Why Rome
For medieval Christians, Rome held a special place. It was the city where the apostles Peter and Paul were believed to have been martyred and buried, and it was the seat of the pope, regarded as Peter’s successor. It also contained the tombs and relics of countless martyrs from the early centuries of the church. Few places could match this concentration of sacred sites, and visiting them was a mark of loyalty to the Roman church as well as a personal act of devotion.
The city had also lost much of its ancient population and grandeur. For long stretches of the Middle Ages it was relatively small, with ruins and open land between the inhabited areas. Pilgrims came to a place that was both holy and visibly worn by time, and the ruins were a part of what they saw.
Early Pilgrims and the Road to Rome
Pilgrims were arriving in Rome from the early centuries of the church, and by the early Middle Ages visitors came from across Europe, including Anglo-Saxon England. Some records of routes survive. One often-cited example is the itinerary of Sigeric, archbishop of Canterbury, who traveled to Rome in the late tenth century and left a list of stops on the way back. It shows that journeys were organized around a chain of overnight stages.
The main roads from the north crossed the Alps, passed through northern Italy, and continued through Tuscany. Travelers sometimes called Rome pilgrims by a special word in Italian, romei, which reflects how common they were. Towns along the way, such as those in Tuscany, depended on this traffic for lodging, food, and trade.
Churches and Sacred Sites
Medieval visitors followed a loose circuit of the principal churches. The most important were:
- Saint Peter’s basilica, built over the traditional tomb of Peter, the key destination for most visitors.
- Saint Paul outside the Walls, which held the tomb of Paul.
- Saint John Lateran, the cathedral of Rome and the pope’s own church.
- Santa Maria Maggiore, a major church dedicated to the Virgin.
- Other churches such as San Lorenzo and Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, which held relics of martyrs and pieces associated with the Passion of Christ.
Visitors also went to the catacombs and to churches built over martyrs’ graves. Some were drawn to a cloth called the Veronica, believed to carry the face of Christ, kept at Saint Peter’s and widely copied on pilgrim badges. A number of guidebooks for pilgrims, such as the Mirabilia Urbis Romae of the twelfth century, mixed religious sites with descriptions of ancient monuments, though they sometimes repeated legends. The practice of visiting seven particular churches as a set was formalized later, so it is better not to assume it was fixed in the earlier Middle Ages.
The Jubilee of 1300
The most famous event in the pilgrim history of Rome was the Jubilee of 1300. Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed a special year in which those who visited the basilicas of Peter and Paul, under stated conditions, would receive a full indulgence. Contemporary accounts describe very large numbers of visitors, though the figures given by chroniclers are impossible to verify and probably exaggerated. Writers record crowded streets, shortages, and offerings left at the altars in great quantity. Dante, then in Florence, mentions the crowds crossing the bridge in the Divine Comedy, which is often cited as a sign of the scale of the event.
Later popes shortened the interval between Jubilees, and over the next centuries the schedule was changed several times. The details of how often a Holy Year was proclaimed, and the exact terms, changed, so it is safer to say the Jubilee became a recurring event than to give one fixed pattern. The large amount of money coming into the city was important to Roman institutions and to the papacy.
The Visitor’s Experience
Pilgrims typically found lodging in hospices maintained by religious communities or national groups. Hospices for English, German, and other travelers existed in the city and cared for visitors who fell ill or ran out of money. Crowds, heat, and fevers were hazards, particularly in summer, and sellers of souvenirs, guides, and moneychangers all worked the visitors.
Confession and prayer were central to the visit. Those who came for penance might receive guidance from priests who spoke their language. The city offered a wide range of experiences, from quiet prayer in a basilica to crowded processions.
Rome and the Wider Pilgrim World
Rome did not stand alone. It was one of three principal pilgrimage goals, with Jerusalem and Compostela. Rome was often easier to reach than the Holy Land, since a pilgrim did not have to cross the sea or enter lands where Christians were in a minority. But it also could be politically unstable, and the papacy’s absence from the city during the fourteenth century, when the popes lived at Avignon, affected its fortunes. The city revived after their return, and later in the fifteenth century its churches and monuments were restored on a large scale.
For many Europeans, a trip to Rome combined devotion with an encounter with the wider church: a place where the ideal of a single Christian community took physical form in streets, relics, and liturgies.