• ~~~OBE0'99 JACOBEAN PILGRIMS FROM ENGLAND TO ST. JAMES OF COMPOSTELLA Conselleiro de Cultura, Comunicación Social e Turismo: Jesús Pérez Vareta Secretario Xeral da Consellería de Cultura, Comunicación Social e Turismo: Andrés González Murga Xerente de Promoción do Ccuniíio ele Santiago: María A. Antón Vilasánchez Edita: Xunta de Galicia Conse ll erí a de Cultura, Comunicac ión Social e Turismo Xerencia de Promoción do Camiño de Santiago Dirección Editorial: María A. Antón Vilasánchez Coordinación Editorial: José Luis Tato Castiñeira Autor: Constance Mary Storrs © Xunta de Ga li cia Imprime: Tórculo Artes Gráficas, S.A.L. Dep. Legal: C-1999-98 !.S.B. N. : 84-453-2287-7 CONSTANCE M ARY S TORRS JACOBEAN PILGRIMS FROM ENGLAND TO ST. JAMES OF COMPOSTELLA FROM THE EARLY TWELFTH TO THE LA TE FIFTEENTH CENTUR Y SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA 1994 J 1 This work by the english profesor Constance Storrs, who, regrettably, is no longer with us, portains to the research she didfor her doctoral thesis. It is a praiseworthy contribution to the study of the pilgrimages from the British Isles to Santiago de Compostela during the Middle A ges. In this day and age, when the bibliography on pilgrimages has evolved sign(ficantly, it is fitting to give due recognition to the ground-breaking work of this authOJ~ and as a result, the dissemination of Ja cobean studies on the British Isles. Th e idea of dijjúsion of Ja cobean studies, which inspired her throughout her Long and fruitful life, germinated on the British Is /es and prevails to this day through the work of the Confraternity of St. James, which promotes the Jacobean milestone and the Way of St. James. Th e Ministry of Culture, Social Communication, and Tourism of the Xunta de Galicia considers that the reprinting of her work this Holy Year of Santiago de Compostela 1999 will pay due homage to Constan.ce Storrs. Jesús Pérez Vareta Minister of Culture, Social Conimunication, an.d Tourism of the Autonomous Government. íl 1 FOREWORD I T WAS with great expectation that I attended the first international conference arranged by the Confraternity of St. James in London and at Hengrave Hall, Suffolk, in March 1990. The main theme was to be Pilgrims from the British Isles to Santiago de Compostela in the Middle Ages, and the principal reason for my anticipation was that Constance Storrs was to be present. This lady, whom I had never met, had spearheaded research into this field sorne thirty years earlier and presented the results in a th~sis for a London University Master's Degree in 1964. On that occasion I gave a lecture, not without sorne misgiving, for much of the material was derived from the unpublished thesis. She was gracious and forgiving enough to invite me home to discuss the future of her research materials, which she decided to hand over to me and let me deal with their disposal. This brief and happy occasion was the one and only time I had conversation with her, for she died on August 24 of that same year. A R equiem Mass was said for her at Westminster Cathedral on Wednesday, December 5, 1990. Constance Storrs had been a lecturer in Business Studies at what were then the Kingston and Regent Street Polytechnics. In the 1960's she took time off to engage in postgraduate study at U niversity College, London; her choice of subj ect was that which I have quoted above, and her supervisor was the well-known economic historian Dr E. M. Carus­ Wilson. There was little published material for her to work on. Sorne general works on the pilgrimage had been published, of which the latest and most detailed were the three volumes by Luis Vázquez de Parga, José María Lacarra and Juan Uría Riu 1948-9. They were the forerunners of well-researched studies of the pilgrimage in its wider contexts, and their work is still indispensable today. Although they were - JO- hampered by working during the Second World War in Spain, they managed to get hold of an edition of the documents published by R ymer from the Public Record Office ( Foedera, 1704-1735). This was the best entry in to the narrower topic of pilgrims to Santiago from the British Isles. It was on that famous institution, which has preserved millions of medieval documents (and this in marked contrast to other European monarchies) that Constance Storrs fixed her unwavering attention. Whatever else may have been superseded in her thesis , her salient contribution was to ransack the unpublished official records, like the Chancery Miscellanea, the Guild Certificates, the Treaty Rolls, the Exchequer Accounts and Customs Records. Although easier, it was no less laborious to sift through the published records , like the Calendars of Chancery Warrants, of Glose Rolls, of Fine Rolls, of Patent Rolls, of lnquisitions Post Mortem etc. She also plunged into the Municipal