Having once been to Jerusalem on a Holy Pilgrimage, and planning to go again, I was very intrigued and somewhat excited to add my personal insight to the pilgrim that I chose, Friar Felix Fabri.
His "little book" of wanderings that he created in his two journeys to Jerusalem, is one of the most frequently cited works in studies of medieval pilgrimages to the Holy Land. One of the authors I came across while researching Felix, uses his work as the basis for three seperate books. I even came across a fictional mystery with Felix as the central character trying to solve the theft of the forearm of his patron saint, Catherine of Alexandria.
His book is filled with many references to the Bible and to other authors, both secular and religious. He even quotes Virgil and Homer. This German monk was very well read for the 15th century, and his education shows in his writings. His "little book" of wanderings is actually two volumes and almost fifteen hundred pages long. He is voluminous in his observations, leaving out nothing. I hope to do him justice.
Frater Felix Fabri, he called himself. F.D. Haeberlin says that his name was Schmidt, his family noble and their arms "a globe argent on a field sable." Not much is known of his life, except for the two periods when he went on pilgrimage, in 1480 to Jerusalem, and in 1483 to Jerusalem, Sinai and Egypt.
He was born in 1441 or 1442 in Zurich. Brought up at the Dominican convent at Basel he learned to read and write both German and Latin. According to his own reckoning, he moved to Ulm in 1453 or 1454, where he spent most of the remainder of his life. He traveled some during his lifetime, and before he left on his first pilgrimage, he had seen a little of the world. In 1457 he was at Pforzheim, probably for study. In 1467, he was at Aix, and in 1476 in Rome. By that time, or soon after, he was preaching at Ulm. After his two pilgrimages, he became provincial of his order from 1486 to 1487 and was at Venice both of those years for the Comitia Generalia of the Dominican Order. He died in bed surrounded by his Dominican brothers at Ulm in 1502.
Friar Felix was very detailed in his description of both his trips. The first was a rather hurried affair and left him wanting to return, which he did, leaving exactly two years to the day after his first pilgrimage. During the first trip, the pilgrims were unable to land at Rhodes due to the Turkish siege, but it was lifted by their return a few weeks later. His second trip follows the same path as the first with few variations. However, on his return, he and several others go on to Mt. Sinai, and then to Cairo, Alexandria and back to Venice. His overland journeys cover basically the same route coming and going both times.
On April 14, 1480, almost 519 years ago, Friar Felix left his brethren at Ulm and joined two fellow pilgrims at Memmingem for their journey across the Alps to Innsbruck. Across Brenner Pass and down to the northern Italian plains, through Bassano, Treviso, Mestre and on to Venice. After booking passage on a galley ship, they sail with other pilgrims down the coast of Dalmatia to Ragusa, Corfu, and on to Crete. Bypassing siege-worn Rhodes, they sail to Cyprus and then to Jaffa. From that port they mount donkeys to travel overland through Ramle and on to Jerusalem. After a quick tour of the Holy City, (only nine days), the pilgrims are rushed back to the boat and shove off for the return voyage through the Venetian controlled islands of Crete and Cyprus, with a brief stay at the newly relieved Rhodes and back to Venice. From there he travels back to Ulm along the same overland route. He knew that he must return to Jerusalem, and begins to plan his second trip immediately. This he accomplishes in two years. The second journey follows the same route back to Venice and on to the Holy Land, yet his writings are much more detailed. He writes a chapter every day during his second trip and leaves nothing out. We know very little about Friar Felix, yet after reading his "little book" one gets to know him very well indeed.
The return trip from Jerusalem has our Friar and a few indefatigable pilgrims making the arduous and dangerous journey to Mt. Sinai and across the desert to Cairo, down the Nile to Alexandria, and then home.
Friar Felix wrote two accounts of his travels one in German (Ulm 1556); the other in Latin. The first was rather brief; the other is very complete and accurate in its descriptions of places visited. Though not widely known, Felix is appreciated among those who study travel narratives, not only for the excellent primary source he provides, but also for his honesty and warm good humor as he stumbles through a world so removed from his own. He wrote his account for his Dominican brothers back in Ulm that he could not take on the pilgrimage with him.
This text was translated from the original Latin text Fratris Felicis Fabri Evagatorium in Terrae Sanctae as into English as The Wanderings of Felix Fabri by A. Stewart for the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society in 1897.
A German version was published in Stuttgart in 1843-49, edited by C.D. Hassler and took up three volumes. The book I used was in two volumes, yet it left out his trip through Sinai to Egypt and Alexandria.
