(From a 15th-century MS. of "Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles" in the Hunterian Library at Glasgow)]
In earlier ages, a pilgrimage had of course been a very solemn matter, involving the certainty of great labour and heavy privations, and with very considerable risk to life or limb. The crusades themselves were pilgrimages _en masse_, as contemporary chroniclers often remind us. At the commencement of an undertaking so serious, the pilgrims naturally sought the blessing of the Church; and there was a special service for their use. It is probable, however, that Chaucer's pilgrims troubled themselves as little about this service as about the special pilgrim's dress, the absence of which appears very plainly from his descriptions of their costume. For a century at least before he wrote, pilgrimages had been gradually becoming journeys rather of pleasure than of duty, for those who could afford the necessary expense which they entailed. Travelling indeed was not always safe; but when the pilgrim went alone and on foot he could always protect himself from most evil-doers by taking the traditional scrip and staff and gown which marked him as sacred; and often, as in Chaucer's case, a caravan was formed which might well defy all the ordinary perils of the road. The "mire" and "slough," which Chaucer more than once mentions, had always been as much a matter of common routine to everybody, even on his journey from farm to farm or village to village, as a puncture is to the modern cyclist, or occasional external traction to the motorist.[151] Moreover, though the inns might not be what we should call luxurious, they offered abundant good cheer and good fellowship to all who could pay the price. A certain Count of Poitou went about in disguise to find what class of his subjects led the happiest life; he judged at last "that the merchants at fair-time, who go to taverns and find all the delicacies they can desire ready prepared, would lead the most delightful life of all, but for this one drawback, that they must at last settle the score for all that they have consumed."[152] If, at these inns, the pilgrims often found themselves packed into great dormitories fitted with berths like a ship's cabin, this was far less of a change from their ordinary habits than are those hardships to which modern mountain tourists cheerfully submit on occasion.[153] Any great change from the ordinary routine marks a bright spot in most men's minds, even in these days of many amusements and much locomotion; so that, in proportion as the King's peace grew more effectual in England, and places of pilgrimage multiplied, and the middle classes could better afford the expense of time or money, it became as natural to many people to go to Walsingham or Canterbury for the sake of the pleasant society as it was to choose a church for the sake of gossip or flirtation.[154] This is already complained of about 1250 A.D. by Berthold of Regensburg, one of the greatest mission-preachers of the 13th century. "Men talk nowadays in church as if it were at market.... One tells what he has seen on his pilgrimage to Palestine or Rome or Compostella: thou mayst easily say so much in church of these same pilgrimages, that God or St. James will give thee no reward therefore." Again, "Many a man journeys hence to St. James of Compostella, and never hears a single mass on the way out or back, and then they go with sport and laughter, and some seldom say even their Paternoster! This I say not to turn pilgrims aside from Compostella; I am not strong enough for that; but thou mightest earn more grace by a few masses than for all thy journey to Compostella and back. Now, what dost thou find at Compostella? St. James's head. Well and good: that is a dead skull: the better part is in heaven. Now, what findest thou at home, at thy yard-gate? When thou goest to church in the morning, thou findest the true God and Man, body and soul, as truly as on that day wherein He was born of our Lady St. Mary, the ever-Virgin, whose holiness is greater than all saints.... Thou mayst earn more reward at one mass than another man in his six weeks out to St. Jacob and six weeks back again: that makes twelve weeks." "Ye run to St. James, and sell so much at home that sometimes your wives and children must ever be the poorer for it, or thou thyself in need and debt all thy life long.