With wagons across the land, mounting the Alps, on ships and rafts down the rivers and

The project CrossCulTour is implemented through the CENTRAL EUROPE Programme co-financed by the ERDF.

WPA

Cultural-Historic Analysis

With wagons across the land, mounting the Alps, on ships and rafts

down the rivers and by foot to the sanctuaries

Pilgrimage, Streets, and Traffic from a Cultural Historical Point of View

Author: Johannes Grabmayer (PP7, University of Klagenfurt)

June 2009, Klagenfurt

WPA 3.3 Cultural-Historic Analysis


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1. Introduction ............................................................................................................ 3

2. Mobility in the Middle Ages ..................................................................................... 4

3. Medieval Traders: Arabians, Jews and Vikings .......................................................... 5

4. Waterways and Trade centres .................................................................................. 6

5. Cursus publicus: The Roman road network ............................................................... 7

6. Trading routes of the Middle Ages ......................................................................... 10

7. Road construction and maintenance ...................................................................... 11

8. Maintenance of Streets in Germany, Italy and France ............................................. 13

9. The Beginning of Strategic Road Planning ............................................................... 15

10. Reconstructing the Trading Routes: Europe´s arterial road network ....................... 16

11. Across the Alps ...................................................................................................... 18

12. Bridges .................................................................................................................. 20

13. Post-medieval developments ................................................................................. 21

14. “Pilgrimage” .......................................................................................................... 22

14.1 The Phenomenon of Pilgrimage and its development ..................................... 22

14.2 Jerusalem ................................................................................................... 25

14.3 Rome ......................................................................................................... 26

14.4 Santiago de Compostela .............................................................................. 28

14.5 Regional pilgrim routes and destinations ....................................................... 29

14.6 Pilgrimage from Reformation to the 21st Century ........................................... 30



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1. Introduction

“Pilgrimage, Streets and Traffic” are important and highly current problems in a Europe

that is constantly growing together. Arguments over common shared investments which do

not necessarily lead to an equal distribution of their assets, environmental pollution caused

by transit traffic, and nation-dependent highly differing tolls are often emotionally

discussed topics in the European traffic planning and traffic politics. Especially concerning

the mobility of man, the Europe of today has inherited the medieval legacy. The “Pilgrim”

can be seen as a metaphor for the mobile human throughout the ages. Today, pilgrimages

are an integral component in the religious, cultural and social lives of societies. Travel

agencies and tourist offices offer numerous locations to pilgrimage to like: Altötting,

Mariazell, Einsiedeln or Gurk, Fatima, Lourdes, Međugorje, and of course the “Big Three”

Jerusalem, Rome or Santiago de Compostela. Already in the Middle Ages, Europe was

covered by a net of streets and paths that also served pilgrims; partially they were even

created especially for them so, in a side-effect, pilgrims also promoted monasteries and

cities. On their way and during their stays they asked for shelter, medical help and services

of various kinds, which led to a development which made the xenodochies of the late

classic period become profitable hospices. Shippers, ferrymen and waggoners but also

different service providers were able to fend for themselves and their families through their

work. An example would be the button industry, which flourished in the Middle Ages.

Settlements that were situated on important travel routes benefited immensely from

Pilgrims. Only the massive amount of pilgrims let places like Vézelay in Burgundy flourish to

what they are today. The pilgrims of the Middle Ages are the predecessors of the tourists of

today. A certain wealth created the condition for the varied aids they received on their

way. Bridges and hospitals were built due to their existence, which also turned out to be

useful to other travellers later on. The pilgrims were a valuable source of income for their

contemporaries. What they asked for, what craftsmen and artists created, allows Europe

today to become aware of its legacy and also of its identity. “Pilgrims contributed to the

development of similarities in the Occident, which were in the long run stronger then the

trenches between the confessions, stronger than the borders of the national states, finally

stronger than the iron curtain which fall we were allowed to witness.” (Klaus Herbers) Not

unlike in the Middle Ages the pilgrims of today are an economic factor to be reckoned with.

This applies to the big destinations like Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago de Compostela, but

also to smaller ones like Gurk in Carinthia with its young Hemma-Pilgerweg. The “Via

Nova”, which leads from the Lower Bavarian monastery Metten via 280 km to St. Wolfgang

in the Upper Austrian Salzkammergut, was “invented” as a tourist attraction. The

“pilgrimage-cake” was rediscovered as a new segment of tourism over the past years.

“Alternative” travellers share the troubles of a long bike tour or an exhausting march

accompanied by young and old fellows who, hiking hundreds of kilometres like the

apostles, are trying to live their own individual Imitatio Christi. The Camino Francés, the

more than 700 kilometres long pilgrimage route through the northern parts of Spain to

Santiago that is lined by venerable points of interest, was raised to the first European



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Cultural Route by the European Council in 1987. In 1993 it was enlisted as a world cultural

heritage site and put under protection by the UNESCO. Similarly, the Via Francigena, which

is the 1600 km long pilgrim’s way from Canterbury to Rome about which already Sigerich of

Canterbury wrote in 994 when he was travelling to Rome to receive the Pallium, the

ecclesiastical vestment of the archbishops, was accredited by the European Institute of

Cultural Routes in 1994 upon application by the Italian ministry of tourism.

2. Mobility in the Middle Ages

The term “street” derives from the Latin word strata (lat. spernere – to spread) and means

the paved way. “Way” on the other hand means in Middle High German “narrow street”.

The word pilgrim derives from the Latin peregrinus (stranger, foreigner). In the roman legal

terminology peregrinus usually meant a guest worker or an economic migrant. In the early

Christian theology until Augustinus, the semantics of the word changed to a paraphrase of

the theocentric life of a Christian on Earth and from the 11th century on, the journey to

sanctuaries became the peregrinatio. Unlike earlier generations of scientists, which vastly

underestimated the mobility of the Middle Ages, we know today that the European

medieval societies – especially from the Romanesque period onwards – were extremely

mobile despite all troubles of travelling.

Thousands and thousands of travellers were on the water- and country ways, went with

their horses over mountains, with wagons across the land, with ships along the shore and

across the seas, on rafts down the rivers and most of the time they went by foot. Mankind

was on the way: “Men and women, of course from time to time with diverse intensity, as

pilgrims and warriors, as beggars, courtesans, gougers and jugglers, as journeymen, as

masters and scholars, clerics, monks and nuns, as citizens, as economical, technical, and

cultural specialists, merchants, traders, waggoners, architects, watchmakers, artists and

learned specialists, doctors and jurists, writers, ambassadors and messengers, as servants,

as travellers and almost already as tourists, as banned like those who had to vow the oath

of truce, as emigrants and refugees because of the most diverse reasons.” (Rainer Ch.

Schwinges) They all made Europe to what it is today – a multicultural, variously shaped

unity of very specific nature. Moreover because of its desire to travel, the occident created

similarities that have been coining Europe up to the present. On the roads of the Middle

Ages beginnings of a common European consciousness can be recognized. The craftsmen

and scholars kept ideas and stimuli, which they had received from pilgrims on their way, in

their memory. After returning home they recounted what they had experienced and told

their fellows about the new things they had seen. Furthermore, they revised their

applicability and ordered craftsmen to reconstruct and rebuild what they had seen or to

obtain the necessary knowledge on the spot – for instance concerning the usage of water



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and wind energy or the fabrication of paper and print products. Gutenberg gained

experience through the creation of pilgrim’s badges, which then accelerated the

development of movable type printing.

3. Medieval Traders: Arabians, Jews and Vikings

During the epoch when the Germanic tribes attacked the roman occident, which was rather

a slow permeation than a militant conquest, and the period of the Islamic invasions that

crushed the flourishing Mediterranean culture, long before the re-blossoming of the

European cities and with them the European trading system, there has nevertheless been a

sort of “world trade”. Europe participated only marginally. Arabian merchants knew the

world like no one else. They followed the directions of the commodity flows and discovered

even the remotest regions on earth. They were the cosmopolitans of their time. Their

business relationships, but also their exploratory spirit led them to the borders of the

Islamic world and even further into the regions of the infidels. They traded with the peoples

of Asia, Africa, and Europe. In the north-western part of the Islamic world their trading

routes led to the lands of the Caspian Sea and over the Russian streams further to the

regions of the Baltic Sea and to West- and Central Europe. The Moslems’ pendants in the

occident were above all the Jews. Jewish traders travelled across the Mediterranean Sea,

loading their goods on camels at what is today known as the Suez Canal and at the Gulf of

Suez back again on ships, on which they then travelled along the Arabian shore and

sometimes even to India. With their caravans they crossed the North-African deserts or

they left their merchant ships in one of the harbours of the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

From there on they advanced further into the country. The Vikings were not only peasants

and fearless warriors but also extraordinary merchants and long distance traders, who

travelled the world with their goods. They kept a tight relationship with Arabs and Jews.

Vast numbers of Arabic coins were found especially in the western part of Scandinavia and

in Russia. The road to the orient led across the Volga to the Caspian Sea. At the big bend of

the river Volga, near today’s Kazan, the famous market Bolgar was located, a melting pot of

cultures, where numerous merchants and traders of miscellaneous origins and religions

provided their goods. It was not as big as Haithabu in Jutland, the most important trade

centre between Western Europe and the northern lands, but similar to it, Bolgar was at the

vicinity of very important travelling routes. At the turn of the millennium, a net of trade

roads ran far away from the Roman street system, on predetermined routes from Iceland

to the Caspian Sea, especially along the Eastern European rivers and across the coast areas

of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. The trading was conducted mainly by ships, which were

also heading for far away destinations – Constantinople, the metropolis on the Bosporus,

Lombardy, Jerusalem.



