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Pilgrimage In Christianity
Travelling To A Place - The Middle Ages
In 891 AD, three monks from Ireland arrived off the coast of England…
‘in a boat without oars. They had left home bent on serving God in a state of pilgrimage, they cared not where’ (from ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle).
In the ‘Celtic Church’ in Ireland (c. 6th century AD) the tradition of wandering monks still continued.
The fabulous story of Saint Brendan, who wandered the seas with fellow monks, is a romanticised version of such practises.
At the same, though, the idea of pilgrimage as a journey to a specific place was rapidly developing. Many early Christians suffered martyrdom for their beliefs. Martyrs were highly honoured by the Christian community and the place where they were buried became a place where Christians would gather. Martyrs, like all Christians who had died, were still thought of as being part of the community, but their heroic deaths meant that their prayers were especially strong. They came to be seen as intercessors between the community and God. Their tombs came to be seen as the place where heaven and earth intersected.
Special Places at home…
There are hundreds of places of pilgrimage in England. In the Middle Ages, nearly every large church would have a relic of a famous saint which was venerated. For example:
St Alban’s. A young man called Alban was executed for his faith, probably in the late third century at the town of Verulamium. Christians would gather to pray at his tomb on the hill slope outside the town. A monastery was founded on the site – indeed the town came to be named after the saint: St Albans. By the mid-fourteenth century many thousands of pilgrims visited the abbey church to pray at his tomb each year. The abbey is now a cathedral – and Saint Alban’s place of burial is still a focus of pilgrimage.
Canterbury. The most famous place of pilgrimage in England was the tomb of Saint Thomas a Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The pilgrimage there was made famous by Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales.
Even village churches often had their pilgrims:
Sonning-on-Thames had a chapel dedicated to Saint Sarik. People with mental health problems would go on pilgrimage to this chapel and ask for the Saint’s prayers. Who Saint Sarik was has now long been forgotten – the name lives on only in the name of the parish room!
And abroad…
It was not only to visit relics of saints that people went on pilgrimage. Rome was a popular destination from western Europe. People often went on church business but they would also visit the famous churches there. In the East, orthodox Christians travelled to Constantinople or Antioch – where the head of their church lived.
And then, of course, there were the pilgrims who went to the Holy Land, visiting the churches on the site of Jesus’s birth and death and other sites associated with him and his disciples. Even fighting between the Christian and Muslim powers didn’t stop them. Pilgrims still crossed the line of conflict to see these places.
How far did they have to go?
Going East: St Simon Stylites, a hermit in the East, lived on top of a sixty-foot high platform for 36 years. Alone – except for the hundreds of pilgrims who had come to see him!
Going West: St Cuthbert tried to retreat to the inhospitable Farne Islands, off Northumbria, and be surrounded only by seals - but was still visited by many who wanted to be in his presence.
What did they do it for?
Why did so many people in the Middle Ages go on pilgrimage? There were lots of different motives.
As Chaucer shows us, some just wanted to have a holiday – for them pilgrimage was just a jaunt, which promised exciting adventures. For serious pilgrims, the motive was often to say prayers for physical or mental healing. When they were healed, they often left a small model of the bit of the body that had been cured at the shrine. Sometime they went to fulfill a vow that they had made in a time of anxiety - during a storm at sea, for example. (St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London was founded by the monk Reher to fulfil a vow he had made when ill far away from home.) Sometimes criminals were forced to travel to a shrine as a form of penance. Their chains were only unlocked when they could prove they had made the journey. Sometimes people went to visit holy men and women who could offer