The Magnificent Century (12 page)

The cost has been exaggerated, some estimates being as high as one hundred silver marks per person. This was perhaps the figure which a knight would have to meet when he traveled with squires, grooms, and the necessary number of horses. The passage from Venice to Jaffa was one mark, but this was the fare only and did not take into consideration the food which became exorbitantly high. The poor pilgrim depended on begging and a free roof when he was ashore.

Shipmasters competed for the trade of the pilgrims. While waiting in port they set up tables on the bows of their ships and invited the gray-cowled men to come aboard and partake free. They made all manner of promises, particularly in the matter of malvoisie, a wine from Crete which was supposed to be the only cure for seasickness. This was a great inducement because the poor pilgrims dreaded
mal de mer
more than anything, more than the blinding sun, the plague, or the loud screeching of Moslems on the raid.

Once aboard, of course, this soft indulgence ceased. The pilgrim would discover that the efforts of the masters had more than filled the ship. He slept on the lower deck, being allotted six feet of space by two but seldom being able to claim that much. It was customary to sleep with the head to the side of the ship, the feet pointing
inward; but it was only a very broad man, or a very pugnacious one, who could insist on his full two feet of space. The stench was unbearable to sensitive nostrils, for the hold directly underneath was filled with sand and bilge water. The sand was seldom changed and, as it was used for sanitary purposes and for the burial of those who died en route (in cases where it was necessary to bring the body back), the atmosphere became extremely foul. To complicate matters further, sheep and cattle were carried on board and stabled on the lower deck with the pilgrims. Most passengers brought hens with them in the hope of having fresh eggs, and they cackled endlessly in the daytime and roosted wherever they could at night.

The food supplied was meager and of wretched quality. After the first few days there was no bread, and the sea biscuit which took its place was hard and far from nutritious. The salt pork and fish turned rancid, especially the fish, which was thrown into the vats without gutting. The wine was thin and sour. There were two meals a day, and the only respect in which early promises were lived up to was that a pan of malvoisie was provided in the morning.

The only moment of the day when the devotional aspect of pilgrimage obliterated the sordid details of mere existence was at the evening services. Everyone attended, the pilgrims bareheaded, the sailors with their hoods thrown back on their shoulders, the ship’s confessor beginning with a
Salve Regina.
The sailors would remain and say an exclusive
Ave
for St. Julien, while the seekers after grace sought their allotment of deck space below and prepared for slumber by the light of lanterns suspended from the low beams. There was a continual feud between the pilgrims and the crew over this use of lanterns. They were a constant danger, and many ships were burned at sea as a result of lanterns breaking or the curtains catching fire in the cabins fore and aft where travelers of noble rank slept.

What a picture the ships presented at night! Conjure it up in your mind: the horn lanterns swinging with the movement of the ship, sometimes leaving the whole lower deck in darkness, then steadying to show the long rows of sleeping men, the callused soles of feet turned upward, the passage between the uneasy pilgrims piled high with supplies; the animals penned at each end stamping and struggling, the hens roosting everywhere, sometimes on the breasts and shoulders of the sleepers; a sailor at each end in long pants of
sailcloth and with bare feet; a priest pacing anxious-eyed as though aware that the wing of death would brush the shoulders of three quarters of these brave men, and wondering what more could be done about their souls.

The overland journey from the seaport to Jerusalem was comparatively easy after the hardships of the sea voyage. There were droves of wily oriental traders to meet the ships with offers of donkeys (most pilgrims desired to ride into Jerusalem as Christ had done) and with supplies of food and every conceivable kind of relic for sale. The business of fleecing the humble men who had come so far for the good of their souls had been very cleverly organized. Guides were always available for trips throughout Palestine, to see the manger in Bethlehem, to visit the spot along Galilee where the miracle of the loaves and fishes took place; to see, in fact, every place mentioned in the Bible. All that was necessary was for a pilgrim to mention something he wanted to see and there would be a native who knew exactly where to go. The pilgrims traveled in large bodies, knowing that to venture out alone was certain to result in mysterious disappearance. Although under treaty protection and watched over by the Templars and the Hospitalers, they were not only in continual peril but were humiliated at every turn, called “dogs of unbelievers” and pelted with offal by Arab boys as they plodded by or rode their stubborn little donkeys.

