Medieval pilgrims - what do you think?

[David]

Was running the brain in idle, just ticking over, and found I was thinking about medieval versus modern pilgrims and it occurred to me that they may not have become as tired as the modern pilgrim ....

I based this assumption on the thought that they may not have split the distance into specific day stages? It seems that most fatigue/stress/damage problems are to do with completing within a certain time limit - usually 33-35 days or so as well as that strange driven compulsion you see many pilgrims have, to get to a refuge - walking in the dark, racing through the countryside, then waiting outside a refugio in a queue for hours until it opens .... but if you have met a camper on the Camino you would have invariably found them to be relaxed and unstressed and undamaged .. mainly because of the certain knowledge that they can stop whenever they want to ...as well as the laissez faire mind-set they bring with them

so - were the medievals like this? Did they just stroll along - stop when tired, sleep when sleepy? They certainly didn't have the time restraints that most moderns have - nor wristwatches! - nor the need to get back to work at a certain date .. (if they did get back of course) ..

So - what do you think? Anyone know?

 

[dougfitz]

so - were the medievals like this? Did they just stroll along - stop when tired, sleep when sleepy? They certainly didn't have the time restraints that most moderns have - nor wristwatches! - nor the need to get back to work at a certain date .. (if they did get back of course) ..

So - what do you think? Anyone know?

I might be old, and there might be some others with a few years on me, but I don't know that anyone here would be able to answer that from personal experience

That said, most accounts that I have read seem to indicate that pilgrimages have always been dangerous undertakings for one reason or another, and I would suspect that the medieval pilgrim would have been just as keen to find a warm, safe shelter for the night, food for the next day and might also have been under pressure to get home to manage a farm or follow a trade as we are today.

Regards,

 

[Andrewere]

What would they have carried? Would their 'pack' weight have been lighter too?

Andrew.

 

[Deleted member 3000]

They probably did not even have third generation smart phones, perhaps suffering through with obsolete first generation technology.

 

[sulu]

What would they have carried? Would their 'pack' weight have been lighter too

No change of clothes or soap, not for nothing is there a 'botafumeira'

 

[andy.d]

Katherine Lack's 'The Cockleshell Pilgrim' is a really good investigation of Robert Sutton's pilgrimage from Worcester to Santiago in the Middle Ages. Well worth reading - much more of an undertaking then than now.

Andy

 

[Arn]

My guess is that societal connections and economics were as much a driving force in medieval pilgrimages as they are today.

If the pilgrim was well off and connected, I'm sure they would plan to stay at Inns and/or the homes/castles of family and friends.

The location of inns serving these gentry would often be located at a distance from said "castle" that could reasonably be covered by horse in a day.

Medieval people traveled with everything they needed following in carts behind them. A train of this sort wouldn't move fast. Mounted knights-- all on well-conditioned destriers or palfreys -- would move fairly fast and cover upwards of 50 or 60 miles per day. However, traveling 20 to 30 miles a day would be considered a good day's journey.

If the pilgrim was on foot, and carrying all their gear, they too could make 20 miles a day; though if they are walking they probably didn't have the funds to stay at an Inn, though many Lords, being good Christians considered it proper to welcome pilgrims. In addition, monasteries also provided simple room and board.

We see the same situation today, though where the CF/CP have a robust infrastructure of albergues, the Caminos less traveled will have a significantly fewer options (of a reasonable nature).

Arn

 

[Rebekah Scott]

Jonathan Sumption´s "Age of Pilgrimage" is THE book on medieval pilgrim life and travel. Superb scholarship, brilliantly written.
Pilgrims often took years to go to Santiago. They traveled lightly as they could, in large groups for protection from robbers and wild animals. In the height of its popularity, pilgrim shelters existed in great abundance all along the Camino Frances, most of them charitable works of local confraternities, parishes, and monastic houses, others were private money-making concerns with evil reputations.
Daily walks were shorter, as GoreTex and Vibram soles were in short supply, as was basic nutrition, sanitation, and healthcare. Travelers were weaker and much more subject to illness, and tended to die a lot. When the weather was bad or winter set in, the pilgrims stayed put in the town or village they were at. The ones with skills would set up shop at the local market and earn money for their onward journey. Sometimes they discovered a niche, or they fell in love, or they got sick or entangled in local affairs and just decided to stay there and never go home again. Others died, or went to jail, or joined a monastic order, or were captured and enslaved in the sporadic border wars.
Pilgrims did not pay taxes, and weren´t supposed to have to pay tolls. They were exempt from military service and were offered free hospitality in many places in exchange for their prayers and stories. They were Christian icons traveling in a deeply superstitious land, probably offered more respect than they´d ever get back home.
And that is just the start of a fascinating subject.

 

[Rebekah Scott]

Oh, and one more item: In my former life I rode in endurance horse competitions. Even a well-conditioned horse will not go "upward of 50 miles a day" for more than a day or so, not with a full burden on his back and rough roads underfoot. No responsible rider would push a valuable horse that hard, not if he wanted it to last the trip.

I rode from Gredos, Avila to Trujillo along the cañadas of the Gredos ridge and Jerte valley/Via de la Plata many years ago, probably about 200 km. in total. It took us 8 days altogether, the horses were very athletic, and we rarely broke a trot. Maybe medieval destriers were über, or maybe they measured miles differently back then?

