An Empire of Memory (25 page)

the Italian Normans landed at Avlona, south of Durazzo, and proceeded on the

southern branch of the Via Egnatia to Constantinople via Thessalonica.56

Sea travel, although much faster than the overland route, continued to be

perceived as inherently dangerous. Even if for ‘all the dangers modern medievalists

have posited along early medieval shipping routes, very few of our early travelers

had their voyage interrupted by violence’, shipwreck and illness nevertheless

continued to be real impediments to the journey.57 Of course, this is not to say

that any route was free of danger. Udalric of Celle, for instance, was attacked by

‘gentiles’ in the Holy Land during his early eleventh-century pilgrimage, only to be

saved through the miraculous intervention of God.58 Nevertheless, there were a few

factors that may have argued against traveling by sea at this time and for using this

new land route. First, the perceived dangers of sea travel by a segment of the

population wholly unused to it should not be underestimated. Jean Verdon

summarizes (and perhaps overgeneralizes) that ‘for a land civilization like that of

the Middle Ages, the sea could only provoke fear, anxiety, and repulsion’.59

Second, pirates were still a problem. The Italian maritime cities were not yet the

forces they would become in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and Byzantine

naval power, although resurgent, was nonetheless a shadow of its former self. Both

of these factors allowed maritime raiders, including fleets out of Egypt and Iberia,

to more-or-less raid at will. Finally, the number of people traveling together on

pilgrimage generally became much larger in the eleventh century, making the cost

of a sea journey more prohibitive.

The first ‘great’ (large-scale) eleventh-century pilgrimage to the Holy Land, in

1026, saw Abbot Richard of Saint-Vannes of Verdun lead a group of approximately

700 notables to Jerusalem. The party included such figures as the count of

Angoulême, the abbot of Saint-Cybard of Angoulême, the abbot of St Martin of

Trier, and many other nobles and clerics from Normandy, northern Francia,

55 McCormick, Origins, 559–62; and Ebersolt, Orient, 71.

56 See Jonathan Riley-Smith (ed.), The Atlas of the Crusades (New York, 1991), 30–1.

57 McCormick, Origins, 170.

58 Ex vita posteriore s. Udalrici Prioris Cellensis, MGH SS 12: 256.

59 Jean Verdon, Travel in the Middle Ages, tr. George Holoch (Notre Dame, Ind., 2003), 55–72,

quotation at 55; and Aryeh Graboïs, ‘Les Pèlerinages du XIe siècle en Terre Sainte dans

l’historiographie occidentale de l’époque’, Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 101 (2006), 531.

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Jerusalem

Lotharingia, and Aquitaine.60 There does not seem to have been any participation

outside the aristocracy. Regardless, Abbot Richard and his party suffered at the

hands of bandits and ‘gentiles’ on their way but eventually arrived safely at

Jerusalem, where they honored the sites of the Passion and shed many tears on

Calvary and in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.61

Ralph Glaber, near the end of fourth book of his Histories, wrote of another large

number of Westerners who departed on pilgrimage around 1033. He said that:

an innumerable multitude of people from the whole world, greater than any man

before could have hoped to see, began to travel to the Sepulchre of the Saviour at

Jerusalem. First to go were the petty people, then those of middling estate, and next the

powerful . . . finally, and this was something which had never happened before,

numerous women, noble and poor, undertook the journey.62

Ralph is, of course, a problematic source on many levels and might not immediately

be trusted. Other contemporary narratives, however, bear out his claims regarding

the movement of pilgrims around the millennium of the Passion. For instance,

Bishop Avesgaud of Le Mans appears to have departed for the Holy Land in 1032

with a large retinue.63 In 1035, Count Fulk Nerra of Anjou and Duke Robert of

Normandy met during their respective pilgrimages to Jerusalem. Also, Bishop

Ulrich of Orléans and the abbot of Helmershausen independently went to the

Holy Sepulcher at about this time. Ademar of Chabannes was another who

departed for Jerusalem in 1034 and died there that same year.64

By 1054, when a group estimated to be around 3,000 aristocrats and ecclesiastics

followed Archbishop Lietbert of Cambrai towards Jerusalem, chroniclers did not

comment that the size of the contingent seemed out of the ordinary. This band

passed overland through Hungary without incident but encountered trouble after

leaving Laodicea (in Syria). After staying there for three months, Lietbert decided to

lead his party the rest of the way by sea. Chronically unlucky, they encountered a

60 On the size and make-up of this contingent, see Dom Hubert Dauphin, Le Bienheureux Richard:

Abbé de Saint-Vanne de Verdun (Paris, 1946), 284. This contingent may or may not have included the

abbot of Conques who went to Jerusalem about this time with a number of nobles from around Toulouse

or Count Adalbert of Alsace, who also went in the late 1020s. On these travelers, see Bernard of Angers, The Book of Sainte Foy, tr. Pamela Sheingorn (Philadelphia, 1995), 115–20; and Morris, ‘Memories’, 94.

