Crossing the Alps with Nothing but a Cloak, Staff, and Sandals



The peo­ple of the Mid­dle Ages were not fond of moun­tains. It takes a leisured class with energy to waste and life to spend to appre­ci­ate inac­ces­si­ble rocks where noth­ing grows, places where it is always cold and snowy and things can fall upon you unawares and smash you. Fre­quent light­ning, the creaks and groans of glac­i­ers, the crash­ing of falling rock, icy-cold gush­ing rivers: these were unnerv­ing to a peo­ple who weren’t likely to reach 40 years of age even stay­ing on the farm.

Even moun­tain val­leys were dark, for­bid­ding places for all but the most hearty of Swiss shep­herds. Adam of Usk famously asked to be blind­folded dur­ing his 1402 cross­ing of St. Gotthard’s Pass. Our own cul­tural fond­ness for moun­tains only dates back to the Roman­tic search for the sub­lime, some­time around 1800. It helped that by this time there were lots of big, dirty cities to flee from.

So how did Luther man­age to go over a 7000 foot pass in Decem­ber? Well, first of all, he had no choice. If you wanted to cross the Alps, you had to go over a tall pass. Sep­ti­mer (or Sempter) pass was far from the most trav­eled pass of the time. The Great San Bernard Pass to the west and the Bren­ner Pass to the east saw much more traf­fic. But Sep­ti­mer was the most direct route from south­ern Ger­many to Milan.

Still, it couldn’t have been fun to cross the Alps in win­ter. The psy­cho­log­i­cal advan­tage was that Luther was used to (a) being ter­ri­fied and (b) dis­com­fort. In 1510, Luther feared the judg­ment of God to such a degree that it seems unlikely that a tri­fling geo­graph­i­cal fea­ture like the Alps could raise his alarm.

He was also used to being extremely cold. Autho­rized garb for an Augus­tin­ian her­mit was min­i­mal: linen under­gar­ments, white woolen stock­ings, shirt, and tunic; black scapu­lar, white cowl and cope; topped with a black cotta with cowl, cinched with a leather belt. Granted, trav­el­ers were per­mit­ted an addi­tional fur cloak, and we can only hope some­thing extra for the feet.

But walk­ing along at a good pace (26 miles a day, we should remem­ber) would have kept him and his com­pan­ion quite toasty, I think, even as they crossed a tall pass in win­ter. Luther had already slept through sev­eral win­ters in an unheated cell with noth­ing but two thin woolen blan­kets. Later in years, Luther never men­tioned being cold on his trip, but he did com­plain of nearly freez­ing while stand­ing in the choir of his own priory.

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