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4. Waterways and Trade centres

For the European domestic trade during the whole Middle Ages especially the large rivers

served as waterways of transport including passenger traffic: Garonne, Loire, Rhône, Saône,

Seine, Somme, Oise in France, in Germany Elbe, Spree, Weser, Oder, Schelde, Maas, Rhine,

Main, Danube, Vistula, in Italy Brenta, Adige, Arno, and especially the river Po, where from

the 13th century onwards the inland water transport was enlarged through the construction

of canals. The ships and rafts of that time had a lower draught than those of today and

travelling on rivers was cheaper and more secure than with wagons or pack-animals on

streets. The waterways on the streams of Europe were of main importance. One could

reach the Mediterranean on a mostly navigable route of 2000 km from the North Sea over

the river Rhine, Aare, Lake Biel, Lake Neuburg, Lake Geneva and Rhône. The ships were

carried in parts to reach the next river. With its more than 2500 km long course, the river

Danube connects several countries and many cultures. It was essential for passenger traffic,

trading and the transportation of armies.

Besides the large streams, many smaller rivers were used in terms of transportation, too.

Wherever the opportunity arose, waterways were preferred to country ways. The travelling

speed was considerably higher, even though the non-regulated rivers of that time flowed

slower than today. Travelling from Lübeck to Danzig/Gdansk took about 14 days, but by

water on the other hand, it were only four. It was more comfortable on a ship than in a

wagon, a litter, or going by foot, and the cargo hold of a ship could carry many wagonloads.

Nevertheless, a river cruise was adventurous, too. Many dangerous parts made it a

complicated enterprise to advance. One example for that was the accident of a raft of the

rich Nuremberg Behaim trading company, where in 1455, not far from the Völkermarkt

Bridge in Lower Carinthia, the whole cargo of drapery was lost. The merchants probably

had bought the drapery on one of the large trade fairs in Hamburg and had transported it

over the Radstädter Tauern and the Katschberg with animals to the river Drau. From there

on they had travelled using rafts to the emporia Villach, Völkermarkt, Ptuj/Pettau and

Maribor/Marburg, the main forwarding place for the lower parts of Styria. From the High

Middle Ages the rafting of timber became highly important because it almost covered the

needs of the flourishing cities entirely for construction timber and fuel wood. The

numerous small waterways of the Early Middle Ages diminished gradually because of the

many mills that began to appear at the headwaters of the rivers, as a reaction to the quickly

increasing energy demand of the business concerns. The main method to travel upstream

was the hauling of boats through animals and men. This is a method that had been

introduced by the Romans in Gaul, the Alpine countries and at the river Danube. The

original method for driving up-hill had been the ship-based punting with long poles. This

traditional, cumbersome method remained the common way of driving up-hill in some



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regions like at the lower Werra, where punting was normal up to the 19th century, or at the

Weser where the boats were hauled by horses only at very few sections of the river. There

were also water crafts like the so called “Lauertannen” at the Upper Rhine, which were

built for only one drive downstream. After the lightening of the cargo at the final

destination the ship was deconstructed and sold as timber.

Along the streams and the other intercontinental routes the first centres of trade for goods

of all sorts developed. From the 8th century onward the first Jewish communities emerged

at these important emporia. Especially families from Italy, the country of origin of the

European Judaism, settled along arterial roads. In the German countries especially at the

river Rhine like in Cologne, Mainz, Speyer, and Worms, in Northern France, in Regensburg,

Prague and at many other cities important Jewish communities were founded. Some

trading routes led straight through the European wilderness, ranging from dark forests with

all their dangers where nobody maintained the roads and the bridges in the Slavic east to

the region around the Black Sea and from the Caspian Sea to the trading centres at the

Asian cultural border. Bridges were torn away, fords flooded, paths sunk deep into the

swamps, were blocked by trees and landslides or became in any other way impassable.

Because of the bad condition of the roads, accidents were highly common. Until the 19th

century plains and river valleys remained marshy and nearly inaccessible for traffic. Many

smaller roads, which could rather be called paths and field tracks, existed as mountain

passes along Europe’s mountain- and hillsides, the Apennines, the Black Forest, the Vosges

and others, to avoid swamps and valleys flooded by rivers. A methodical constructed road

network did not exist until the modern age. There was always the danger of murderers and

bandits ambushing the pilgrims and merchants, taking away their goods and possessions.

Because of the dangers of travelling alone, communities were formed. Merchants

assembled caravans with which they and their assistants could cover 40 km per day, and

shared their earnings after arriving home again. Many material goods (e.g. glass wares) and

immaterial ones (e.g. geographical knowledge) found their way to Europe through long-

distance trade.

5. Cursus publicus: The Roman road network

The road construction and road network of the Imperium Romanum is regarded as the

mother of the European traffic system. Through Emperor Augustus (63 B.C. – 14 A.D.) the

cursus publicus was established and the maintenance of the streets was put under the

control of the Princeps. From the second century A.D. on the municipality was called to

participate in the road construction, and in the Roman Imperial Period the road network

was increasingly intensified. At the zenith of the Roman Empire, starting at the Golden



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Milestone (milliarium aureum), which had been erected by Augustus in the Forum

Romanum, about 5000 km of roads were radiating from Rome. All roads lead to Rome! The

road network that connected the municipia consisted of three main connections that lead

over the Alps, and one coast road, that connected Ravenna with Aquileia. The Greek writer

and historian Plutarch (died around 125) describes the appearance of Roman streets: “In

almost perfectly straight lines the streets were running through the country, they were

paved with worked stones or covered with mounds of sand, which were then tamped.

Hollows were filled in; where torrents or canyons cut through the country, bridges were

built, and because both watersides were evenly elevated, the whole construction looked

symmetrical and pleasant.” The Middle Ages were enthusiastic over the great roman road

constructions, as well. Archaeological investigations have shown that roman pavement

differed from medieval pavement and was caulked so densely that it kept hanging in the air

although its subsoil had been washed away long time ago. Especially this dense paving and

also the compactness of the road stones were praised by medieval authors. Nevertheless,

the important roman streets were primarily built for military purposes and therefore rather

useless for civilian traffic. In bad weather their surface quickly became slippery, animals

easily slipped, and on the hard pavement their unshoed hooves wore themselves out

rapidly. Outside of Italy, the roman streets often were unpaved, but still massive enough so

that their routes lifted off the landscape. Investigations on the roman military road from

Basel to Straßburg have shown that the whole basis was made from a 3.5 m broad and 0.4

m high fill made from gravel. After 20-30 years, the gravel had become so hard that the

covering was similar to one made from concrete.

After the collapse of the Imperium Romanum, vast, sparsely populated regions inhabited by

peoples on a very low level of civilization, extend to the north and to the south of the river

Rhine. The regions that were once shaped by roman culture were in the west and the

south. The buildings soon became ruins, decayed houses, and leftovers that reminded of

the former administrations of the past. These features can also be found in the European

road network. The east is made accessible through endlessly dusty and muddy paths, which

were prepared probably only near settlements and maybe partly in extremely difficult

sections. When the weather conditions were unfavourable they were difficult to drive and

to walk on. There are no roman streets to be found in the moor and marsh lands of the

primeval forests of northern and eastern Europe, therefore the Empire must have never

expanded this far. Travelling on these roads must have been extremely cumbersome. If the

sun was shining, the dust was a problem; in case of bad weather mud and deep puddles of

water filled the holes in the streets. Of course there was also traffic infrastructure to be

found on the other side of the Limes, for instance in Northern Germany with its vast moor

lands that reached from the river Elbe to the Dutch border. There, an ancient and

independent tradition of constructing streets can be found. In these regions more than 200

corduroy roads have been found so far as results of excavations, of which the oldest can be

dated back to the second millennium B.C. Obviously, a large number of construction

techniques were applied; from the alignment of simple, along or across the road installed



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planks to complicated constructions in which the individual components formed structures

similar to bridges. At the beginning of the fifties of the 20th century a street from the 9th

century was excavated in Mecklenburg, it had been built with technical perfection and had

been renovated in the 11th century. The exceptional discovery included a three metres

broad and about 750 metres long road, which had connected the defensive fortifications of

an island on Lake Teterow (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) with the mainland. The Arabian

merchant and ambassador of the caliph of Córdoba, Ibrāhīm ibn Ya´qūb, who travelled

through Northern Germany at the end of the 10th century, elaborately describes such a

corduroy road in his records. It was to be found in the eastern part of Magdeburg and was

about 1,8 km long. Excavations in Hanover on the other hand have exposed a coast road

from the 12th century along the river Leine, which had been fortified by 6-8 cm thick and

2.5 m long pieces of wood. They had been installed there diagonally to the road with a

distance of 50 cm and parallel to each other. The gaps between them had been filled with

3-4 cm thick clubs and the entire construction had been covered with sand. When the

renovation of this street took place in the 13th century a similar construction system was

applied, comparable to the one in Magdeburg, where excavations that were held in 1955

laid bare a corduroy road at the river Elbe. In different cities like Duisburg, Potsdam, or

Göttingen, they just exclusively used sand instead of clubs made of wood.

Similar to the north and the east, the road network of the west and the south showed only

a few remnants of the former quality of the Western Roman Empire. The roman street

network as such did not exist anymore: destroyed pavement stuck out between dust and

dirt, single milestones and the bridges built a long time ago which are barely usable or

already collapsed and decayed, are the last witnesses of an intact traffic system. After

centuries of the Roman's administration's decay, the impotence of the public authorities to

control the traffic system and the unclear duties of maintenance, the fundamental

qualitative differences between the regions that were influenced by Rome and the worlds

beyond the former borders of the empire do not exist any longer. Hence there are similar

preconditions for the further development of the traffic system on both parts of the

continent. The street network, including the western network, fell back at large parts to a

pre-civilization state of nature, in which the individual road was no longer the road paved

and prepared by the inhabitants, so to say, an endless way through the landscape, but just

“the place where one walked”. The Roman road between Augsburg and Salzburg for

instance was soon overgrown by European forest. Man only scarcely intervened in these

conditions. The system of many regions was in a precarious condition for centuries. The

duty of partaking in the maintenance of the streets and their financing, which had been a

burden on the inhabitants of different parts of the German Empire for a long time, were

harder and harder to demand for the new Germanic Lords after they had claimed the rule.