Incidentally, Richard of Saint-Vannes was a close adviser to Duke Robert of Normandy (who would

undertake his own journey to Jerusalem in 1035). See Daniel F. Callahan, ‘Jerusalem in the Monastic

Imaginations of the Early Eleventh Century’, Haskins Society Journal, 6 (1994), 122.

61 Vita Richardi Abbatis s. Vitoni Virdunensis, MGH SS 11: 288–9. The pilgrims arrived just before

Easter of 1027. See Dauphin, Le Bienheureux Richard, 291. Shortly after this pilgrimage’s return,

Bishops Isembert of Poitiers and Jordan of Limoges went on their own journey. See Marcus Bull,

Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade: The Limousin and Gascony, c.970–c.1130

(Oxford, 1993), 209.

62 Glaber, Five Books, tr. France, 199–201.

63 Jean Mabillon, Vetera analecta sive collectio veterum aliquot operum & opusculorum omnis generis, carminum, epistolarum, diplomatum, epitaphiorum, &c. (Paris, 1723), 304. On the timing of Avesgaud’s journey, see Le R. P. Dom Paul Piolin, Histoire de l’église du Mans, 5 vols. (Paris, 1856), iii. 118.

64 On Fulk and Robert, see below, n. 72; Glaber, Five Books, tr. France, 202; Krautheimer,

‘Introduction’, 117; and Richard Landes, Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History: Ademar of

Chabannes, 989–1034 (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 281.

New Jerusalems and Pilgrimage to the East before 1100

89

storm that made them put ashore at Cyprus. Returning to Laodicea to try the

remainder of the journey overland, there they met the bishop of Laon with a host of

other pilgrims returning from Jerusalem, who informed Lietbert of the dangers

ahead. This last potential setback seems to have been too much for the bishop of

Cambrai, for the contingent abandoned the journey to return home.65 Others who

traveled to the East at about the same time were more fortunate. In addition to the

aforementioned bishop of Laon, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle mentions that Swein,

son of Earl Godwine, went to Jerusalem in 1052 and Bishop Aldred of Worcester

went in 1058. In the same year, the archbishop of Rouen went on pilgrimage with

the abbot of Saint-Évroul and the future bishop of Rochester. Abbot Lambert of

Hersfeld went to Jerusalem at about the same time. Abbot Theodoric of Angers also

seems to have gone in 1053, as did a Count Odilo from the Rouerge, who founded

the monastery of Villeneuve d’Aveyron on his return.66

The largest pre-crusade pilgrimage of the eleventh century was the German

pilgrimage of 1064–5, estimated to have been more than ten times larger than the

pilgrimage of 1026–7.67 Between 7,000 and 12,000 persons, primarily from the

Rhineland, followed Archbishop Siegfried of Mainz, Bishops Gunther of Bamberg,

William of Utrecht, and Otto of Regensburg, along with a host of other ecclesiastics

both named and unnamed, towards Jerusalem. But the majority of the contingent

was composed of laymen including ‘counts, princes, courtiers from the royal palace,

numerous knights, [and] a large host of commoners, rich and poor’.68 The Rhenish

pilgrims were constantly troubled by bandits but eventually reached Jerusalem

thanks to an escort of armed youths sent by the local emir. After completing their

pilgrimage, the Westerners (perhaps wisely) chose to secure a sea passage back to

Constantinople before finishing their return journey overland through the Balkans.

