Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/105

Rh P I L P I L 95 Another, which became the Bethlehem of the West, as Koine had become its Jerusalem, was Loreto, where, ever since 1295, the Santa Casa, declared to be the home of the Holy Family, miraculously transported from Nazareth, has been frequented by pilgrims till very recent times, when its popularity has waned. Other famous shrines, some few of which even still attract yearly crowds of pilgrims, are Einsiedeln in Switzerland ; Assisi, Oropa, Varese and Vicovaro in Italy; Monserrat and Guadalupe in Spain ; Mariazell in Austria ; Getting and Eberhards- clausen in Germany ; Walsingham, Becket s shrine at Canterbury, Peterborough, St Davids, and Holywell in England and Wales ; St Andrews in Scotland ; Chartres, Notre Dame de Liesse, Notre Dame de Eocamadour, and Notre Dame des Victoires, with Ste Anne d Auray in Britanny, in France ; and Hal in Belgium. Devotion to these shrines was encouraged and developed by copious in dulgences annexed to them; but this system in the long run became adverse to pilgrimages, because exactly the same privileges were annexed at a later time to acts much more easy of performance. Thus, the wearers of the cord of St Francis, every time of reciting certain brief prayers, acquire all the indulgences attached to the holy places of Palestine, Rome, Assisi, and so forth, and have naturally little induce ment to perform toilsome and costly journeys thither. There is a further small class of pilgrimages, differing from all others in being neither permanent nor yearly, but periodical at various long intervals. They are usually connected with the exposition of the principal relic or relics in some important church, an event which rarely occurs. Such are the pilgrimages of Cologne, to the shrine of the Three Kings, and that of Treves, where the alleged seam less coat of Christ has been displayed for popular devotion, and has been visited by vast crowds of pilgrims. Pilgrims in the Middle Ages were known by a peculiar garb and various badges, the hood and cape, the staff and scrip and water-bottle, and the low-crowned hat, turned up in front, and fastened with strings, being common to al while the palm specially marked a pilgrim from the Holy Land ; a shell, one from Compostella ; a bottle or bell, one from Canterbury, and so forth. They had many privileges and advantages. They were exempt from toll, their persons were inviolable, and any injury done to them incurred the penalty of excommunication ; they were entitled to shelter, fire, and water in all convents on their road, and the needier ones to food in addition ; and there were resting-stations erected for them on all the great lines of travel, sustained sometimes by voluntary offerings, and sometimes by public imposts ; while in Rome, above all, institutions for their reception and relief were established early, and are still in active operation. 1 Nevertheless they declined in repute, not only by reason of the feigned devotees who joined them for purposes of vagrancy and mendicancy, and even from worse motives, but because many notorious criminals were customarily sent on pilgrimage as a punishment, with no care to isolate them from their innocent companions. The general charge of moral deterioration as a result of pil grimage, which recurs from the fourth century onwards, is specifically brought by Langland in respect of truthful ness : &quot; Pilgrims and palmeres plighten hem togidere, For to seken seint Jame and seintes at Rome. They wenten forth in hire wey, with many wise tales, And hadden leve to lyen all hire lif after. &quot; ( Vision of Piers Floivman, pass. i. line 82). lasted very long, for there are edicts of Louis XIV. and XV. forbid ding foreign pilgrimage to French subjects without the written per mission of their bishop, and the counter-signature of a state official, under pain of the galleys for life. They bear date 1671, 1686, and 1738. 1 For more details see Mr Scudamore s articles, &quot; Holy Places &quot; and &quot; Pilgrimages,&quot; in Smith s Dictionary of Christian Antiquities. Hence pilgrimages were attacked with the weapons of ridicule, and the most celebrated satires upon them are the chapter in Reineke Fuchs, describing Reynard s adventures as a pilgrim, and the yet wittier squib of Erasmus, Pere- grinatio religionis ergo, in which he gives a sarcastic account of the pilgrimage to Walsingham, which had much to do with destroying the prestige of not only that particular one, but most others also. The French Revolution all but completed the work of the Reformation in causing pil grimages to decline seriously, where they were not entirely abolished, in the West, though they were still able to main tain their ground in retired and unchanging places such as Britanny, various places in central Italy, and in Ireland, where the severely penitential pilgrimages of Lough Finn, Lough Dearg, and Croagh Patrick are not yet obsolete. There was a remarkable recrudescence of the spirit of pil grimage under the pontificate of Pius IX., notably to the new sanctuaries of La Salette and Lourdes in France, which reached its height about 1872-73, but has shown signs of subsiding again since. In the Eastern Church, pilgrimages have not for many centuries formed so important a part of popular religion as in Latin Christendom, and the number of frequented shrines is very small. In the Greek Church properly so called, Mount Athos, with its numerous monasteries, where the great yearly gathering is on the feast of the Trans figuration, ranks next to the visit to the Jordan (Tozer, Highlands of Turkey, i. 103). After Mount Athos comes a shrine in the island of Tenos, where, in the cathedral church of the Panagia Evangelistria, is preserved an icon of the Madonna, alleged to be wonder-working, and said to have been discovered by means of a dream in 1824 ; the annual concourse of pilgrims twice a year, on the feasts of the Annunciation and the Assumption, is very great. Three alleged pictures of the Blessed Virgin by St Luke at Megas- pelion, at Sumelas in the mountains behind Trebizond, and at Stiri in Mount Helicon are also much visited. Etch- miadzin is the chief Armenian pilgrimage, besides which are those of Kaisariyeh and Mush (Tozer, Turkish Armenia, pp. 161, 271). And finally, the chief Russian pilgrimages are to the Petcherskoilavra at Kieff (said to be visited by 200,000 pilgrims yearly), the Solovetsk monastery near Archangel, and the Troitsa, close to Moscow, besides many more locally popular shrines. (B. F. L.) PILLORY. This was a mode of punishment by public exposure of the offender on a platform or scaffold long used in most countries of Europe, originating prob ably with the Anglo-Saxons, one of whose methods of punishment as described by Strutt is nearly identical with the instrument which eventually became known as the pillory. The etymology is not quite clearly made out. It is most probably connected with pillar, Fr. pilier, M. H. German Pfilaere, but there are forms with an initial s (Prov. espitlori, Low Lat. sjnlorium) which this derivation does not explain. The more usual French term is not pilori but le carcan. The Germans have Preller. Heals- fang or halsfang (Anglo-Saxon for a catching of the neck) was the old English name. The word was also sometimes applied to the pecuniary mulct paid in commutation of the punishment. No punishment has been inflicted in so many different ways as that of the pillory. Sometimes the machine was constructed so that several criminals might be pilloried at the same time, but it was commonly capable of holding only one. Douce (Ilhistrations of Shakespeare) gives six representations of distinct varieties of this instrument. In Griffiths (Chron. of delegate] and in a learned and exhaustive account of the pillory by Jewitt (Reliquary, April 1861), examples will also be found, and notably of the pillory for women, which differed in form from that in use for male offenders. It would