The Via Francigena (Fran-CHEE-gena) means the “path from France,” though its official starting point is actually Canterbury. For centuries, it was the major thoroughfare for pilgrims and others heading for the Eternal City, i.e., Rome. It hasn’t been as famous or as frequented, lately, as the Camino de Compostela. Until a few decades ago, it had largely been forgotten until the French and Italian governments decided to try to make it a “thing” again.
A good thing too, because it puts people in the company of figures like Thomas Aquinas – who walked it Rome-Paris in both directions a few times. And many others, like Dante and Hilaire Belloc – whose Path to Rome is one of the most remarkable accounts of travel by foot ever written.
I’ve made the case on this site a couple of times that we would do well to follow in the footsteps – including the actual physical footsteps – of earlier Christian pilgrims. It brings the Church into the world again, and the created world back into us. As a brief break after our annual Summer Seminar on the Free Society in the Slovak Republic (which Randall Smith described recently here), I’ve been trying, now and then, to take my own advice: Parts of the Camino, the Tolkien-Lewis Cotswold, and (my favorite) St. Cuthbert’s Way (Scotland to England’s Holy Island of Lindisfarne.)
During the Middle Ages, the most common reason to walk the Via Francigena was to visit the tombs of Sts. Peter and Paul. Many did. Back then, you could also continue farther south on the route from Rome to ports in Puglia, and sail to what medieval people thought of as the center of the earth: Jerusalem.
These pilgrimages were spiritual journeys as well as physical ones. The main stopping points were monasteries, which are largely gone now. But it’s quite possible even today to follow a route that takes you through places with deep religious significance. There are even a few churches that offer hospitality to pilgrims.
The Italian government, like all our Western regimes, seems nervous about re-creating the Via in purely religious terms. On the one hand, it’s a good tourist opportunity. On the other, it’s a pilgrim route, actually several somewhat different routes over the centuries. So, the route markers compromise, with images of both secular hikers and a hearty monkish figure.
A week ago, I started along the first segment south of Florence – San Miniato to Gambassi Terme – by myself. My walking companions had been held up at our increasingly dysfunctional airports. Fifteen miles, in 100-degree weather with few water sources, and almost no pilgrim helps. In all, nine hours, about half of them penitential hours that I would not recommend doing alone, even in less heat, because other pilgrims are few and, in an emergency, you could find yourself in real trouble. But the other half was contemplative and restorative: through some of the most beautiful hills of pine, olive, and grape that God created.
Further south the Via is less rigorous and more immediately rewarding. At San Gimignano, famous for its high towers and Simone Martini’s New Testament frescoes inside the basilica, you get the strong flavor of the old pilgrimage. The frescoes provided a full pictorial account of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus even for those who could not read. In the one below, you can see Judas betraying Jesus with a kiss in the Garden of Gethsemane while Peter is hacking off a servant’s ear with a sword.
There was plenty of betrayal and violence and drama in places along this route from the Dark Ages well into the Renaissance. So images like this were much the stuff of everyday life – while later panels continue on to Christ’s Resurrection, and hope of a better life to come.
They’re even now a reminder that our confused and contentious days are not all that unusual in the sad annals of human history. Meanwhile, in the piazza in front of the church, a stout Tuscan dressed up like Dante, was declaiming some powerful verses from Inferno, warning of the terrible torments of souls whose actions condemn them to Hell – an integral part of Catholicism, hard to find in our times.
Still further south lies Montereggione, famous among readers of Dante because its city walls and regular towers, which are still intact, are the images the sommo poeta chose to suggest the sheer size of the giants that stand around the deepest pit of Hell: the floor of ice and Satan himself. That was also probably a not-so-subtle dig at the city itself, which served as Siena’s defensive bulwark against rival Florence. Troubled history notwithstanding, then – as now – the city stands amid created glories.
The great Saint Catherine learned in Siena to teach popes how to behave – starting with returning from Avignon (the “Babylonian Captivity”) to their proper place in Rome. For all her mystical transports and spiritual insights, she was also often asked – probably because she inspired trust – to intervene in the age’s endless political, ecclesial, and military rivalries.
The palio, the yearly horse race in the main piazza, runs later this week. And marchers with drums and colorful flags are already livening up the neighborhoods in a cheery medieval way [see the video below]. But Catherine is something else again.
St. Catherine seemed to spring wholly formed spiritually from the depths of her time and place. Yet her words still resonate everywhere:
“Proclaim the truth, and do not be silent through fear.”
“Be who God meant you to be, and you will set the world on fire.”
“What is it you want to change? Your hair, your face, your body? Why? For God is in love with all those things and he might weep when they are gone.”
Yet we must change, in a deep not superficial way. As Newman said, to live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often. And moving along a pilgrim way is a good change, for body, mind, and spirit.
