Christian Pilgrimage Research Articles

Reassessing the ‘Jerusalem Pilgrims’: the Case of Bede’s De locis sanctis

AbstractThe history of Christian pilgrimage in Syria-Palestine has captivated scholarly and public audiences since the first waves of research in the region in the nineteenth century. This subject continues to generate vibrant debate among scholars of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Central to this discourse is John Wilkinson’s seminal publication Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades, first published in 1977. This text still offers the most systematic study of descriptions of pilgrimage to the region between the fourth and eleventh centuries, yet in spite of its popularity and central status to the subject, few of the texts collected in Wilkinson’s volume have received systematic study as literary compositions in their own right, or as products of individual writers and communities. This article offers an overview of issues which have emerged from a preliminary study of one of the texts published in the revised second edition of Jerusalem Pilgrims in 2002: Bede’s De locis sanctis, a survey of ...

Soundscapes of Pilgrimage: European and American Christians in Jerusalem's Old City

Building on the recent ‘auditory turn’ in ethnomusicology and on recent anthropological approaches to pilgrimage, this article considers how the soundscapes and vocal practices of European and American Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem's Old City shape the practices and experiences of pilgrimage. Sounds colour the ethical comportment of pilgrims; listening, both voluntarily and involuntarily, intervenes in their interactions with others in the pilgrimage environment, provoking a range of public and private responses. Focusing attention on the auditory landscape provides compelling insights into the practices and politics of pilgrimage, in particular revealing moments of tension as pilgrims seek to realise personal and communal ideals in a crowded, shared space.

Pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, 1187–1291, by Denys Pringle

The Holy Land provided the most strenuous and meritorious Christian pilgrimage destination in the middle ages. From the fourth century AD onwards, the attraction of visiting the sites of the Bible, and in particular of the Incarnation, and thus in some way witnessing, even spiritually re-enacting, scriptural events, provoked a constant flow of pilgrims to the carefully constructed Christian holy landscape and shrines of Jerusalem and Palestine. Yet even in periods of greatest ease of access and popularity, for western Christians during the twelfth-century Frankish occupation, the Jerusalem pilgrimage remained a minority activity, difficult and expensive. So, parallel to the actual journeys, literary accounts of them were composed, often claiming the authenticity of personal experience even though many (by the thirteenth century, perhaps most) were products of inter-textual borrowing, plagiarism from earlier narratives and fictive invention. Studied artifice frequently lay behind the desiccated facts and lush piety. More than travellers’ tales or tourist gazetteers, the accounts implicitly or explicitly associated the liturgical and pedagogical centrality of the Bible stories with literally treading in the footsteps of Christ, the Apostles, the heroes and villains of the Old and New Testaments. Thus a description of the journey to Jerusalem could supply a mnemonic for the journey of the soul to Heaven as well as providing apparently validating objective evidence of the physical reality of the scriptures and therefore of the truth of Christian faith itself.

Exploring Visitor Experiences, Activities and Benefits at Three Religious Tourism Sites

AbstractThis research examines and compares the experiences of visitors (N = 534) to three different Christian religious heritage sites: Canterbury Cathedral, the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham and the Glastonbury Abbey Christian pilgrimage festival. Employing the activity, setting, experience and benefit framework, the findings indicate that the three religious sites attract visitors who seek different kinds of experiences and report different kinds of benefits. Results indicate that restorative experiences and benefits often overshadow the spiritual or cognitive benefits that many believe to be the primary outcomes of religious tourism. These results challenge traditional ideas about what it means to be a visitor at historical religious sites. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Changing Colors of Money: Tips, Commissions, and Ritual in Christian Pilgrimage to the Holy Land

The movement of money in Christian pilgrimage is a profound mirror of cultural classifications. By examining tips, commissions, and souvenir purchases in Holy Land pilgrimages, I show how the transfer of monies activates a series of multiple, complex relationships between Jewish guides, Palestinian drivers, and Christian pilgrims. I identify the 'colors'—or moral values—of salaries, tips, and commissions that change hands as 'white', 'black', or 'gray' monies and correlate these colors with particular discourses and degrees of transparency. I then illustrate how prayer, rituals, and the citation of scripture may 'bleach' these monies, transforming tips into 'love offerings' and souvenir purchases into aids to spiritual development or charity to local communities, while fostering relationships and conveying messages across religious and cultural lines. Far from being a universal 'acid' that taints human relationships, pilgrimage monies demonstrate how, through the exchange of goods, people are able to create and maintain spiritual values.