In Jerusalem the movements of the pilgrims were carefully supervised. They went about in processions planned and watched over by the Franciscans or the Templars, visiting the Dome of the Rock and the Mount of Olives and even venturing down into the narrow and airless alleys to see the house near the southern wall where the Last Supper was held. Their stay in the Holy City was generally limited to a week because more and more of them kept arriving and the tempers of the oriental masters of the city were too short to allow overcrowding.

The casualties were extremely heavy. In 1066 the Archbishop of Metz led a company of seven thousand pilgrims to Jerusalem. Two thousand only came back. This percentage may be accepted as an indication of the degree of risk the men in gray took. They dropped of exhaustion along the dusty trails and they died like flies in the malodorous holds of wallowing ships. Some died of Eastern fevers and other strange diseases; many were cut off from their companions
and sold into slavery. Some could not face the rigors of the return voyage and settled down to finish their lives in crowded ports or olive groves.

The rewards, however, were great. Those who came back from Jerusalem were venerated by everyone and were permitted ever after to wear a cross of palm leaves on their hats; from which custom rose the term “palmer.” The penitent pilgrims had to announce that they were seeking the absolution of a sin in either one of two ways. They wore a chain of iron around the waist (which would spring apart or disappear when the sin had been forgiven) or carried a fagot in their hands. In the latter case they were permitted to burn the fagot publicly when they reached Jerusalem as a sign that they were no longer in danger themselves of burning.

It was customary to bring back a “pilgrim sign” as proof that their destination had been reached. This took the form of something which could be worn on the cap after the order of the palm leaf. Returning from Compostela, after praying before the shrine where the bones of St. James, son of Zebedee, were kept, it was customary to wear a cockleshell; from Amiens, a badge of the head of John the Baptist; from the shrine of St. Thomas, the Canterbury bell.

England had seen armies on the march—Harold in breathless haste from victory at Stamfordbridge to death at Hastings, William leading his steel-clad Normans eastward to London, the handsomely caparisoned knights of Prince Louis going confidently to the Fair of Lincoln—but never anything to equal the curious phenomenon of mass movement which happened around July 7 and December 29 of each year, the march of the Canterbury pilgrims. The pilgrims walked to the cathedral city by three routes, from Dover, from London, and from Winchester. The latter was the one most commonly used because it led direct from the West and South of England and it drew most of the European visitors who sailed from Norman ports to Southampton. It was called the Pilgrims’ Way or sometimes the Old Road.

This road converged on Winchester, the ancient capital, and there the pilgrims were allowed hospitality free for one day and one night in any of the church establishments or at Strangers’ Hall. The
road from there ran due east, a rutted and stubborn track over hills and down valleys and across unexpected fords. It followed at first the course of an ancient British road, the antiquity of which has been proven by the ingots of tin occasionally dug up from the sides where they had been hidden by tin merchants when thieves attacked them.

Sometimes an invalid would be carried in a sling between horses. Still less often the creaking of a hammock-wagon would be heard, the only form of traveling vehicle of the time, bearing some great lady or person of advanced years to the scene of the martyrdom. The hammock-wagon consisted of a seat, shaped like the rockers of a hobbyhorse, perched on springless axles, and it was such an uncomfortable way of achieving distance that the need for absolution must have been great in the case of all who adopted it. Pilgrims were expected to walk, and walk they did, in gray cowl and round hat and with staff in hand, the penny which must be left at the shrine carried on a string around the neck or clutched in one hand as an identifying mark. Thus they marched, nobleman and lady of high degree, socman and franklin and buxom dame, rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief. They marched in ever-increasing numbers as the years went on. The Jubilee of the Translation in 1420, just after the great victory at Agincourt which had left men jubilant and filled with a thirst for adventure and, moreover, possessed of French spoils to pay the cost, brought one hundred thousand people to Canterbury, most of them by the Pilgrims’ Way. Conceive of the confusion which resulted when the unorganized masses drew near their destination and the weary files converged on the gates of Canterbury.

