The pilgrimage to Rome in the Middle Ages

Since the Middle Ages, pilgrimages have been an important part of everyday life in Western Europe. In fact, this ancient Christian custom, which consists in undertaking a journey to a place considered sacred, had cultural and religious purposes, linked to the concepts of devotion or penance. The pilgrim, from the Latin peregrinus, meaning "foreigner", before making the journey had to prepare himself with purification practices, deemed necessary to arrive at sincere repentance. There were many reasons why a pilgrimage was undertaken: for example, one could leave to fulfill a vow or to atone for a crime committed, to obtain indulgences for oneself or one's loved ones or even to try to obtain a miraculous cure.

The main destinations of pilgrimages in the Middle Ages were the Holy Land, Santiago de Compostela and Rome. The first involved visiting the places linked to the life of Jesus, namely Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem. Around the year 1000, however, these pilgrimages began to encounter many difficulties because the Arabs, who had proved tolerant, were replaced by the Turks, rough and violent warriors. When in 1095 Pope Urban II called for the first crusade to free Jerusalem from the invading Turks, the latter was more of an armed pilgrimage and those who left did not call themselves crusaders, but pilgrims. The two European pilgrimages, on the other hand, followed itineraries that have become famous over time. The most famous are the Camino Francés to Santiago de Compostela and the via Francigena to Rome. The latter was born out of a strategic necessity of the Lombards who, having settled in Italy during the sixth century, needed to connect their main city, Pavia, with the southern duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, surrounded by the Byzantines. During the dominion of the Lombards this was called Via di Monte Bardone and only with the beginning of the Frankish one did we begin to call it Via Francigena. The street was not really a street, but rather a set of streets with different itineraries.

In Rome, capital of Christianity and burial city of St. Peter, pilgrims came from all over Europe to venerate the relics of Christ and the first Christian martyrs; however, it was only after 1300, the year in which Boniface VIII proclaimed the first Holy Year with the Bull Antiquorum habet trust relatio issued in February 1300, that the pilgrimage to Rome strengthened considerably. On this anniversary, the Pope granted plenary indulgence to all those who had visited the Basilicas of Saint Peter and Saint Paul outside the walls thirty times, if they were Romans, and fifteen times if they were foreigners, for the entire duration of the year 1300 This Holy Year would be repeated every hundred years in the future. Among the pilgrims who went to Rome to obtain the indulgence there was also Dante Alighieri. The poet, in the eighteenth Chant of the Inferno of the Divine Comedy, compares the two ranks of the damned in the eighth circle, who walk in two opposite directions, to the stream of people who walked, divided by a barrier, on the bridge in front of Castel Sant'Angelo during the jubilee.

Initially there were two poles of reference for the Jubilee pilgrimage: the tombs and memorials of the apostles Peter and Paul. Then, in 1350 Urban VI added the basilica of Saint John's in Lateran, the cathedral of Rome, and Boniface IX for the Holy Year of 1390 extended the obligation also to Santa Maria Maggiore, the first Marian shrine of Western Christianity. These were the "patriarchal basilicas" in which, from the Jubilee of 1500, the ceremony that the Pope performed in St. Peter's began to be repeated simultaneously by papal delegates. Then, in the last quarter of the 16th century, thanks to San Filippo Neri, the practice of visiting the seven basilicas became established: Saint Peter, Saint Paul, Santa Maria Maggiore, Saint John's in Lateran, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Saint Lorenzo, Saint Sebastian.