Friar Felix Fabri's "little book of wanderings" offers an excellent primary source for any scholar seeking information about the practice of pilgrimage during the late 15th century.
He is not widely known except to those who study medieval literature or to those who want to know more about the history of pilgrimages. With the nearing of the millennium, more and more people are interested in pilgrimages to Jerusalem, and I am sure that Felix, as well as many other pilgrims, will become better known to the general public.
Friar Felix and I do have a little in common, even if there is 519 years between us. I, too, felt rushed the first time I traveled to Jerusalem. Felix mentions that his short first trip left him with a burning desire to return. The same desire lies within me. We both began making plans to return to the Holy Land the moment we got back home. Felix also talks about receiving indulgences during his pilgrimages (over 100 are mentioned in the first volume alone). This coming millennium, Pope John Paul II has reinstated the granting of indulgences to any Roman Catholic who makes a pilgrimage to the holy sights during the coming celebration of the Jubilee. This is another motivational factor for me to return.
Friar Felix has frozen a picture in time. A picture of what Christian pilgrims would have to go through to get to the Holy Land. But more than this, he also shows us the human side of what a pilgrim felt and thought in response to the many influences and stimuli that one encountered while trying to accomplish a private pilgrimage while under public scrutiny in a hostile environment. His descriptions of the sights he sees and the places he visits is so vivid, it is as if we are there with him. He shows us life as it was lived. He shares with us his knowledge, his spirituality, his humanity. He shows us his medieval ignorance on many subjects scientific, as well as his prejudices. He shows us his humanness.
"Throughout the Middle Ages, pilgrimage was one of the most popular expressions of religious devotion in the Christian world. The desire to visit, and worship at, places of special significance is common in all religions. But the exceptional popularity of pilgrimage in the Medieval West can be attributed to three important aspects of religous beliefs."(1)
The first of these is the belief that a follower of Christ is also a wanderer in this world, for whom life on earth is an unavoidable and painful existance, to prepare us for the everlasting afterlife in paradise. This idea, rooted in the life and teachings of Christ and St. Paul, was part of a theme of poverty and wandering. "The word pilgrim is derived from the Latin word pelegrinus, meaning stranger or wayfarer."(2) This idea inspired many people to commit themselves to a life of aimless wandering and painful existence in an attempt to become closer to Christ. The pilgrimage tradition was deeply influenced by the notion that the discomfort and suffering of travel had spiritual value in their own right. Yet, "A pilgrimage is not just a journey; it also involves the confrontation of travellers with rituals, holy objects and sacred architecture."(3)
During the Middle Ages the most popular sights to make a pilgrimage to were Compostela, Rome and the Holy City of Jerusalem. The 15th century Dominican, Friar Felix Fabri, writes of his desire to go to Jerusalem and indeed he does twice. "On returning to Germany from his first visit to Palestine, made in 1480, when he 'ran about the Holy Places without understanding or feeling what they were,' Felix painfully realized that he had no clear answer to give to questions about the Holy Land. Determining to make a second journey under different auspices, he devoted a year to an elaborate study of the literature of the subject, which further revealed to him the superficial and irregular character of his own observations. His new record took the form of a diary, minutely detailing each days happenings..."(4)
His "little book" was written after his second trip to the Holy Land, and it is this great work which tells us so much about the time that he lived in, the people that he traveled with, and the sights he saw and events that he experienced. "If we knew nothing else at all of him but what is to be found here, we should still feel that we know Brother Felix very well." (5) His purpose of travelling to Jerusalem was not only to satisfy a longing to behold the Holy Land but also so "that he might better understand the Holy Scriptures...and to gain some little knowledge of them. Since...there can be no doubt that clerks in orders and men of some small learning will return learned to no small degree."(6) Felix, like so many others, took on the pilgrims appearence. "There are five outward badges of a pilgrim, to wit, a red cross on a long grey gown...a black or grey hat, also marked in front with a red cross. The third is a long beard growing from a face which is serious and pale...the fourth is the scrip upon his shoulders...the fifth, which he assumes only in the Holy Land, is an ass, with a Saracen driver, instead of his staff."(7) Or, as Sir Walter Raleigh later wrote:
Up until Felix's time, travel narratives whose subject is pilgrimage "bear witness to a strange foreign reality, often overtly proclaiming this intention; every Christian is called to join in, and those who already belong exhort others to follow the same path."(8) And indeed, many did. "Up until the 16th century, more than a hundred narratives of this kind, in all languages, form an uninterrupted line influenced very little even by the Crusades." (9)
"So, on the 13th of April, in the year 1483, there came a messenger sent to me by the noble Lord Phillip...to come on the morrow without delay...on the 14th, I called together all brethren...who flocked around me and eagerly begged me to take careful not of all the holy places I saw, and to write an account of them and bring it to them..." (10) Felix leaves his Dominican brothers in Ulm to take an overland journey to Venice. He notes every small village that he passes through and makes comment on a good many of them. Always the seeker, he never seems to be able to pass up any side journey, even to walk up a small hill to see what is on the other side. This curiousity of Felix's is fairly typical of travel narratives of his day. "Curiosity, which had hither to been held in check, now tends to enjoy a free rein; thus tetimonies become more personalized and accounts more secularized." (11)
Arnold Von Harff in his pilgrimage of 1498, follows Felix's route exactly once he reaches Ulm from Cologne. Yet, his narrative is a little more straight forward. He gives the mileage between the villages he goes through with minimal or no comments about the towns or valleys that he passes through. Of Ulm, Felix's home town, he says, "This is a free city lying on the Danube...In this city there is a fine Cathedral dedicated to our blessed Lady." (12) His narrative, which does contain some insight to his character does not quite fill us with as much life as Felix does.
