|
|
KEY Commentary Side Textual Bibliographic Scriptural
|
|
in so moch that they which be most wontte to offer to images
and to shewe them / be so colde in offerynge to
the pore / that they wyll scace geue them the
scrappes which must else be geuen dogges / or their old shone /
iff they maye haue new bromes for them.
|
|
|
¶Pilgrimages
|
¶ Pilgrimages. A
major theme of Dialogue Bk. 1, Ch. 2–17 (CWM
6/1.5–101). An ample account of the background is found in Jonathan
Sumption, Pilgrimage: An Image of Medieval
Religion (London: Faber, 1975), in
which Ch. 14–15 treat the late-medieval increase of pilgrimages, both to
long-revered sanctuaries like Walsingham and Mont-Saint-Michel and to
new centers of enthusiastic devotion like Wilsnak, near
Wittenberg, with its bleeding host. Lollards attacked
pilgrimages as wasteful of time and money, as occasions of lechery,
gluttony, and drunkenness away from home and neighbors, and as wrong in
localizing Christ or Mary at one place, cf. Hudson 86/122–87/167.
Luther's To the Christian Nobility, 1520 (WA
6.447/17–450/21; LW 44.185–89), called for the suppression of pilgrim
shrines with their many
abuses so people could seek Christ's word and
sacrament in their parish churches. Cf. later passages on pilgrimages:
[G1v, “pilgrimage and all bodyly exercice”; G4, “He saith . . . their circles”; G6v, “As the miracles . . . se playnly”; M3, “pilgremages”].
The most engaging literary treatment of the theme occurs in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (c1387—c1400), where the
thirty-odd pilgrims to the shrine of Becket represent every class of
feudal society . Margery Kempe (c1373-c1439), who dictated the
earliest surviving autobiography in English, left a vivid narrative of
her three major pilgrimages: to Jerusalem, Assisi, and Rome; to Santiago;
to Wilsnak and Aachen. See The Book of
Margery Kempe, ed. Sanford Brown Meech and Hope Emily Allen,
EETS 212 (London : Oxford UP, 1940).
|
|
To speake of pilgrimages / I saye / that a christen man / so that
he leaue nothinge vndone at home that he is bounde to doo / is
fre to
goo whother he will / only aftir the doctrine of the
lorde / whose
seruaunte he is and not his awne. If he goo and viset
the pore / the secke and the presoner / it is well done and a
worke that god commaundeth . If he goo to this or that place / to
heare a sermon or because his mynd is not quiet at home / or if
because his hert is to moch occupied on his worldly businesses
bi the reasons of occasions at home / he gett him in to a moare
quiett and styll place / where his minde is moare abstracte and
pulled from worldly thoughtes it is
well done. And in all these places if what soeuer it
be / whether liuely preachynge / ceremonie / relique or image
stere vpp his herte to god and preach the worde of god and the
ensample of oure sauioure Iesus moare in one place then in a
nother / that he thither goo / I am content. And yet he bydeth
a lorde and the thynges serue him and he not them / Now whether
his entent be so or no / his dedes wil testifie / as his
vertuouse gouernynge of his housse and louynge demeanoure to
warde his neyghboures: yee and gods worde wilbe
all waye in his hert and in his mouth & he euery
daye perfecter then other.
|
True Pilgrimage is to walke from place to place ther better to serue God & to helpe my neighbour.[1573]
viset . . .
presoner. Cf. Matt. 25.36.
Matthew 25.36
gods . . .
mouth. Cf. Rom. 10.8.
Romans 10.8
|