English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages (XIVth Century)Jusserand, J. J. (Jean Jules)
History
English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages (XIVth Century)
Jusserand, J. J. (Jean Jules)
Christian pilgrims and pilgrimages -- England; England -- Social life and customs -- 1066-1485; Travel, Medieval
Setting out again, they went to Boulogne to pray to a miraculous
virgin, whose hand still exists enclosed in a reliquary. The statue
itself was thrown into a well by the Protestants in 1567, replaced
on the altar in 1630, pulled down again at the Revolution and burnt,
but one of the faithful saved the hand, which the church of Notre
Dame preserves to this day. Chaucer’s travelled gossip, the Wife of
Bath, had among other pilgrimages, made this one to Boulogne.[525]
People also went to Amiens to venerate the head, or rather one of
the heads, of St. John the Baptist.[526] Great was their wonder
when, {372} continuing their journey, they fell in with another
at Constantinople. Perhaps, let us hope, they were content with
remarking as “Mandeville” does: Which is the true one? “I wot nere,
but God knowethe; but in what wyse than men worschipen it, the
blessed seynt John holt him a-payd.”[527] Then also people went to
the shrine of the three kings at Cologne, to Paris where innumerable
relics were kept, to Chartres, where, besides a famous statue of the
Virgin, was shown the tunic she wore on the day of the Annunciation
(preserved in the cathedral since 861),[528] to Vezelay, Tours, Le
Puy, and to many other places in France, among which the celebrated
and to the present day most frequented church of Our Lady of
Rocamadour in Guyenne. The fame of this pilgrimage among Englishmen
is attested by Langland, when he advises people belonging to the
religious orders to cease pilgrimage-making, and rather practice
virtue at home:
“Right so, if thow be religious · renne thou never ferther
To Rome ne to Rochemadore.”[529]
[Illustration 64. FORTIFIED ENTRANCE TO THE SANCTUARIES OF
ROCAMADOUR. (_Restored._)]
It was a shrine of great renown. Roland, according to a legend, went
there before starting for the ill-fated expedition in which he met
his death, and a large piece of rusted iron is still shown in the
old church as part of the famous Durandal. Henry II of England came
there, too, as a pilgrim, as did many other illustrious travellers,
Simon de Montfort among them.[530] The place was fortified; it had
a part to play in the Hundred Years’ War, {375} and Froissart
has told us “howe Sir Robert Carrol and Sir John Chandos . . . toke
Guaches, Rochemador, and diuers other townes, the which wer newly
turned frenche.”[531]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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