Some of the wanderers have been inspirations for other travelers, even modern ones. "Margry Kempe,...has always been a great love and inspiration to me...without much means, or any foreign tongue, made these journeys on her own,...her eccentricity and her honesty were my inspiration." (13) This touches at the heart of many of these narratives, they were honest accounts of brave souls who wandered through alien lands in search of something that only they could truly find.
The second contributing factor was more important, and in some ways was at the very heart of a pilgrimage: the cult relics. The belief of Western Christians was that God and Satan were in continual conflict, not only through the minds and actions of mortal men, but also through natural disasters. Disasters such as floods, famine, earthquakes, sickness and accidents. The saints, men and women whose exceptional holiness enabled them to act as God's agents during these events, continued to act as His spirtual soldiers, even after their deaths. Since the second century, Christians venerated the remains of the saints for three reasons: 1) to show reverence for what they achieved in life, 2) to gain their intercessory support, and 3) because they believed that the relics themselves had healing powers. The Catholic Church encouraged the first two practices but was uncertain about the third, because of the problem of false relics. Yet, even this did not deter some churches from obtaining as many relics as they could. When forced to spend a month in Venice during his second trip, Friar Felix approaches his commrades and makes this speech: "Lo, now, my lords, we have set out upon a pilgrimage in the name of God, and it is not fitting that a pilgrim should stand idle...we cannot solace ourselves and pass the time by visits to flowery gardens*...nor can we employ our leisure in hunting...therefore my advice is that, while we remain here, we should every day make a pilgrimage to some church and visit the bodies and relics of the saints..." (14)
For the next month, Felix spends his days traveling from chuch to church visiting and kissing the relics that were contained in the churches of Venice. A mini pilgrimage within a pilgrimage. "Often, it was important not only to view sacred objects, but also to touch them in order that there power be realized and made personally applicable." (15) The touching of the relics by objects such as rings, crosses, or rosaries brought with them from home, "that they may perchance derive some sanctity from the touch; and thus they are returned to the friends of the pilgrims dearer and more valuable than before." (16) How Felix carried his money and where he put all those brooches, rosaries and rings which he carried in order to lay on the Holy Places, he does not say. Other men, obviously wealthy, often carried money belts, yet even these were not entirely safe from the constant threat of thievery that was so prevalent on any pilgrimage. In one instance, one of Felix's companions lost his wallet during the desert crossing from Mt. Sinai to Cairo. "Von Breydenbach, the splendid and high born canon of Mainz announced that he had lost a large sum in gold ducats, ... he had dismounted and walked for awhile, and only when he got back again did he discover his loss. The pilgrims traced his footsteps back through the desert...searched all around, turning over sand with their hands, but in vain...it was clear that someone had a appropriated the money and an unhappy Calinus (Arab Dragoman leading the pilgrims) declared that everyone would be searched...one of the stranger Arabs approached Calinus and handed over the money."(17) This account is just one of many that Felix mentions about the distrust that was, and still is, held between Christians and Muslims. At the very beginning of their overland journey at Joffa, the pilgrims are kept in a dark cave that they must pay to be put into and pay to get out of. "There came to us a fierce Saracen, begirt with arms, and bearing a club in his hands, who exacted from each pilgrim a Venetian penny ... for our lodging...before it was fully light, this same fierce extortioner came back ... and would not allow anyone to leave the cave for necessary purposes without giving him a penny."(18)
The cost to the pilgrim was as constant as it was when I went to the Holy Land. There is always someone somewhere who wants to take your money. The Medieval Churches were no exception. As mentioned before, religious orders bought relics of martyrs or saints or sacred things and built whole churches around them. One of the most popular was a piece of the true cross. Felix mentions seeing a piece applied to one of the whole crosses which held one of the thieves crucified with Christ on the island of Cyprus. "It is a tolerably large cross, covered in front with plates of silver, guilded and made of fine sound wood, like cyprus wood, ... the cross of Dysma, the thief on the right hand to whom Jesus promised paradise..." (19)
When Sigurd, a Viking king, traveled to Jerusalem, "...By the orders of King Baldwin there was taken a splinter off the Holy Cross, and given to him."(20) This was in 1110 and there must have been plenty of the original cross left to give to some obscure Viking king who brought no less than three poets with him to sing his praises to the world.
