A Study in Fourteenth-Century Piety

Extract

Some years ago there came into my hands a little book in Middle French entitled Le Saint Voyage de Jherusalem. Its author was a certain Seigneur d'Angleure, who in 1395 made the pilgrimage to the holy places, and included in his itinerary Mount Sinai and the monasteries of Anthony and Paul in Egypt. It was a very comprehensive journey; the Seigneur had an eye for detail and would have excelled today as a compiler of Blue Guides or Baedekers. He could not write a travelogue in the Morton style, however, still less Waugh's, and the value of his record lies in the remarkably complete list of relics and customs which he managed to ‘do’ with disarming simplicity and devotion. His piety is not repulsive, for the charitable anxiety of the good knight and his contemporaries to leave no event of scripture unmarked for the edification of the faithful covers a multitude of transgressions committed in their identification.