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Promotional Pamphlets for Pilgrims
As competition for pilgrims between holy sites and
churches grew jingles and rhymes were composed and
travelling preachers were employed to drum up interest.
Pamphlets to attract custom might advertise a new relic,
saint or miracle. Some churches appealed to pilgrims not
to bother going abroad but to spend their devotions and
their money closer to home instead:
“remember you are never far from Fécamp, where the
Lord has sent his precious blood for your benefit”.
An English pamphlet told of how an Englishman visiting
St Peter’s in Rome, delirious and sweating on his sick bed,
heard an unearthly voice beseeching him:
“Why are you wasting your time here? Go back home to
England and make your offering at the monastery of St
Egwin at Evesham, for there alone will you be healed.”
Mediaeval Merchandising
Some of the earliest known travel souvenirs date from the
Middle Ages when pilgrims bought badges made of pewter
to show where they’d been. The fashion was to wear your
badge on your wide brimmed pilgrim’s hat. These badges
still turn up occasionally on riverbeds where the Christian
pilgrims succumbed to trace memories of old Pagan
practices and cast them into the water for luck.
The Thomas à Becket Canterbury badge to the right was
found in the Thames near old Billingsgate Fish Market.
In the run up to the London Olympics there was a bit of
bristling at suggestions that the International Olympic
Committee was planning harsh measures to protect its
trade marks, especially any use of the Olympic rings to
ensure that only officially endorsed merchandise was sold.
Nothing, but nothing in this world is new. As early as the
13
th
century onwards churches and local traders throughout
Europe clashed over the lucrative manufacture and sale of
pilgrim badges. In France, at the Hospital of
St Mary in Le Puy, pilgrims were searched and
unauthorised badges confiscated. The church authorities
would allow only badges bought on the premises to be
touched to the Virgin’s statue or blessed by the priests.
The Rough Guide to Pilgrimage
Guide books were made (copied out by hand this being
before printing) offering practical advice. The 12
th
century
Guide for Pilgrims to Santiago
was written to be carried
on the journey to Spain. It held nothing back in describing
the dangerous thick forests, mosquito-infested marshes,
wild animals, impassable rivers and undrinkable water.
The author, unknown but probably French, really didn’t
like the Basques, a race he thought so dreadful they could
only have originated in Scotland:
“Not only are they badly dressed, but they eat and drink
in the most disgusting way... Far from using spoons,
they eat with their hands, slobbering over their food
like any pig or dog. To hear them speaking, you would
think they were a pack of hounds barking, for their
language is absolutely barbarous... They have dark,
evil, ugly faces... They are like fierce savages, dishonest
and untrustworthy, impious, common, cruel and
quarrelsome people... They will kill you for a penny.
Men and women alike warm themselves by the fire,
revealing those parts, which are better hidden.”
By far the most dangerous pilgrimage was the big one
to the Holy Land and the dangers started with the sea
crossing. The leg from Venice to the Holy Land
alone would take six weeks. A guide book written by
a 15
th
century Bursar of Eton called William Wey advised
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The Kettle
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