. Pilgrimage—journeying from one’s home to a hallowed site—has a long tradition. In ancient and modem times, and in many cultures and religions, adherents have traveled to venerate holy places, to visit tombs of holy persons or heroes, to seek counsel from oracles or cures.
Although the earliest Christian pilgrimages seem to have been to the Holy Land, the practice of pilgrimage soon expanded to include sites of veneration of the Virgin, martyrs, and saints. Of particular importance for early Christian pilgrimage and its development in France was the growth of the cult of saints. Early Christianity introduced the concept of Heaven and Earth joined at the tomb of a saint, who was a martyr or holy person seen as able to intercede with God on behalf of humans. The bodies of saints, left on earth to aid the living, could work miracles, just as the saint, or Christ himself, had done while alive. Thus, relics—the physical remains, or closely associated objects, of the holy person—formed the sine qua non of the shrine to which pilgrims journeyed.
Well over 1,000 centers of pilgrimage existed in France from the Gallo-Roman period to the end of the Middle Ages. Relics at shrines varied greatly, and many shrines, such as Aix-la-Chapelle, contained a large number. Cultic shrines also developed around miraculous statues of the Virgin (Rocamadour [12th c.] and Mauriac [13th c.]), as well as at sites designated as holy through supernatural apparitions (the Virgin at Rocheville [14th c.] or the archangel Michael at Mont-Saint-Michel [8th c.]).
A number of important shrines are located at places of great height (Le Puy) or near springs (Conques). Some were erected over pagan sanctuaries and Gallo-Roman healing centers. Some Christian shrines were known as particularly efficacious for specific healing, such as Sainte-Foy at Conques for eye ailments and the church of John the Baptist at Saint-Denis for epilepsy.
Pilgrimage was motivated by a variety of reasons. Besides being an act of piety and veneration, a pilgrimage might be undertaken for remission of sins or for purification and absolution and, from the 6th century at least, could be imposed as penance. Many went on pilgrimage seeking miracles and cures or to give thanks for divine assistance. Some went to shrines to die in the presence of relics.
Kings, queens, nobles, and high ecclesiastics have been recorded as pilgrims through the centuries, but shrines attracted untold numbers of ordinary folk, especially in times of calamity like plagues and civil unrest. For the ordinary pilgrim, a journey to a shrine within France had the advantages of requiring less cost and less time than the great international pilgrimages to the Holy Land, Rome, or Santiago de Compostela.
By the 12th century, pilgrims set out from their home parishes after receiving special blessings, and they wore clothing that identified them as pilgrims. Customary garb was a cloak, a low-crowned and broad-brimmed hat, a pouch (called a “scrip”), and a pilgrim’s staff. Pilgrims carried letters from ecclesiastical authorities to identify them officially for their protection, although their efficacy was not always certain.
Most pilgrimages were made on foot, but those wealthy enough could travel by horse. Walking barefoot was not common, although some penitents and pious pilgrims did so. Louis IX is said to have walked barefoot about 15 miles to Chartres. Travel on roads was especially dangerous in some periods (the 7th to mid-11th centuries, in particular) due to civil unrest, invasions, and robbery.
Food and water could be brought from home if the pilgrimage was for only a few days, but if the pilgrim was away longer resources had to be found along the roads. During periods of civil unrest and invasions, this was not always easy, nor were accommodations always to be found. A system of hospices for pilgrims within France is not apparent before the late 11th century, when the Augustinians were active in establishing shelters, especially in inhospitable regions. The Templars, by the 12th century, also provided assistance to pilgrims, and by the 13th century many confraternities were organized to help. By the 12th century, inns were no longer so difficult to find. Accommodations could be difficult even when the shrine was reached. Pilgrims to Rocamadour were frequently sheltered in tents because the town was so small; in other towns, like Vézelay, conflict arose between the inhabitants and the abbey over pilgrims’ accommodations.
Pilgrims brought gifts and tokens with them to shrines. In keeping with the practice at pre-Christian healing centers in Gaul, pilgrims seeking a cure for an illness might bring to the saint’s shrine a representation of the afflicted part of the body, frequently crudely made of wood, wax, or metal. If Christian pilgrims were making their pilgrimage to thank the holy patron for a cure, they might also bring such a token as well as gifts (frequently money, gold, gems, or oil). Pilgrims to Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat who were freed from prison after praying to St. Léonard brought their chains to hang near the saint’s tomb.
