Pilgrim and Preacher: The Audiences and Observant Spirituality of Friar Felix Fabri (1437/8–1502), by Kathryne Beebe

Abstract

The late medieval friar and pilgrim Felix Fabri is the complex subject of Kathryne Beebe’s engaging and original contribution to medieval literary and devotional studies. Fabri is perhaps best known for his pilgrimage narratives describing the Holy Land and Egypt, which are often mined for their colourful details about Cairo’s famed egg incubators or the pilgrims’ seasickness during the Mediterranean crossing. However, in Beebe’s study, Fabri emerges as a dynamic figure whose texts reveal more about the devotional culture of the Observant houses of south-western Germany than about the exotic sights of Egypt. Beebe aims to untangle the complex production and reception histories of Fabri’s many texts—primarily the multiple versions of his pilgrimage tales which Fabri wrote for different audiences, but also his sermons, spiritual writings and local histories. Navigating between literary studies of textual transmission and reception and the social history of late-medieval German religious houses, the book provides a new and welcome approach to pilgrimage texts that is grounded in detailed manuscript research. Beebe proposes to reorient the focus of pilgrimage studies: away from the highly selective accounts of medieval encounters with the ‘other’ and towards an approach which seeks to trace the ways in which these accounts were read, understood and circulated within their local social and devotional contexts.