Image of Geoffrey Chaucer on a horse pointing to the start of the “Tale of Melibee” in the Ellesmere manuscript of The Canterbury Tales, a tale that one of the ones told by the character of Chaucer, the pilgrim, in that work
24 November 2020
Bifil that in that seson on a day,
In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay
Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage
To Caunterbury with ful devout corage,
At nyght was come into that hostelrye
Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye
Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle
In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle,
That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde.(It happened that in that season one day,
In Southwark at the Tabard Inn as I lay
Ready to go on my pilgrimage
To Canterbury with a very devout spirit,
At night had come into that hostelry
Fully nine and twenty in a company
Of sundry people, by chance fallen
Into a fellowship, and they were all pilgrims
Who intended to ride to Canterbury.)—Geoffrey Chaucer, “The General Prologue” to the Canterbury Tales, lines 19–27
1 minute and 30 seconds of John Wayne calling Jimmy Stewart pilgrim in the 1962 film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Whoa, take ‘er easy there, pilgrim.
—John Wayne, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
To most Americans nowadays, the word pilgrim conjures up one of three images: the puritans who arrived in what is now Massachusetts in 1620; a person on a religious journey; or John Wayne schooling some cowboy wannabe.
Pilgrim comes to us from the Latin peregrinus, via the Anglo-Norman pelerin or pilegrin. The original Latin meaning was that of a foreigner, stranger, exile, or traveler, that is someone who wasn’t from these parts. That meaning still survives today and is what John Wayne meant when he kept calling Jimmy Stewart’s character pilgrim in John Ford’s 1962 film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. In the film, Stewart plays Ransom Stoddard, a lawyer from the East, and Wayne’s character of Tom Doniphon treats him with affectionate disdain for his inexperience in the ways of the Wild West.
But pilgrim is much older than the American West. It dates to the late Old English period when it is found in a list of witnesses to a late eleventh-century charter found in Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ii.2.11, fol. 202v:
And ðis is seo gewitnisse, Iohan alurices sune, & Nicole & Ailric & Randolf, Alword cild, Osbern clopeles sune Ricard a paules stret, & Ricard theodbaldes meg, & Andreu & Serle, & Saluin & Seric & Huberd Randolf cotes sune. Osbern hod Pilegrim Ialebriht Gesfrei se coc & Pierres se niulier Ailric, & Gales. And se þe þis undo, habbe he godes curs & Sanctę Marie & sanctes Petres & ealle Cristes halgena a butan ende. Amen.
(And this is the list of witnesses: Iohan, Aluric’s son; & Nicole & Ailric & Randolf, Alword’s children; Osbern, Clopel’s son; Richard in [St.] Paul’s Street; & Ricard, Theodbald’s kinsman; & Andreu & Serle & Saluin and Seric, and Huberd, Randolf Cot’s son; Osbern Hod pilgrim; Ialebriht Gesfrei, the cook; & Pierres, the wafer-baker; Ailric; & Gales. And may he who shall void this have the curse of God and of St. Mary and St. Peter and all of Christ’s saints ever without end. Amen.)
It’s also found in an Old English translation of the Rule of St. Benedict, in a chapter about how visitors to the monastery should be treated:
Ða heane & þa pilegrimes ealre geornest beon underfangene, forþam þe Crist on heom swiðest byð anfangen.
(Paupers and pilgrims should all be welcomed most conscientiously, because in them Christ is especially welcomed.)
Benedict’s original Latin uses peregrinus.
In these two Old English examples, the context does not make clear exactly what is meant by pilgrim, but it probably simply meant traveler. This meaning is made clear in Laȝamon’s Brut, a poem probably written in the late twelfth century, with the text found in London, British Library, Cotton Caligula MS A.ix which was copied c. 1275. The poem gives a history of Britain and is one of the earlier sources of the King Arthur Legend. But Arthurian lore does not appear in this passage which clearly uses pilgrim to mean nothing more than a traveler, in this case an itinerant workman:
Þa he iuaren hafde; fulle seouen nihte
þa imette he enne pilegrim; pic bar an honde
hiȝend-liche þe com; from þas kingges hirede
Brien hine gon fræine; of his fare-coste
þe pillegrim him talde; al þat he wolde
Wið him warfte Brien; al his iweden
and æiþer gon liðe; þider him to luste
Brien enne smið funde; þe wel cuðe smiðie
and saide þat he wes pelegrim; ah pic nefden he nan mid him
þene þridde dæi þer bi-fore; at his inne he wes forlore(When he had traveled seven full nights,
Then he met a pilgrim who bore a pick in his hand
who had hastily come from the king’s employ.
Brian went to ask him of his business;
The pilgrim told him all that he would.
Brian exchanged all his garments with him,
And both went on their way as it pleased them.
