A History of the Crusades-Vol 1 by Steven Runciman Page B

took several years, and he met with many hardships.
We know the names of other pilgrims of the time, such as Vulphy of Rue in
Picardy, or Bercaire of Montier-en-Der in Burgundy and his friend Waimer. But
their stories showed that only rough and enterprising men could hope to reach
Jerusalem. No women seem to have ventured on the pilgrimage.
     
    Eighth-and
Ninth-Century Pilgrims
    During the eighth century the number of
pilgrims increased. Some even came from England; of whom the most famous was
Willibald, who died in 781 as Bishop of Eichstadt in Bavaria. In his youth he
had gone to Palestine, leaving Rome in 722 and only returning there, after many
disagreeable adventures, in 729. Towards the end of the century there seems to
have been an attempt to organize pilgrimages, under the patronage of Charles
the Great. Charles had restored order and some prosperity to the West and had established
good relations with the Caliph Harun al-Rashid. The hostels that were erected
by his help in the Holy Land show that in his time many pilgrims must have
reached Jerusalem, and women amongst them. Nuns from Christian Spain were sent
to serve at the Holy Sepulchre. But this activity was short-lived. The
Carolingian empire declined. Moslem pirates reappeared in the eastern
Mediterranean; Norse pirates came in from the West. When Bernard the Wise, from
Brittany, visited Palestine in 870, he found Charles’s establishments still in
working order, but empty and beginning to decay. Bernard had only been able to
make the journey by obtaining a passport from the Moslem authorities then
governing Bari, in southern Italy; and even this passport did not enable him to
land at Alexandria.
    The great age of pilgrimage begins with the
tenth century. The Arabs lost their last pirate-nests in Italy and southern
France in the course of the century; and Crete was taken from them in 961.
Already by then the Byzantine navy had been for some time sufficiently in
command of the seas for maritime commerce in the Mediterranean to have fully
revived. Greek and Italian merchant ships sailed freely between the ports of
Italy and the Empire and were beginning, with the goodwill of the Moslem
authorities, to open up trade with Syria and Egypt. It was easy for a pilgrim
to secure a passage direct from Venice or from Bari to Tripoli or Alexandria;
though most travellers preferred to call in at Constantinople to see its great
collections of relics and then to proceed by sea or by the land route, which
recent Byzantine military successes had now made secure. In Palestine itself
the Moslem authorities, whether Abbasid, Ikshid or Fatimid, seldom caused
difficulties, but, rather, welcomed the travellers for the wealth that they
brought into the province.
    The improvement in the conditions of pilgrimage
had its effect on western religious thought. It is doubtful at what age
pilgrimages were first ordered as canonical penances. Early medieval poenitentialia all recommend a pilgrimage, but usually without giving a specified goal. But
the belief was growing that certain holy places possessed a definite spiritual
virtue which affected those that visited them and could even grant indulgences
from sin. Thus the pilgrim knew that not only would he be able to pay reverence
to the earthly remains and surroundings of God and His saints and so enter into
mystical contact with them but he might also obtain God’s pardon for his
wickedness. From the tenth century onwards four shrines in particular were held
to have this power, those of Saint James at Compostella in Spain and of Saint
Michael at Monte Gargano in Italy, the many sacred sites at Rome, and, above
all, the holy places in Palestine. To all of these access was now far easier,
owing to the retreat or the goodwill of the Moslems. But the journey was still
sufficiently long and arduous to appeal to the common sense as well as to the
religious feeling of medieval man. It was wise to remove a criminal for the
space of a year or more