couriers, particularly in northern France. Even in the case of mixed companies of
horsemen and pedestrians, travelers could maintain a speed of at least 30 miles a day over
a period of several days.
Hospitality was an important obligation, and the church had a particular duty to
furnish it. Abbeys built visitors’ quarters and housed their guests according to rank, the
great nobly and pilgrims and wayfarers simply. By the 13th century, a favorite charity
was the foundation of hospices for the ill and the aged and for pilgrims, wanderers, and
indigent travelers. The kings of France were entertained by their officials, by churchmen,
and by various towns. (Evidently, the municipalities felt that it was a productive
investment, but officials and some churchmen attempted to procure documents
exempting them from this honor.) Most of the French kings’ travels seem to have been
from one of their châteaux to another. Royalty offered foreign dignitaries hospitality in
castles with or without furnishings and food. French kings and nobles employed a
household official, the harbinger, to travel ahead and arrange for quarters, food, and
fodder; they ensured the provision of sufficient bedsteads, collecting from the
neighborhood an adequate supply of mattresses, straw, featherbeds, sheets, and cushions,
and saw that the tapestries were hung before royalty’s arrival.
All classes stayed at inns. Even royalty found the accommodations at some inns
adequate, doubtless after the king’s harbinger had seen to it that the furnishings and
provisions were what they should be. Those in modest circumstances ate at the landlord’s
table, but travelers with a servant frequently bought food and firewood from the
innkeeper and the servant cooked the meal. This custom enabled persons seeking favors
from government officials to entertain them in a suitable style. The provisions so
purchased sometimes lasted several meals. At inns, a noble would sleep in a bed in a
private room, less important people on pallets in the main room, and grooms frequently
on straw in the stable with their charges.
In the course of the 15th century, some of the peculiarly medieval values that had
given prestige to travel in France began to decline. There were no longer the same
reasons for travel to the Roman curia, because many of the appointments to offices and
much of the litigation formerly decided there were now determined in France. Pilgrims
had been objects of charity, because they were engaged in a pious mission, and students
studying at French universities had been a cause of pride. Now, pilgrims began to be
classed with vagabonds, and English students, because of the Hundred Years’ War, were
no longer welcome in France. German students preferred the newly founded universities
in their own region. Despite this contraction, however, in the 15th century we find for the
first time explicit expressions of pleasure in travel.
Marjorie N.Boyer
[See also: PILGRIMAGE; SHIPS AND SHIPPING; TRADE ROUTES]
TREASON
. The political concept of treason developed in France during the 13th and 14th centuries
and was closely interrelated with the increasingly defined notions of sovereignty,
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1750