The afternoon was sunny, hot, and dry, like most August afternoons in southeastern France. But for the peasants working in the fields and vineyards near the Rhône river by the town of Tournon, this was to be no regular day. Perhaps they saw the dust rising in the distance; perhaps a young boy ran along spreading the news. In any case those field workers would have flocked to the side of the road that led west toward the city of Le Puy and gawked in amazement: It wasn’t every day a papal caravan came marching by.
The year was 1095 and Pope Urban II was in the middle of a pastoral visit to his native land of France, visiting dioceses, meeting with clerics and lords, and culminating later that year with his call for a crusade to recover the Holy Land and his excommunication of the king of France for adultery.
But little of that was on the minds of the peasants who watched him pass that day. Urban had been on the road for months on his journey north from Rome and across the Alps, and like any ruler on the road for months, he brought his office with him so he could govern on the way. We have no firsthand report of how complex the pope’s caravan might have been, but other medieval sources give us clues. William Fitz-Stephen, for example, a clerk employed by Thomas Becket when he was Lord Chancellor of England, gives us a detailed report of what was in Becket’s traveling caravan to France, and while what he describes may have been especially extravagant, would the pope, the medieval Lord of kings, have traveled with much less?
First, Fitz-Stephen tells us, Becket “had with him 200 men on horseback of his own household — soldiers, clerks, butlers, serving men, knights, and sons of the nobility, who were performing military service to him, and all equipped with arms.” Becket also had “four and twenty changes of garments,” along with elegant tartans, friezes and foreign skins, cloaks, and carpets “such as those with which the bed and chamber of a bishop are adorned.” He also had many kinds of dogs and birds with him “such as kings and wealthy men keep.”
There were eight large wagons in Becket’s traveling caravan, “each drawn by five horses, in size and strength like chargers.” Each horse had its own groom, dressed in new attire who walked beside the wagon. Each wagon also had a driver and a guard. Two wagons were filled with casks of beer “to be given to the French, who admire that sort of liquor.” One wagon “served as the Chancellor’s chapel, one as his chamber, and another as his kitchen.” Others were loaded down with food and drink, bedclothes, cushions, and other assorted baggage.
And let’s not forget the twelve packhorses and eight coffers “to carry his plate of gold and silver cups, pitchers, basins, salts, spoons, knives and other utensils.” There were also coffers containing the chancellor’s “money, together with his clothes and a few books.” One packhorse that went before the others carried the sacred vessels, books, and ornaments for the altar and chapel. Each packhorse had a groom attending it, and every wagon had a large, “fierce and terrible” dog tied to it. And just to put the whole picture way over the top, each horse pulling a wagon had “a long-tailed ape” sitting on its back.
Even if Pope Urban didn’t share Becket’s attachment to long-tailed apes, the papal caravan the peasants saw that day was probably similar in size and scope. We can guess from other papal caravans that he surely also would have with him a number of secretaries and chamberlains and their supplies, wagons carrying whatever papal archives he would need on the road, and a fairly large supply of wax for official papal seals. More pack horses or less, the peasants of Tournon, used to spying farm wagons and an occasional noble carriage, had probably never seen anything like it.
The peasants, of course, weren’t the only ones excited by the pope’s visit. In Le Puy at that moment, workers with pick axes were punching a hole in their cathedral wall and turning it into a sumptuous entranceway, draped with the finest scarlet wool curtains. This was where the pope would enter the cathedral, and as soon as he entered the workmen would wall it up again, so that no one less exalted than the pope would ever use that doorway again.
All along the way the pope met huge crowds. By the time he reached Clermont in November the throng of bishops, Lords, knights, and commoners was so large that any thought of him presiding in the cathedral was abandoned and the papal events took place out in the open air.
There’s no question about it: Papal travel back then was a huge and complex endeavor and a very big deal for the people who encountered His Holiness along the way.
Today, more than 900 years later, papal travel is again a big deal as Pope Benedict prepares for his visit next month to Washington, D.C. and New York. As far as I know, no holes are being punched in the walls of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception or St. Patrick’s Cathedral. And while there will be no long-tailed apes, or loads of tableware or wax on the papal plane, a pastoral visit from the pope is still a huge and complex endeavor. The same sense of excitement will build in these cities and the crowds will be so large that the pope will take to the open air for Masses in Nationals Park and Yankee Stadium. Planning committees have been busy for months preparing every detail of the trip, tickets have been printed, press passes requested, arrangements made for thousands of buses in the two cities, and extensive protocols developed with federal, state, and local law enforcement and security agencies.