Archives of Corunna in search of data on ship movements. As a result we have a much firmer grasp of the nature and scope, particularly of maritime traffi c from the British lsles, the social classes which participated, the motives and approaches of pilgrims to their undertaking, the routes they took and what observations they made. As Constance Storrs concludes, this is only part of the story; countless others have escaped attention. Constance Storrs received her degree of M .A. from the Queen Mother in 1964. At that moment she had no clear idea of what might happen to her years of labour. She did not know that the Confraternity of St. J ames was to be founded in London sorne seventeen years later and that her thesis was eventuall y located by that body at the University's lnstitute of Historical Research. Dr Mary Remnant, the noted musicologist, spent severa! years trying to locate the author whom she eventually found in the tiny village of Badwell Ash in Suffolk where she was living in retirement with her husband. Mrs Storrs was immediately invited to become an honorary member of the Confraternity and also invited to attend the Hengrave Hall Conference where she met many enthusiastic scholars. Those who were there can only thank Providence that we were able to show our gratitude for her labours just befare she died. Many attempts were made in the ensuing years to have the thesis retyped and submitted for publishing. Eventually we were fortunate enough to receive an offer from, appropriately, the Regional Government (the X unta) of Galicia to publish the work in more or less its original form. 1 say this advisedly, because any attempt to revise the text to bring it up to date would have the effect of distorting the opening chapters and obscuring the work that -11- was done in the immediate postwar years. Nowadays, it is true, there are infinitely better histories of Spain in both English and Spanish, and the bibliography on the topic of pilgrimage in ali European languages has expanded enormously. To take a few examples from English, there have appeared since the 1960s Víctor and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (New York, 1978), ?eter Brown, The Cult of the Saints (Chicago, 1981), Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind (Philadelphia, 1982). On the immediate historical background there has been Richard Fletcher, St James 's Catapult. The Life and Times of Diego Gelmírez (Oxford, 1984); on medieval trade, Wendy R. Childs, Anglo-Castilian Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Manchester, 1978) and Elisa Ferreira Friegue, Gaiicia en el com ercio m arítimo medieval (Santiago, 1988); on the camino itself there are Marilyn Stokstad, Santiago de Compostela in the Age of the Great Pilgrimages (Norman, USA, 1978), Horton and Marie Hélene Davies, Holy Days and Holidays: the Medieval Pilgrimage to Santiago (1982). And finally Book V of the Codex Calixtinus has been edited and translated by Paula Gerson et al. in two volumes, The Pilgrim 's Cuide to Santiago de Compostela, Critica] Edition and A Catalogue of Monuments. A shorter edition, translated by James Hogarth, was published by the Confraternity of StJames in 1992, and was the first fu]] translation to appear in English. Therefore, in view of the intrusive nature of revision, I would beg indulgence for our wishes to be respected, to leave the work as a monument to a researcher who laboured with a single purpose towards accomplishing a task that was only accomplished severa! years after her death at the age of 79. Robert BRIAN TATE Nottingham ABBREVIATIONS B.L. British Library CCR Calendar of Glose Rolls CIPM Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem CPR Calendar of Patent Rolls E.E. T.S. Early English Text Society Foedera Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae et cujuscunque generis acta publica, ed. T. Rymer Historia Historia de la S.A.M. Iglesia de Santiago de Compostela K.R. King's Remembrancer L.S.]. Líber Sancti ]acobi PRO Public R ecord Office P.S.J. Peregrinaciones a Santiago de Compostela T /R Treaty Roll INTRODUCTION THE practice of pilgrimage was an established feature of mediaeval Christendom and pilgrims frequented numerous local and «national» shrines. But above all these lesser ones there were three which attracted the faithful from every part of Christendom -Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago de Compostela. The first two were known from the early days of the Christian church although not publicly visited until the fourth century when the Roman Empire became Christian under Constantine; but of the third, the shrine of St James the Greater, little was known until about the middle of the ninth century when what was accepted as the saint's tomb was discovered in a far corner of Galicia in north­ west Spain.