Usually, the initiative for the construction and reparation of a street did no longer come

from a central power but remained to be decided by the local rulers and authorities. It was

only effective as long as they were able to prevail against the will of the people and as long

as action was dictated by the necessity of the moment. How cumbersome travelling must



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have been, even at the end of the Middle Ages, can be seen when looking at how long one

needed for even smaller distances. Giovanni da Capistrano for instance, the charismatic

preacher, who led the crusade against the Ottoman Empire, began his journey in Venice on

the 27th of April 1451 and reached his destination Vienna on the 30th of May. That means

that he had travelled for 28 days; so it took him one day to cover 20 km.

6. Trading routes of the Middle Ages

In the Middle Ages, comparable to the situation nowadays, European centres of trade were

connected by long-distance trading routes. Mainly, the old transcontinental country ways

were used. Their routes had once been built by the Romans. The rural roads, most of the

time only 2-3 m broad, were not paved; they were covered with gravel and thus hardly

accessible after a rainfall because they were soaked with water. A document for San Cugat

(Catalonia) refers to a path, which had, not a long time ago, been covered with gravel made

of stone which had then been tamped (around 988). In the north of Europe, where stone

was rare, logs of wood and sand or bricks were used to repair the streets, depending on

what was available.

The course of medieval roads differed from the ancient Roman one by adjusting itself to

the topographical conditions, “because the Roman civil engineering constructions like

bridges, embankment walls, artificial cuts, etc. that were needed for an almost perfectly

lined course decayed without regular maintenance. Therefore, obstacles were no longer

overcome but evaded.” (Arnold Esch) Because of that, the medieval traffic routes leave the

romans route's straight line in many sections, which then mutate to paths, hedges,

mounds near forests, etc. In the time of Charles the Great (747/48 – 814), and of many

generations that followed him, road construction consisted of the levelling of a path, the

filling of soaked and muddy sections of the roadway, and its clean-up, as the scholarly

monk Notker Balbulus (died 912) reports. Because of the risky surface of the paved roman

streets, which became slippery in bad weather, an unpaved path parallel to the original

road emerged. On plains, streets could reach up to 100 lanes, in areas with hills on the

other hand, they became narrow passes whose ruts dug deep into the soil. Moreover,

complaints about the dangers on the streets were common and there were ambushes to be

expected on a daily basis. Pilgrims, merchants and other travellers always had to fear

robbers and thieves, who made the streets an insecure area. Notes in the sources about

assaults and murder on the streets are frequent.

Therefore, according to an edict from Piacenza which was decreed in 1336, 130 metres on

both sides of the Via Francigena, the most important Italian pilgrims’ route in the Late

Middle Ages, had to be cleared to ensure safety for the travellers. For other rural roads 52



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m were seen as sufficient. Furthermore, in the surrounding area of Siena, the street leading

to Grosseto was prepared similarly. Moreover, the constitutions of different Italian

communes demanded the cutting of roadside pitches on both sides of the roads. The

excavated material was used to repair the holes on the road. The road itself had an about

twenty centimetres thick cover of fine gravel and sand covering it. Duke Albrecht II of Inner

Austria rigorously demanded in his legislation for Carinthia (1338), to cut the throat of any

bandit that was caught, but even though harsh punishment was exercised, the omnipresent

plague could not be diminished. Even the mighty Southern German centre Nuremberg was

affected in its commercial interests to such an extend, that the city council had to put

bounties on robbers.

7. Road construction and maintenance

Around 1100 a rethinking concerning streets and traffic could be observed in many regions

of Europe. The main reason for this process was that about a tenth of the European

population lived in the – from today’s point of view – primarily small cities. The cities had

begun their triumphant advance. Of course, this varied from region to region and depended

on the level of development of the traffic system as well as the participation in the supra-

regional trading. Under the influence of the emerging economical boom, which led to an

unprecedented accumulation of wealth in the field of trading of which the regional leaders

profited through tolls and road charges, the public authorities began to gain interest in the

traffic system once again. Until then, the initiative to build and maintain a street had to be

taken by smaller, local leaders and landowners who possessed the means and the people

that was necessary for the accomplishment of such tasks. But also single initiatives that

simply acted on personal necessities and interests contributed to the street and road

network. An example for that would be the hermit Gunther from the Bohemian Forest: A

deed of donation from the year 1029 reports indirectly that he had installed a path near a

church he had built before. The path was used by the commune, which had gathered

around him, to get water. 400 years later hermits still installed paths, this time near

Gdansk, as the Tresslerbuch of the Teutonic Order, who financed the undertaking, reports

for the time between 1400 and 1408.

The first ones to make an effort to keep the traffic routes intact were the prospering cities

of Upper Italy, France, and present-day Belgium. Their economical importance quickly

increased, and so did the traffic by water and land in these areas. Market economy became

interesting again, money became increasingly important from the 12th century onwards;

city, trade, and finance became more and more characteristic of the economical system.

The boom of the traffic system is inseparably connected to this development. Cities and



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markets needed good transport connections to prosper. From the ending 12th and the

beginning 13th century onwards communities began to pave their streets as signs of wealth,

but also because of reasons of disposal. The city of Paris is said to have got its first medieval

pavement already in 1185, in Germany archaeological evidence was found, that the market

place in Hanover had been paved with small stones in approximately 1200. In the 13th

century, however, a 30 cm high layer of dirt began to emerge because of the lack of street-

cleaning. For this reason a surface made of wood was put over the dirt at the end of the

century. First messages about street pavement were written in the middle of the 13th

century in Cologne and Duisburg, but still 100 years later the chancellor of Charles IV

complained about the streets of the Southern German metropolis Nuremberg, which

changed to swamps by rain so that riders could not advance anymore. The streets of Italian

communities were paved with natural stones, or, because of saving expenses, with bricks.

The pavement was at first only laid over the main roads, but later on it was extended to

back roads and alleys. In Siena, the country roads even outside of the city gates were

paved, like the contemporary frescos in the Palazzo Pubblico impressively show.

Furthermore, on sloping streets the currently installed, highly expensive pavement made of

stone was partly torn because of slipping danger in case of bad weather. It was then newly

installed, so that the centre of the street was formed by a line of natural stones which were

enveloped by bricks. These and similar activities resulted in Italy having possessed the best

roads in Europe in the early 14th century. They had not reached the much praised ancient

standard but their roads, filled in with gravel and sand, were presumably more comfortable

to use than the streets in the regions north of the Alps.

The authorities began to realize the effects of a well functioning traffic network on the

economic system by the beginning of the 12th century when first infrastructural measures

were taken. This is demonstrated by the recognition of the duty of supervision over the

street network by the authorities (e.g. for Italy at the Diet of Roncaglia 1158) or the

denomination of streets in Germany and France with the name Via Regia, but also because

of several edicts that concerned the minimal width of these “king’s roads”. The oldest

private German law compilation, the Sachsenspiegel from Eike von Repgow (1220/30),

regulates that the road of the king had to be broad enough to allow two wagons to pass

each other. And if they should not be able to do so for any kind of reason, the loaded or

heavier wagon would have precedence over the empty or lighter one. The wagon that

reached a bridge first was allowed to pass it firstly. Furthermore, a horseman should give

room to a wagon and a pedestrian to a horseman. The traffic regulations in France were

similar to those in the German Empire. The main problems concerning traffic regulations

were concerning the width of the road and the question of precedence. In the Coutumes du

Beauvaisis, which were written by the jurist Philipp de Beaumanoir in 1283 and which

adhere the legal customs of that time, the author agreed on the rules concerning

precedence which had been written in the Sachsenspiegel, and he too highlights the

question concerning the width of the road elaborately. According to Beaumanoir, five

categories of ways with differing widths existed: tracks (sentiers, ca. 1.30 m), hollow ways



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(charieres, 2.60 m), ways (voies, 5.20 m), roads (chemins, 10.40 m) and kings’ roads

(chemines roials, 20.80 m). Actually, the width of the streets and paths throughout Europe

were highly varying regionally and always depending on the respective function. By means

of several traffic regulations the average width was calculated: mule tracks: 1.5 m;

driveable mountain roads: 2.7 m and rural roads: 4.5 - 5 m.

8. Maintenance of Streets in Germany, Italy and France

Besides general traffic problems, the question of the qualitative condition of the streets

and their maintenance initially remained in the background and only became important

over time. As long as riding was seen as courtly and noble, and driving in wagon as

“cissyish”, the condition of the roads was scarcely of interest. Pedestrians, who were the

most common users of the streets, were not interested too. “Wagons” originally were two

to four wheeled carts where, depending on the cargo, one to four horses could be

harnessed, and which usually were strung with awnings. Two types of wagons were used: 1.

the older “Anzen-“ or “Baierwagen”, a small wagon provided with a so called

“Anzendeichsel”, a fork shaped drawbar, with the horse harnessed in between the two bars

(when using two horses they were harnessed behind each other); 2. the “Deichsel-“ or

“Ungarwagen”, which only had one drawbar. When using this type of wagon the horses

were harnessed on each side of the bar. The appearance and quality of the wagons were

dependant on time related differing fashions. But they were always built weighing a lot,

uncomfortable for travelling and hard to manoeuvre. First improvements were developed

in the 9th century: novel horse-gear, rotating axis and the revolutionary innovation of the

horse shoe. Because of it the tractive output of a horse was quadrupled. From the first half

of the 12th century, several other improvements for wagons and for horse harnesses

improved the overland transport to a serious competitor for the inland water transport.

From the middle of the 13th century on two axed carts were used in addition. The two

wheels coped better with the unevenness of the streets and paths than four, and the axis

or the wheels broke much less frequently. If it snowed in the winter, sledges were used.

