Medieval Pilgrimage: Routes Beyond the Horizon

Pilgrims in front of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, from Liber peregrinationis, French, c.1410

The Power of Saints and Pilgrimage

Quite simply, without the belief in the power of saints, the concept of pilgrimage would not exist, or at the very least it would lean towards tourism. Thus, to understand pilgrimage, we must understand those who experienced and witnessed the miracles performed by local, regional, or even international saints. Miracles are also important if we understand shrine worship in terms of modern virality because, quite often, patterns and influxes of pilgrim migration were influenced by the reputation and popularity of the shrine spurred on by oral tradition. An extraordinary example of virality is the 12th-century case of Eilward of Westoning, a man who was blinded and castrated for petty thievery. Upon asking the newly established Saint Thomas Becket for help, he quickly regained sight. Eilward’s story, as understood by Benedict of Peterborough, went viral and ‘‘word of this went out among the vicinity, and the new thing attracted no small multitude of people.’’ As Eilward travelled to the shrine at Canterbury to pay homage, he told his story along the pilgrim routes and created a large buzz, so much so that the story reached Canterbury before he did. Yet, Eilward is not unique, and John McNamara has pointed out that multiple hagiographical texts ‘‘reveal surprising amounts of information about the oral tellings of these legends in their own contexts.’’

The Limitations of Oral Traditions

This is, however, a potential limitation of analysing miracles. R.W Southern dubbed this oral tradition as a “chattering atmosphere” and thus the telling of miracles can become a game of whispers. Benedict of Peterborough, narrating St Thomas Becket, remarks how he was told about a miracle from a “truthful man”, who had heard it “from a certain Gilbert”, who had heard it from a blind man. Likewise, the author of the Liber Eliensis at Ely received a letter from Osbert of Clare about a miracle he was told about by Prior Osbert of Daventry, who had heard said miracle by the friends of a women. Though seemingly comical, Brian Patrick McGuire in examining Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogus Miraculorum, discovered that 95% of miracle stories arose from oral sources, as opposed to 5% written records. The miracle collections of Thomas Becket have comparatively similar statistics as 94% of miracles were from oral tradition. Questions thus arise on the truth and validity of such miracles, especially if we are to closely analyse them. Did stories become distorted as they were passed on? It is difficult to be sure, to say the least, but in his study of twelfth-century miracle collections, Marcus Bull suggests that ‘‘we should treat the majority of miracle stories as the end-product of genuine attempts to formulate explanations of real experiences.” Thus, we must rely on the scrutiny and critique of miracle collectors for reassurance.

Methodology of Miracle Collections

Such a notion is not overly farfetched if we understand how miracle collections were constructed, and how certain miracles were omitted or grouped. What becomes clear from the introductions of some miracle collections is that collectors did take time to process miracles and decide how the collection should be curated. A modern and comparative example is that of sociologist Candace Slater who sought to record the miracles witnessed at Brazilian and Spanish shrines. Her fifteen years of research yielded over 47,079 miracles, and thus to keep her research manageable she based her collection on quality rather than quantity, and thus deconstructed the personal experiences to group the miracles together. In essence, contemporary sources show that medieval miracle collectors undertook a similar methodology. The anonymous Beverley collector noted, ‘‘the passage of time would detain me for a very long time if I wished to write down every single release of prisoners through the merits of St. John.’’ Likewise, another anonymous miracle collector at Reading wrote that ‘‘in a similar way and by a similar remedy another knight named Ralph Gilbuin was cured of a similar disease, as also were so many others, both men and women, that I cannot cover them all in this account.’’ Therefore, considering this methodology, miracle collectors did seek to minimise any anomalies, half-truths, or distortions, so much so that miracle stories are known to be highly repetitive, all containing similar themes. We can, with a fair degree of reassurance then, understand these collections to be a qualitative sample of the wider pilgrim population. As such, statistical analysis can be conducted on such data to understand shrines and their pilgrims.