Just sayin.
Reb.

 

[newfydog]

It seems that most fatigue/stress/damage problems are to do with completing within a certain time limit - usually 33-35 days or so as well as that strange driven compulsion you see many pilgrims have, to get to a refuge - walking in the dark, racing through the countryside, then waiting outside a refugio in a queue for hours until it opens

Good way to ruin a trip. We go off season, never have a destination or reservation, and are prepared to spend a bit extra for a place here and there is that is all there is available. Perhaps the modern pilgrim should scale back the plans to fit the time and budget better.

One word for anyone longing for the halcyon days of the middle ages: Dentistry!

 

[Abbeydore]

It seems that most fatigue/stress/damage problems are to do with completing within a certain time limit - usually 33-35 days or so as well as that strange driven compulsion you see many pilgrims have, to get to a refuge - walking in the dark, racing through the countryside, then waiting outside a refugio in a queue for hours until it opens

Good way to ruin a trip. We go off season, never have a destination or reservation, and are prepared to spend a bit extra for a place here and there is that is all there is available. Perhaps the modern pilgrim should scale back the plans to fit the time and budget better.

One word for anyone longing for the halcyon days of the middle ages: Dentistry!

a bit like life really..... :mrgreen: Thank you, wise words. Dentistry?

 

[David]

I must admit that when thinking of medieval pilgrims I wasn't thinking about the wealthy, the same way that I don't think about them in the modern world .... I was thinking of the average Joe (or Joan).
The English were well fed and healthy, until the enclosures of common land started to produced the poor class.

On the whole they would have been strong pilgrims, used to physical activity, and only the rich would have had to worry about their teeth as only the rich had sweet items in their diet. All English Yeoman had to be trained in the long-bow - a civic duty. The long-bow had a pull of between fifty and seventy pounds. When I was an archer I used a recurve bow and drew 34 pounds and that was plenty for me, so I don't think we have to look at the medievals as all poor and ragged thin people on bad diets.
There life expectancy was almost as long as ours is now, though ours is starting to decline as we know. The statistics that show they all died young are false as the numbers crunched include all still births and deaths of children in their first five years. Remove those numbers from the stats and their life expectancy rises to 'normal' levels.
Certainly if one became ill from something like malaria - which was prevalent in Europe then - or the various plagues that re-appeared every few decades, then you would have very sick people indeed, stuck a long way from home, but I doubt that violence against the person was more common then than now - try walking through any English town centre at night during the weekend and see how you get on ...

They would have carried a repair kit, normal at the time, so would have been able to repair clothes and sandals without problem. They would be unused to central heating so would have been hardier .. I do think we have to beware of painting the past as somehow primitive.

Nor do we have to think that they were constrained by time issues, the nature of the extended family system meant that if there were adult children one was free to go for as long as one needed to (and good riddance quite a lot of the time I should think!).

We know that when they returned their status had changed and they carried their pilgrim status with them until they died - consider the shells on coffins and so on. The Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca gives status - a pilgrim returned may add the name 'Hajji' to their name, and will wear a white skullcap to show that they have been. It confers great status within the community.

Yes, we had horses too, when the children were growing (I don't ride them, no handbrake!) and I have always found it quite funny that in cowboy films the horses seem to gallop long distances all the time, day in and day out, without problem - if only! Bex - I think your 200kms in 8 days was pretty good going indeed.
A Roman army on the march would be expected to walk 25 miles a day, with kit (though mules carried the heavy kit) and then build an overnight fortress before turning in - day after day. These were Roman miles of course (a thousand two-step paces) which were nearly 200 yards shorter than our mile .... so .. pilgrim with side pack .... hhmmm ... no idea at all :lol:

So - I dunno, I think they would have walked shorter daily distances ... to a sanctuary each night for certain, it would have been a brave or naive pilgrim who slept outside the walls of a town or monastery by himself - though a caravan of pilgrims would have been a moving town wouldn't it?

These are all just thoughts - I don't know, so I don't hold any of the thoughts dear ... just wondering

 

[Deleted member 3000]

I for one expect to live longer than medieval people:

Era Life Expectancy at Birth (years) Comment
Upper Paleolithic 33 [At age 15, life expectancy an additional 39 years (total age 54).]
Neolithic 20
Bronze Age and Iron Age 26
Classical Greece 28
Classical Rome 28 [At age 15, life expectancy an additional 37 years (total age 52).]
Pre-Columbian North America 25-30
Medieval Islamic Caliphate 35+
Medieval Britain 30 [At age 21, life expectancy an additional 43 years (total age 64).]
Early Modern Britain 25-40
Early 20th Century 31
Current world average 67.2 2010 est.

 

[David]

:lol:

 

[Arn]

I've found over the several years on the Forum that we are all full of opinions, if not full of ourselves...your humble mod among those.

I've also found, that some of us are quite "expert" in some areas...and could, if challenged, provide a laundry list of credible sources for their offerings, be they purely scientific, or peer reviewed statistics. In this case, the subject line includes: "...what do you think?" Therefore opening the door and welcoming any opinion, without reservation...or invective.

I've also found, we are better off if we don't fall into an unpleasant cesspool that's clearly not representative of the majority of Forum members.

Saludos,

Arn