Konfrontacja ascetyki Hieronima ze Strydonu i Pelagiusza z Brytanii na podstawie wybranych dzieł

Jerome’s meeting with Pelagius could be chance for them, but unfortunately – missed this chance. Saint Jerome shaped by idea of the West theology, but deeply fascinated by East. While Pelagius – too far in his vision of human nature optimistic had strayed into. He became disillusioned with this many people together and instead of typing the current orthodoxy, always will be associated with the heterodoxy. A way of looking at the world and the life environment have an impact on the asceticism Jerome and Pelagius. Jerome’s asceticism was based on the allegorical reading and meditation of the Holy Scriptures, while Pelagius represented the moralistic approach to Bible and Christian life. Jerome postulated the way of Christian pilgrimage to God, where faithful tackling weaknesses by the grace of God and ascetic practice. The good Christian by Jerome should imitate Christ, by honest work, prayer and ascetic practice, consequently – the choice of monastic life. Pelagius the purpose of life – proclaim the glory of God, understood as performing good deeds and practical morality. He wasn’t a Christian understanding of prayer, in exchange for that – he put great emphasis on the obligation to give away all the goods, as a fundamental human ethical excellence. Pelagius postulated already in earthly the community a believer with God, but conditioned by moral perfection.

Shared devotions: non-Latin responses to Latin sainthood in late medieval Cyprus

Convergence among religious rites has long been a favoured subject of study among historians of the Latin East, who have come at it from a variety of different angles, exploiting a wide array of evidence ranging from papal correspondence to works of art. At the level of popular devotion to saints and relics, research has focused on Latin piety expressed towards local Christian cults, relics and pilgrimage sites mainly in the Holy Land and Cyprus. However, the reverse – the devotion Greeks and other Eastern Christians exhibited towards cults and relics of Latin provenance – has been but little explored. This paper examines non-Latin reactions to the emergence of two ‘indigenous’ Latin cults in fourteenth-century Cyprus, those of the Carmelite Peter Thomae and Count John of Montfort. It will be argued that the cults evolved through time in response to the expectations and needs of a ‘Cypriot’ urban public, comprised of both Latins and Greeks of a high social standing.

“A Bible People”: Post-Conciliar U.S. Catholics, Scripture, and Holy Land Pilgrimage

