Before the Reformation of the 16th century, the Roman Catholic Church was the dominant cultural and religious force in Western Europe. Although Catholic culture was by no means internationally homogeneous, it did provide a broadly similar frame of reference for how the majority of inhabitants of Western European understood the world.
A very common expression of religious devotion during the middle ages was pilgrimage. Medieval Catholics believed that some objects or places were essentially sacred. The objects were called relics, usually body parts or prized possessions that used to belong to particular saints. These relics were housed in shrines that became centres for pilgrimage. Sometimes the pilgrimage was undertook as penance or as a general expression of devotion. Sometimes a particular shrine was thought to be particularly useful at providing a certain kind of relief such as healing.
Pilgrimage did not always have to mean a long journey. Regional saints and their corresponding relics meant that pilgrims often would not have to travel long distances. However, not all shrines were created equal. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a slightly dubious piece of the true cross at your local parish church would not compare to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the site of the original cross.
Second only to Jerusalem as a pilgrimage destination was Rome. The Holy City contains and contained an extraordinary number of relics. It was most significantly associated with St Peter whose symbol of the crossed Keys of Heaven was the most common badge for pilgrims. Of particular interest to English pilgrims was the burial place of Gregory the Great: the pope who instigated the conversion of England from the south.
There were three main routes to Rome from England. The first involved coming down the Rhone valley and then crossing from Marseilles to Ostia. This became increasingly unpopular due to the presence of Saracen pirates in the Mediterranean. The second meant travelling to Lyon and then crossing into Italy using the Little St Bernard Pass or the Cenis Pass. The third route passed through Besançon and over the Great St Bernard Pass. By the tenth century it was this third route that had become the most popular.
Shortly after Sigeric the Serious was consecrated as Archbishop of Canterbury in 990 he made the pilgrimage to Rome to collect his pallium (a woollen cloak that was a symbol of office). On his return journey, one of Sigeric’s party took note of where they stopped. It is a remarkable document in that it is one of the only complete itineraries of a medieval pilgrimage. The itinerary records eighty stops and an average distance of around twenty kilometres a day.
British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B V f. 23v.
Pilgrimage across Europe proliferated into the late middle ages where it became an increasingly large source of income for churches. However, the growth of humanism and Protestantism slowed the stream of pilgrims that trekked across Europe. Although the Catholic counter-reformation attempted to reaffirm the spiritual validity of pilgrimage, the popularity of the intra-European routes never again reached their late medieval popularity.
In 1985, Italian road anthropologist, Giovanni Caselli, decided to explore and map Sigeric’s initial itinerary. The specific route is somewhat disputed across guidebooks but totals to 1900km. Since Caselli’s publication, the Via Francigena has grown in popularity with contemporary pilgrims. Although not as popular as the Camino de Santiago, it averages around 1,200 pilgrims a year.
Reflecting on his work around the time of the signing of the Maastricht treaty in 1992 Caselli wrote:
“It is a curious coincidence that the thousandth anniversary of the voyage of Sigeric almost coming to coincide with the removal of borders in Western Europe, for a long time divided, but always united both by the Via Romea and by a shared culture to which the Via Romea-Francigena has undoubtedly contributed.”
A quarter of a century later the future of Europe seems like it might turn in a different direction. Is the Francigena a mark of shared identity and culture? Or is it a relic of a largely forgotten history?