5 - The Road to Recovery: The Experience of Seeking Cure

Summary

That a visit to a saint’s shrine required travel is an evident but often overlooked part of these cure-seeking pilgrimages. Yet, this is an important part of the cure-seeking process. For some, the journey to the shrine would have been relatively straightforward. For others, these journeys might require travelling beyond the familiar or spending prolonged periods of time on the road. Ysembela’s comments to St James, mentioned in the previous chapter, reveal the trepidations some had before undertaking longer-distance journeys. Even those travelling relatively short distances might have had anxieties over the journey, especially if their affliction had a detrimental effect on their mobility. Paralysis and blindness, notably, would have been limiting even over a short distance; while those who were described as sick were often said to be unable to leave their beds prior to their miraculous cure, suggesting that covering even a short distance would be near impossible, except with considerable help. Nevertheless, pilgrimages were made, and these journeys contributed to the overall cure-seeking experience.

As the miracle accounts focus on the result – the successful cure – additional contemporary evidence must be consulted to establish what travel in twelfth-century England was like. To understand the road network, and travel on this network more broadly, consideration of the legal concerns and regulations, and the accounts of contemporary travellers, is essential. Taking these sources into account, alongside the miracles, allows for a greater contextual understanding of a very necessary part of the cure-seeking process.

Travel has been an understudied area of the pilgrimage experience, at least for English pilgrimage. Recently though there has been growing interest in considering pilgrims within the pilgrimage landscape. Of note is Martin Locker’s study of four English pilgrimage routes that may have been traversed by a hypothetical pilgrim. Locker’s research was chronologically broad, with a greater emphasis on the later medieval centuries. His field work, and attention to the sensory experiences of the journeys, provides a fascinating angle from which to consider pilgrimage. Noteworthy are Locker’s studies of the pilgrimage from Ely and to Winchester, which offer a thoughtful consideration of the local landscapes and of the, often ancient, road networks which ran through these regions.

England’s Road Network

In an article on England’s medieval roads, Frank Stenton noted that much of the infrastructure consisted of prehistoric tracks and the remains of Romano-British roads.