In the German Empire, the first document to deal with the maintenance of streets in a

binding way was the Mainzer Reichslandfrieden (1235). The techniques concerning road

construction and reparation varied vastly temporally as well as regionally. Furthermore the

ways of building and mending a street depended on the reasons and the aims of the

respective organizations, but also on the available building materials and the technical

knowledge of the construction workers. In Mainz it was proposed that whoever collected

tolls, by land or by water, was also responsible for the condition of the road and the safety

of the travellers. The main aim of this regulation was to decrease the amount of

uncountable tolls, which delayed and increased the price of travelling. For the 13th century

an average for toll costs on European streets was calculated. It added up to 25% of the



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value of luxury goods and between 100% to 150% of common goods. But also by water one

could not evade the numerous tolls: Between Bamberg and Frankfurt a boat on the Main

had to pass 25 toll stations. The Mainzer Reichslandfrieden followed an old legal principle,

according to which for every effort a consideration had to be provided. From that point on

the sovereigns gave the right to collect tolls only in combination with the obligation to

maintain the streets in good condition. As logical as this principle may seem, its

implementation was still problematic. Road construction as a duty for residents did not

become a habit for a long time. Again and again resistance and carelessness by the

responsible inhabitants and authorities became problems, and the central authority was

too powerless to actually enforce the laws and regulations that were passed by themselves.

In Italy, the improvement of the traffic network remained in the hands of the communes,

which began to extend beyond the regions of the city in the course of the 13th century. The

non-coastal (Milan, Florence, Bologna) as well as the coastal cities (Venice, Genoa) of Italy

developed to the leading economical as well as trading regions of Europe. The maintenance

and improvement of already existing streets happened regularly (e.g. Padua, Treviso,

Verona), whereas the instalment of new ones remained the exception (e.g. Verona 1228,

Vicenza 1264). Still: “even in the 15th century, a strategy of street politics under Venetian

rule over the Terra ferma is still not to be witnessed, which is because for Venice, even by

land, the waterways were the most important traffic routes.” (Gian Maria Varanini)

Transport policy in today’s meaning was definitely practiced by Italian merchants. In 1284 a

messenger was sent by the Maggior Consiglio of Venice, in the interest of the Venetian

merchants, to the commune of Verona and the count of Tyrol to establish the restoration

of the much used Brenner-route pro restauratione strate Theotonicorum. An improvement

of the West-East relationship and the inner-Alpine traffic was obviously in the interest of

the Italian metropolis. Already in 1269 the communes Como and Milan closed a contract

with the Swiss regions Blenio and Leventina at the important St. Gotthard-route, according

to which the Swiss obligated themselves to guard and repair the street between Cassero

and Cresciano. And in 1272 procurators who were sent by the commune and the merchants

of Milan closed a contract with a citizen of Sitten, in which they obligated themselves to

pay certain fees for all their goods that passed below Vétroz (6 km west of Sitten). In return

the citizen should keep the street and bridge below Vétroz in good condition. Only a short

time later, envoys from Milan and those of the merchants of Pistoia, who worked together

in this case, submitted a proposal to the bishop of Sitten to pay new tolls, if he repaired

bridges and certain sections of the street through the valley of the Rhône. The east-west

direction of the street in the valley of the Rhône, which lead through the Wallis to Lake

Geneva, was highly important for the trade of the Italians on the Champagne-fairs, the

most important trade fairs in Europe of that time. It had to take all the traffic that came

from Milan over the mountain pass of Simplon and from the Piemont over the Great Pass

of St. Bernhard, and which then moved on to Lake Geneva and Champagne. Furthermore,

this arterial road was highly significant for the pilgrim’s traffic to Santiago de Compostela.

In the 12th century, the trade fairs of the Champagne had grown to the centre of the trading



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routes between the Netherlands, the orient, and Italy, the three most important locations

of European trade. Later on, these fairs were replaced in their function as North-South

commodity markets by the fairs of Bruges and in the 16th century by those of Antwerp. In

the 14th century the Upper-German cities and the Hanseatic cities with their associations

gained importance. Until the decline of the union because of English and Dutch competitors

in the 15th and 16th century, their cogs and covered wagons entered the markets of

Northern and Eastern Europe.

In France the question of the responsibility for the maintenance of the streets was

answered in principle at the end of the 13th century. After the Coutumes du Beauvaisis the

surveillance of the streets was administered by the respective sovereigns. The costs of the

reparations were to be paid by the nobility, the clergy and the common subjects together.

But here too it took a long time until this law found general acceptance. As a result the

merchants of Gent who worked in Paris had to repair the street from Senlis to Paris at their

own expense in the year 1332, to ease the transportation of their goods.

9. The Beginning of Strategic Road Planning

That the sovereigns of cities and the local lords in fact did understand the causal connection

between City – Street – Road Network – Economical Profit can be seen through several

actions that were taken: Certain traffic routes were ordered by the sovereigns to aim

directly for their cities and the usage of these streets was enforced, which resulted in

varying success. The young commune Viterbo for instance had a section of the Via

Francigena destroyed, which originally lay at the antique trace of the Via Cassia that lay 4

km western of their city. The inhabitants of New-Lodi, which was erected after Lodi’s

destruction through Milan in the war of the cities in 1158, similarly destroyed a trace of an

old roman road, rebuilt a new one and lead its course through their city to stimulate it

economically. Emperor Friedrich II ordered in 1217 that the street, which ran below the

Tuscan Reichsburg S. Miniato, had to run through the castle, through which he expected a

more successful surveillance over the street traffic. In 1220 the bishop of Pavia proposes

that the pilgrim’s road, which led over Voghera, Casteggio and Broni but below Stradelle,

had to run through the town to, as he pretended, ensure more safety for the travellers. It is

to be assumed that he included the economical benefits that would arise in his calculations.

The duke of Saxony, Henry the Lion, who was in rivalry with Lübeck, tried in 1158 on the

other hand to reroute the market traffic over his city of Braunschweig, which later became

a Hanseatic city. “Street” becomes more and more a political means of rule over a region.

The rerouting of trade and pilgrim’s traffic because of economical reasons, which became a

more and more common way of gaining importance for higher and lower sovereigns adds

to this, but also several communes from the 12th century on made use of this method. In

the German Empire a sovereign’s decree, which was chartered by the archbishop of



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Salzburg in 1236, turned against this praxis. It prohibited the rerouting of traffic from public

roads to newly developed markets or streets. In the German Empire of the Late Middle

Ages an enforcement existed that obligated merchants, at least during trade fairs, to use

certain streets. As a compensation, mounted escorts ensuring the safety of the merchants

were provided. The right to escort was given to the higher sovereigns by the king. The

counts of Görz for instance could enforce their right to escort (conductus) from “the sea to

the Katschberg” and collect money as fees. The right to escort from Görz – the oldest

bequeathed right to escort in Austria – was documented the first time in 1234. Through it

the sovereigns of Görz controlled the traffic of the north to south route through Carinthia

and Friuli completely. In 1332, Venzone, where the Kanaltal- and the Plöckenstraße came

together, was added to the contract and became the central point of request for escorts.

When the counts of Görz lost Venzone in 1336, the fee for the escorts was at first collected

by the patriarch of Aquileia and later on by the Republic of Venice. The mounted escort was

soon replaced by “escorting letters”, which can be seen as a sort of medieval insurance

policy; if a merchant had been attacked on a road that was protected by the right to escort,

the owner of this right had to pay the damage that had been dealt. In Italy the communes

arranged contracts concerning this matter.

10. Reconstructing the Trading Routes: Europe´s arterial road network

The period of the decline of the European arterial road network in the Early Middle Ages

follows a period of reconstruction, in which the priority of the individual regions of the

traffic network got adjusted to the new conditions. The high and late medieval expansion of

settlements caused essential restructuring of, and additions to, the old road network. And

naturally the course of the streets was dependant on the formation of the landscape, on its

hydrographical character, and the respective political conditions. The so called

Birkenhainerstraße for instance led from the region at the rivers Rhine and Main over

Spessart and the Rhön to Thuringia and Saxony and was one of the most important arterial

roads in the Carolingian-Ottonian period. It lost its importance in the High Middle Ages as a

result of changing political constellations in favour of the streets through the Kinzing- and

the Fuldatal and through Fritzlar. The Goldene Straße (golden road) on the other hand

resulted from political considerations by Karl IV (1316-1378). When he had acquired

remarkable regions from the Wittelsbacher in the Upper Palatinate he put them under the

Bohemian crown. With this he created a bridge between his Bohemian home countries and

the area of Nuremberg. Through this the city gained importance in the fields of economy

and traffic. Furthermore he ordered a street between Nuremberg and Prague to be built,

declared it to be the Reichsstraße (first road of the empire) and demanded that the

Bohemian kings should travel to Diets of the empire and elections of emperors exclusively

on this road; he himself used it 52 times. Soon it was used by hanseatic merchants as



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preferred trading route. The connection between Venice and Vienna on the other hand, of

which especially the Viennese merchants profited in the 14th century, had to face a halt in

its ascension in the middle of the 15th century. This happened because of short-sighted,

regional political considerations, which excluded Upper-German and Italian merchants from

the usage of the Semmeringerstraße, the so called sloped way through the Alps from

Villach over Bruck/Mur to Vienna, whereupon the Upper-German merchants, who ruled

over the trade with Venice because of their outstanding capital, rerouted their caravans

predominantly back on the old Tauernstraßensystem, while the Viennese and other

Austrian merchants lost the capital they would have gained through Venetian luxury goods.

Besides the mentioned politico-economical factors, the European road network is in the

end a product of the network of settlements. It changed over time parallel to the changes

of the nature given settings, the land utilisation and especially of the structure of the

settlements of the respective region and landscape. For instance, between Late Antiquity

and the Early Middle Ages the Tyrrhenian coastal road in Italy (Via Aurelia) decayed, and

also the course of the Via Cassia, which led through central Italy, changed on its mid-section

that led through the swamps of the valley of Chiana. Between these two antique arterial

roads a new far-distance route emerged: the Via Francigena. Until the rise of the Italian city

states Genoa, Pisa, and finally Florence, it had become one of the aortas of trade and

pilgrimage that connected Italy with Western Europe, from which many smaller paths and

ways branched off. In the course of the High and Late Middle Ages a shift of the centre in

France occurred. From the once Lyon-centred roman road network the focus changed to

the new capital city Paris. The numerous changes of straightening the course of several

street and path sections, which were conducted by the Italian communes in the Late

Middle Ages, were mainly functional improvements. With the development of the cities

that lay at the most important arterial roads between Italy and Northern Germany

(Augsburg, Basel, Frankfurt, Cologne, Mainz, Nuremberg, Straßburg, Ulm, etc.) to centres of

trade and culture with supra-regional importance, the conditions of the larger streets that

were built to meet the demands of the increasing traffic changed to the better.