In addition to leaving offerings at shrines, pilgrims brought away objects in some way sanctified by relics. In some instances, these relics-by-association were thought to possess the power of the saint. While on pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Julian of Brioude, Gregory of Tours broke off a piece of the tomb and brought it back to Tours, where it was reported to have worked miracles. Pilgrims also brought away badges to indicate they had been to shrines. These had images symbolic of the shrine visited, as the head of John the Baptist for Amiens, the Virgin for Rocamadour, Le Puy, and other Marian sanctuaries. Trade in pilgrims’ badges was so extensive and open to abuse that it was regulated by legal and episcopal decrees by the 13th century.
The earliest Christian pilgrimages were those to the Holy Land to retrace the footsteps of Christ (2nd c.) and to Rome to visit the tombs of Peter, Paul, and the martyrs. Pilgrimage within France was enhanced by these distant journeys, because pilgrims from the British Isles, Spain, and the Low Countries traveled through France on the way to Rome, and Marseille and Saint-Gilles-du-Gard were major ports of embarkation for ships to Rome and the Holy Land. One of the earliest extant itineraries of a Jerusalem pilgrimage was left by a Gallo-Roman from Bordeaux traveling ca. 333. He gives the route taken from Bordeaux to the Holy Land, indicating the stopping places along the way.
Pilgrimage to shrines within France was well established in the Gallo-Roman and Merovingian periods. Most early sanctuaries seem to be centered in established Gallo-Roman towns with Christian communities, or those where early missionary-martyrs preached. The best-documented early shrine is that of St. Martin (d. 397/400) at Tours. Known for miracles worked during his lifetime, his vita was written while he was still alive by his friend Sulpicius Severus (ca. 360–420/25) but was not published until after Martin’s death. So many pilgrims came to his tomb that the small chapel built after his death was replaced by a larger church within a century. An account of his miracles was written by Gregory of Tours (ca. 539–594), and by the end of the 6th century Martin’s tomb contained the inscription “Here lies Martin the Bishop, of holy memory, whose soul is in the hand of God; but he is fully here, present and made plain in miracles of every kind.” The town, and especially the saint’s shrine, remained a major pilgrimage center throughout the Middle Ages.
Another Gallo-Roman city with important shrines was Lyon, which had an active Christian community from the end of the 2nd century. The city had early bishops’ shrines (St. Irenaeus, St. Justus) as well as sanctuaries of martyrs (Epipodius, Alexander). Nearby at Fourvières was a shrine dedicated to the Virgin, where previously a statue of Mercury had been venerated. Limoges had a sanctuary dedicated to St. Martial (known from the 4th c.), and other shrines were located in the cities of Arles, Auxerre, Marseille, Dijon, Clermont, Cahors, Agde, and Paris. During this early period, relics were also imported from Rome. In 397, Victor of Rouen brought relics of twenty-three martyrs from Rome to Rouen.
Relics were so important in the conversion of pagan Gaul that parts, and entire bodies, of saints were bought, sold, and stolen. Augustine mentions relic sellers in the 5th century, and Gregory of Tours writes about Syrian relic mongers in France in the 6th. In the 7th century, the body of St. Benedict of Nursia was stolen from Monte Cassino after the abbey was destroyed by the Lombards and brought to Fleury (which became Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire), where his relics attracted pilgrims until the 11th century, when the monks of Monte Cassino claimed to have found the true relics still at their abbey.
The establishment of sanctuaries and pilgrimages to shrines continued throughout the tempestuous reigns of the Merovingians, who supported such shrines. Clovis (d. 511) had a shrine built over the tomb of St. Geneviève (d. ca. 500) in Paris, and Dagobert (d. ca. 639) has been credited with revitalizing the shrine of St. Denis, who became the patron saint of France. It is also from the Merovingian period that the early Marian pilgrimage to Ambronay in Burgundy is dated (7th c.), and we begin to see the establishment of shrines in rural monastic settings.
The ever-increasing interest in sanctuaries and pilgrimages received impetus during the Carolingian dynasty. Charlemagne was an ardent collector of relics, which were kept at Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen). The most important, the swaddling clothes and loincloth of Christ, were exhibited once every seven years and attracted hordes of pilgrims. Carolingian aristocrats also donated relics: Charles the Bald gave the Virgin’s tunic to Chartres in 876, from which time the pilgrimage to the cathedral can be dated.
Even more important for the history of pilgrimage, the Carolingian hierarchy reinstated the ruling, first decreed at the Fifth Council of Carthage in 401, that required all altars to contain relics. This necessitated the procuring of more relics than were present in the Frankish kingdoms, and Carolingian ecclesiastics were major movers in procuring saints’ bodies and other relics, especially from Rome but also from Spain. For example, in the early 9th century, Abbot Hilduin acquired the body of St. Sebastian from Rome for Saint-Médard in Soissons.
