A great number of pilgrims undertook the voyage to Palestine; they entered Jerusalem by the gate of Ephraim where they paid a tribute to the Saracens. After having prepared themselves by fasting and prayer, they presented themselves in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, covered with a funeral cloth or robe, which they preserved with care during the remainder of their lives, and in which they were buried after their death. They viewed with holy respect Mount Sion, the Mount of Olives, and the Valley of Jehoshaphat; they quitted Jerusalem to visit Bethlehem, where the Saviour of the world was born; Mount Tabor, rendered sacred by the transfiguration; and all the places memorable for his miracles. The pilgrims next bathed in the waters of the Jordan,[23] and gathered in the territory of Jericho palms which they bore back as evidences and relics to the West.
Such were the devotion and spirit of the tenth and eleventh centuries, that the greater part of the Christians would have thought themselves wanting in the duties of religion if they had not performed some pilgrimage. He who had escaped from a danger, or triumphed over his enemies, assumed the pilgrim’s staff, and took the road to the holy places; he who had obtained by his prayers the preservation of a father or of a son, went to return his thanks to heaven far from his domestic hearth, in places rendered holy by religious traditions. A father often devoted his child in the cradle to a pilgrimage, and the first duty of an affectionate and obedient son, when past the age of childhood, was to accomplish the vow of his parents. More than once a dream, a vision in the midst of sleep, imposed upon a Christian the obligation of performing a pilgrimage. Thus, the idea of these pious journeys mixed itself up with all the affections of the heart, and with all the prejudices of the human mind.
Pilgrims were welcomed everywhere, and in return for the hospitality they received, they were only asked for their prayers; often, indeed, the only treasure they carried with them. One of them, desirous to embark at Alexandria for Palestine, presented himself with his scrip and staff on board a ship, and offered a book of the holy Evangelists in payment for his passage. Pilgrims, on their route, had no other defence against the attacks of the wicked but the cross of Christ, and no other guides but those angels whom God has told “to watch over his children, and to direct them in all their ways.”
The greatest merit in the eyes of the faithful, next to that of pilgrimage, was to devote themselves to the service of the pilgrims. Hospitals were built upon the banks of rivers, upon the heights of mountains, in the midst of cities, and in desert places, for the reception of these travellers. In the ninth century, the pilgrims who left Burgundy to repair to Italy, were received in a monastery built upon Mount Cenis. In the following century, two monasteries, in which were received travellers who had strayed from their way, occupied the places of the temples of idolatry on Montes Jovis,[24] and thence lost the name they had received from Paganism, and took that of their pious founder, St. Bernard de Menton. Christians who travelled to Judea, found on the frontiers of Hungary, and in the provinces of Asia Minor, a great number of asylums raised by charity.
Christians established at Jerusalem went to meet the pilgrims, and often exposed themselves to a thousand dangers whilst conducting them on their route. The holy city contained hospitals for the reception of all travellers. In one of these hospitals the women who performed the pilgrimage to Palestine, were received by religious females devoted to the offices of charity. The merchants of Amalfi, Venice, and Genoa, the richest among the pilgrims, and several princes of the West, furnished, by their benevolence, the means of keeping these houses open for all poor travellers.[25] Every year monks from the East came into Europe to collect the self-imposed tribute of the piety of the Christians. A pilgrim was a privileged being among the faithful. When he had completed his journey, he acquired the reputation of particular sanctity, and his departure and his return were celebrated by religious ceremonies. When about to set out, a priest presented to him his scrip and staff, together with a gown marked with a cross; he sprinkled holy water over his vestments, and accompanied him, at the head of a procession, as far as the boundaries of the next parish. On his return to his country, the pilgrim gave thanks to God, and presented to the priest a palm-branch, to be deposited on the altar of the church, as an evidence of his undertaking being happily terminated.
The poor, in their pilgrimages, found certain resources against misery; when coming back to their country, they received abundant alms. Vanity sometimes induced the rich to undertake these long voyages, which made the monk Glaber say, that many Christians went to Jerusalem to make themselves admired, and to be enabled, on their return, to relate the wonders they had seen. Many were influenced by the love of idleness and change, others by curiosity and an inclination to see various countries. It was by no means rare to meet with Christians who had spent their lives in holy pilgrimages, and had visited Jerusalem several times.
Every pilgrim was obliged to carry with him a letter from his prince or his bishop, a precaution which must have prevented many disorders. History does not record a single act of violence committed by one of the travellers who absolutely covered the route to the East. A Mussulman governor, who had seen a vast number of them pass to Emessa, said: “They have not left their homes with any bad design; they only seek to fulfil their law.”[26]
Every year, at the period of the festivals of Easter, numberless troops of pilgrims arrived in Judea to celebrate the mystery of the Redemption, and to behold the miracle of the sacred fire, which a superstitious multitude believed they saw descend from heaven upon the lamps of the holy sepulchre. There existed no crime that might not be expiated by the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and acts of devotion at the tomb of Christ. We find in the “Acts of the Saints,” that, in the time of Lothaire, this opinion was established among the Franks. An old relation, preserved by a monk of Redon, informs us that a powerful lord of the duchy of Brittany, named Frotmonde, the murderer of his uncle and his brother, presented himself in the habit of a penitent before the king of France and an assembly of bishops. The monarch and the prelates, as an expiation for the blood he had shed, caused him to be tightly bound with chains of iron, and ordered him to visit the holy places, his brow marked with ashes, and his body clothed in a winding-sheet. Frotmonde, accompanied by his servants and the accomplices of his crime, set out for Palestine; after having for some time sojourned at Jerusalem, he crossed the desert, went to the banks of the Nile, traversed a part of Africa, proceeded as far as Carthage, and came back to Rome, where Pope Benedict III. advised him to commence a new pilgrimage, to complete his penance and obtain an entire remission of his sins. Frotmonde saw Palestine a second time, penetrated as far as the shores of the Red Sea, remained three years on Mount Sinai, and went into Armenia, to visit the mountain on which the ark of Noah had rested after the deluge. On his return to his country he was received as a saint; he shut himself up in the monastery of Redon,[27] and died regretted by the cenobites whom he had edified by the relation of his pilgrimages.
Many years after the death of Frotmonde, Centius, prefect of Rome, who had used violence to the Pope in the church of St. Mary the Great, who had dragged him from the altar, and placed him in a dungeon, needed nothing more to expiate this sacrilege than to perform the pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Foulque-Nerra, count of Anjou, charged with crimes, and stained with blood, thought to efface all his cruelties by a voyage to Jerusalem. His brother, whom he had caused to perish in a dungeon, presented himself wherever he went, before his eyes; it appeared to him that the numerous victims sacrificed to his ambition in unjust wars issued from their tombs to disturb his sleep, and reproach him for his barbarity. Pursued everywhere by these frightful images, Foulque left his states, and repaired to Palestine, in the garb of a pilgrim. When he arrived at Jerusalem, he passed through the streets of the holy city with a cord about his neck, beaten with rods by his domestics, repeating in a loud voice these words: “Lord, have pity on a perjured and fugitive Christian.” During his abode in Palestine,[28] he bestowed numerous benefactions, comforted the miseries of the pilgrims, and left everywhere testimonials of his devotion and charity. He returned to his duchy, bringing with him a portion of the true cross, and the stone upon which he had knelt when he prayed before the tomb of Christ.