In the South, the Via Appia, the most important far-distance road of the Roman Antiquity,

led from Rome to Brindisi. Still today it is trafficable over its full course of 540 km. In the

Middle Ages all important Italian trade routes did no longer start in Rome but in the all

ruling capital of trade Venice/Venezia: Through the Kanaltal or on the ages old Laibacher

Straße, along the so called Bernsteinstraße (amber road) through Görz/Gorizia, Cilli/Celje,

Pettau/Ptuj to Vienna, Brünn/Brno, Krakow/Kraków and further to the coast of the Baltic

Sea and to Kiev/Kyjiw in Ukraine; through Bozen/Bolzano, over the Brenner Pass, Augsburg,

Nuremberg, to Leipzig; over the Arlberg to Bregenz; through Milan/Milano, Lyon and

Troyes to Paris. Important were, and remained, the old trade routes between the cities

Paris, Reims, Worms, Passau, Vienna, and Constantinople. Cologne was considered to be

the intersection of the traffic from Southern France to Basel, downstream the river Rhine to



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Amsterdam and from Krakow through Breslau/Wrocław, and through Leipzig to

Bruges/Brugge. A North-West, South-East diagonal road network connected Bruges

through Antwerp, Cologne, Frankfurt, Nördlingen, and Bolzano with Venice. The so called

High Road (Via/Strata Regia) led over 450 km from Frankfurt to Leipzig and then through

Gelnhausen, Eisenach, and Erfurt to the Silesian-Polish region. The “Hanseatic Road” on the

other hand led from Lübeck through Lüneburg and Magdeburg to Erfurt. Until the 18th

century it remained unpaved and barely trafficable. At first Lübeck and Hamburg and later

on dozens of other cities joined the Hanseatic League. The Salzstraße (salt road, also

Böhmische Glasstraße, Bohemian glass-road) led from Halle through Leipzig, Dresden and

Warnsdorf, as well as the Schöberpass to Bohemia. Along the shores the inland routes were

increasingly supported through a net of sea lanes.

11. Across the Alps

A risky – and very often life-threatening – adventure for travellers of all kinds was the

crossing of the Alps. The Alps were fascinating and scaring in the same degree due to their

immense height and mightiness. The most important traffic routes across the Alps were the

St. Gotthard’s pass, which was extended in the second quarter of the 13th century and

since then the shortest and most lucrative route between Basel and Milan, the Septimer’s

route that was upgraded as a reaction on this new way after a wish by merchants from

Milan at the end of the 14th century, the connection between the Upper-Rhine area and

the Po Valley, and the Brenner Pass, which was also relatively secure in winter, which was

the only route to be accessible by wagons for a long time and which connected the Danube

Valley with the Eschtal and Upper Italy. Furthermore the Tauernroutes led from Salzburg

across the alpine main ridge to Venice. The very often highly private descriptions of

crossings of the Alps narrate of the dangers of these adventures. In midsummer the

crossing of the Great St. Bernhard’s pass was seen as unproblematic. The Northern German

abbot Albert from Stade, who crossed the Alps in 1236, reports about this pass, as well as

about the Brenner Pass, the Cenis pass, the St. Gotthard’s pass, and the Septimerpass, in

his notations. For a long time the Cenis pass shared a good part of the main traffic across

the Western Alps with the Great St. Bernhard’s pass and the Simplon. According to Abbot

Albert, the best time for a crossing was mid-August, because at this time the air was mild

and the streets were dry, it was not wet and the rivers did not burst their banks, there was

enough light and no lack of supplies. But travellers also often crossed the Alps in winter.

The crossing of the Great St. Bernhard by the Bishop of Lüttich and the Abbot of St. Trond,

who tried to return to Belgium from a pilgrimage to Rome in January 1129, was for instance

bequeathed. They had accepted the dangers of a crossing in winter and their horses were

led behind the other pilgrims but in front of the higher nobles to ensure them a broader

and more tamped path in the snow. The marrones, the professional mountain guides who

blazed a trail for the rest of the group, protected their heads with felt, their hands with

rough mittens and their feet with high boots that were prepared with iron nails against the



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slippery ice. To explore the snow-covered road poles were used. They were cooperatively

organized and worked for fixed tariffs. The historically highly interesting record also reports

of avalanches and their victims. In 1188 John Bremble, a monk from Canterbury, managed a

crossing of the Great St. Bernhard in February. His report of the stresses and dangers of this

wintry crossing became famous: “’Lord’, I said, ‘restore me to my brethren that I may tell

them to come not to this place of torment’ Place of torment, indeed, where the marble

pavement of the ground is ice alone, and you cannot set your foot safely … I put my hand in

my scrip that I might scratch out a syllable or two to your sincerity; lo! I found my ink-bottle

filled with a dry mass of ice; my fingers, too, refused to write, my beard was stiff with frost,

and my breath congealed into a long icicle. I could not write”. At this time, the route across

the St. Bernhard was the direct route from Paris and from the Champagne to Italy. Starting

at Dijon it led across the Jougnepass and reached its dreadful climax with the Great St.

Bernhard. From St. Rheny, where the counts of Savoy were collecting road tolls, the street

led through Aosta, Ivrea and Vercelli and finally to Upper Lombardy. Many road houses and

hospices bordered the streets that led across the country and the Alps. Hospices were

charitable foundations, the “great holy works on the ways” (Reinhard Zweidler). They were

erected near dangerous sections of the road, at river crossings or along the steep mountain

paths to ensure the safety of the travellers. The hospices under the St. Bernhard’s summit

were installed so that a traveller could get from one to the next within a day. When the

weather conditions were unfavourable, when there was fog, rain, or snowfall, the bell of

the chapel was rung consistently to give acoustic aid to orientation to those in need of

protection. From the 11th century on hospices were also built directly at the crest of a pass.

The richest and most famous hospice was that of the Augustinian Canons at the Great St.

Bernhard’s pass, which was attested the first time in 1125. Wealthy seekers of protection

thanked the owners of the hospices for board and lodging through privileges and

donations. The donations were given by emperors and popes and especially by the counts

of Savoy, but also from other thankful travellers. As a result the hospice at the Great St.

Bernhard owned widespread possessions from England to Sicily. Many of the other

hospices along this route, as well as a house in Troyes, were connected with the foundation

at the Great Saint Bernhard, as for instance the hospice at the summit of the Jougnepass in

Jura. At the end of the 12th century hospices existed between Troyes and the Jougnepass

near Bar-sur-Seine, Val Suzon and Salins, and between the Jougnepass and the Great Saint

Bernhard near Lausanne and Vevey. Most of the uncountable medieval doss houses were

abandoned a long time ago. Two of the few that still exist are the land and buildings of

Altopascio near Lucca and Poggibonsi near Siena at the Via Francigena.

The Tauern-routes connected the Upper Italian metropolis Venice with Salzburg, which was

the main trading centre north of the Alpine ridge, where several other roads by land and by

water opened up to Southern Germany and the region of the Danube. From all the routes

across the Tauern, the Untere Straße, the “lower street”, which was the easiest to access

and at the same time the lowest one, across the Radstädter Tauern and the Katschberg,

was the most preferred route of merchants. Already in 1002 traffic of traders across the



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Radstädter Tauern can be proven, while across the Katschberg it is only mentioned toward

the end of the 13th century. On this route, which was like all the other ways across the

Tauern (and most of the other Alpine roads) a mule track until the construction of a street

in 1520, about 2/3 of all goods from Venice to Salzburg and further on to Southern

Germany were transported. Because of that, a logistics organization across the Tauern

emerged in the Middle Ages. Reloading from the wagons to sumpters happened in Salzburg

and Gemona respectively, as well as in Venzone, where German mercatores were seated.

Direct transport between these cities was organized. The Plöcken route, besides the

Brenner route, by far was the most important connection between Italy and Southern

Germany until the 13th century, when the Kanaltal was made accessible for wagons. In 1485

Paolo Santonino, the secretary of the Bishop of Caorle, describes a journey across the

Plöckenpass, which connects Carinthia with Italy, as highly dangerous. The pass was “hard

to traverse, steep and rocky, and inaccessible for men and horses in every way”. On the

northern side of the mountain Gail the path was “supported through piles, which were

attached to nearby trees, on many places and … so narrow that only one horseman was

able to pass at a time”. After the development of the Semmeringstraße and the

Kanaltalstraße, the Carinthian city Villach, at a crossroad of the routes Venice-Salzburg and

Venice-Vienna, gained importance. On the steep paths across the mountain passes, which

were actually nothing more than tracks for cattle of the mountain farmers or

transportation routes for coal and for lumber transports of the many mountain businesses,

the goods were mostly carried by pack animals. To ensure security people travelled in

groups. These communities of transport brought the arriving goods with the pack animals

of their qualified mountain farmers along the sections of the route they were entitled to

use until they reached the next station, where the goods were reloaded on the animals of

the next community of sumpters. As pack-animals primarily horses and, more scarcely,

mules were used. One load normally weighted about 2.5 to 3 hundredweights, whereas a

wagonload could weigh up to 10 hundredweights. On the steep mountain paths and across

the passes of Europe the goods were, with few exceptions (e.g. Brenner Pass) carried by

pack-animals. Occasional broadenings of the else 1.5 m wide paths allowed risky evasion

manoeuvres. Mainly farmers and innkeepers polished up their income as “part-time

transporters” and worked as sumpters. Because of that, and also dependant on the

weather and – connected to that – the condition the roads were in, the main labour time

for sumpters was between October and the end of February, whereas in summer the

sumpters worked as farmers and cultivated their fields. Full-time sumpters did not exist

until the 16th century.

