Even exalted nobles thus spend the remainder of a lifetime expiating their iniquities. Everyone has heard of Count Fulk the Black of Anjou, who heaped up misdeeds even to the murdering of his wife. Then at last he realized the awful peril to his soul. Three times he made the long pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the third time letting himself be dragged upon a hurdle through the streets of the Sacred City, while two varlets smote him with whips.
Such great criminals often carry passports issued by bishops, certifying that they are expiating by pilgrimage specified evil deeds--and requesting Christian folk to give them lodging, food, and assistance. These penitents, if knights, are likely to wear chains upon their wrists and neck, forged of their own armor, as witnesses at once of their social position and their genuine repentance.
Most pilgrims, however, have no such fearful things weighing down their souls. They are simply ordinary erring men who are moved by a genuine piety, possibly admixed with a willingness to find excuse for "seeing the world." Every day they appear at the gate of St. Aliquis castle to ask a share in the supper and a bed on the rushes in the hall, and they are respectfully treated, although Conon sometimes complains that their trailing robes of brown wool, heavy staffs, and sacks slung at belt are merely the disguises for so many wandering rogues. Unwashed and unkempt though many of them are, it never does to repulse them, lest you lose the Scriptural blessing for those who received strangers and so "have entertained angels unawares."
Pilgrims, too, are good newsmongers. They supply you with tidings from Italy, Germany, Spain, or even the Holy Land. They will carry letters also to foreign parts and transmit verbal messages to kinsmen. They do not always travel alone, but by twos, fives, or even tens. Recently at Dunkirk, where the peasants revolted, the bishop laid upon twenty-five of their leaders the penance that they should spend a year going about in a body to different holy places and joining in religious processions "in twenty-six churches," wearing no clothing save their trousers, going barefoot, and carrying the rods with which they had been disciplined.