Medieval pilgrims often slept in churches, finding respite there
during their arduous journeys. But locals, too, had a wonderful
familiarity with their churches, treating them as homes away
from home. They bathed and did laundry with water drawn from
holy wells and ate the food that merchants sold in the aisles.
The smoke billowing from the enormous censer at the cathedral of
Santiago de Compostela in Spain, for example, blessed not only
the highly fragrant pilgrims crowded inside but also local
Christians. Medievals touched, kissed and asked for the prayers
of the saints portrayed in stone, paint and stained glass, who
were rendered with such verisimilitude that they seemed alive,
like part of the family. Inside the church was a marvelous
democracy of beauty that, like heaven, was available to poor and
rich alike. By the 19th century, as the church tried to suppress
some superstitious practices, the familial relationship of the
faithful to their churches began to devolve into a more formal,
less lively relat