“A Bible People”: Post-Conciliar U.S. Catholics, Scripture, and Holy Land Pilgrimage Hillary Kaell Each year, approximately 250,000 U.S. Christians, including 60,000 Catholics, journey to Israel and the Palestinian Territories to “walk where Jesus walked.”1 U.S. Catholics have a long and essentially unstudied history of such pilgrimages dating back to the late nineteenth century.2 Once connected to devotions like the Stations of the Cross and the rosary, Holy Land pilgrimage has prospered in recent decades even as other devotions have showed precipitous decline.3 As U.S. Catholics advanced socio-economically and trans-Atlantic commercial flights made international travel more efficient and affordable, pilgrims have flocked to the Holy Land in unprecedented numbers. The lack of scholarship on these contemporary Catholic pilgrimages is surprising. Sociological and anthropological studies of Christian pilgrimage developed around, and still largely focus on, Catholic sites. By contrast, work on the Holy Land has centered almost entirely on U.S. evangelical Protestants and, more specifically, the impact of Christian Zionism.4 In these studies, Catholic [End Page 85] pilgrims rarely appear “in person.” Instead, they provide a ready counterpoint in that they are imagined by Protestants to exemplify devotionalism (Catholic “ritualism”) in contrast with evangelical Biblicism.5 In fact, few U.S. Catholics who set out to “walk where Jesus walked” are part of the devotional revival associated with conservative Catholicism.6 Moreover, far from being Biblically illiterate or uninterested in Scripture, they often describe themselves as “Bible people.” The typical pilgrim is a devoted, weekly communicant and scripturally-focused. More than others, he or she is likely to participate in Bible studies and articulate the desire for a “personal relationship” with Jesus. For these U.S. Catholics, the significance of Holy Land pilgrimage lies in how it is located at the nexus of traditional devotionalism and Bible-focused knowledge and experience. The pilgrimage opens up opportunities to negotiate flexible relationships with the institutional Church, to reaffirm links to Christian tradition, and to ground faith more firmly in Biblical study, interpretation, and meditation.7 Studying the Holy Land In 2009, I travelled to the Holy Land on a twelve-day pilgrimage. The first day I shared a meal with Janine and Frank, a couple in their mid-60s [End Page 86] from Boston, Massachusetts. We were making small talk—the weather, the falafel, our favorite Christmas carols—when Janine turned to topics more profound. “We’re the middle generation,” she said, leaning towards me for emphasis, “and we’re becoming a Bible people.” Janine and Frank have hosted a Bible study in their home for more than a decade. No priests attend these gatherings—just the People of God and scripture. “It’s something our parents never would have done,” Janine noted, referring to the changes she has experienced since the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). Anthropological studies of Christian pilgrimage typically focus on the journey and the shrine itself (the “center out there” in Victor Turner’s well-known phrase).8 My interest lies in drawing a fuller portrait of how pilgrims like Janine and Frank incorporate the trip into their everyday religious lives, including the Bible studies that so often precede it. To this end, I rely on an interdisciplinary methodology that includes archival research, in-depth interviews, and “multi-sited” ethnography. Between 2008 and 2012, I participated in two Holy Land pilgrimages and conducted pre- and post-trip interviews with 131 pilgrims from seven different groups.9 Our conversations lasted between two and four hours, conducted in person when possible. I focused on Catholic groups from Massachusetts, Maryland, and North Carolina, which collectively consisted of participants from seventeen states. I highlight the stories of three of these pilgrims below: Janine, Frank, and Paula. Janine and Frank travelled in 2009 with a Boston-based group and Paula in 2008 with her Maryland parish. They are typical of American Catholic pilgrims in background (Euro-American, U.S.-born, “cradle” Catholics), gender (more women than men), age (about fifty to seventy), and socio-economic status (varied). Frank, now retired, has a master’s degree and worked as an industrial chemist, while Janine stayed home with their children. Paula, a...

The Emblematics of the Self: Ekphrasis and Identity in Renaissance Imitations of Greek Romance by Elizabeth B. Bearden (review)

BEARDEN, ELIZABETH B. The Emblematics of the Self: Ekphrasis and Identity in Renaissance Imitations of Greek Romance. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2012. xiv + 258 pp.When I was invited to review Elizabeth B. Bearden's The Emblematics of the Self, I immediately accepted since it contains three of the most cherished topics which I have been researching over the last two decades: Cervantes, ekphrasis, and the art of memory. Her book covers a wide panorama of Renaissance texts from Sidney's Arcadia to Lady Mary Worth's Urania and from John Barclay's Argenis to Cervantes's Persiles and Segismunda, thus including English, Spanish, and neo-Latin texts. Aware of the many ekphrastic passages in the ancient Greek romances which are then echoed in Renaissance imitations, Bearden focuses her book on those moments which invite both the reader and the characters within the plot to decode (5). Through these passages she delves into questions of identity and imitation. When turning to the characters' identity she prefers to use passability, that is, susceptibility or capacity to change, rather than agency or self-fashioning. This is a very apt choice, since in lives that are ruled by fate, agency may be less applicable; and since Bearden's book is dealing mainly with the subaltern, these characters may only be able to show a kind of adaptation and flexibility as they navigate the pressures imposed on them by society.A clear, concise, and thoughtful introductory chapter provides a brief history of how the Greek romances became so popular in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, while at the same time showing the reasons for this. These include the privileging of chastity (although she does admit that racy and sexually divergent passages were at times erased from the translations and imitations); the assimilation of the travel narrative to the Christian pilgrimage; the superior narrative structure of these romances over the chivalric; the importance of a global perspective at a time of conquest and colonization; the echoes of epic structure that elevates them; the use of the far-away to include political and moral reflections; etc.The second and third chapters then deal with imitations of Achilles Tatius's Leucippe and Clitophon. Bearden begins with Alonso Nunez de Reinoso's Los amores de Clareo y Florisea (1552). Following the arguments made by Constance Rose, Bearden accepts that this Spanish romance expresses the feelings of loss and exile that typify a Spanish converso-and Nunez de Reinoso was indeed of Jewish origin, affected by the choice given to the Jews in Spain: exile or conversion. To this argument, Bearden adds a second of her own. The Spanish romance is told by a female narrator, Isea. This shift in narrator leads Bearden to analyze the firstperson narrator in Leudppe and Clitophon. In a perhaps fanciful but well-argued and shrewd analysis she claims that the framing narrator at the beginning of Tatius's work, who sees a young man affected by a picture (a magnificent ekphrasis of Europa/Astarte is exhibited in words) and who is identified as Clitophon, is in reality the young Melite dressed as a man. The framing narrator thus misinforms the reader, who can reach the proper conclusion by looking at a number of elements in the novel, but particularly at the fact that it begins with the supposed Clitophon seeming woeful in Sidon, but ends with the happy pair of Leucippe and Clitophon happily married and traveling to Byzantium. Bearden furthers her argument through the uses of ekphraseis as points of alternative focalization that expose gender ambiguity (51). A dazzling interpretation of an ekphrasis of the Philomela myth is then provided, showing its many meanings (including the prophetic) and its link to Melite. In Reinoso, however, although the prophetic points to the capture of Florisea, Isea appropriates the myth showing how she is in command of the narrative. Furthermore, in a dream that takes place in Spain, Isea furthers her link to Philomela through her oneiric transformation into a turtledove. …

