often gave rise to affecting and even romantic incidents, which are presented at intervals on the page of history. The pilgrim and hoary palmer are interesting characters in the early and middle ages of the Church. The last pilgrim that I met was an old man, who bore his staff and had his cockle hat; and who begged alms of me as I was riding up a mountain near the river Seine. Oh, come ye from East, or come ye from West, Or come ye from the shrine of St. James the divine, He was Pélerin de St. Jaques en Gallice. It is justly right and quite in character for the amusing author of a History of Fiction to tell us of "the lying horde of pilgrims from the holy land;" but he who would give a history of true facts will often have occasion to admire the piety and humility of these holy men at all events, as Socrates says, it is not proper that a man who loves the Muses should be unacquainted with them. They are often met with in poetic regions: Now was the hour that wakens fond desire In men at sea, and melts their thoughtful heart These poor pilgrims were often great princes in disguise, who were glad to suffer indignities for the love of God. Alas! when men behold God dishonoured, does it seem ridiculous that they should shrink from being honoured? Our early history is full of examples of royal pilgrims; such as Cenred, king of Mercia; Offa, king of the east Saxons; Ceodulfe, king of Northumbria. King Lucius is said to have renounced his crown and the world, and to have preached the Gospel in the Grissons; and St. Adelme, a holy pilgrim from the banks of the Thames, is said to have taken his station on a bridge, where, with his sweet melodious accents, he used to convert the idolaters to the Christian faith. It is a memorable history which is re 1 Dante, Purgatory; Carey's translation. 2 La Gaule Poétique, ii. 114. lated of a stranger returning from a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella, and arriving at the castle of Raymond Berenger, count of Provence, where he was so hospitably received, that he attached himself to his court, and shewed such capacity, that the prince confided in him the administration of his finances. His attention soon tripled the revenue nevertheless the pilgrim did not escape the envy of the courtiers, who prevailed upon the count to call for his accounts. 66 My lord," replied the pilgrim, "I have served you a long time, and have put your estate into order; the malice of your barons obliges you to pay me with ingratitude. I was a poor pilgrim when I came to your court, and I have lived honestly on the wages you allowed me. Order them to give me back my mule, my staff, and my bottle, and so I depart as I came." The count was moved at his words, and endeavoured to retain him; but he persisted in his resolution, and went his way. Some say that from this pilgrim, called Romieu, from his having been to Rome, and supposed to have been of the house of Arragon, is descended the illustrious family of Villeneuve. Pilgrims were under the protection of the Church: "All pilgrims, recluses, hermits, of whatever country, are under the especial protection of our holy father at Rome," says the author of L'Arbre des Batailles, "et peuvent faire et accomplir leurs pelerinages et voyages par toute la Chrestienté la ou leur devotion sera ou au saint sepulchre, ou ailleurs ou ils auront voue a aller en pelerinage, soit en temps de guerre, de paix, ou de treves, quelque temps qu'il soit sur terre. Et en ce cas cy sont privilegies comme gens d'Eglise :" "so that if the richest citizen or merchant of London" (observe the character he takes)" should be moved to go on pilgrimage to St. Denis or to St. Antony of Vienne, he need have no safe-conduct. Et sans faulte toute personne qui mit la main sur pelerin ou pelerine il va contre l'ordonnance et sauvegarde du Pape." So the question is proposed: "A French knight with his company riding before Bourdeaux, meets on the road an old citizen coming from hearing mass in a chapel without the city, where there is a hermitage; ought the knight to take him prisoner? The answer is, that he 1 Chap. c. should be let go free. belled against Earl Richard (Cœur de Lion), he defeated them, and kept one Peter Seille in very strayte prison, and would not put him to his ransome; wherefore Earl Reymond took two of the King of England's knights, Sir Robert Poer and Sir Richard Fraser, as they were returning from Compostella; but they were quickly set at liberty by the French king's commandment, for the reverence of St. James, whose pilgrims they were.' "1 It was for the use of pilgrims that the famous Itinerary from Bordeaux to Jerusalem was composed. I am not willing to take any notice of the commonplace declamation which the moderns are so fond of in ridicule and censure of these holy and venerable practices. Bad men may have concealed their wickedness under their cloak of devotion : this is no modern discovery. "Dieu seul sait qui bon pélerin est," was the saying of our old ancestors, of men who received every pilgrim for the love of God, who, like Count Raimond de St. Gilles, would name their own house Chasteau Pelerin; who were quite as sharp-sighted as their descendants, and who were not in the least behind them in horror "de la abominable simulation ou fiction de sainctete," as Gilles de Rome calls it. Sismondi, in his History of the Italian Republics, does full justice to the conduct