One of the earliest known depictions of Becket’s assassination, c. 1175–1225

Finucane’s Impactful Study

Arguably the most impactful study on medieval pilgrimage, Finucane’s ‘Miracles and Pilgrims’ sought to examine the miracles of each of the major medieval saint cults and place their pilgrims within a system of classification to identify trends and social profiles in shrine devotees. Within this there is plenty of evidence on the popularity of Thomas Becket’s shrine within England, but also internationally on the continent. In fact, within the first decade of Thomas Becket’s cult becoming established, Benedict of Peterborough had assembled the greatest miracle collection of the Middle Ages with over 703 miracles. William, another Canterbury monk, also collected over 438 miracles for his collection which ends about c.1179. Finucane’s analysis provides some incredible insight into where these pilgrims predominantly came from. Subtracting the pilgrims listed by Benedict and William where no origin is given, 531 individual pilgrims can be pinpointed. 360 of these pilgrims were from England, and over half of these (56%) came from south-east England. The localisation to the cult, however, is striking as a quarter of all English pilgrims originated in Kent or Canterbury. Then, great numbers of pilgrims came from London, followed by Berkshire and Oxfordshire, Sussex, Essex, and Suffolk. There were relatively fewer pilgrims from more distant counties such as Devon, Somerset Cornwall, Hereford, Shropshire, Durham, and Northumberland. Interestingly, of the northern, Midland, and western regions, York contributed the most pilgrims, most probably due to its prominence as an English monastic site.

Pilgrims from Northern France

Of the aforesaid 531 pilgrims, over a third of these pilgrims (171) came from Northern France. Abbot Peter de Celle describes vast numbers of Northern French pilgrims visiting Canterbury in the late c.1170s, and one such pilgrim was Louis VII of France who, in c.1179, visited the tomb of St Thomas Becket seeking a cure for his son Philip Augustus. Louis is recorded as placing a gold coin on the altar and granting the priory an annual income of 1,600 gallons of wine. The associations between Northern France and Becket are perhaps encouraged through his interactions as chancellor and exiled Archbishop, but the proximity of the shrine to Dover, and by extension Northern France, meant that pilgrims from France, specifically Claremont, Eu, Liseux, Poitiers, Pontigny, and Rouen all visited and worshipped at the shrine with ease.

The major European pilgrimage routes ran from England through France to Italy and from France to Santiago de Compostela

Pilgrimage Routes and Political Climates

As such, there were as many pilgrims leaving England as there were being received. Upon setting off on a journey, however, certain routes could be taken to get to your destination. Much has been written about the Via Francigena, the multitude of complex routes connecting north-western Europe to Rome, and likewise, the Via Tolosana, which connected France to the Compostela via Grenoble and the Rhone Valley. The sea, however, often provided direct pilgrim travel to certain shrines, particularly in those in Spain or Italy. In the twelfth century, Icelandic Abbot Niklas of Munkathvera described a junction at Luni whereby pilgrims who travelled by road and by sea would converge on their way to Rome.

Adaptability and Mobility of Pilgrims

Nevertheless, pilgrims had to adapt to the ever-changing political climates of Europe, and chronicler Ralph Glaber describes how a “usual route” to Jerusalem for French and Italian pilgrims by sea changed when Hungary converted to Christianity and opened its land borders. Likewise, fluctuations of pilgrims to Jerusalem notably declined in c.1009 when the Holy Sepulchre was destroyed by Caliph Al-Hakim. Only when it was later restored did pilgrims, firstly of lower social classes, begin to return to this region.

Medieval pilgrimage was therefore well-defined yet also highly flexible and could adapt and change according to political climates, both positive and negative – perhaps because it truly was so ingrained within societies and cultures across Europe. Yet it also underpins a major fact about the Middle Ages that so many get wrong – that people, even of lower classes, were highly mobile and travelled across counties, countries, and continents.