THE PILGRIMAGE IN THE MIDDLE AGES The mediaeval Church adopted the custom of the pilgrimage from the ancient Church. The young Germanic and Romance nations did precisely as the Greek and Romans had done before them, and the motives of these devotional journeys—now much more difficult of execution in the general decay of the great world-system of commerce—remained much the same. They were undertaken to the honour of God, for purposes of prayer, or in quest of assistance, especially health. But the old causes were reinforced by others of at least equal potency. The mediaeval Church was even more profoundly convinced than its predecessor that the miraculous power of Deity attached to the bodies of saints and their relics. But the younger nations—French, English and German—were scantily endowed with saints; while, on the other hand, the belief obtained that the home-countries of Christi anity, especially Rome and Jerusalem, possessed an inexhaustible supply of these sanctified bodies.
Pilgrimages were consequently undertaken with the intention of securing relics. At first it was enough to acquire some object which had enjoyed at least a mere connection with the hallowed corpse. One enthusiast took a little wax dropped from the taper; another, a portion of the dust which lay on the grave; a third, a thread from the cloth covering the sarcophagus; still another plucked the flowers which visitors had planted above the tomb. Before long, however, these humble trophies failed to content the pilgrims, and they began to devote their efforts to acquiring the actual bodies, or portions of them—frequently by honest means, still oftener by trickery. One of the most attractive works of early mediaevalism—Einhard's little book, Translatio Marcellini et Petri—gives a vivid description of the methods by which the bodies of the two saints were acquired and transported from Rome to Seligenstadt on the Main.
Far more important consequences, however, resulted from the fact that the mediaeval mind associated the pilgrimage with the forgiveness of sins. This conception of the pilgrimage, as a means of expiation or a source of pardon for wrong, was foreign to the ancient Church. It is quite in accordance with the keener con sciousness of sin, which prevailed in the middle ages, that the expiatory pilgrimage took its place side by side with the pilgrimage to the glory of God. The pilgrimage became an act of obedience; and, in the books of penance (Poenitentialia) which date from the early middle ages, it is enjoined as an expiation for many of the more serious sins, especially murder or the less venial forms of urlcha stity. The place to be visited was not specified; but the
pilgrim, who was bound by an open letter of his bishop to disclose himself as a penitent, lay under the obligation, wherever he went, to repair to the churches and—more especially—the tombs of the saints, and there offer his prayers. On occasion, a chain or ring was fastened about his body, that his condition might be obvious to all; and soon all manner of fables gained currency: how, here or there, the iron had sprung apart by a miracle, in token that the sinner was thereby absolved by God.
As the system of indulgences (q.v.) developed, a new motive came to the fore which rapidly overshadowed all others : pil grimages were now undertaken to some sacred spot, simply in order to obtain the indulgence which was vested in the respective church or chapel. In the I 1 th century the indulgence consisted in a remission of part of the penance imposed in the confessional, in return for the discharge of some obligation voluntarily assumed by the penitent. Among these obligations, a visit to a particular church, and the bestowal of pious gifts upon it, held a prominent place ; and during the whole period of mediaevalism, the number of pilgrims was perpetually on the increase.