It seems that nothing is sacred when there is a chance to make some money from it. One of the most vile practices deals with the Holy Innocents. Felix explains, "On a [side tour] to Bethlehem, we discover a certain cave... which we could not enter without bending our backs... Into this cave were cast many thousand bodies of the Holy Innocents whom Herod slaughtered, seeking Christ among them...some of the pilgrims...searched among the dust...for some relics of [them], but they found none at all...the relics of these innocent children are now scattered throughout the churches of the world...at Venice...Nuremburg...Strasburg...Ulm...Noblemen who go to Jerusalem take a special interest in the Holy Innocents, I know not for what reason. One in our company, an exceeding rich nobleman, offered one hundred gold ducats for an entire [body]...the reply came that the bodies of these innocents were removed to Cairo, where the lord Soldan (sultan) had them in his own keeping, and sold them to whom he chose."(21) Yet, that was not all of it. It seems that even worse things were going on. Felix continues, "I was assured by [him] that it is a fact that Saracens and Manelukes receive the bodies of still-born children, or of children who have died soon after their birth, slash them with knives, making wounds, then embalm the bodies by pressing balsam, myrrh, and other preservative drugs into the wounds, and sell them to Christian kings, princes, and wealthy people as bodies of the Holy Innocents...thus are Christ's faithful people mocked and robbed of their money, for these infidels know our ardent desire for the possession of relics, and therefore set out for sale: wood said to be part of the Holy Cross, and nails, and thorns, and bones, ...to delude the unwary and cheat them out of their money. I do not set much value upon new relics brought from parts beyond the sea..." (22) Yet Felix seems to forget that any and all holy relics at one time or another were new, and came from across the sea. The Reliquary in St. Peters in the Vatican in Rome has been collecting relics for a very long time. In it is enough wood from the "true cross" to build a house and enough bone fragments to fill a large church. The really remarkable thing to me was the gold, silver and precious stones around the bits and pieces of the saints and martyrs. Some very elaborate art work. Arnold Von Harff on his pilgrimage thirteen years later, notes many of the same relics as Felix. Yet his descriptions do not seem to have the flourish that Felix's does, and at times it seems that Von Harff is only copying what Felix wrote. There is evidence of this in his descriptions of the religious sects and different nationalities of the people that reside in Jerusalem. Von Harff seems to copy Felix verbatim.
