Going to Jerusalem

FRIAR FELIX AT LARGE (254 pp.)--H F M. Frescott--Yale University Press ($3.75).

In recent years, the pilgrim has become a rare bird of passage in Christendom. The Roman Catholic Holy Year is swelling the pilgrim flock by the millions, but most of them will dispense with cowl and staff, danger and dust, and have a fairly comfortable time. To learn what such journeys once involved, pilgrims and non-pilgrims can turn to Friar Felix at Large, by British Novelist H.F.M. Prescott. It is based largely on the 15th Century's 1,500-page Fratris Felicis Fabri Evagatorium in Terrae Sanctae, perhaps the best account ever given of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and one of the merriest books to come out of the Middle Ages.

Frater Felix Fabri, a Dominican, was born in Zurich about 1441, of a well-to-do family named Schmidt. He was a jolly friar, and he "dared, among great things and true, grave things and holy, to mingle things silly, improbable, and comical" with such gusto that a reader may sometimes think he has strayed into a company bound for Canterbury.

Perils by Sea. Friar Felix made two expeditions to the Holy Land, in 1480 and 1483. In both cases he crossed the Alps and took ship at Venice. On his first trip, the ship was a ratty old bireme captained by Agostino Contarini, one of the most notorious profiteers on the Jaffa run.

The fare: 55 ducats For this, the pilgrims were given, as a bed, an 18-in. strip on the deck of the pilgrims' cabin, a little lower than the animals, a little higher than the bilge.

The place smelled like a garbage can. The least dispute over beds and boundaries might set whole parties of pilgrims against each other, with daggers drawn. Let a man come in late, and he would have his light splattered out by the contents of a neighbor's chamber pot. After the pilgrims finally landed at Jaffa, they were "rushed round the usual Holy Places in the utmost haste and hardly given any time to rest." Dissatisfied, Felix made up his mind to take the trip again.

On the second voyage he got a better boat. But once ashore, the pilgrims' troubles began in touristic earnest. They were put through a rigorous customs and herded into a "bare, stinking stable ground" for lodging. Instantly, a horde of Moslem peddlers descended, offering "rushes and branches of trees to lay on the ground . . . water of roses . . . balsam . . . musk ..." Young Arabs so annoyed the pilgrims with their pilfering that the pilgrims were forced to hire watchmen to keep the intruders out.

Tax Collectors by Land. On trips through open country they were stopped by Arab bands, and forced to give a head tax. One time Felix almost gave his head, when a mounted Arab ran full tilt at him and "tore my cap off" with his lance. If it wasn't the Moslems it was their bats, which were reputed to bite off the noses of strangers and fly away with them. "Men who have long noses," Felix concluded soberly, "are in greater danger than others."

The high points of the pilgrimage were the vigils in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. But by the third vigil, familiarity had so far bred irreverence in some of the company that they desecrated the shrine outright--bargaining with the Moslem merchants, "swilling [strong wine] till the bottles were empty." Some of the priests got into a wrangle over their turn to celebrate Mass, and the lay pilgrims were forced to intervene. And then there were those pilgrims who went about scratching their names on everything in sight, and hunting for souvenirs. Felix's own "irreproachable" collection of relics included pebbles from holy places and thorned twigs from the Mount of Olives.

Yet, after all the troubles he had endured, there was no irony in the jolly friar's cry: "PRAISE BE TO GOD. The pilgrimage to Jerusalem is ending." After a side trip to Egypt, he hustled home happily to write his book about it all.

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