12. Bridges

From the 11th century on bridges across rivers were built on a larger scale. But still in the

Late Middle Ages they were rather scarce constructions; bridges that could be used without

any danger were even less frequent. The Benedictine Richer von Reims reports about a



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journey from Reims to Chartres in 991: “… and as I took a closer look at it (a bridge), new

worries arose. On it gaped so many and so vast holes, that even those who were familiar

with the place had problems making it across this day.” Most bridges were constructed on

pillars. They were made of wood, and although some of the bridges were roofed to protect

the wooden floor from the rain, they usually consisted of planks that were quite often

rotten, fragile and sometimes even not to be used at all. There were only a few bridges

north of the Alps that were made of stone. The bridge near Regensburg Cathedral, which is

made of 14 arches, is deemed to be a masterpiece of medieval architecture. It was

supposedly erected between 1135 and 1146 and served as an ideal for other bridge

constructions of the 12th and 13th century. It was an archetype for the bridge across the

river Elbe near Dresden, across the Vltava near Prague or the Rhône near Avignon. The

Ponte Vecchio, the oldest bridge across the Arno in Florence, which, likewise made of

stone, was erected over the course of 12 years until 1345, Ponte Scaligero in Verona, which

was constructed from 1354 to 1356 and which consists of three segmental arches, with the

last one being the longest arch of a bridge of its time with 48.7 m span length, and Ponte

della Pia across the river Rosia in Siena, a single-arched bridge, which had already been

constructed in the time of the Romans and which was extensively renovated in the 13th

century, were the most famous bridges in Italy. In Carinthia, the number of bridges across

the river Drau, Carinthia’s largest and most important water way, was quite low because of

the unpredictable course of the river, which made navigation and rafting in the upper valley

of the Drau, before it reached Spittal, nearly impossible, but also because of its common

flood waters and the bursting of its banks. Between Villach and the bridge of

Unterdrauburg/Dravograd, first mentioned in the 12th century, existed only the

Völkermarkterbrücke, erected around 1217, and a bridge near the Hollenburg, likewise

constructed at the beginning of the 13th century. Rivers were generally hard to cross.

Between the bridges scattered fords and crossings were to be found. At crossings humans,

animals, and goods were ferried across the river, given that the number of potential

passengers who wanted to cross the river was high enough to support the family of a

ferryman. Still today place names like Erfurt, Schweinfurt or Klagenfurt remind that the

settlement was created at a “Furt” (ford). If the course of the river was separated by an

island, optimal conditions to build a bridge were given. Famous cities like Paris, Prague,

Hamburg, Magdeburg, Rome, Florence or Verona were founded at such places. Across

creeks and smaller rivers logs were lain, very often rotten and slippery, through many fords

one had to wade; ropes were spanned from one bank to the other, because snowmelt and

bad weather turned even the most harmless rills into torrential traps.

13. Post-medieval developments

In early Modern Times one has to differentiate between central road axes and main- as well

as byroads, whereas the routes that are known from the Middle Ages usually remain

existent. Still, of course shifts and variations in importance happened. Similar to the Middle



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Ages the growth and the new foundation of cities successively lead to a readjustment of

the centres in the European road network. Rural roads are mostly passage ways that lead

to the “constraints” of traffic (emporia, cities, passes, fords, bridges) and not strict lines. It

was not until the state-run construction of causeways in the 18th century, that an official

and governed hierarchisation and differentiation of the road network system, including

bureaucracy, became common. First of all in France the Direction des ponts et chaussées

was founded in 1715. With this, a phase of road construction began, in which the federal

state authorities plan, organize and execute the constructions. It is the epoch of the

instalment of supra-regional arterial roads, the beginning of mass transportation of goods,

organized scheduled traffic and the differentiation of regional road networks. The fords

over rivers, which interfered with the traffic, were steadily bridged. Through the utilization

of steam power for traffic the previous velocity, the capacities of transport and the density

of the road networks were increased enormously. Only thereby the already known

processes of industrialization could develop in the 19th century. Another increase of the

capacity of traffic began with the motorisation of the masses, which started in the 1920’s,

and from the second half of the 20th century on the technical preconditions were created to

use aviation as a means of mass transportation.

14. “Pilgrimage”

14.1 The Phenomenon of Pilgrimage and its development

The roots of the social mass phenomenon “pilgrimage” reach far back into the history of

Christianity. The veneration of saints and relics are a fundamental element of Christianity.

Until the 10th century, countless saints and their relics were venerated, at first martyrs,

then mainly saintly bishops, hermits, the so called missionary saints, and noble saints

whose ideal should remain important until the Late Middle Ages; every epoch had its own

saints. In 993 Pope Johannes XV (985-996) carried out the first known canonisation. He

sanctified Bishop Ulrich of Augsburg (died 973) because of the wonders he accomplished

“inside and outside of the body”. Therefore the pope sanctioned the already existing cult

and the accompanying veneration of the bishop through his papal decree. Until the High

Middle Ages the bishops of the several dioceses were also allowed to approve to the public

veneration of those persons who died as martyrs, led a “holy” life, and/or those who had

proven themselves as holy through miracles before or after their death. In the 11th century

the word canonizare emerged, firstly used by Pope Benedict VIII (died 1024), and it became

common in the 12th century. The act of sanctification (canonisatio) was declared a papal

privilege by Alexander III (1159-1181) and Innocent III (1198-1216). It was definitively

regulated by the fourth Lateran Council in 1215, which prohibited the veneration of relics

without the permission of the pope. This included the right of authorizing and banning

cults. Originally, as an expression of the veneration of the saints, all pilgrimages referred to

the graves of “these passed-away Giants of Christianity”. In the East on the other hand,



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besides sepulchres, images and icons were venerated, as was the case in the western world

with sanctuaries of the Holy Mary only.

“To make a pilgrimage” per se is age-old and a common denominator of all world religions.

In Buddhism the sanctuaries where the founder Gautama Buddha had lived are being

sought out, the Hindus pilgrimage to numerous holy locations where the respective god is

being venerated, and also the bathing in the river Ganges is an obligation for all devout

followers. Shintoism knows pilgrimages to the Iso-shrine, and in Islam the hajj, one of the

five pillars of Islam, is to be executed by every Mohammedan who is wealthy enough to

afford the journey. In the Christian Late Classic Period pilgrimage was definitely known too,

and in the Middle Ages numerous sites of pilgrimage emerged. Thousands of Christians for

instance travelled to the empty grave of the founder of their religion to Jerusalem, to the

graves of martyrs in Rome or to the grave of the Holy Martin in Tours (from the 5th century

on). Some pilgrims visited a site of pilgrimage that was near their home several times a

year; others accepted the troubles of a journey to a more distant one. But also members of

the lower class were highly mobile. The pilgrimage was generally accepted as a way of

travelling in the Middle Ages. The intentions were varying: Of course pilgrimages had

mainly spiritual value. One made a pilgrimage to the sanctuaries for salvation, to carry out

expiation and to repent, to make vows, because of problems concerning body and/or soul,

or also because of thankfulness for already occurred help. In the Late Middle Ages the

practice of forcing convicted law-breakers to make pilgrimages increased. Some undertook

the Peregrinatio as representatives for others, were professional pilgrims, for whose effort

fixed tariffs existed. Often, love of adventure and desire for educational journeys and/or

the Grand Tour, as described delicately by Geoffrey Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales (around

1387), were motivators. Maybe it was profane financial interests or an escape of any kind,

because of which people of all social classes took the walking staff of the pilgrims into their

hands. Limitless reasons could be the triggers. Iso Baumer analyzes in his “structural

Phenomenology” the course of a pilgrimage: “1. A person lives somewhere and pursues a

trade; 2. Because of any motives he decides to leave; 3. He leaves; 4. He travels; 5. He

arrives at his destination; 6. There, he performs acts of individual and collective

devoutness; 7. He travels home; 8. He resumes working.”

Concerning the adequate vestment of pilgrims respective recommendations existed, but

the spectrum of possibilities was vast. The supreme maxim was not to stand out too much

in foreign countries. Before the departure the pilgrim confessed his sins to his priest,

received his stick, a consecrated bag, and a passport that legitimised its carrier as a pilgrim.

After the pilgrim’s clothing had been put on a prayer of blessing was spoken and often

letters of recommendation, which could be very useful when looking for shelter or food or

to travel with somebody else cheaply, were handed over. Now the pilgrim entered his own

religious status. He “was dead to the world” for the duration of his journey. The bag (from

today’s point of view rather a sack), which was shouldered, was seen as a symbol of



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pilgrimage, the bar was used as a walking stick as well as a weapon against animals and

tramps, and the wide, often sleeveless coat protected its bearer against the rain and the

cold and could be used as a blanket at night. The wide-brimmed hat was used as a

protection too, and the respective pilgrim’s badges were attached to it. Even if the pilgrim

fell back to his old daily routine sooner or later after his return, he still carefully treasured

staff, coat, bag and the pilgrim’s badge (e.g. palm tree/Jerusalem, key/Rome,

scallop/Santiago) and wore them on high festive days. Those for instance who let

themselves be buried with the characteristic scallop, the pilgrim’s badge from Santiago de

Compostela, hoped that Saint James would remember them at their last journey and at the

Last Judgement. But also concerning profane and worldly matters the pilgrim had his own

status. For instance according to law a pilgrim was freed from road tolls, but in reality he

was always dependant on the good will and the discretion of worldly authorities (local

lords, toll collectors).

First pilgrim’s hospitals emerged in Italy already from the 8th century on, north of the Alps

from the 11th century on, because the capacity of monasteries to accommodate pilgrims

was no longer sufficient. In the hospital of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem (founded

around 1070) in Jerusalem 2000 sick and as many poor are said to have been awarded

shelter and food just alone in the year 1170. In Tuscany near Lucca along the road to Rome

hospitals were situated every 5 to 6 kilometres. A sort of commercial hospitality firstly

developed in Italy, from the High Middle Ages on it also emerged north of the Alps.

According to the sources the trend of individualisation intensified from the High Middle

Ages on. Persons in need are named even if they were common people, and a clear

increase of pilgrimages is determinable. From the Late Classic Period on women begin to

appear amongst the pilgrims as several rules of conduct of hospices document. Still,

significantly less women than men were on the roads pilgrimaging, and in the patriarchal

and rough men’s world of the Middle Ages they were way more imperilled. Prostitution

could be imputed to them quickly. Nevertheless, travelling was always dangerous for

everybody. Murder, enslavement, robbery, and fraud, accidents by water and by land,

maybe even just anguish of mind through temptation threatened the travellers. Depending

on personal preference a special relationship developed to this or that saint.

