“P.S.—I beseech by all means that [the] said Janet may not quit Mantua, but be in safe custody, and so you will have obliged me for ever.”

No less determined as a warrior than as a lover, and accustomed, as it seems, in both cases, to put people to flight, William Gold was made a citizen of Venice in recognition of his services on April 27, 1380, and in July of the same year received from the Doge Andrea Contarini a pension of 500 gold ducats for life.[577]

Thinking less of the Jeannettes to be met on the way, troops of pilgrims sailed from England, beginning their long journey towards the Holy Land, usually provided with letters from their sovereign, to serve both as passports and as recommendations in case of need. The tenor of these documents, written in French or in Latin, was usually similar to that of the following letter granted by Edward III in 1354 to one who, it is true, was more of a fighter than a pilgrim: “Know all men that the noble Jean le Meingre, knight, otherwise Bussigand [Boucicaut], our prisoner, is about to set forth, duly licensed by us, with twelve knights to St. James, and thence to march against the enemies of Christ in the Holy Land; and that we have taken him and his twelve companions, {405} their servants, horses, and harnesses under our protection and safe conduct.”[578]

Such travellers were well received by the French King of Cyprus, of the famous Lusignan family; they brought him news of the outer world, with them came variety and hope; they also were sometimes able to actually assist him in his difficulties, which were ceaseless, and the king showed his pleasure in his letters. Thus James I of Lusignan, “King of Jerusalem and Cyprus,” writes from Nicosia, in 1393, to Richard II, that a knight has no need of a personal recommendation to be welcome in the island; his subjects always are. It was for him an honour and delight to be visited by “your noble relative the lord Henry Percy.”[579] In the same manner the troop of French pilgrims, to which belonged the lord of Anglure, was welcomed in Cyprus, by the same king, in 1396. They reached the island on their way home, after a fearful storm, in which they nearly lost their lives.[580] As soon as James heard of their having landed he sent to them {406} provisions in plenty: a hundred chickens, twenty sheep, two oxen, much good red wine and good white bread. Then he asked them to his Court, where they were delightfully entertained by him, by the queen, and their four sons and five daughters. Being himself a great huntsman, James asked them to go hunting with him, a pleasant offer after so many trials, and one not to be refused.

Combats, hunts, storms, encounters of all sorts, in a word, adventure, were thus associated with the idea of the voyage, the holiness of which sometimes disappeared in the midst of so many profane incidents. Well may one wonder whether Saint James was the real attraction, for a De Werchin, Seneschal de Hainaut, who, about to start on a pilgrimage to the shrine of this saint, in 1402, would make it publicly known that, “in the name of God, of our Lord St. George, and of his own lady,” he would accept during his whole journey the friendly combat of arms with any knight for whom he should not have to turn from his road more than 20 leagues. He announced his itinerary beforehand, so that any one might make ready.[581]

The strange man, Jean de Bourgogne by name, who chose to sign his book of travels “Jean de Mandeville,”[582] {407} gives somewhat similar reasons to explain why he undertook his journey to the East in 1322 through perilous seas and countries—or rather, according to modern discoveries—through the books of his library. He started, or, anyhow, he studied and wrote, partly, says he, to sanctify himself, partly to know the world and its wonders, and to be able to speak of them; for many persons, he observes, are much pleased with hearing the marvels of distant regions described. The reason he publishes his impressions is, first, because numbers of people like stories of the Holy Land, and find great consolation and comfort in them; and, secondly, to make a guide, in order that small companies or caravans, like that of Boucicaut and others, may profit by his knowledge.

His ideas as to the road to be followed are not unreasonable. Thus, “to go the direct way” from England to Palestine, he advises the following itinerary: France, Burgundy, Lombardy, Venice, Famagusta in Cyprus, Jaffa, Jerusalem. Very often people went to Jerusalem by way of Egypt. It was a tradition of long standing that the greater part of the difficulties concerning the Holy Land had their root in Egypt; many tombs of saints also attracted the pilgrims there, so that crusaders, or mere pilgrims, often took that road to Jerusalem. “Mandeville” says he himself followed this itinerary. In 1422 Gilbert de Lannoy wrote, “at the behest of King Henry of England, heir and Regent of France,” that is, Henry V, a description in French of the places through which a crusade might be led against the infidels, for this prince, like his predecessors, continued dreaming of a crusade. Lannoy, a practical soldier and diplomat, who speaks only of what he has seen, gives a detailed account of all towns, stating which are protected by walls, {408} towers and ditches; he notices the Venetians’ warehouses for cotton at Acre, and the presence at Beirut of a great number of Christian merchants, Venetians, Genoese, Greeks, and others. He carefully mentions what sorts of provisions in wood, water, etc., may be found in each part of the country, in what plains an army can be easily arrayed, in what ports a fleet shall be safe. He pays the greatest attention to Egypt, and describes its several cities: “Item. There is Cairo, the chief town of Egypt, on the river Nile which comes from Paradise.”[583] But the crusade, in anticipation of which he wrote, never took place, and the next military expedition to reach Syria through Egypt was destined to be a French one, headed by that extraordinary pilgrim, Bonaparte.

