Pilgrimage to the holy shrines of Latin Christendom was a striking feature of popular religious experience from the early Middle Ages to the eve of the Reformation. Pilgrimages were undertaken to seek a miraculous cure at the tomb of a saint; to perform the penitential rite of the ascetic journey; and to receive the spiritual reward of an indulgence, such as the crusader's plenary indulgence for the Jerusalem pilgrimage. During the first of the medieval Jubilees—the remarkable Holy Year of 1300, the year in which
Dante's celebrated Divine Comedy is set—Pope Boniface VIII granted a plenary indulgence to pilgrims who visited designated Roman stational churches. In addition to religious motives for pilgrimage, more secular cravings for travel, adventure or escape also played an important part in directing the footsteps of medieval proto-tourists.
Punitive pilgrimages were imposed by some secular powers (the Flemish towns, for instance), but they were especially utilized by the inquisitorial courts of Carcassonne, Albi and
Toulouse as penances for the former heretics of Languedoc. These Inquisitors drew upon an old distinction between 'major' and 'minor' pilgrimage sites. Here the shrines where the 'major' saints were venerated—St James of Compostela, Sts Peter and Paul of Rome, the Three-Kings of Cologne, and St Thomas Becket of Canterbury—provide us with the four outstanding 'high places' of thirteenth-century Christendom. On the other hand, the choice of 'minor' pilgrimage sites is not representative of the great number of regional and local shrines dotted throughout Europe, but instead reflects the southern French perspective of the Inquisitors and the locality of the penitent ex-heretics. A few of the most important shrines not mentioned by the Inquisitors have been marked on the map. A complete map of Christian holy places, however, listing all the miraculous images, translated Eastern saints' relics, pieces of the True Cross, venerated hosts and so on—could it be drawn— would be so detailed as to be virtually unreadable. Indeed, by the late Middle Ages, most localities in Christendom could lay claim to some saint or sacred object worthy of a pilgrim's devotion.
Like pilgrimage, many thirteenth-century revivals had an itinerant (or at least an ambulatory, processional) character. Like pilgrimage, too, revivals were instances of public, collective and popular religious behaviour. They began with a religious crowd, developed into a movement, and sometimes, as with the flagellants of 1260, created durable religious institutions. The flagellant movement of 1260 began in Perugia and completed its transalpine trek in 1261 in northern Poland. It was fundamentally penitential, prophetic and Christocentric in nature, although strongly influenced by its crusading context. In contrast, the children's crusade of 1212 and the shepherds' crusade of 1251 were both popular, i. e. unofficial, crusades: the papacy did not authorize them. The children's crusade of 1212 began with processions, which probably were held at Chartres, to obtain divine support for the threatened Spanish Church. Ultimately, the majority of its adherents settled in Mediterranean cities. The enthusiasts of the shepherds' crusade of 1251 proclaimed their intent to assist King Louis IX of France against the Saracens of Egypt. This movement, however, turned violent, antisemitic and anti-clerical, and was put down by force. All three of these popular enthusiasms gained recruits along the line of march. These recruits were usually peasants, but also included townspeople, who joined when the enthusiasts passed through cities. The Lombard 'Great Hallelujah' of 1233 was itinerant only in respect to the huge crowds who gathered to hear the sermons of miracle-working friars. It was a revival promoted by Franciscan and Dominican friars, who emphasized preaching. It was a notable medieval peace movement.
Just as with both pilgrimages and crusades, such medieval revivals show how religious enthusiasm could mobilize large groups of ordinary believers and influence their behaviour in many ways.
G. Dickson
World History