In the Late Middle Ages rural as well as urban areas were caught by a so far unknown urge

for pilgrimage. Ernst Schubert fittingly described the new aspect of the late medieval

pilgrimage with three terms: intensification, formalisation, emotionalisation. Christians

spontaneously set off to sanctuaries when they heard from miraculous happenings of

which they hoped for salvation and help against their sufferings. Pilgrimage as a European

mass phenomenon has experienced its completed implementation in the 13th century (and

until today the important role of the masses remains an attribute of popular devoutness).

As causes for this extraordinary behaviour the decline of the central authority, the

widespread competitiveness of a bourgeois society that is oriented on performance, as well



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as the increased necessity for miracles as a reaction on an economical and existential

instability, on unsettling existential experiences, were identified. Late medieval mass-

pilgrimages are not just a religious phenomenon of the crisis that expresses the strong

inner tensions and the disposedness to religious crowds of the contemporary “non-

professional” Christians, but also of clerical circles, and especially of the lower clergy. The

expansion of trade and the improvement of the traffic routes play a significant role. It is no

coincidence that precisely at this time the three main pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, and

Santiago de Compostela were defined as peregrinationes majores to differ them from the

smaller ones, the supra-regional pilgrimages to Aachen, Einsiedeln, Wilsnack or Le Puy, as

well as from regional pilgrimages to nearby sanctuaries with a journey time of few hours or

days, which were known as peregrinationes minores.

14.2 Jerusalem

The main destination for christian pilgrims was, and still is, Jerusalem, the city where Jesus

lived and where he was crucified. The medieval world maps are clearly pointing out the

high significance of this place for the Christian world. The “Holy Jerusalem on Earth” is

always the centre of the world. From the legendary localisation of the places of the

crucifixion of Christ, the entombment, and other incidents by Flavia Helena, who was the

holy mother of emperor Constantine, and by bishop Makarios of Aelia Capitolina in 325, the

discovering of the relics of Jesus (cross, thorns from the crown, the nails which had held

Jesus to the cross, the plate with the inscription “INRI”), and the erection of the Church of

the Holy Sepulchre as well as the Nativity Church above the shepherd’s cave in Bethlehem

through Constantine on, Jerusalem emerged as the most important destination of the

peregrinationes majores. It was primarily the veneration of saints – of the sepulchre of

Christ – and of relics, why Christians went on the highly exclusive, because very expensive,

journey to Jerusalem. Pilgrims from the German lands accepted the stress and strain of a

pilgrimage to the centre of Christianity too. The first Alsatian who described a journey to

Palestine (after 1222) was a Dominican from Strasbourg named Bonaventura Burkhard,

who took on the byname “de monte Sione” after his voyage, which stresses the

exclusiveness of the trip to the Holy Land. Until the 12th century, stays in Jerusalem with a

length of about half a year were common; with the emergence of all-inclusive tours from

the 14th century on the duration of stay was reduced to 10-14 days. The Franciscan

chronicler Johann von Winterthur (died 1348/49) reports on two nobles from lake

Überlingen, who made a pilgrimage as part of a large tourist party to the Holy Land to see

the tomb of Christ in 1346. He tells us that the nobles had to pay large sums of money to

the Saracens to visit the sepulchre. In the report the speciality and high dangers of such a

journey become evident. The chronicler narrates that the two men had begun their trip in

March and returned home happily before Christmas. After the definite loss of the Holy Land

with the fall of Acre to the Mamelukes (1291), who were ruled by the sultan Al-Ashraf

Chalil, the next regular pilgrimages to Jerusalem began to arise in the middle of the 14th



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century, whereas Venice and the Franciscan Order were the main supporters of the

undertaking. The Christian pilgrims were again seen by the Muslim rulers as welcome

bringers of foreign currency, and in 1316 the Minorites were allowed to govern the

sanctuaries. Especially wealthier citizens and members of the lower nobility travelled in

groups of 100-300 persons from Venice along the Dalmatian shore, past Corfu, through

Crete, Rhodes, Cyprus, and Jaffa to Palestine, where they stayed for two to three weeks. A

part of the sightseeing tour was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where some pilgrims

spent the night praying. More places of interest in Jerusalem (Golgotha/Calvary, Via

Dolorosa with the respective Stations of the Cross, Mount of Olives, the Grave of Mary) as

well as in the surrounding regions followed. Part of the tour was a visit of Bethlehem, often

of the place where Jesus had been baptised in the river Jordan, and of several sanctuaries

from the Old Testament, like the Oak of Mamre, which is also known as the Oak of

Abraham, and the sepulchres of the Kings David and Salomon. Some of today’s tourist

attractions, like the Dome of the Rock, the house of Pilate, and others, pilgrims were only

allowed to see from outside. The high travelling expenses of 25-40 gulden, which

corresponded approximately with the price of a grand house in a Central European city,

guaranteed that the not only expensive but also exhausting and dangerous pilgrimages to

Jerusalem did not become a mass phenomenon. Favoured as souvenirs was oil from the

lamps of the Holy Grave, water from the river Jordan, or the famous roses of Jericho.

14.3 Rome

Different to Jerusalem was the situation in Rome. There, beginning in the middle of the 3rd

century, pilgrimages to the graves of the martyrs had come up and Emperor Constantine,

together with St. Peter and St. Paul, had two glorious churches erected before the walls of

the city (Sancti Pauli extra muros). Soon these locations became the centre of the

veneration of relics in Rome, a city that offered most of the holy places of all of Christianity.

Between the 8th and the 9th century, the mortal remains of the earlier saints were removed

from the niches in the walls of the catacombs and systematically transferred to the Basilicas

of the city. In 990 the Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury (990-994) visited 23 roman

churches, which were mentioned by name, within two days; and that in a city with 10.000

to 20.000 inhabitants. Because of the shift of interest of the believers to Palestine and

Spain through crusades and reconquista, the Roman tourism of pilgrimage suffered a

painful decline in the 12th and 13th century. The downfall of pilgrimage could be prevented

through a brilliant idea of pope Boniface VIII and Rome quickly regained its political and

economical power. Boniface declared the year 1300 to be a “Holy Year” and granted all

pilgrims who came to Rome and visited the four main churches of the city (St. Peter, St.

Paul, Lateran, Maria Maggiore) a complete jubilee-indulgence. From that date on every 100

years such a Holy Year should be celebrated to prevent the case of a person getting two

complete indulgences in his lifetime. With that Boniface relocated the total indulgence

from the crusades to the roman jubilee-indulgence. This indirectly led to the getting out of



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the hand of the system of indulgence in the Late Middle Ages itself. The tour to Rome

became a mass phenomenon. Thousands and thousands of pilgrims followed the call to be

freed from their sins. To receive money to free someone from his/her sins became a

lucrative business. In Rome a huge crowd flocked together. That the pilgrims were mainly

from Germany and France described the contemporary witness Jacobus Gaetani Stefanesci,

but also Englishmen, Spaniards, Hungarians and others are reported to have found their

way to Rome in high numbers. The Florentine merchant and chronicler Giovanni Villani for

instance notes the astronomical number of 200.000 seekers for indulgence, who – he said –

had passed the gates of Rome daily. The Dominican chronicler from Colmar on the other

hand reports a more realistic number of 30.000. The huge success of the Holy Year caused

Pope Clemens VI (died 1352) to shorten the original period of 100 years in between the

jubilees down to 50 years; he declared 1350 again to be a Holy Year. Although, or maybe

because, the Black Death raged in Europe the second jubilee became a vast economic

success for the Romans, and the following popes shortened the intervals between the Holy

Years to 33 and later to 25 years. Soon the visit of the seven main churches of Rome was

seen as obligatory. From Alexander VI (1492-1503) on the legend of the opening of a holy

gate at the St. Peter’s Church became reality and official prelude to the Holy Year. In the

15th century special Holy Years were introduced and from the 15th century on, because of

reasons of rivalry, other centres of pilgrimage offered Holy Years too, so for instance

Canterbury in 1420 and Santiago de Compostela around 1426. With the Holy Years the

periodical pilgrimages became fashion. The citizen Mathias von Neuenburg from Strasbourg

stresses in his chronicle that on the occasion of the jubilee such a big crowd had gathered

as it had not been the case since the foundation of the city. He also emphasises on the

dangers of such a journey, because many pilgrims had died in ship accidents on the river

Rhine, and because robbers and murderers had ambushed pilgrims. In 1345 for instance

130 pilgrims on their way to Rome lost their lives in the river Rhine near Rheinfelden,

because the boat on which they were cruising had been overloaded and most of them did

not know how to swim. The most important and most walked-on pilgrim’s path from

England and France to Rome was the Via Francigena. From Canterbury through Calais the

1600 km long route led through Arras, Laon, Reims and Besançon to Lausanne and on to

the Great St. Bernhard’s pass. On the Italian side of the Alps it went through the Aosta

Valley, Ivrea, and Vercelli to Pavia, Piacenza and Parma and from there over the Cisa pass

across the Apennines; then it went on in two directions to Lucca on to the old roman road,

the Via Pisana, between Florence and Pisa in the direction of the river Arno, on many ways

along the valley of the Elsa (Valdelsa) to Siena and finally from there through Viterbo, Sutri,

and Nepi to Rome. From Germany two important ways led to the central route: One from

Stade through Würzburg, Augsburg, Innsbruck, the Brenner pass, Verona, Bologna, and

Florence, whereas a branch-off to the St. Gotthard’s pass existed near Augsburg, which led

from there through Milan to Rome. The second route had its starting point in Stade too and

led through Paderborn and Mainz to the “Rhine axis” at the river Rhine and on to Worms,

Speyer, Strasbourg, and Basel to the Great St. Bernhard’s pass, where the Via Francigena

was reached. In Mainz the western route, from Utrecht through Cologne and along the

“Rhine axis” coming, met the pilgrim’s road. Soon it had evolved to more than just a



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pilgrim’s path. It became the economical arterial road between Italy and the rest of Europe,

until the economical strength of Venice correspondingly rerouted the flow of traffic.