Besides his account of a journey to Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Central Asia, and China, “Mandeville” gives a description of a number of countries peopled by imaginary monsters. This fantastic part of his work, where he anticipated no less famous a traveller than Gulliver himself, did not diminish its success, quite the contrary; it was translated into several languages, and above three hundred MSS. of it now remain. But we, less confiding than our fathers, are loth to accept the excuse he gives as a guarantee of, at least, his good faith: “Things that are long past away from sight fall into oblivion, and the memory of man cannot all retain and comprehend.”[584]

Many books, beginning with that of Lannoy, came after his, more practical, less fantastic, and, of course, less famous.[585] While the renewal of the crusades became {409} less and less probable, the number of individual pilgrimages was on the increase. The word of the priest which could no longer uproot and set on the move entire nations, still detached here and there little groups of pious men or adventure seekers, who went to visit the holy places under favour of the Saracen’s tolerant and practical spirit. For the mass of them no longer set out to fight the infidel, but to ask his permission to see Jerusalem, which was the more readily granted that it had to be paid for.

From the fourteenth century onwards, a regular service of transports existed at Venice for the use of pilgrims: “It is the rule,” says a traveller of the fourteenth century, “that the Venetians send every year five galleys to the Holy Land. They all reach Beirut, which is the port for Damascus in Syria; thence two of them bring the pilgrims to Jaffa, which is the port for Jerusalem.”[586]

Many particulars about this service of transports, the purchases to make before starting, and the provisions to take, are found in a book written in the following century by William Wey, Fellow of Eton College, an experienced pilgrim with a passion for such journeys. He recommended that the price of the passage be carefully settled before starting, and that a bed with its pillows, sheets, etc., be procured. This was bought at Venice, near St. Mark’s, and cost three ducats; after the journey the whole could be sold back to the vendor for a ducat {410} and a half: “Also when ye com to Venyse ye schal by a bedde by seynt Markys cherche; ye schal have a fedyr bedde, a matres, too pylwys, too peyre schetis and a qwylt, and ye schal pay iij dokettis; and when ye com ayen, bryng the same bedde to the man that ye bowt hit of and ye schal have a doket and halfe ayen, thow hyt be broke and worne.”[587] Such settled customs and fixed prices show better than anything else the frequency of the intercourse.

William Wey is as obliging for his traveller as are modern guide-book makers; he devises mnemonics of names to remember, a vocabulary of the Greek words most important to know, and ready-made questions which our manuals still repeat in more correct language:

“Good morrow. _Calomare._
Welcome. _Calosertys._
Tel me the way. _Dixiximo strata._
Gyff me that. _Doys me tutt._
Woman, haue ye goyd wyne? _Geneca esse calocrasse?_
Howe moche? _Posso?_”

He does not omit a sentence which must have been, and still is, of especially frequent use: “I understond the not—_Apopon kystys_.” Wey also gives a table of the rate of exchange for moneys from England to Venice, Crete, Rhodes, Cyprus, and Syria; and a programme for the employment of time, as now very parsimoniously distributed; he only allows “thirteen or fourteen days” to see {411} everything and start back again, specifying what should be seen each day. Lastly, he gives a complete list of the towns to be traversed, with the distance from one to the other, a map of the Holy Land with all the remarkable places duly inscribed thereon,[588] a considerable catalogue of the indulgences to be gained, and full details as to what is sacred or curious in Palestine, or on the way thither, not forgetting the dogs at Rhodes, who keep watch at night outside the castle, know perfectly how to distinguish a Turk from a Christian, and who, if one of their number “sleeps instead of taking his watch at night outside the castle, kill him themselves,”[589] so great is their detestation of a _slacker_.