Traditionally, scholars have looked at this list of large-scale journeys and suggested

that one of the most characteristic aspects of pilgrimage to the East in the eleventh

century was its mass appeal, across social class. Moreover, the traditional narrative goes,

these mass pilgrimages increased in frequency throughout the eleventh century,

building in intensity and becoming a natural precursor to the First Crusade in 1095.69

First, the characterization of pilgrimage in the eleventh century as a ‘popular’

phenomenon is inaccurate. Before the First Crusade in 1095, the vast, vast majority

65 Vita s. Lietberti episcopus Cameracensis, AASS 23 June: 596–9; also Gesta Lietberti, MGH SS 7: 497.

66 See The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, tr. Dorothy Whitelock, David C. Douglas, and Susie I. Tucker

(London, 1961), 124, 134; William M. Aird, Robert Curthose Duke of Normandy, c.1050–1134

(Woodbridge, 2008), 157 and n. 20; Graboïs, ‘Les Pèlerinages du XIe siècle’, 533; Vita Theodorici

abbatis Andaginensis, MGH SS 12: 44–5; and Bousquet, ‘La Fondation de Villeneuve d’Aveyron’, 538–9.

67 The essential work on the pilgrimage of 1064–5 remains Einar Joranson, ‘The Great German

Pilgrimage of 1064–1065’, in The Crusades and Other Historical Essays: Presented to Dana C. Munro by

his Former Students, ed. Louis J. Paetow (Freeport, NY, 1928), 3–43; but now also see Fritz Lošek, ‘“Et bellum inire sunt coacti”: The Great Pilgrimage of 1065’, in Michael J. Herren, C. J. McDonough, and

Ross J. Arthur (eds.), Latin Culture in the Eleventh Century: Proceedings of the Third International

Conference on Medieval Latin Studies (Turnhout, 2002), 61–72.

68 Joranson, ‘Great German Pilgrimage’, 10–12; and Lošek, ‘Et bellum inire’, 63.

69 e.g. Jonathan Riley-Smith, ‘Pilgrims and Crusaders in Western Latin Sources’, in Mary Whitby

(ed.), Byzantines and Crusaders in Non-Greek Sources, 1025–1204 (Oxford, 2007), 5; and Purkis,

Crusading Spirituality, 64–5.

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Jerusalem

of those who undertook the expensive and time-consuming journey to the holy sites

were elites––nobles and churchmen (of the latter, primarily monks). The possible

exceptions to this rather categorical statement would be 1033 and 1064–5 but even

then there is little evidence to support the claim that these pilgrimages were patron-

ized broadly across social class.70 And yet, we must concede that these early medieval

elite pilgrims almost never traveled alone, inevitably being surrounded by entourages

of servants, churchmen, and other nobles.71 For example, when Lietbert of Cambrai

led his large party east, he happened upon another large band of pilgrims around the

bishop of Laon, as noted above. Count Robert I of Flanders could hardly be called

‘lonely’ during his trip to Palestine in the late 1080s. Count Fulk Nerra of Anjou may

have gone to Jerusalem ‘alone’ no less than four times during the first half of the

eleventh century, yet he was undoubtedly accompanied by a number of retainers and

hangers-on. Fulk even (apparently intentionally) met the large party surrounding

Duke Robert of Normandy in 1035.72

Second, we cannot subscribe to an evolutionary model that sees a steady increase

in either pilgrimage generally or large-scale pilgrimage specifically during this

period. Recently, Rachel Fulton has asserted that there were only four great,

collective pilgrimages in the eleventh century before the First Crusade––those in

1026–7, 1033, 1054, and 1064–5.73 This estimate seems a bit reductionist. For

example, it does not include the 1080 journey by Robert of Flanders, nor does

Fulton’s statement allow for the pilgrimage of Bishop Berengar of Elne (in the

Pyrenees) in 1047, said to have included a large number of minor ecclesiastics, local

lay nobility, and their followers.74 Certainly, neither Robert’s 1080 journey nor

Berengar’s 1047 pilgrimage were on the same scale as the German pilgrimage of

1064–5, yet they were not altogether different either. They may have varied in size

and in the eminence of the regional elites that they attracted, but these peculiar

eleventh-century elite pilgrimages were structurally similar in that they each cen-

tered around a single person and attracted large numbers of the lay nobility (and

their retinues).75 Nevertheless, I think that Fulton is correct in pointing to the

extraordinary nature of large-scale pilgrimage in the eleventh century.

70 See France, ‘Le Rôle de Jérusalem’, 155–6. At the very least, people knew how expensive and

time-consuming the trip would be. See Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, 1095–1131

(Cambridge, 1997), 106–43.

71 McCormick, Origins, 162; Graboïs, Le Pèlerin occidental, 187; and Morris, ‘Memories’, 94.