The attitude of these Bedawyn in matters of religion was perplexing to the Europeans, who began with looking upon Mohammad the Prophet as the incarnation of all wickedness, and then realised that his followers had a standard of dignity and hospitality which were by no means despicable. Ludolf, in 1341, noted that the Saracens did homage to St. Katherine (p. 66), and Frescobaldo remarked that the Saracens held the mountains of Sinai in veneration. “And be it known,” he continued, “that the Saracens reverence the Virgin Mary, St. John the Baptist, St. Katherine, and all the patriarchs of the Old Testament and hold that Christ was the great prophet previous to Mohammad; also that Christ was not born of the flesh, but that the Divine Father, through the lips of an angel, sent the Divine Word, and that in many ways they approximate our faith” (pp. 91, 101). An English poem of about the year 1425 is extant, which describes the chief sites of pilgrimage at the time. They included the shrine of St. James of Compostella in Spain, the city of Rome, Jerusalem, and Mount Sinai. The poem is about 1500 lines long, of which about thirty deal with Mount Sinai, and are as follows (the spelling is modernised): In that mount up high Is a minster of our Lady: The minster of the Bush, men call it, Wherein the body of St. Katherine was put. Also behind the high altar Is where Jesus did appear In that church to Moses, When he kept Jethro of Midian’s sheep truly. In the midst of that hill is a place Where did penance the prophet Elijah; On the height of that hill, by Clerk’s saws, God gave to Moses both the Laws Written in tables, without miss. Plenary remission then it is. A garden there is at no distance Where Onorius (_i.e._ Onophrius) did his penance. Another hill also is there, To which angels did bear The blessed body of St. Katherine, She was a holy virgin. Under that hill trust thou me, There runneth the Red Sea. At each of these places, that I told, Is VII years, and VII “lentonez,”[271] be thou bold. Thus from Sinai would I skip And tell of the pilgrimage of Egypt; etc.[272] CHAPTER XVI THE PILGRIMS OF THE MIDDLE AGES II.