Page:The Normans in European History.djvu/207

The earliest relations of the Normans with the countries of the Mediterranean were the outgrowth of those pilgrimages to holy places which play so important a part in mediæval life and literature. Originating in the early veneration for the shrines associated with the beginnings of Christianity and the sufferings and death of the Christian martyrs, pilgrimages were in course of time reënforced by the more practical motives of healing and penance, until the crowds of pilgrims who haunted the roads in the later Middle Ages included many a hoary offender who sought to expiate his sins by this particular form of good works. Sometimes these penitents would be sent to wander about the earth for a definite time, more frequently they would be assigned a journey to a neighboring shrine or to some more famous fountain of healing grace, such as Compostela, Rome, or Jerusalem. Compostela, hiding among the Galician hills the bones of no less an apostle than St. James the Greater, who became in time the patron saint of Spain and spread the name of Santiago over two continents, was early a centre of pilgrimage from France, and claimed as one of its devotees the mighty Charlemagne, the footsteps of whose paladins men traced through the dark defiles of the Pyrenees in the Song of Roland, as well as in the special itinerary prepared for the use of French pilgrims to the tomb of the saint. Rome was of course more important, for it claimed two apostles, as well as their living successor on the pontifical throne.