The land of milk and honey: Biblical foods, heritage and Holy Land tourism

This paper discusses the importance of Biblical food as heritage cuisine for religious tourists in the Holy Land. Based on empirical evidence and case material from sites in Israel, the study describes the role of Biblical gastronomy in the religious tourism landscape of Jerusalem and examines the dynamics of experience, cost and authenticity of Last Supper re-enactments for Christian tourists in Israel. Biblical food is an important theme for religious tourism in the Holy Land, and it is becoming more influential in creating spiritual and authentic religious heritage experiences for Christian pilgrims.

Scurvy martyrdom: Allen Gardiner and the Patagonian Mission

In 1851 a small party of British missionaries died of scurvy and starvation in Tierra del Fuego. Led by retired Royal Navy commander Allen Gardiner, the expedition was poorly planned, lacked reliable supplies, and faced relentless hostility from the indigenous Yaghan. Nevertheless, Gardiner and his companions would not be remembered as failures. Scurvy, an iconic disease of exploration and empire, became an icon of missionary martyrdom. Extensive journals and other papers were recovered from the unburied bodies of the last of the group to survive, including Gardiner himself. This rich archive includes the journal of Richard Williams, a surgeon turned missionary. Details of the group's sufferings and final days were published widely and read eagerly as an account of Christian pilgrimage and exaltation. Comparisons with the fate of other British missionaries worldwide, with Franklin (now presumed dead), and even with military figures like General Gordon, gathered Gardiner and his companions into an imperial pantheon. Scurvy played a complex and intriguing role in this process of apotheosis.

Book Review: Mapping out curriculum in your church: Cartography for Christian pilgrims.

Book Review: Mapping out curriculum in your church: Cartography for Christian pilgrims.

Crossing Surfaces in Search of the Holy: Landscape and Liminality in Contemporary Christian Pilgrimage

This paper examines the role of surfaces in pilgrimage practices and experiences in two denominational and cultural contexts and landscape settings for Christian pilgrimage: a week of Ecumenical pilgrimage walks in the Isle of Man and Orthodox pilgrimage to the monasteries of Meteora in Greece. Surfaces are examined as dynamic textured platforms for journeying and stages for the performance of ritual; as part of visual aesthetic and multisensory embodied experiences; as hermeneutical texts; as perceived liminal thresholds through which the divine might be experienced; and as tangible material fragments encapsulating and facilitating the ‘taking home’ of the pilgrim experience. Surfaces are found to be significant for pilgrims in a variety of shared ways, but also ways which are inflected by different theological and cultural contexts. Through its analysis of faith adherents and practices, this study offers (i) a spiritually informed perspective on both perceptions and experiences of surfaces, and (ii) understanding of faith-inflected mobilities and ‘more-than-representational’ meanings and practices.

