Saints and Pilgrims. Geoffrey Chaucer opens The Canterbury Tales (circa 1375—1400) with an agrarian calendar that defines months based on crops and other factors. At that time, the average person would have been more aware of saints' days than the months of the year. For instance, Chaucer defines April, the start of spring, as the month when people go on pilgrimages: "Then folks long to go on pilgrimages, and palmers to visit foreign shores and distant shrines, known in various lands." Pilgrimages were religious journeys that sinners would take as a form of penance, or repentance for sin. Just as warriors would go on a Crusade to win penance, so, too, ordinary people would journey to Jerusalem, Rome, or local sites such as the Shrine of Saint James of Compostela in Spain. Chaucer's pilgrims were headed to the most popular...