The hardest bit was over the high escarpment of the Weald. Here the roads were chalk and so the constant pressure of feet cut ever deeper into the spongy surface until the clay banks on each side, topped by high beech and yew, seemed like drifts of snow. The dense forests of the Weald were filled, according to popular report, with wild beasts and wild men. The deep chalk pits, falling off abruptly from the edges of the road, were a constant peril. All in all it was a welcome sight when the plodding pilgrims glimpsed the green of peaceful Kentish lanes.

It was a pleasant amble downhill to Canterbury, past hamlets where every house offered accommodation, at a price, past Chilham Castle and the village of Old Wives Lees and Knockholt Green,
past the grave of the giant Julaber (the natives were always ready to show the way to this sight although Julaber was as mythical as Blunderbore), and so on through Westgate into the sacred city. Canterbury, once a sleepy town which the martyrdom of Thomas à Becket had turned into a busy city with twenty-one watch towers and a cluster of churches, was still gray and austere around the curving course of the Stour. There were always pilgrims walking to Canterbury, seeking grace with penny in hand, but for the two great occasions, the anniversaries of the murder of St. Thomas and the Translation, the old city girded itself to meet the invasions and to profit thereby; and did both exceedingly well. The doors of St. Thomas Hospital, the large spittlehouse built by the Martyr himself on stone arches across the Stour, were always wide open for the needy but capable of looking after a mere fraction of the impecunious who arrived. Every householder was under orders to take the travelers in and was always glad to do so at a good, round price. For the nobility there was the priory of Christ Church, where gracious rooms overlooked the avenue of elms, Les Ormeaux, which became corrupted in time to The Omers. For common men with money in their pockets there were many inns, most particularly the Chequers of the Hope, which boasted of its Dormitory of the Hundred Beds. During the teeming anniversary days, when more than twice the population of London camped in little Canterbury, the most earnest efforts of the church authorities could not cope with the situation, and most of the pilgrims slept under hedges or in the shelter of rick-stavels; finding the company of the stars more congenial, perhaps, than the snoring occupants of a hundred beds.

The carcasses of oxen and sheep were roasted whole and offered for sale on all open pieces of land, together with pots in which soup simmered, and those who could afford such a luxury were permitted to dip a spoon. The inns had capons turning on spits and mawmennies and other stews on the fire, and mountains of loaves which the White and Brown Bakers had labored for days to produce. It was impossible, however, to feed such multitudes, and the wise pilgrims, forewarned, always had a pouch in which they carried food of some kind.

Mass was celebrated in all the churches and in the open on streets black with people as far as the eye could see. It took days for all
the visitors to file through the cathedral, past the Martyrdom and the shrine, after dropping their pennies in receptacles at the entrance. The pilgrimage could not have failed to become the most lucrative business in all England.

Finally the pilgrims would visit the open booths in the neighborhood of High Street and Mercery Lane, where the greatest profits were reaped. Here tokens and pilgrim signs were on sale. Every pilgrim bought something. Those who could not afford the costly ampullas, lead bottles containing a drop of the Martyr’s blood (which flowed continuously from a well and then turned from water to blood), had to content themselves with the
caput Thomae
, brooches with a carved representation of the mitered head of the saint. This ended the pilgrimage and, equipped with proof that they had completed their journey, the weary walkers turned homeward, rich man, poor man, beggerman, and thief.

The road over the chalk escarpment and through Chantries Wood and up St. Catherine’s Hill seemed much longer on the homeward journey and more beset with danger. But what of that? They were full of the wonders they had seen. A life sanctified with new grace stretched ahead.