The golden age of pilgrimage

The period from the 11th to the 14th centuries marked the golden age of pilgrimage at Compostelle, certain sources giving figures of 500 000 pilgrims per year.  Four routes lead to Saint-Jacques from Compostelle. Amongst them: The via Podiensis which crosses the Aveyron.

The pilgrimage of Compostelle became even more frequented in spite of the crusades, the doors of Jerusalem definitively closed at the middle of the 13th century with the capture by the Turks.  In the middle ages, millions of pilgrims took their sticks and wallets to go to Galice.  A monk even wrote a sort of tourist guide "The pilgrim's guide".

In all of Europe, the "Jacquets" trace their routes - four main routes - on which were often installed by the great abbeys a system of aid to pilgrims with hospices, chapels, and rest stops.  It didn't prevent the pilgrimage from being an ordeal.  Bad weather brought out the highwaymen happy to profit from the windfall of these brave people by plundering them at imaginary tolls, when not simply leaving them for dead. 

But at the end of their pilgrimage, having crossed Europe, met other people, suffered, known solitude and the challenge of the unknown, the pilgrim collects shells on the banks that he sews onto his hat.  He sometimes adorns his stick.  Such signs show that he is a new man returning to his country.

The hundred years war in France slowed the tide. The reform and its opposition to relics and finally the nationalism of the great kingdoms, managed to exhaust it. The pilgrimage of Saint-Jacques didn't restart until the 20th century.