Most pilgrims, however, journeyed for the sake of their spiritual rather than their bodily health. The third major reason for devotional travel was the desire to do penance for sins, and the harnessing of pilgrimage to the Church's penitential discipline. A compulsory pilgrimage to distant shrines was quite often suitable punishment for grave sins. It was expensive and laborious, gave the sinner time to repend fully, and removed him from his community long enough to let passions die down. But, not all those who took on a penitential pilgrimage did so because they had to. A characteristic was a wide spread desire to increase one's chances of salvation by undertaking a voluntary pilgrimage. This resulted from the changes in the sacrament of Penance. "The early church had imposed severe penances, and only when these had been performed was the sinner given absolution. At the end of the tenth century, the practice began of granting absolution directly after confession of sins. Light penances were imposed, and the church taught that the punishment demanded by God would be paid for, either in this world or the next (hence the doctrine of Purgatory)." (23) Pilgrimages were seen as one way to satisfy or lessen God's punishment, for not only would the suffering (pena) of the journey count as penance, but the saint visited would intercede on their behalf to the divine court. The intercession of a great saint was thought to guarantee a completely fresh start, a second baptism that many pilgrims to Jerusalem would celebrate by bathing in the Jordan River. "...it is believed that in this place the Lord was baptized by John...When we had finished our prayers we took off our clothes, that we might bathe in the sacred river."(24)"We came to the place where Saint John baptized our Lord Jesus. We stripped ourselves naked and went in to bathe there."(25)
Men and women of all social classes went on pilgrimages but there was one special group that had particular appeal, the knights. Their vocation had constantly put them in a position to do acts of violence that was condemned by the church. For such men, undertaking regular pilgrimages was an invaluable way of doing penance. The constant visits to the shrines and the ritual of alms giving by the wealthy knights was a major source of revenue for those churches. Of those who Felix lists as lords among his fellow travelers, the pilgrimage to the Holy Land would bring them additional honor. "Once they actually reached Jerusalem, the high point of the trip for the noble members of the party was the dubbing of knights in the Holy Sepulchre. The custom was obviously of great symbolic worth, and Fabri tells us about it in great detail." (26) "Now, when this procession had been formed and had been completed, and brought to an end...this Brother John, at one hour before midnight, called together to him all the noble pilgrims who wished to receive knighthood into the Church of Golgotha...[he] began to tell them of the laws of this knighthood." (27) After a lengthy discource on the conditions of knighthood, the dubbing ceremony was quite simple. "First, therefore, he called to him the noble Lord John, Count of Solms, into the inner cave of the Lord's monument, wherein is the most holy tomb, and girded the sword of knighthood upon his thigh, tied the spurs of knighthood on his feet, and bade him bow himself down upon his bended knees before the Lord's tomb in such sort that his knees rested upon the pavement, and his breast and arms lay upon the lid of the tomb. He being thus kneeling, the aforesaid Brother John took from its sheath the sword wherewith the Count was girded, and with the blade thereof smote him thrice upon the shoulders in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. After this had been done he raised up the Count, loosed the sword and the spurs from him, kissed him, and respectfully said: 'May it be for thy good.'"(28)
On the occassion of the first crusade (1095), Pope Urban II began the ritual of granting a plenary (or absolute) indulgence to, "whosoever out of pure devotion and not for the sake of gaining honour or money, shall go to Jerusalem to liberate the Church of God, may count that journey in lieu of all penance."(29) "An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven...An indulgence is partial or plenary according as it removes either part or all of the temporal punishment due to sin."(30) The rite of issuing indulgences soon was exploited by some churchmen to enrich the coffers of their churches, or their own pockets. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) tried to curtail their use, but could not. By the time of Felix Fabri it had become regular church doctrine. Felix and Von Harff both mention the gathering of indulgences wherever they went. "However, like relics, indulgences were subject to destructive forces of supply and demand as competition between providers increased."(31) This misuse eventually helped lead Martin Luther to nailing his 95 Thesis on the door of the church at Wurtemburg and the Great Reformation began.
Although relics were everywhere and indulgences granted to all who would visit the various holy sites throughout Medieval Europe, the most meritorious pilgrimage of all was that to Jerusalem. It was the first to develop. Pilgrims traveled to Jerusalem since the early third century and their numbers greatly increased during the fourth century with the construction of Christendoms greatest shrine of the time, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Many books have been written on the subject of the various peoples who have occupied the Holy City since it was first settled.* During Felix's time it was controlled by a sect of Muslims called the Mamluks. "While the Sultan did not destroy the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, he established a policy towards pilgrimage...which agressively promoted Islamic Jerusalem in open competition with Jewish and Christian Jerusalem."(32) "The Christian problem in Jerusalem was, for most of the 14th and 15th centuries, more precisely the Latin problem, and most of its unedifying details unfolded on the slopes of Mt. Sion."