By Robert Royal

The Via Francigena 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 further 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...