Brian found a smith who could smithy well
And said that he was a pilgrim, but he had no pick with him;
Three days before it had been lost at his inn.)
But at about the same time that Laȝamon’s Brut was being written, pilgrim was acquiring the sense of someone on a spiritual or religious journey. Perhaps the most famous religious pilgrims are Chaucer’s fourteenth-century fictional pilgrims, who travel to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury, as referenced in the quotation above. But they are not the first such religious travelers. The Latin peregrinus acquires this meaning in the eleventh century, and an twelfth-century hagiography of Saint Katherine uses pilgrim in this sense too. The manuscript, British Library, Royal MS 17A.xxvii, which was copied c. 1225, reads:
I þæt ilke stude, anan,
iwurðen twa wundres.
Þe an of þe twa wes,
þæt ter sprong ut, mid þe dunt,
milc imenget wið blod,
to beoren hire witnesse
of hire hwite meiðhad.
Þe oðer wes, þæt te engles
lihten of heuene,
& heuen hire on he up,
& beren forð hire bodi,
& biburieden hit
i þe munt of Synai,
þer Moyses fatte
þe lahe et ure lauerd,
from þeonne as ha deide
twenti dahene ȝong,
& ȝet ma, as pilegrimmes,
þæt wel witen, seggeð.(In that same place, instantly,
two miracles were performed.
The first of the two was
that there sprung out, with the blow,
milk mingled with blood,
to bear her witness of her pure virginity.
The other was, that the angels
descended from heaven,
and carried her on up high,
and bore forth her body,
and buried it
in the mount of Sinai,
where Moses received
the law from our Lord,
from the place where she died
twenty day’s journey,
and even more, as pilgrims,
who know well, say.)
In this case, the comment about the pilgrims does not appear in the original Latin found in British Library, Cotton Caligula MS A.viii. That was an addition by the English translator.
The first person to label those Puritans who settled in New England in 1620 pilgrims was one of their own, William Bradford. In his 1630 History of Plymouth Plantation, Bradford wrote:
So they lefte yt goodly & pleasante citie, which had been ther resting place near 12. years; but they knew they were pilgrimes, & looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to ye heavens, their dearest cuntrie, and quieted their spirits.
The “goodly & pleasante citie” is Leyden in The Netherlands. Bradford is making a biblical reference here, to the New Testament letter to the Hebrews 11:13. The passage is about the Hebrew patriarchs and matriarchs, and specifically to Abraham and Sarah who lived a nomadic existence. The Authorized or King James Version of the verse reads:
These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
Given the religious inclinations of the Puritans, Many Americans today probably associate this use of pilgrim with the sense of a spiritual journey, but while his use has a religious connotation, Bradford is primarily using it in the sense of a wanderer, and exile.
Other writers picked up on Bradford’s use and soon the appellation became common. One of the more famous was Cotton Mather, who uses it in his 1702 history of New England, Magnalia Christi Americana. In one passage he paraphrases Bradford:
After the fervent Supplications of this Day, accompanied by their affectionate Friends, they took their leave of the pleasant City, where they had been Pilgrims and Strangers now for Eleven Years.
And in another, Mather evokes the rootlessness of an exile:
And indeed they found upon almost all Accounts a new World, but a World in which they found that they must live like Strangers and Pilgrims.
So, the pilgrims we associate with Thanksgiving have more in common with Jimmy Stewart’s Ransom Stoddard than they do with Chaucer’s traveling company.
Sources:
Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2017, s.v. pelerin.
Bradford, William. History of Plymouth Plantation (1630). Charles Deane, ed. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1856, 59. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Brook, G. L. and R. F. Leslie. Laȝamon: Brut, vol. 2 of 2. Early English Text Society, 277. London: Oxford UP, 1978, lines. 15342–348.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The General Prologue.” The Canterbury Tales. c. 1387. Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website.
Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013, s.v. peregrinus.
Einenkel, Eugen, ed. The Life of Saint Katherine. Early English Text Society. London: N. Trübner, 1884, lines 2486–2504, 121. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Ford, John (dir.). The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck (screenplay). Paramount Pictures, 1962.
Fox, Cyril and Bruce Dickens, eds. The Early Cultures of North-West Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1950, 366–67, including Plate 12. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Mather, Cotton. Magnalia Christi Americana. London: Thomas Parkhurst, 1702, 1.6, 2.3. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. pilgrim, n.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2006, s.v. pilgrim, n.
Schröer, Arnold, ed. Die Winteney-Version der Regula S. Benedicti. Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1888, 107. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Venarde, Bruce L. The Rule of Saint Benedict. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, 6. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2011, 174.
Image credit: San Marino, Huntington Library, MS EL 26 C 9, f. 153v.
Video credit: “Pilgrim..”, 13 December 2007. YouTube.