Medieval Pilgrimage to Corinth and Southern Greece

Christian pilgrimage to Corinth and other sites in modern southern Greece has antecedents in the Late Antique and Byzantine pilgrims of medieval textual and archaeological sources. Though southern Greece gave the early church few prominent saints, the Corinthian martyrs Leonidas and Quadratus each drew pilgrims from outside the Peloponnese. Corinth and Athens also attracted attention among travellers as cities on Saint Paul's itinerary, while Patras claimed the relics of Saint Andrew. Though southern Greece could never compete with the Holy Land or Constantinople as a pilgrimage des- tination, the residents of Corinth and other cities in southern Greece did successfully construct both churches and stories in order to attract Christian travellers throughout the early middle ages. The archaeological evidence for their efforts sheds new light on the phenomenon of Christian pilgrimage to Late Antique and early Medieval Greece.

The Material Culture of Roman and Early Christian Pilgrimage: an Introduction

The Material Culture of Roman and Early Christian Pilgrimage: an Introduction

Lydgate Rewrites Chaucer:

Lydgate Rewrites Chaucer:

Blessing for sale? On the production and distribution of pilgrim mementoes in Byzantium

The so-called eulogies (“blessings”) were portable objects used as souvenirs of pilgrimages to Christian shrines and holy places. These mementoes were credit by the faithful with miraculous properties: they could protect against any danger known to man, provided miraculous cures, even protection from the hazards of travelling. Acquiring them was an essential part of religious practice on a Christian pilgrimage. Aim of the article is to explore economic aspects of these artefacts, namely the modes of their production and distribution. Therefore, the most know categories of this kind of devotionalia were study and in connection with the written sources their economic dimensions were explored.

The Preaching of the First Crusade and the Persecutions of the Jews

Abstract Although the versions of Pope Urban’s call for the First Crusade focus on the need to liberate the Holy Land from the Muslims, crusaders and locals attacked first the communities of the Franco-German (Ashkenazic) Jews. Both contemporary and modern historians have offered a variety of explanations for these uncalled-for devastating attacks. Without discounting some of these proposals, this article applies the psychological explanation of Displacement to offer an additional reason. The article suggests that the urgent call to retaliate against the Muslims immediately and the many graphic descriptions of alleged Muslim atrocities against Eastern Christians and Christian pilgrims in the propaganda of the First Crusade created mounting frustration in Europe. And since this frustration could not be expressed immediately and directly against its source, i.e., the faraway Muslims, the attackers displaced their aggression onto the nearby Jews. Moreover, Displacement also explains the many close parallels between the images of Muslim atrocities in crusading rhetoric and the idiosyncratic manifestations of the violence against European Jews in the early stages of the First Crusade.

Pilgrimage in Turbulent Contexts: One Hundred Years of Pilgrimage to the Holy Land

In this paper, I review select developments in the last one hundred years of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic pilgrimage to sites found today in Israel and the Occupied Territories. I argue that only by viewing the pilgrimages under analysis as dissipative systems, is one able to explain historical change in this most turbulent of contexts. When combined with an understanding of pilgrimage as social action, this approach enables historians of religions to account for not only the restructuring of pilgrimages over time but also to understand dynamics surrounding ritual birth and death. Furthermore, the political strategies of traditionalists and revivalists who attempt to authenticate contemporary ritual behavior by linking it up to purportedly longstanding, unchanged practices are undermined. After initially focusing upon changes in pilgrimage catalyzed by socio-political events, I discuss the birth of distinctively new pilgrimages associated with the rise of the State of Israel as well as the demise of several other pilgrimages in the years since 1948.

Bodies in Motion: Pilgrims, Seers, and Religious Experience at Marian Apparition Sites

Historically, walking has been an essential element of Christian pilgrimage. For medieval journeys of faith, whether from London to Canterbury, Santiago de Compostela, Rome, or Jerusalem, the rigors of walking the distance from home to site could demonstrate suffering, sacrifice, and devotion. Although people may arrive at a religious destination by plane, bus, or car, walking at the site remains essential to the pilgrim's experience of the sacred. Focusing on the reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes, Necedah, Garabandal, Medjugorje, and Melleray and some later developments at these sites, this article examines the ways in which the physical movements of the pilgrims at these places establish a context for their experiences of the sacred. In the chaos of the crowds assembled at an ongoing apparition, experience is as fluid as the mingling of the pilgrims with each other and with the physical environment. These sites stand in stark contrast to well-established shrines where permanent structures orchestrate both movement and meaning.