14.4 Santiago de Compostela

The third main destination of pilgrimage during the Middle Ages was Santiago de

Compostela. According to legend Saint James had preached in Spain after the death of

Jesus. He then returned to Jerusalem where he was the first of the Apostles to suffer a

martyr’s death. His mortal remains were then brought back to the Spanish west coast by his

disciples and buried near Compostela. Forgotten by the Galicians, James appeared to

Charles the Great in a dream and gave him the mission to find his grave and drive the

Saracens out of Spain. The pilgrimage to the limina sancti Iacobi was highly popular. Many

scallops that were sold in front of the cathedral were later found all over Europe. Already in

a hymn from the 8th century James is named as the patron saint and head of Spain, and

from the 10th century first messages from James’ pilgrims are bequeathed. In northern

Spain the coming and staying of pilgrims favoured the resettlement of regions that had

been depopulated during the wars between Christians and Muslims. In the High Middle

Ages most of them came from Catalonia and from France, but more and more Germans

travelled there too. In the 12th century Santiago de Compostela was elevated to the seat of

an Archbishop and had established itself as the most important place of pilgrimage besides

Jerusalem and Rome. According to approximations 200.000 to 500.000 people made a

pilgrimage to Santiago every year. Four main pilgrim’s routes led through the centuries

nearly unchanged to the tomb of James and united in Puente la Reina. One led through St.

Gilles (near Arles), Montpellier, Toulouse, and across the Somport-pass, a second through

Le Puy, a third through Vézelay and Périgueux and a fourth through Tours, Poitiers, and

Bordeaux. The routes two to four led across the Pyrenees, the Cisa pass, to Roncesvalles.

From the Middle and Upper German area the pilgrims travelled through Einsiedeln and

Geneva across the valley of the river Rhône to Valence and from there on across the

southern route through Arles and the Somport-pass. From Carinthia and Slovenia the route

upstream of the river Drau through the Pustertal and across the Brenner Pass towards the

Arlberg was preferred. Important for the knowledge of the cult around St. James is

especially the Liber Sancti Jacobi (= Codex Calixtinus), a collection of manuscripts from the

12th century. It contains several legends, reports of miracles, pilgrim’s songs, sermons,

liturgies of the hours, and hymns. According to the Liber Sancti Jacobi, similar to practices

in Jerusalem pilgrims liked to spend a night at the Apostle’s tomb. From the 15th century

on, similar to Rome, jubilee years were celebrated in Santiago too. They were held when

the 25th of July, the festive day of the Apostle, fell on a Sunday, which resulted in an

approximately seven-year cycle. After the decline of the cult around St. James in the 16th

century it was revived in the 19th century and in 1937 James the Greater was proclaimed

the national patron saint of Spain by General Franco. Today the saint is a European symbol

of integration and stands for a continental feeling of togetherness, triggered by a campaign



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of the European Council in 1987, which declared the pilgrim’s way on the Spanish side the

first European Cultural Route. Up until today the enthusiasm for the “Way of Saint James”

even increased - stimulated by several movies and reports. In 2008 125.000 pilgrims visited

the grave of St. James.

14.5 Regional pilgrim routes and destinations

From the 14th century on, the local and regional Mariological and Eucharistic sanctuaries

multiplied quickly and were visited in droves by pilgrims eager for miracles.

In the Emilia Romagna such close destinations of pilgrimage were for instance Madonna di

San Luca in Bologna, the Holy Virgin Mary del Piratello in Imola, the veneration of the Holy

Blood and the Holy Mary in Vado in Ferrara; in Piedmont the believers made pilgrimages to

the sanctuary of the Holy Anna di Vinadio in Cueno, to that of the Madonna del Sangue in

Re or on the mountain Rocciamelone, the highest place of pilgrimage of Europe near Turin;

in Slovenia the Churches of the Mother of God at Ptujska Gora and Petrovče in the diocese

Maribor, as well as Strunjan and Sveta Gora in the diocese Koper were visited; in Carinthia

Gurk, Heiligenblut, the Hemmaberg in the Jauntal, one of the oldest places of pilgrimage of

Europe, as well as Maria Wörth or Millstatt; in Thuringia the people made pilgrimages to

Elende in the administrative district of Nordhausen, to Grimmenthal, Hülfesberg near

Geismar, or Vierzehnheiligen at the Jakobsweg; in Saxony-Anhalt finally to Drübeck in the

district of Wernigerode, to Horburg in Kötschlitz/Merseburg, Huy near Halberstadt, to the

Heiligblutkapelle, the chapel of the Holy Blood, in Schwanebeck, or to the Marienkapelle,

the chapel of the Holy Mary in Welfesholz with a picture of the “Jodute”. Especially the

local and regional sanctuaries are an expression of a quantified devoutness. One of the

causes for the escalation in number of the short-distance destinations for pilgrimage is to

be found in the system of indulgence. It made the time-consuming, exhausting, dangerous,

and especially expensive journey to the larger places of pilgrimage superfluous, because

the smaller sanctuaries were endowed with the same rights of indulgence as their larger

counterparts. In 1466 in the Swiss monastery Einsiedeln 130.000 pilgrim’s badges made of

metal were sold in the course of a fortnight. The indulgences that could ultimately be used

for the deceased freed the sinner from a temporary punishment for his sins, whereas the

complete relief from the guilt of the sin could only be reached through repentance and

forgiveness. In the Late Middle Ages such a complete relief could be reached at those

sanctuaries where relics were situated. Thus nobles collected uncountable amounts of

years of indulgence. Through the relics that were cherished in Wittenberg at the beginning

of the 16th century, 2.000.000 years of indulgence could be acquired. From 1300 on the

wish of the pilgrim for a direct contact to the saint, to reach recovery for both body and

soul, shifted. From now on the achievement of indulgences and therefore the relief of sin

and the creation of precautions for the afterlife was the main aim to be reached. The vast



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amount of late medieval local places of pilgrimage, especially for the poorer population as

an alternative for the more famous locations, presupposed the specialization of respective

Saints on certain illnesses and afflictions. The situation ultimately led so far that clergymen

tried to attract pilgrims to “their” sanctuary through several means, for instance through

reports of miracles. They were supposed to propagate the respective cult site and make it

popular. Nevertheless the wish of touching pictures, statues or relics of saints, of traveling

to the tombs of martyrs or at least to be nearby to be healed by them, should remain one

of the religious exercises with the aim to exploit the saint as magical helper for individual

interests.

14.6 Pilgrimage from Reformation to the 21st

Century

The reformation caused a heavy decrease in pilgrimages. The criticism from Protestants

concerning the cult of saints was important for this decrease. Under reference to the Bible

they refused the veneration of saints. Martin Luther ranted against the irrational traveling

of those who are addicted to miracles to the excessively increasing wild chapels and small

churches, and Zwingli and Calvin let cult pictures and relics be removed from meeting

houses inside their sphere of influence and prohibited pilgrimages. In the part of Europe

that remained catholic the emergence of a public sovereignty and of national states as well

as the so called enlightenment caused a heavy crisis for pilgrimages and the idea of

pilgrimage per se. The secular, but also the clerical sovereigns feared any form of crowd

and deemed it as highly dangerous. Therefore pilgrimages were regarded as suspicious and

were prohibited. This applied especially to pilgrimages across the borders of the national

state, for a subject that had crossed the national border was no longer controlled easily.

According to philosophers of the enlightenment on the other hand, pilgrimage as an

expression of blind lay piety was to be rejected, because it contradicted any form of

rationality, and of the rational, enlightened Christianity that was cleansed of all fuss. As

compensation for pilgrimages local pastors and clergymen offered processions and stations

of the cross inside of the respective local churches, or small pilgrimages to destinations

inside the borders of the own territory. Nevertheless it did not stop Protestants to make

“educational journeys” to places their ancestors had already visited, and – today – to make

pilgrimages themselves. The 19th century created a self conscious bourgeoisie and

connected to it a renaissance of pilgrimage, especially in the Catholic Church. The romantic

transfiguration of the Middle Ages as well as the “rediscovery” of lost traditional Christian

virtues were the main causes for this development. Numerous appearances of the Holy

Mary stand paradigmatically for this progress, which brought forth pilgrimages to new

destinations; to Fatima in Portugal, or to Lourdes and La Salette in France. The attraction of

these sanctuaries, or lastly also of Međugorje in Croatia, is still unbroken, although

respective totalitarian systems with their innate contempt for human beings and their

hostility against religion blocked pilgrimages again in the first half of the 20th century. The

pilgrimages were often politicised, got subversive connotations and became a symbol of



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anti totalitarian thinking. In 1937 for instance 800.000 people from all parts of the country

came to a pilgrimage in Aachen. And after World War Two, the pilgrimage to Czestochowa

was a highly visible demonstration of the pursuit for freedom of the Poles, which also had

far reaching political consequences. Today’s enormous popularity of pilgrimage is

especially connected with the overcoming of the borders of the modern national states in

Europe, and with an increase of the individual freedom in the European Union.

Nevertheless the pilgrimages of today did experience a fundamental change in meaning,

compared to those of former times. “Modern tourism does neither care about eternal

salvation nor about the healing of illnesses. The main reasons for a temporary change of

location are for younger people wanderlust and curiosity; for the middle and higher age

groups the recuperation from stress plays a more important role. These worldly structures

of motivation create the foundation for a branch of industry that profits from employee’s

rights to a certain amount of holidays. The longed for escape from the daily grind does not

have to be legitimized with religious needs.” (Maria Wittmer-Butsch) The tourism

professionals will hardly be impressed by this new motivation for pilgrimage. Important for

them is the existence of an obviously not so small target group for pilgrimage travels that is

ready to invest and to take other objects of interest “with them” on the way to their

destination. This is where it comes full circle, for already in the Middle Ages many pilgrims

wandered through foreign countries with open eyes and enjoyed the sight of various

cultural assets with great enthusiasm.

With wagons across the land, mounting the Alps, on ships and rafts down the rivers and

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