CHARACTER OF THE PILGRIMS

[1Sidenote: [1000-1050 A.D.]]

2Though pilgrimages were generally considered acts of virtue, yet some of the leaders of the church accounted them useless and criminal. Gregory, bishop of Nyssa, in the fourth century, dissuades his flock from these journeys. They were not conscientious obligations, he said, for in the description of persons whom Christ had promised to acknowledge in the next world the name of pilgrim could not be found. A migratory life was dangerous to virtue, particularly to the modesty of women.

3The necessity of making a pilgrimage to Rome and other places was often urged by ladies, who did not wish to be mewed in the solitary gloom of a cloister, “chaunting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.” In the ninth century, a foreign bishop wrote to the archbishop of Canterbury, requesting, in very earnest terms, that English women of every rank and degree might be prohibited from pilgrimising to Rome. Their gallantries were notorious over all the continent. “_Perpaucæ enim sunt civitates in Longobardia, vel in Francia, aut in Gallia, in qua non sit adultera vel meretrix generis Anglorum: quod scandalum est, et turpitudo totius ecclesiæ._” Muratori, _Antiquitates Italiæ Med. Ævi, Dissert. 58_, vol. V., p. 58. “There are few cities in Lombardy, in France, or in Gaul, in which there is not an English adultress or harlot, to the scandal and disgrace of the whole church.” Morality did not improve as the world grew older. The prioress in Chaucer, demure as she is, wears a bracelet on which was inscribed the sentence, “_Amor vincit omnia._” The gallant monk, in the same pilgrimage, ties his hood with a true-lover’s knot.

4Horror at spectacles of vice would diminish with familiarity, and the moral principle would gradually be destroyed. Malice, idolatry, poisoning, and bloodshed disgraced Jerusalem itself; and so dreadfully polluted was the city that, if any man wished to have a more than ordinary spiritual communication with Christ, he had better quit his earthly tabernacle at once than endeavour to enjoy it in places originally sacred, but which had been since defiled. Some years after the time of Gregory, a similar description of the depravity at Jerusalem was given by St. Jerome, and the Latin father commends a monk who, though a resident in Palestine, had but on one occasion travelled to the city. The opinions of these two venerable spiritual guides could not stem the torrent of popular religion.

5The coffers of the church were enriched by the sale of relics, and the dominion of the clergy became powerful in proportion to the growth of religious abuses and corruptions. Pilgrims from India, Ethiopia, Britannia, and Hibernia went to Jerusalem; and the tomb of Christ resounded with hymns in various languages. Bishops and teachers would have thought it a disgrace to their piety and learning if they had not adored their Saviour on the very spot where his cross had first shed the light of his Gospel.

6[Illustration: A PILGRIM AND SHRINE]

7The assertion, that “the coffers of the church were enriched by the sale of relics,” requires some observations; because the sale of one relic in particular encouraged the ardour of pilgrimages, and from the ardour the Crusades arose. During the fourth century, Christendom was duped into the belief that the very cross on which Christ had suffered had been discovered in Jerusalem. The city’s bishop was the keeper of the treasure, but the faithful never offered their money in vain for a fragment of the holy wood. They listened with credulity to the assurance of their priests that a living virtue pervaded an inanimate and insensible substance, and that the cross permitted itself every day to be divided into several parts, and yet remained uninjured and entire.

8Thus Erasmus says, in his entertaining dialogue on pilgrimages, that “if the fragments of the cross were collected, enough would be found for the building of a ship.” It was publicly exhibited during the religious festivities of Easter, and Jerusalem was crowded with pious strangers to witness the solemn spectacle. But after four ages of perpetual distribution, the world was filled with relics, and superstition craved for a novel object. Accordingly, the Latin clergy of Palestine pretended that on the vigil of Easter, after the great lamps in the church of the Resurrection had been extinguished, they were relighted by God himself.

9People flocked from the West to the East in order to behold this act of the Divinity, and to catch some portion of a flame which had the marvellous property of healing all diseases, mental as well as bodily, if those who received it had faith.[c]

10[Sidenote: [1050-1076 A.D.]]

11The inclination to acquire holiness by the journey to Jerusalem became at length so general that the troops of pilgrims alarmed by their numbers the countries through which they passed, and although they came not as soldiers they were designated “the armies of the Lord.” In the year 1054, Litbert, bishop of Cambray, set out for the Holy Land, followed by more than three thousand pilgrims from the provinces of Picardy and Flanders.

12Ten years after, seven thousand Christians set out together from the banks of the Rhine. This numerous caravan, which was the forerunner of the Crusades, crossed Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Thrace, and was welcomed at Constantinople by the emperor Constantine Ducas. After having visited the churches of Byzantium, the pilgrims of the West traversed Asia Minor and Syria without danger; but when they approached Jerusalem, the sight of their riches aroused the cupidity of the Bedouin Arabs, undisciplined hordes, who had neither country nor settled abode, and who had rendered themselves formidable in the civil wars of the East. The Arabs attacked the pilgrims of the West, and compelled them to sustain a siege in an abandoned village; and this was on a Good Friday. The emir of Ramala, informed by some fugitives, came happily to their rescue, delivered them from the death with which they were threatened, and permitted them to continue their journey. After having lost more than three thousand of their companions, they returned to Europe, to relate their tragical adventures, and the dangers of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.