Pilgrimage is a metaphor for life and every man is a pilgrim on this earth (1 Peter 2:11). In fact, life is like a journey and the meaning of a journey is its destination. For the pilgrim, the goal of life’s journey is not death, but to find the meaning of life and once found, return home with this new treasure. For the Christian man in the Middle Ages, the purpose of life was to know God, and to return home was to go, at the end of life, to Heaven to enjoy the life of the Trinity forever, as exemplified in Dante’s journey described in his Comedy which concludes with the vision of the Trinity. The journey of life is a journey full of pitfalls and dangers, but more terrible than corporal death is that of the soul in which heaven is lost forever: “what good is it for man to gain the whole world if he then loses his own soul?” Jesus said in the Gospel (Mark 8:36).
This article briefly introduces the types of medieval pilgrimages (penitential and devotional), the main pilgrimage destinations (Rome, Santiago, Jerusalem), from which the different names of the pilgrims (Romei, Pellegrini and Palmieri) de- rive to understand the figure of the pilgrim, in particular the one going to Rome, including how he was dressed and what he brought home after the pilgrimage (e.g., insignia on the hat).
After summarizing how to recognize the figure of the pilgrim, his iconographic attributes and how he is represented in the figurative art of the Italian Middle Ages, this article discusses the figures of select pilgrim saints such as Saint Galgano and Saint Francis, or protectors of pilgrims, such as Saint Roch, and Saint Christopher, in order to analyze the dangers they had to face during their journey, both physical dangers but also spiritual ones, and how these were opportunities to experience di-vine assistance and human charity.
