MEDIEVAL PILGRIMAGE
How to go on a medieval pilgrimage
Are you a medieval worshipper looking to demonstrate the strength of your devotion? A pilgrimage could be the answer – and we have the ultimate guide to planning your trip…
WHERE TO GO
the tallest building on Earth
There are many reasons for going on pilgrimage. You may wish to undertake the journey to show your religious devotion. You may be doing penance for sins you’ve committed. You may wish to be cured of a serious medical condition or illness, or to gain a cure for someone else. You may wish to make a political protest: to visit the tombs of Simon de Montfort or King Henry VI, because you supported their causes. Or you may just be in need of a holiday and a little adventure.
But pilgrimages cost time and money. Most people cannot spend long away from their work, their children or their farm animals. Going a great distance means either walking, which is wearying; travelling in a carrier’s cart for which you have to pay; or riding a horse, which you must own or hire. Then how are you to find food or a bed? You can beg, which is hazardous, or you may be able to stay in a monastery, but often the only alternatives will be inns or private houses charging money.
This means that, for most people, pilgrimage is a local matter. You go out for the day, often with friends and neighbours, to visit a nearby abbey, church or chapel. You take a picnic and get home by nightfall. Long pilgrimages to the most famous shrines are chiefly made by the wealthy, who can a ord to take time off and have money to spend, or by very devout poor people who support themselves as best they can along the way.
Local pilgrimage places are innumerable. Many churches have images of Christ or the Virgin Mary, which are reckoned to be especially holy and where your prayer may be answered. Small chapels are also popular, usually on their festival day once a year, especially ones in romantic places such as hilltops, woods or caves. If you have the means to travel further, there is also a wide choice of places to go. Canterbury Cathedral, with the shrine of Thomas Becket, canonised in 1173, is the most famous and busiest shrine of all, attracting pilgrims from all over Britain and from the Continent. Other notable churches to visit are Walsingham in Norfolk, which has a copy of the Virgin Mary’s house at Nazareth and is a shrine in her honour, and Hailes Abbey in Gloucestershire, which possesses some of the blood of Christ in a crystal phial. Of course, anyone lucky enough to live close to these places can easily visit them in a single day.
WHEN TO GO
Scheduling your pilgrimage properly will be crucial to your enjoyment of the whole experience. The best time to go is from after Easter until the autumn. This is when the weather is better, the roads are drier and (except at harvest times) there is less work to do on the land. But you do not have to make a pilgrimage the whole point of your travel. If you are going on business, even to a market in a nearby town, or if you are a wealthy member of the aristocracy, moving from manor to manor or to London, this will allow you to call in at churches with an image or a shrine, on the way or at your destination. A pilgrimage can be part of a journey for other reasons.
WHAT TO BRING
terrain meant a staff would have
been a key piece of kit
For your time on the road, you may dress in normal clothes suitable for travelling (Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims were dressed in this way). Some pilgrims, chiefly men, wear a special outfit, but this is not compulsory. It consists of a wooden staff for support (and for warding off hostile dogs), a wide-brimmed hat to protect you from sun and rain, and a bag in which to carry your provisions.
Make sure that you also bring or buy an offering to the image or shrine. Candles, coins and jewellery are all acceptable. At the major pilgrimage places, you may purchase a wax image to hang up at the shrine as a sign that you are asking for help, or to give thanks for help you have already received. These can include little human figures, parts of the body such as hearts, limbs and fingers, or images of animals or hawks.
HOW TO TRAVEL AND WHERE TO STAY
It is more pleasant to travel in company than alone. On a short pilgrimage you may go as a church group, and on a longer one, you are likely to find other people on the roads whom you can join. Indeed, Chaucer describes pilgrims from different parts of England – including Devon, Norfolk and Oxford – meeting in Southwark, across the Thames from London, and forming a party to go to Canterbury.
You will mostly travel by the ordinary roads rather than by special pilgrim ways. The main roads have inns and shops to buy food, and they are safer as long as you go in a group.
You can stay briefly in a monastic almonry, where you may be able to secure basic food and lodging. Monasteries, by the later Middle Ages, however, are tending to build inns for this purpose, and these inns will probably charge for staying, as other inns do. Private houses are likely to take in travellers, but there too some payment will be expected.
WHEN YOU GET THERE
Kent, commemorating one of England’s most
popular pilgrim routes
The best time to arrive is the early morning, so that you can attend mass in the church. After that, you will visit the main image or shrine that you have come to see, and there you will make your offering, and pray for your needs. The church may have other relics to show you: when the scholar Erasmus visits Walsingham in 1512, he is shown a bone of Saint Peter and some of the breast milk of the Virgin Mary. But relics are more likely to be brought out for wealthy pilgrims who can be expected to make generous offerings.
After visiting the shrine, you may wish to buy a souvenir in the form of a lead or pewter badge to wear on your hat. At Canterbury you can also purchase a small lead phial of water that has been in contact with a drop of the blood of Saint Thomas. This may be taken home and kept for veneration, or for drinking during a serious illness.
EXPECT SOME DISAPPROVAL
shrine of Saint Thomas Becket, would have
been worn as a cherished souvenir of a
pilgrim’s travels
Not everyone will approve of you going on pilgrimage. Some images are claimed to have powers that the Church does not endorse, and a few bishops have expressly forbade people from venerating them.
A series of writers have also criticised pilgrimage. They include Chaucer’s contemporary, William Langland (the author of the poem Piers Plowman); the followers of John Wycliffe (died 1384), known as the Lollards; and Erasmus in the early 16th century. These men question the superstitions associated with some pilgrim places, and think that human life is the only pilgrimage that God asks us to follow. Instead, people should stay at home, work, go to their local church, and give money to the poor rather than shrines and images.
If you ignore these views and still wish to go, just make sure that you do so before 1538, because in that year Henry VIII will ban the practice altogether!
FOUR OTHER PLACES TO GO ON PILGRIMAGE
Don’t fancy Canterbury? Here are some more holy sites for your consideration…
DURHAM CATHEDRAL ▲
The relics of Saint Cuthbert ended up here in AD 995, having not had a permanent home after the Vikings’ sacking of Lindisfarne more than two centuries earlier. The relics were the primary reason for pilgrims to visit Durham, especially after they were placed in the new cathedral in the early 12th century.
THE SHRINE OF OUR LADY OF WALSINGHAM ▲
Located in the Norfolk village of Walsingham, this popular shrine was established in 1061 by a noblewoman who had a vision of the Virgin Mary asking her to build a replica of the house at Nazareth in which she brought up Jesus.
ST ALBANS CATHEDRAL ▲
The shrine to Saint Alban, a Christian martyr who died at the hands of the Romans (possibly around AD 304), was visited by pilgrims from the fifth Century onwards. The Venerable Bede would later describe it as a place where “there ceases not to this day the miraculous eures of many sick persons, and the frequent working of wonders”.
ST MICHAEL’S MOUNT ▲
The saint’s chief shrine in Britain attracted some pilgrims from far away (it seems to have been regarded as Land’s End is today), but it was especially popular as a local place of pilgrimage for Cornish people, most of whom could visit on a short journey.