Chapter III: Pilgrims and Pilgrimages (3)

Wey foresaw all the disagreeables to which the boorishness of the captain of the galley might subject you; he recommends engaging a berth in the highest part of the boat, “for in the lawyst [stage] under hyt is ryght smolderyng hote and stynkynge.”[590] You must not pay more than forty ducats from Venice to Jaffa, food included, and should stipulate that the captain stop at certain ports to take in fresh provisions. He is bound to give you hot meat at dinner and supper, good wine, pure water, and biscuit; but it is well besides to take provisions for private use, for even at the captain’s table there is great risk of having bad bread and wine. “For thow ye schal {412} be at the tabyl wyth yowre patrone, notwythstondynge, ye schal oft tyme have nede to yowre vytelys, bred, chese, eggys, frute, and bakyn, wyne, and other, to make yowre collasyun; for sum tyme ye schal have febyl bred, wyne and stynkyng water, meny tymes ye schal be ful fayne to ete of yowre owne.” It would even be prudent to take some poultry: “Also by yow a cage for half a dozen of hennys or chekyn to have with yow in the galey;” half a bushel of seed to feed them must not be forgotten, nor what you will want to fry your own bacon and drink your wine: “Also take with you a lytyl cawdren and fryyng pan, dysches, platerrys, sawserys of tre (wood), cuppys of glas, a grater for brede and such nessaryes.” You must also have remedies, “confortatyvys, laxatyvys, restoratyvys,” saffron, pepper, spices.[591]

On arrival at a port it is well to leap ashore one of the first, in order to get served before others, and not to have the leavings; this counsel of practical selfishness often recurs. On land heed must be taken as to the fruits: “beware of dyverse frutys, for they be not acordyng to youre complexioun, and they gender a blody fluxe (dysentery), and yf an Englyschman have that sykenes hyt ys a marvel and scape hyt but he dye thereof.”

Once in Palestine, one must be careful about robbers; beware of Saracens coming to talk familiarly with you: “Also take goyd hede of yowre knyves and other smal thynges that ye ber apon yow, for the Sarsenes wyl go talkyng wyth yow and make goyd chere, but they wyl stele fro yow that ye have and they may.” At Jaffa you must bestir yourself and be quick, in order to have the best donkey, “Also when ye schal take yowre asse at port Jaffe, be not to longe behynde yowre felowys; for and ye com by tyme ye may chese the beste mule, other asse, for ye schal pay no more fore the best then for the worst. And ye must yeve youre asman curtesy {413} a grot.”[592] This last recommendation shows the high antiquity of “pourboires,” one of the best preserved of mediæval traditions. At last the caravan leaves the seaside and proceeds towards the Holy City; and then it is prudent not to straggle too far from your companions for fear of evildoers.

Worthy of notice is the fact that these visits to the Holy Land were in great part performed on donkeys; knights themselves did not disdain mounting these modest animals: “At this said inn did we dismount from our asses,” says the narrator of the travels of the lord of Anglure, who, as we have seen, visited Jerusalem at the end of the fourteenth century; which tends to show that if there was, as there still is, some danger of attacks by robbers, it was not very serious. If there had been any chance of real fight knights would hardly have ventured getting into it on donkey-back. In fact, many of those reports of travels in the Holy Land give the impression of mere tourists’ excursions, and what comes out most clearly from them is the before-mentioned spirit of tolerance, coupled with the spirit of profit, displayed by the Saracen. He did not forbid the entry into Palestine of all these pilgrims, who often came as spies and enemies, and he let their troops do very much as they liked, provided they did not forget to pay.[593] The companions of the lord {414} of Anglure, and half a century later of William Wey, go where they will; returning when it is convenient, and making plans of excursions beforehand as they would do at present. They admire the beauty of the “muscas” or mosques, the quaint appearance of the vaulted streets with light coming from apertures at the top of the vault, and with shops for Saracen merchants on both sides, in other words, the bazaar; they are led by and receive explanations from their “drugemens;” at certain places they meet officers entrusted with the permit of the “Soudan,” as to all affairs concerning foreigners: these officers are called “consulles.” They find European merchants established and doing much trade in the ports of the infidel; they have, in fact, nothing to fear seriously but local wars (about which they were pretty sure to get timely information), or possibly calamitous encounters at sea. William Wey and his companions learn with much uneasiness on their return that a Turkish fleet with dubious purpose is ready to quit Constantinople, but happily they do not meet it.