(33) This is explained by Felix, "After the driving out of the Latins, the Holy City of Jerusalem remained for many years without any Latin or Roman Christians for when the Latins left Jerusalem, the Easter Christians, who are monsterous heretics and schismatics, entered therein in the place of the Latins and became possessed of the churches which the Latins had build. The Latins were not suffered to own any place within the Holy City, nor were they even suffered to enter the Holy Land and the city of Jerusalem without being guarded by Saracens with great precautions, with a safe-conduct and the payment of an exceeding heavy toll. And when they came to Jerusalem, they found no divine service, save that of schismatics and heretics."(34) This very reason could be why Latin pilgrims sought out preachers such as Felix to take with them on the journey. They would have a priest to perform their various religious rites for them. They would also want one who spoke their own language and could translate the Latin Mass into their native tongue. Again, Felix, "After the Gospel in the service of High Mass, the Father Guardian* turned himself to the people and preached a beautiful sermon in the Latin tongue, in praise of the holy places and of their devout visitation, which sermon was translated in German to the layman by the Venerable Father Paul Guglinger."(35) Indeed even on the route to Jerusalem was found inns and taverns that catered to certain nationalities. "In 1484 the Dominican Felix Fabre, a native of Zurich on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, stayed in Venice at the Zu der Flote, where the whole household, from the patrons to the servants, was composed of native Germans and not a word of Italian was heard."(36) But even this could not help Felix from remarking on his obvious distaste for the other inhabitants of Jerusalem. "The Saracens are befouled with the dregs of all heresies, worse than idoloters, more loathsome than the Jews; the Greek Church, once learned, is now darkened with numberless errors; and the Syrians are the children of the devil, and the Armenians sunk in diverse heresies; the Jews are justly hated by all the rest, their intellects dulled by the misery and contempt they undergo. Only the Franciscans, of all the citizens of Jerusalem, live a virtuous life, the chief mark of their piety being a longing in their hearts for a new crusade to conquer the holy city. 'This dismal catalogue shows that the pilgrimage did nothing to liberate Felix from his projections and prejudices but had simply led him to a dead end of hatred and self righteousness'"(37) Yet to defend the Friar, he had witnessed some pretty terrible things that were done to the Latin pilgrims. Fabri, "mentions one 'beardless youth' from Picardy who was so harrassed (we assume this meant sexually) that he returned to the ship and did not complete the pilgrimage."(38) He also talks about how the pilgrims were treated when each first sets foot on the Holy Land at Joffa and, "...were appointed certain Saracens who straightway seized him and dragged him to an entrance of a darksome and decayed dwelling beneath a ruinous vault ... these caverns are called 'St. Peter's cellars'... we found the very place of our abode abominably defiled and befouled with filth, nor was there any place to sit down save upon filth."(39) Enduring this, as well as other disgraces, the pilgrims pressed on to Jerusalem. Being led by their Dragoman, Calinus, riding the chosen beast of the pilgrim, a small donkey. On the road for two days, the travelers finally see their destination. "The pilgrims did what pilgrims before and since have done...they dismounted and knelt in the road, bowing their faces to the stones...then, mounted once more, they moved on, the priests among them singing the Te Deum, but in voices discreetly subdued lest they should annoy their escort."(40) Upon approaching the city at the Fish Gate, "We dismounted from our asses, ... walked two and two towards the gate ... Some of the pilgrims out of piety threw away their shoes, and walked barefoot all the time that we were in the Holy Land...thereby honoring the glorious footsteps of our Lord, of the blessed Virgin Mary, and of the Saints of the Old and New Testaments..."(41)
Fabri goes on about the description of his tour around the Holy Sepulcher as well as Jerusalem and other parts of the Holy Land. The references found here are drawn from just a few of the many authors whose scholarly works fill the shelves of bookstores and libraries. "It was a matter of great regret for Fabri that: 'Jerusalem...continues to be held by them [the infidels] even to this day.'"(42) Actually Fabri was being very prophetic; for forces were about to be unleashed on the Church in Europe (with the aforementioned Martin Luther) that would make Western European Christians leave Jerusalem to its own devices for many years to come.
Pilgrimages, relics and indulgences all are rather selfish reasons for anyone to take a journey anywhere. The wandering of a pilgrim to take on a Christlike appearance and to dive deep into one's own soul, is very self absorbed indeed. To have personal material items values increase, to have the penalty of sin taken away, are both very selfish reasons for a holy pilgrimage. Yet, one cannot help but think that to care for other people one must care for one's self. This is true in Felix's case. However, his obvious distaste for other religious sects and of other cultures proves to me that not much has changed in the five hundred plus years since his time.
So I choose to leave Jerusalem with Friar Felix's own conclusion to his first journey to the Holy Land, "By this all men may see clearly how untrue is the common saying, that the pilgrimage by sea from Venice to the Holy Land is a mere pleasant excursion with little or no danger...It required courage and audacity to attempt this pilgrimage, that many are prompted to it by sinful rashness, and idle curiosity, cannot be doubted; but to reach the holy places and to return to one's home active and well is the especial gift of God."(43)