MEDIEVAL EUROPEAN PILGRIMAGE, c.700–c.1500 European Culture and Society General Editor: Jeremy Black Published Lesley Hall Sex, Gender & Social Change in Britian since 1880 Keith D. Lilley Urban Life in the Middle Ages: 1000–1450 Neil MacMaster Racism in Europe, 1870–2000 W. M. Spellman European Political Thought, 1600–1700 Diana Webb Medieval European Pilgrimage, c.700–c.1500 European Culture and Society Series Series Standing Order ISBN 978-0-333-74440-6 (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England MEDIEVAL EUROPEAN PILGRIMAGE, c.700–c.1500 Diana Webb © Diana Webb 2002 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2002 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin’s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN 978-0-333-76259-2 hardcover ISBN 978-0-333-76260-8 ISBN 978-1-4039-1380-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4039-1380-7 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Webb, Diana. Medieval European pilgrimage, c.700–c.1500 / Diana Webb. p. cm.—(European culture and society) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-333-76259-2 — ISBN 978-0-333-76260-8 (pbk.) 1. Christian pilgrims and pilgrimages—Europe—History. 2. Church history—Middle Ages, 600–1500. 3. Europe—Church history— 600–1500. I. Title. II. European culture and society (Palgrave (Firm)) BX2320.5.E85 W43 2002 263′.0424′0902—dc21 2001056145 10987654321 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 CONTENTS Preface vi Map Medieval pilgrimage sites and other places mentioned in the text vii Introduction viii 1 Medieval Pilgrimage: an Outline 1 2 Motives for Pilgrimage 44 3 Varieties of Pilgrim 78 4 The Geography of Pilgrimage 114 5 Pilgrimage in Medieval Culture 154 Notes 182 Suggestions for Further Reading 186 Index 192 v PREFACE This book is intended for students; it is only sparingly annotated. Where dates are given for kings, popes, etc., they are regnal dates. The bibliog- raphy is divided into broad categories which, it is hoped, will make it possible to find further guidance on particular topics without too much difficulty. It is not a comprehensive bibliography of medieval pilgrim- age, still less does it adequately cover the associated topics of sanctity, miracles and crusade. The books and articles listed are mostly, but not exclusively, in English, but their bibliographies and footnotes provide multiple signposts to relevant scholarship in several languages. They include a few on modern and non-Christian pilgrimage, and also some sources, where possible in English translation. A miscellany of translated sources is to be found in my Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in the Medieval West (1999) and some of the quotations used in the text come from that source. For the map, and a great deal else, I am indebted to my husband, Dr A. W. Webb. My other major debts are to the multitude of scholars who have written about medieval pilgrimage and edited relevant texts, and to the institutions which have made it possible to explore this literature: a special word is owed to the Institute of Historical Research of London University and, as ever, to the London Library. vi L beckü Stade Wilsnack Amsterdam Utrecht Hildesheim London Den Bosch Elbe Canterbury Brussels Maastricht Köln Aachen Rhein Arras Seine Trier Würzburg Rouen Paris Rothenburg Regensburg Donau Ulm Tours × × × × × × × × × × × Vevey × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × Alps × × × × × × × Rhone × × × × × × Verona × × × Milano Po Venezia × St Antoine Grenoble× × Piacenza × × × × Bologna × × × × × Firenze Gubbio Santiago × × × × × × × × × Toulouse Loreto ×× Pyrenees× × Siena Assisi × × ×× × Tiber ×× ×× ×× ×× Sutri ×× Ortona Roma San Michele Barcelona Bari vii Map Medieval pilgrimage sites and other places mentioned in the text INTRODUCTION Pilgrimage is not a peculiarly Christian or European phenomenon, still less a peculiarly medieval one. In one or another of its many shapes, it has been a feature of most of the world’s religions, and its origins probably go back long before the written record. The apparently deep-seated human tendency to locate the holy at a distance from one’s everyday surroundings and to seek solutions to personal problems and the allevi- ation of suffering (or boredom) in a journey to such a place was clearly manifested in pre-Christian cultures. In the religions which preceded Christianity in the Near Eastern and Mediterranean region we can observe features that will persist throughout the Christian epoch. The idea that particular benefits accrued in the afterlife to those who had made the pilgrimage to Osiris at Abydos became familiar to Egyptians of the New Kingdom, and Abydos remained an important shrine in the Hellenistic and Roman epochs. Healing shrines, not least those sacred to Asklepios, abounded in ancient Greece. The ‘guidebook’ written in the second century AD by Pausanias mentioned many of them, as well as the great sanctuaries such as Olympia with their imposing panoply of sculp- tural images. Greeks practised ‘incubation’, sleeping at a shrine in order to obtain a cure, and medieval Christians developed their own version of the practice. The ancient Tuscan city of Arezzo illustrates continuities and recur- rences over a period of more than two thousand years. In 1869 a large haul of objects was discovered in the vicinity of a spring known as the Fonte Veneziana, in the area of the modern cemetery just east of the modern city. They included votive offerings such as bronze models of body parts (eyes, legs, arms) dating from the sixth century before Christ. On the hilltop known as Castelsecco south-east of the city, there are remains of a theatre and a temple which is thought to have been sacred to an Etruscan goddess, later equated with the Roman Juno, who was invoked by pregnant women. Here terracotta models of swaddled babies viii Introduction ix have been found, dating from the second century BC; these may have been left in petition for a safe delivery or in thanksgiving for one. Other finds at Arezzo, as at other Etruscan and Roman sites, include little models of horses, cows and other animals, some with loops for hanging them up. Ex votos of similar types were deposited at the Christian shrines of medieval Europe. The Fonte Veneziana remained in use until about 1500 and another spring to the south of Arezzo, known as the Fons Tectus or Tetta, was also still frequented in the early fifteenth century. The Franciscan preacher Bernardino of Siena heard about it when he preached in the city in Lent 1425, and identified it as a ‘pagan’ sanctuary, which he tried to have destroyed, but the local nobility opposed his efforts and drove him out of town. On a second visit in 1428, he was successful. Bernar- dino consecrated an oratory of the Virgin on the site, and after his own death and canonisation a chapel in his name was added to what is now the elegant Renaissance church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. By 1482 a superbly graceful portico had been built to accommodate the pilgrims who now flocked to the church in honour, not of a holy well, but of the Virgin and Bernardino. For at least two thousand years successive generations of Aretines had been frequenting local shrines, and some of them undoubtedly made longer journeys in the hope of reaping bigger rewards. They also expected, or hoped, to play host to pilgrims from elsewhere. In the fourteenth century the city statutes proclaimed safeconduct for ‘those who are visiting the shrines of any saints reposing in the city of Arezzo or its district’, or who were passing through on their way to St James of Compostela, to Rome or to the shrine of St Michael the Archangel in Apulia. Christians, like the adherents of other religions, sought in particular places the visual and tactile embodiment of a reality other and higher than themselves, not just in a generalised sense of ‘the holy’, but in the form of contact with the continuing presence of the great departed. These impulses are very far from extinct, as any observer of modern tourism will instantly recognise. The visitor to Paris may choose to satisfy them by visiting the Père Lachaise cemetery or Napoleon’s tomb, or he may fight to get a glimpse of the Mona Lisa behind its bullet-proof shield, even though a good reproduction would serve the purposes of study just as well or better. The point of this last exercise is that the tourist can say that he or she has seen the ‘real thing’, however fleetingly and imperfectly.