A comparison between the experiences of both troops of pilgrims, the French and the English, is instructive, precisely because they are, in so many cases, similar. The lord of Anglure[594] had no trouble in reaching Jerusalem, being provided with the proper authorization: “Shortly after, we started thence on foot, and with the license of the lieutenant of the Sultan we entered the holy city of {415} Jerusalem at the hour of vespers, and were all received and lodged in the hospital where it is customary now for pilgrims to stay.” Having bought tents, they travel by land without difficulty from Palestine to Egypt, crossing the desert, noticing the places where Moses performed his miracles, visiting Cairo, which deeply impresses them by its beauty, its greatness, its gardens and monuments, and the immense number of Saracens living there. They go partly by water, partly on camels, observing on their way “two great black-feathered ostriches trotting along,” to the places where St. Anthony had lived with his “porcellet,” and where churches and abbeys prosper under the rule of the unmeddling Saracen. They navigate the Nile, a large river which “comes from Paradise,” and where “live several serpents called cokatrices,” otherwise crocodiles, of which they see one “very great and hideous” that dived into the water when they came near. There only they have a rather narrow escape, being attacked in their boat by “Arab robbers,” and some of their troop are wounded with arrows, but none is killed.

Needless to say that, if Rome was full of relics, there was no want of them in Jerusalem. All the places named in the Gospel, and some others, had been identified with precision: “Item, continuing to go up towards this mountain on the right hand side, there is a house where the sweet Virgin Mary learnt at school.” Near the church of the Holy Sepulchre is a large square “with two big stones on the one of which our Lord used to sit when He preached to His disciples, and our Lady sat opposite on the other.” The place is shown “where St. John the Evangelist sang mass every day in the presence of our Lady after the Ascension of our Lord.” You may see, too, the spot where was roasted the paschal lamb; “even here was warmed the water with which our Lord washed the feet of His apostles.” There is also a cave or well “where King Herod had the Innocents {416} thrown, out of spite.” At Bethlehem is a church of St. Nicholas, “in which place the sweet Virgin Mary hid herself to draw her milk from her worthy breasts when she would fly to Egypt. In this same church is a marble column against which she leaned when she drew her worthy milk, and this pillar continues moist since the time she leaned against it, and when it is wiped, at once it sweats again; and in all places where her worthy milk fell, the earth is still soft and white and has the appearance of curded milk, and whoever likes takes of it, out of devotion.”—Hence the milk at Walsingham?

In Egypt, too, the wonders are numerous, but many are of a different order. Besides the churches and hermitages there are the “granaries of Pharaoh,” namely the pyramids, which seem to the lord of Anglure and his companions “the most marvellous thing they had yet seen in all their travels.” They are cut “in the shape of a fine diamond,” but inside they are full of animals, who stink horribly. Mandeville, who had seen them some years before, gives them the same origin, and utterly discards the belief that they might have been tombs of high personages. He mentions the hieroglyphics, about the only thing in all his book that he does not try to explain; he also has a word for the grim inhabitants of the pyramids: “Thei ben alle fulle of serpentes. And aboven the gernerers with outen ben many scriptures of dyverse languages. And sum men seyn that they ben sepultures of grete Lordes, that weren somtyme; but that is not trewe; for all the comoun rymour and speche is of alle the peple there, bothe far and nere, that thei ben the garneres of Joseph. And so fynden thei in here scriptures and in here cronycles. On that other partie, yif thei werein sepultures, thei scholden not ben voyd with inne. For yee may well knowe that tombes and sepultures ne ben not made of suche gretnesse ne of suche highnesse. Wherfore it is not to beleve that thei {417} ben tombes or sepultures.”[595] This powerful mode of reasoning did not, however, convince such sceptics as Mariette and Maspéro.

Besides the pyramids, the companions of the Lord of Anglure notice and greatly praise the houses with their terraces, the mosques and their “fine lamps,” these same ornamented glass lamps which, after having been admired by our pilgrims in 1395 when they were fresh and new, can be seen now without going so far, in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Egyptian animals, too, are noted by our travellers as being very striking; besides the crocodiles there are the long-necked giraffes, so tall that “they could well take their provender on the highest lances that it is the custom now to use,” and then the elephants. A very strange beast an elephant: “It could never bend to the ground to get its food on account of its great height, but it has in its snout something like a bowel, put at the further end of its snout,” and this bowel “hangs down almost to the ground,” and with it the beast “takes its food and carries it to its mouth.” He uses it also to drink, and “when he blows air through it the noise is greater than that of any buccina,” and the sound “is terrible to those unaccustomed.”

At last the time came when our pilgrims had seen everything, and they had to wend their way homewards. Twice did William Wey undertake the great journey, happy to have seen, fain to see again. When he came back to England for the last time he bequeathed to a chapel, built on the model of the Holy Sepulchre, the souvenirs which he had brought back, that is to say, a stone from Calvary, another from the Sepulchre itself, one from Mount Tabor, one from the place where the cross stood, and other relics. As for the French troop of pilgrims who had left Anglure-sur-Aube on July 16, {418} 1395, they came back in the following year, complete in their numbers but for Simon de Sarrebruck, who had died of fever in Cyprus during the journey home, and lies interred in a church there. “And on Thursday, the twenty-second day of June, and the day before the eve of the feast of St. John the Baptist, in the year of grace of our Lord, 1396, we found ourselves again dining in Anglure.”

(_Original in the British Museum._)]

{419}

(_From MS. 10 E. IV._)]