from Medieval Academy News

Embarrassments of modern pilgrimage
by George D. Greenia

Admittedly, we were both a bit embarrassed. The woman behind the plate-glass windows of Notre Dame’s reception area dedicated to spiritual (rather than tourists’) needs was certainly used to dealing with imperfect French. But what should she say to a middle-aged American man asking for an official cathedral stamp on his pilgrim’s passport before launching a biking trip to Santiago de Compostela? Her quiet, indulgent smile only fueled my insecurities: she’s thinking, “Is this his first trip to Europe (which he takes for another Disneyland)? Is he even Catholic? Does he really think he’s up to biking 1,200 miles? Is he having a midlife crisis but can’t afford the full fare to Tibet?” I felt suddenly sheepish, as if caught making a wild claim to my publisher that, sure, I can knock off a book for him in a month and it’ll sell 10,000 copies. Medievalists are mostly well served by a resolute modesty.

Yet there I was, equipped with enough confidence to ship a couple of disassembled bikes to my aunt’s home in Paris, and reassured by a loving spouse’s enthusiastic planning. We had every kilometer plotted, every day’s journey logged in with elevation changes, road types, distances, and likely lodgings. And we are both seasoned cyclists, so the distance in itself was not out of the question. But I still felt embarrassed and conflicted. Do I claim this is really a spiritual pilgrimage? And announcing that this is an entirely professional enterprise, a sort of field research expedition for a practicing medievalist, seems fodder for the “prof scam” folks. Holy pilgrim and candescent medievalist both seemed overblown claims for me.

No one reading these pages needs a travelogue on the Camino de Santiago, so I’ll skip the details. The joyful miles of biking, even over the Pyrenees and the Montes de León, reassured me that I’m not so deep into my own middle ages after all. And we did find refreshing moments for reflection at the relics of St. Benedict in St-Benoît-sur-Loire and those of St. James in Santiago and a hundred other shrine sites along the way. But I also came back transformed as a medievalist, and that may be worth recounting.

The research question that kept surfacing in my imagination during those twenty-one days of actual biking centered on judicial or involuntary penitential pilgrimage. Its roots extend back to Roman political exile and Insular penitential practices of expulsion from the community of believers. At first these wanderings had no physical goal and sometimes no limit: one wandered, living off the land and at the charity of others until one’s iron collar or chains rusted off. Later on, specific destinations were imposed with distance, times of year, rigors of the journey, and appropriateness of the target shrine providing a rough calculus of equivalencies between sin and expiation. Pilgrimage was imposed for special offenses, such as acts of adultery, arson, sacrilege, patricide, or other personal violence that outraged whole communities.

Imposition of a penitential pilgrimage by religious or lay authorities must have had a practical side as well, one best explained in sociological terms. An egregious offense by a member of a village community might be handled by civil authorities, but their options were limited: execution, permanent or temporary exile, severe physical punishment or mutilation, and, if the transgressor had the means, a massive fine. Religious authorities, of course, could not apply these material penalties, only spiritual ones, so penitential pilgrimage may have been a sensible way to remove the criminal swiftly and avoid retaliatory violence and to give aggrieved clans or families distance from the emotional explosion of the criminal act.

The involuntary pilgrim would endure real hardships and heightened danger of illness or death in foreign lands but also be inserted into the company of a better class of believers who might help influence and unobtrusively reform him. Participation in liturgical events and exposure to frequent moral instruction at the charitable shelters along the way provided opportunities for rehabilitation through catechesis. The sinner who returned home months later would come back inevitably changed on some level and often with knowledge or practical skills that would encourage his community to reintegrate him, even if his contributions were mostly news, stories of the journey, and his personal profession of renewed faith.

This concern with either individual or group experience correlates to some modern dabbling in pilgrimage: while such a trip may be undertaken as a solitary exploit, this sober enterprise is more commonly performed with family or loved ones, or perhaps with fellow members of an academic or religious community.

The penitential pilgrim, however, often had no entourage and his exposure to danger was real, as was his daily reliance on the kindness of an endless sequence of total strangers resident along his assigned path. Their displays of tolerance and forbearance toward innumerable transients who regularly included convicted criminals must have had a certain therapeutic effect on those thousands of invisible, involuntary penitents. Receiving charity simply because the judicial or forced pilgrim was a pilgrim undoubtedly contributed to the experience of integration into a collective identity and the modification of personal identity that went with it. And finally, the return trip made by the condemned pilgrim released from the chains and iron bars left behind in Compostela and freed from any outward signs of condemnation?mainstreamed the former convict into the company of accomplished pilgrims. The long walk home bearing this new authority and persona of a successful devotee of the saint was arguably the most potentially transforming aspect of the journey.

And did the pilgrimage reform me? Yes, and more than I would have had the courage to expect when I faced that gentle woman at Notre Dame in Paris who gave me my first stamp in my credencial de peregrino. For starters I am now a true believer in sabbaticals: well used, they force us into silence and a salutary detachment from our books, and may lead to a disciplined re-imagining of the life and habits of another age. Biking is a fairly solitary activity, one that opens up time for serious thought. Following those ancient trails in the open air, one learns a lot about weather patterns and the rigors of various climates; about physical barriers and changes in geography; the psychological effects of alternating vistas, whether of deep forests or mountain views; distances between major points of devotion, the churches and monasteries which offered charitable shelter (many of these structures still extant); the deep silence of the road; small favors that represent huge helps; the real comfort of emerging from daily solitude into bustling settlements at timed intervals; imperfect communication due to linguistic barriers; worry about being cheated or robbed (and we were robbed once, in Burgos).

And was it a penitential pilgrimage? Again, yes, in the sense that at least in part I repented of my all-too-bookish view of the Middle Ages and my elitist literary pretensions about how it should be taught. Life was not all nasty, brutish, and short, and there was majesty to be found in experiences accessible to thousands outside of courts and cathedrals. Confusion about mixed motives and embarrassment about false advertisements of piety or erudition probably weighed on medieval pilgrims, as they did on me, and like our medieval counterparts we modern medievalists are well served by an openness to new horizons.

Editor’s note: George D. Greenia is Director of the Program in Medieval and Renaissance Studies and Professor of Spanish at the College of William and Mary. He is the editor of La Corónica.