In a kind of perpetual motion, pilgrims from all over Europe started moving towards destinations that were 100 to maximum 200 km away from their residence. Their saints were all the same, and their qualities strangely similar from one end of the continent to the other. Long way pilgrimages were undertaken only by a negligible minority of the population, on quite particular dates and circumstances.

Pilgrims in Rome for the first Jubilee in 1300 (min. 15th)

crowds walking tours, le puy, vézelay or arles

In the enthusiasm of reunion in Compostella, one believed that the four sanctuaries indicated by the Guide of the Pilgrim were places where pilgrims gathered during great departures towards Galicia. It is nothing of the kind. Crowds of pilgrims from Germany, Italy or Spain indeed found themselves in Tours, in Le Puy, in Arles and in Vézelay, but they had achieved the goal of their pilgrimage.

the black Virgin of Puy-en-Velay - France Photo DPM

In Tours the body of saint Martin was venerated in the crypt of the abbey bearing his name. In Le Puy, one of these Black Virgins in the colours of volcanic lava exerted a mysterious attraction since times immemorial. In Vézelay, the relics of Marie-Magdalene the sinner attracted the pilgrims, until those of Sainte-Baume eclipsed it. In Arles, an abundance of places of pilgrimage to saintly tombs: saint Trophime, saint Césaire, and the cemetery of Alyscamps full of anonymous saints: in the twelfth century, the legend of Charlemagne locates there the burial sites of hundreds of heroes who died at Roncevaux.

For each one of these places, testimonies abound about the continual presence of crowds of pilgrims. In Le Puy during jubilee years (years when Good Friday was on March 25, day of the Annunciation) one was squashed in the narrow and winding streets as pilgrims perished there choked.

This famous Guide of the Pilgrim still quotes the great sanctuaries located on the roads of Aquitaine: Saint-Gilles in Provence, Saintes, Saint-Jean d'Angély, Orléans… It invites the lords of this vast region to become vassals to the kings of Spain, who dream of creating an Empire like Charlemagne, an Empire that would go, they say, "from the steps of Santiago to Poitou and the banks of the Rhone".

Photo JP Gisserot

At the bottom of the hill of Vézelay, close to Saint-Jacques d' Asquins church, the newcomers were grouped in a "field of pilgrims", pilgrims from Vézelay and nothing else.

a need, to go far away

As opposed to what has been believed for a long time, the mediaeval road network did not have to envy the Roman ways. It is attested by the Champagne markets, which every year in Provins, Troyes, Bar-sur-Aube received Italian, Spanish, English, Flemish merchants and where enormous quantities of food products were transported by convoys. Making way, tradesmen and carriers gathered readily in places of pilgrimage in order to venerate saints familiar to all due to a common religion. No roadmaps (the first, very brief, date from the seventeenth century), only the lists of names of cities or sanctuaries marking out the roads to be followed. One of these log books, called Itineraries of Bruges, is preserved. It was written in the fifteenth century, for the use of Flemings wanting to go to the fairs of Nijni-Novgorod or on pilgrimage to Rome, Rocamadour or Compostella. They were certainly useful to penitent pilgrims, those (never dangerous for others, one can rest assured) that Flemish justice wanted to forget for some time by dispatching them towards a remote sanctuary: Saint-Maurille in Angers, Saint-Fiacre-en-Brie, Notre-Dame of Chartres, Notre-Dame of Cléry, Saint-Julien in Mans, Sainte-Croix in Orléans, Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire or Vendôme. Conversely, heretic Albigensians were sent to reflect in Cologne or Canterbury. To inflict as punishment the obligation of being a foreigner, of going to meet other customs and other languages was already understood as a means of redemption. The fact of doing it in the guise of the pilgrim protected both the punished (the pilgrim was carrying letters of introduction) and the host (reassured by these letters).

For a long time these pilgrimages came to be much more effective than a visit to a nearby sanctuary, because the distance to be traversed implied efforts to be counted towards obtaining the required grace.

crusades of german children to mount saint-michel

Mount Saint-Michel - France Photo JP Gisserot

At the Mount, holy archangel Michel succeeded the Greek Hermes and the Latin Mercury. The former was carrying the myths of childhood and the latter was the servant of Jupiter's loves. It is also said that nine druid priestesses of the Mount sold arrows to the sailors, which calmed the storms, provided they were launched by a still virgin young man.

Saint Michel, once installed, became the patron of young boys and attracted their pilgrimage to him. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, this attraction was so strong that at times it looked like uncontrollable immigration... A monk of the Mount recounts that in 1333: "a multitude of children called Little Shepherds came to the Mount from various remote countries. Several swore that they had heard celestial voices that told them Go to Mount-Saint-Michel, which they had obeyed at once and had put themselves on the way, leaving their herds in the fields, and going towards this Mount without saying good-bye to anybody". The monk adds that a priest tried to temper them by proposing that they prepare this pilgrimage maturely but that he himself was taken with same desire and left without returning to his place. In July 1450, "a thousand children" (i.e., lots, lots) leave Frankfurt-am-Main, led by a Dominican. These departures are repeated for several years, "on all sides of Germany. There were some twelve years old or older children, behind banners on which the image of saint Michel was painted. They sang in places and begged their bread". They also came from Liège and Switzerland. Worrying adults threaten with excommunication, speak about possession, sale of slaves, depopulation of certain areas. Some saw there a consequence of the creation of new schools in Germany, which involved concentrations of young people unknown before. How can one not also think of the history of the flute player of Hamelin, written in the thirteenth century? No explanation was convincing.