Bernard's account closes with the Roman churches--the Lateran, where the
"keys of the whole city are given every night into the hands of the
Apostolic Pope," and St. Peter's on the "West side of Rome, that for
size has no rival in the world."
At the same time, or a little earlier than the Breton traveller (_c._
808-850), another Latin had written a short tract _On the Houses of God
in Jerusalem_, which, with Bernard's note-book, is our last geographical
record before the age of the Northmen.
A new time was coming--a time not of timid creeping pilgrims only, but
of sea-kings and seamen, who made the ocean their home, and, for the
North of Europe at least, broke the tradition of land journeys and
coasting voyages.
But the early pilgrims after all have their place. It is of no use
insisting that the mental outlook of these men is infantile;--that is
best proved by their own words, their own scale of things; but it is
necessary to insist that in these travellers we have comparatively
enlarged experience and knowledge; and as comparison is the only test of
any age, or of any man therein, the very blunders and limitations of the
past, as we see them to be, have a constant, as well as an historical,
value to us.
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