Sandy Curnow Reflection

Pilgrimage and Women

Image: Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales (www.britannica.com)

So priketh hem Nature in hir corages,
So Nature incites them in their hearts,
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
Then folk long to go on pilgrimages.

This year of 2025, is once again a Pilgrimage/Jubilee year for the Church, and a glance at the internet shows page after page of advertised pilgrimage tours to Italy – Rome central of course – featuring various spiritual directors (some ‘waitlisted’, some with ‘places available’) promising tantalising ‘holy sites’ to visit.  The idea to travel to a holy place to pray is a very old one and Pope Francis is more aware than most of its downside, but rejoices in its long tradition of prayer.

The word Jubilee comes from the Hebrew word yobel, which is the ram’s or goat’s horn trumpet that is sounded at the start of such a year as in Leviticus 25:9.  In the Old Testament it occurred once every 50 years and involved the cancelling of debts, the freeing of slaves, a year of rest for people and the earth, and of land being restored to the landless.  Signal justice for the poor and powerless.

These are higher expectations than society would face today.

In 1470 Pope Paul II reduced the interval between Holy Years to 25, so that it was open to every generation, and so pilgrimages to Rome and especially to St Peter’s have flourished through the centuries, with a break only in the disruptive Napoleonic period.  To walk through the opened central doors of the mother church is a moving experience.  In the past, pilgrims to Rome were promised a range of spiritual benefits and blessings.

Image: Pope Francis opening the Holy Door

This year the Pope changed the traditional ceremony by opening both the great papal central doors on Christmas Eve 2024, and immediately afterwards opening a similar one in Rebibbia Prison nearby.  His theme was ‘hope’ – of particular importance to the prisoners themselves.  He is clearly drawn to the ideals of Leviticus.

Image: Statue of St Helena – St Peter’s Basilica, Rome (Wikimedia Commons)

The three great pilgrimage sites in European Christianity were traditionally Jerusalem, Rome and Compostela in that order.  St Helena, mother of Constantine the Great (and whose figure is celebrated spectacularly in St Peter’s), was encouraged by early church fathers, especially St Jerome, to travel to the Holy Land and search for – and by legend to find – the site of the Crucifixion in or outside the Holy City;  then not only did she successfully bring home the True Cross, but also left a church built over the site.  Gradually other Holy Places were identified and celebrated.  The Holy Land re-established its Christian associations.  Some pious folk even travelled the three or four thousand kilometres from Europe to the River Jordan to be baptised – a massive effort of faith.  (Even today British Royal babies are baptised in water from the Jordan.)  But pilgrimages, while being sometimes taxing and dangerous were also interesting and fun.  The route from northern Europe to the Holy Land was most safely travelled by sea across the length of the Mediterranean.  The route was called the ‘Way of the Cross’ – Via Crucis – which is actually the origin of the modern word “Cruise”.

In the 7th Century, the Holy Land fell to the Muslims and as travel there became more difficult, major pilgrimage sites developed in Western Europe, notably Santiago de Compostela (St James) in Northern Spain.  Today, there are many land routes which have been revived from Germany to southern France and across Spain for this Camino whose popularity has only increased.  There was a charming badge of a scallop shell that Pilgrims often wore; at first the shell was found in local food from the coastal area and so given to pilgrims as a sign and memento of Compostela as well as acting in practical ways as both a spoon and a cup for the return journey.  The image of the shell marks medieval graves all over Europe – a sign of the piety of the one buried there and the widely held importance of Santiago itself.

There are many tales of Pilgrimages – some true and some utterly apocryphal, but since this week is of Women in the Church, we could do worse than turn with wry laughter to two women Pilgrims in the English Church of the Fourteenth Century.  They are Geoffrey Chaucer’s creation from his Canterbury Tales – of a group of pilgrims meeting by chance in a south London Inn and deciding for safety’s sake to travel together to the great shrine of Saint Thomas a Becket, an archbishop murdered/martyred by the king’s instructions no less, in his Cathedral Church of Canterbury.  The Tales are unfinished, the pious folk never actually get to Canterbury, but that’s the whole point.  The travellers are all on a path to something better.

Image: Canterbury Tales: The Prioress Tale

Chaucer’s eye is sharp but his writing ranges from amused affection for the foibles of his subjects to a quite bitter savagery.  A courtier and international diplomat by training, he could make devastating criticisms with a feather’s touch.  Our first woman, the prioress Mother Eglentyne, is a gentle worldly figure, conscious of courtly manners but in fact engagingly provincial, meticulous in appearance, with her rosary and its gold pendant “Armor Vincit Omnia” (love conquers all – more secular than sacred), and who was so charitable she would weep if she saw a trapped mouse.  Her small pet dog – we are told – was fed from the best at table – roast meat and finest bread.  It is only as an afterthought to her and her appearance, that we are told that she has another nun with her as her chaplain and three priests in tow.  Apparently charming, the Prioress is in fact a serious condemnation of her society.  Christ is nowhere on her horizon.  Clearly unsuited to be a religious, even more unfit to be in authority over others, her set of priorities show her as trivial and witless.  Service in the church has become lip service, her spiritual position is a social slot into which she can fit her reasonably well-born life, and that the Church allows – much less accepts – such figures show how much reformation is needed.

Image: The Wife of Bath (http://www.universalteacher.org.uk)

The other significant woman in the group of pilgrims is the Wife of Bath.  An immediately engaging larger than life figure, she again challenged the stereotypes laid down by a distorted Christianity.  Thank heavens she rebelled.  A competent solo traveller, dressed to impress, she had been three times to Jerusalem, as well as to Rome, Germany and Santiago de Compostela, and was now heading for this year’s adventure.  Piety is an excuse for travel, but who could blame her?  She loves life.  She says she argues from experience rather than be guided by the cramped scholarship of clerical theory.  And her experience is rich.  She had been married five times and controlled three husbands (who were old and rich) apparently by her sexual prowess.  Then we see that she was first married at 12.  Prowess at that age?  In fact, marriage has been her means of survival.  Condemned by the church for her successive marriages she defends herself with an argument as specious as theirs, (they told her that Christ went only to one wedding, so how could she marry five times?), we sense that they are threatened by her vitality.  She understands herself and is unrepentant.  What indeed is the particular value of this virginity?  We have known from the outset that she was one of the finest cloth-makers in Europe, this woman’s energy and skills are underutilised while she is criticised for her non-conformance with the Church of the day.

It was so tempting then, and perhaps it is now, for the Church to take what are the historically permissible roles for women, and view them as the God-given Authority about which she speaks.  As she asks, “what is this Authority”, “where is the role of Experience?”

We may well ask ‘where is the role for women’s experience’ in the Church today?

By Sandy Curnow