All Roads Lead to Rome

Abstract

Rome, as the heart of the medieval Christian world, the site of numerous shrines, and the centre of Church administration, was a frequent destination for the Anglo-Saxon clerics as well as medieval travellers under the Norman rule. Based on primary sources – The Venerable Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, the present paper attempts to map the busy travels, focusing on the travellers’ motivation as well as the obstacles they had to overcome. The paper addresses the question of how the Roman travels reflected Britain’s relationship to the Papal see, which was to become the bone of contention during the English Reformation