Trade in relics flourished, and the frequency of theft increased, with more than fifty documented instances from 800 to 1100. Among the most famous of these thefts in the Frankish lands were that of St. Foy’s body, stolen from Agen by a monk of Conques in the 860s, and that of Mary Magdalene’s, said to have been stolen from Provence and brought to Vézelay in the late 9th century. Both became objects of major pilgrimages.
Despite the political fragmentation after the collapse of the Carolingian empire and the incursions of the Vi-kings, pilgrimage to sites of cultic worship increased during the 9th and 10th centuries. By the 11th century, the cult of relics and pilgrimage were major aspects of religious practice, and they provided important sources of financial support for French monasticism. Funds brought in by pilgrims helped in the ambitious building projects begun in the 11th century by many monastic houses.
Typical of this development is Mont-Saint-Michel. Pilgrimage to this sanctuary began after an apparition of the archangel Michael to Aubert of Avranches while the bishop slept (708). The archangel directed the bishop to build a sanctuary at the top of Mont-Tombe, a granite rock some 550 feet high in the bay near Avranches. A small sanctuary was built and relics were received from the archangel’s shrine on Monte Gargano in Italy. By the 11th century, the structure at the top of the mountain was inadequate for pilgrims, and construction of the massive hilltop abbey was begun. By the 12th century, additional lodgings were added, and the lower town began to grow. The 13th century saw Gothic additions to the monastery. The town increased in size each successive century, moving farther up the mount to meet the abbey perched on top.
The 12th century saw ever-greater numbers of people going on pilgrimage. Without doubt, the Crusades popularized the idea of pilgrimage. It was, however, the enormous popularity of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain that increased the numbers of pilgrims traveling through France and visiting shrines on the route. The tomb of St. James, discovered at Compostela in the northwest corner of Spain in the 9th century, saw its first recorded French pilgrim, Godescalc of Le Puy, in 950–51. Large numbers of pilgrims from all over Europe were arriving by the end of the 11th century, and except for those traveling by sea almost all had to go through France.
The earliest western European guidebook for pilgrims was written by a Frenchman (ca. 1135–39) for those going from France to Compostela. The author gives four routes through France toward Spain, mostly following old Roman roads. Each route began at a major cultic center: Paris, Vézelay, Le Puy, or Arles. The three westernmost routes met at Ostabat and crossed the Pyrénées at Roncevaux, while the route from Arles crossed the Somport pass farther east. Hospices at both passes existed from the late 11th or early 12th century.
A forerunner of the modern travel guide, the text of this guidebook provides information on where to find provisions and drinking water, describes the characteristics of the peoples to be encountered along the way, and provides cautionary tales on the location of thieves and other hazards, as well as instruction on the proper treatment of pilgrims. Of importance for French pilgrimage is a long chapter describing twenty-one shrines in France (and four in Spain) to be visited along the way. It is clear that those on long pilgrimages would visit many shrines and that shrines with important relics located on major pilgrimage routes could benefit greatly. Competition for pilgrims and the funds they donated was so strong during the 12th century that some institutions resorted to advertising to attract pilgrims. The Norman abbey of the Trinity at Fècamp had a vial of Christ’s blood by 1120, which they advertised in a poem: “…remember that you are never far from Fécamp, where the Lord has sent his precious blood for your benefit….”
The late 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries appear to have been the high point of pilgrimage in France, coinciding with a period when roads were safest and travel most se-
cure. The Hundred Years’ War impeded traffic on roads, and while pilgrimage remained an important aspect of late-medieval religion, private devotion seems to have offered greater consolation.
The later Middle Ages witnessed a decline in the cult of saints and an increasing veneration of the Virgin. Relics of Mary, discovered with greater frequency from the 12th century on, stimulated pilgrimages. Relics of the Virgin’s hair were found at, or acquired by, Coutances, Saint-Omer, Mâcon, Sainte-Chapelle, and Saint-Denis. In addition to Mary’s tunic at Chartres (9th c.), one finds her slipper at Soissons, as well as other pieces of clothing at Marseille, Toulon, and Arles. Relics at other sanctuaries included the Virgin’s milk and nail parings. While pilgrimages to sites of the apparition of the Virgin are known in the later Middle Ages (as at Rocheville, 1315), they are a much more common manifestation of postmedieval religiosity.
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