Defense of Pilgrimages

5. However, Our writers have excellently defended the practice of pilgrimages against the falsehoods of the heretics, and the Church's prelates have ensured that these pilgrimages are properly conducted and free from all scandal. Without wishing to compose a dissertation or treatise, We merely indicate what Jonas, bishop of Orleans, a writer of the ninth century, wrote against Claudius of Turin who was opposed to holy images and so to holy pilgrimages as well. We also indicate what Aegidius Carlerius, Dean of the church of Cameraca, said in his famous sermon at Basel against the errors of Nicholas the Taborite, in which he clearly demolished by learned arguments whatever objections his opponent raised to pilgrimages, as is obvious to the reader of this sermon in Harduin, Collectionis Conciliorum, tome 8, pp. 1896ff. Likewise to be borne in mind are the decrees of the second council of Cabilone in the year 813 (chap. 45) and the fuller expression of the council of Bourges in the year 1584 (Harduin, tome 10, pp. 1466ff), for it will be clear that some canons were formed to remove certain nonsense which had managed to infect holy pilgrimages. And the information which Laurentius Bochelli carefully assembled on this subject in in Decretis Ecclesiae Gallicanae, bk. 4, 14, de Peregrinationibus, should not be passed over in silence.