Via Francigena: Sigeric’s 79 stops

The European Association of the Via Francigena dates the journey to 990. Sigeric went to receive the pallium, the insignia of his office, from Pope John XV. That explains Rome’s importance as a destination. Open the surviving account to find out how he got there, however, and you discover that the list of stopping places sets out from the papal city.

There is a good reason to read it in that order. The heading identifies the sea as the endpoint. Canterbury was Sigeric’s seat, but treating the words “to the sea” as a record of every step on the English side would put information into the list that simply is not there.

The British Library catalogues the passage as Cotton MS Tiberius B V/1, folios 23v–24r. Those letters identify sides of leaves: the back of leaf 23 and the front of leaf 24. A short entry among quite different texts in a bound volume can carry a reader across a good part of Europe.

The library dates most of the copying of the manuscript to the second quarter of the eleventh century. The journey took place decades earlier. We can use the text as evidence for Sigeric’s route without turning the leaves now in London into a pocket notebook written in the archbishop’s own hand.

Alessio Innocenti’s study points out a small irregularity: the numbering jumps from 78 to 80. There are 79 entries. Reading the last numeral alone gives a different answer from counting the places. Nor does a list of stops tell us exactly how many days the journey lasted. We do not have a dated departure and arrival for every name.

To reconstruct a road, historians also have to work between the points. Innocenti sets the names alongside the terrain, material remains and other known routes. The order of two places survives in writing; the line that connected them still needs evidence on the ground.

Between San Gimignano and Monteriggioni, today’s stage map gives you every turn. Cover the line with your hand and leave just the two town names showing. You know which way you want to go; at the first fork you are already missing a piece of information. That is the historian’s problem with a list of medieval stops.