of the millions of Christians who made a pilgrimage to Rome in 1350.2 Busching, too, another witness, whom even the moderns cannot suspect, leads his reader to conclude, "that amidst the excessive fatigues to which men thus exposed themselves, there could hardly have been wanting moments in which the penance inflicted on the outer man was changed into an inward and lasting return to God." Among the Anglo-Saxon Penitential Canons, A.D. 963, we read as follows: " Deep satisfaction is this, that a layman lay aside his weapons, and travel far away, and not be a second night in the same place; and fast, and watch much, and pray earnestly night and day; that he come not into a warm bath nor a soft bed, nor taste flesh nor spirits; that he come not within a church, (though he zealously inquire after holy places), and declare his guilt, and earnestly beg prayers for himself, and kiss. 'Holinshed, 467. The nobles of Poictou having re 2 Vol. vi. 43. 3 Ritterzeit und Ritterwesen, ii. 159. nobody, but be always vehemently bewailing his sins." Let any man read the pilgrimage of Duke William V. of Aquitaine to St. James in Galicia, in 1136, when he retired from the world, and say, if he can, that here was not the sorrow and repentance unto life. Bouchet, in his book Le Bouquet Sacré de la Terre Saincte, shewing the spiritual advantage to be derived from a pilgrimage, says, that the Hebrews used the same word for pilgrimage and tribulation: and even Fleury admits, that a penitent travelling alone, or with another, observed a rule, fasted or lived soberly, kept hours of meditation and silence, sung psalms, or had edifying conversation. If they had committed sin, they knew what was their hope, and they now sought to ascend by their vices and their passions. "De vitiis nostris scalam nobis facimus," said St. Augustine, “si vitia ipsa calcamus."2 The solemn and penitential spirit under the palmer's cowl, or even knightly armour, gave rise to many awful examples of mortification: And here it soothes him to abide, For some dark deed he will not name; Reveals too much of times gone by. Slow sweeps he through the column'd aisle ; And hear the prayer, but utter none. When William Longue-épée, the warlike Duke of Normandy, was assassinated, they found under his clothes the inner garment of a monk; for he had made a vow to renounce the world, and was about to have put it in execution. The title of one chapter in L'Arbre des Batailles was enough to cast a shade of solemnity over the warrior's brow: "Se ung chevalier meurt en la bataille, se nous dirons que son ame soit sauvée ou se elle est dampnée ?”3 The author first concludes that it is not saved, because "mortel homme qui meurt en ire et en malle voulente on croit qu'il soit mort en pechie mortel;" nathless, he draws three other conclusions. If he dies fighting for the faith, and otherwise is not in mortal sin, "il s'en va en Paradis : 2. if in a just war, for a just cause, he goes to Paradise 3. if he dies in unjust battle for unjust cause, il est en See Jean de Bouchet, Annales d'Aquitaine, 131. 2 Serm. iii. de Ascens. 3 Chap. liii. ; voye de dampnacion." Among Lanfranc's Canons, A.D. MLXXII. we read, "This is the penance for the soldiers whom William, Duke of Normandy, had in arms. Let him who knows he killed a man in the great battle (Hastings), do penance one year for every man slain by him; for every one that he struck, if he do not know that he died of the blow, forty days: if he know not the number of men whom he has slain or struck, let him do penance one day in every week, as long as he lives; or if he be able, let him redeem it with perpetual alms, by building or endowing a church. Let him that intended to strike any one, though he did it not, do penance for three days." Before the siege of Orleans by the English, the inhabitants knowing that war under all circumstances gives occasion to disorder and license, proceeded to excuse themselves beforehand, and to beg the mercy of God with pious processions. In 963, those who were poor are ordered, in the Anglo-Saxon canons, to " frequent churches with alms, and salute holy places with light, and give hospitality, and meat and protection to them who want it, and afford fire and bed and bath and clothing and succour to the poor; to visit the sorrowful and sick with relief, and bury the dead, in devotion to God, and kneel down often in secret, and often vehemently extend their limbs on the ground, and pray by day and night." Those who were rich in the primitive church had to benefit the world by great works. Thus Theodoret says, "I erected public porticos; I built two great bridges; I took care of the public baths; I built an aqueduct and supplied a city with water." Hear an eye-witness describe the penance of an emperor : "Stravit omne quo utebatur insigne regium, deflevit in ecclesia publice peccatum suum: gemitu et lacrimis oravit veniam. Quod privati erubescunt, non erubuit imperator publice agere pœnitentiam.”2 The heroes of the old romances of chivalry are not less careful of their soul's state. When Beltenebros was accosted by the unknown damsels, who prayed him to tell them for courtesy what place was that where they had landed and who he was; Ladies," he replied, "they call it the Rock of the Hermitage, because of the hermit who dwells here. As for me, I am a poor 1 Thomassin, iii. iii. 37. 2 Div. Ambrosii de Obitu Theodosii Imp. Serm. |
