The Age of Erasmus: Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and LondonAllen, P. S. (Percy Stafford)
History
The Age of Erasmus: Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London
Allen, P. S. (Percy Stafford)
Erasmus, Desiderius, -1536; Renaissance
We have three English narratives of Erasmus' period: by William Wey,
Fellow of Eton, who went to Jerusalem in 1458 and again in 1462; by
Sir Richard Guilford, a Court official who made the journey in 1506;
and by Sir Richard Torkington, a parish priest from Norfolk, who went
in 1517. But besides these some Baedekers of the time survive; one
entitled 'Information for Pilgrims unto the Holy Land'[35] which was
printed by Wynkyn de Worde at Westminster in 1498, and again by him in
London in 1515 and 1524; another written by Hermann Kunig of Vach in
1495 and several times printed before 1521, 'Die Walfart und Strass zu
sant Jacob'[36] which gives the distance of each stage and notes inns
and hospitals at which shelter might be found.
[35] It has been reproduced with an introduction by Mr. E.G.
Duff, London, 1893.
[36] It has been reproduced with an introduction by Professor
K. Haebler, Strasburg, 1899.
The Compostella pilgrimage was popular for many reasons, and no doubt
began long before St. James had ousted St. Vincent from being
patron-saint of Spain. The spot was remote, literally then at the end
of the earth, 'beyond which', as another pilgrim says, 'there is no
land any more, only water'. There was a great stone, too, in which
later piety found the boat that had borne the saint's body from
Jerusalem. And there were islands to be visited, one a St. Michael's
Mount, round the shores of which should be gathered the cockle shells
that were the emblems of pilgrimage duly performed: though the less
active bought them at stalls high-heaped outside the cathedral doors,
and the rich had them copied in silver and gold.
To the 'end of the earth' Northern Europe went most easily by sea,
all others by land. Convoys gathered in Dartmouth in the lengthening
days of spring, and crept along Slapton sands and round the unlighted
Start, until there was no land any more, and summoning their courage
they must steer out into the Bay of Biscay. This way went John of
Gaunt to St. James in 1386, to be crowned King of Castile in the great
Romanesque cathedral; and so, too, Chaucer must have pictured the Wyf
of Bath visiting 'Galice'.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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