Motives for Pilgrimage

Abstract

The famous opening lines of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales repay repetition when we ponder the question of pilgrim motivation. Here the poet is rooting the human impulse to pilgrimage in a context of nature and season. The sap is rising, crops and creatures are astir, and Chaucer’s characters, because they are Christians, express their participation in the general ferment by going on pilgrimage. Because they are also English, many of them choose to go to Canterbury, but others seek out distant shrines, and for these ‘palmers’ the very ‘strangeness’ of such places is important. The only specific pretext for domestic pilgrimage to which Chaucer refers is the desire to give thanks for delivery from sickness; he assumes that the saint’s ‘help’ has already been received.

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour Of which vertu engendred is the flour; Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne, And smale foweles maken melodye, That slepen al the nyght with open ye (So priketh hem nature in hir corages), Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes, To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes; And specially from every shires ende Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende, The hooly blisful martir for to seke, That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke …