Irish Pilgrimage Research Articles

Irish soldiers in Loreto and Rome: a pilgrimage, and an employment request c.1609

Scholarly attention to the Irish Catholic experience on the Continent in the early Stuart era is increasing.1 Interest in Irish pilgrimage to continental sanctuaries in the early modern period is one facet of that broader historiographical trend. However the surviving evidence tends to favour the travels of those of higher social standing, and it is their experience which has received attention.2 The present text, by contrast, arose from the journey to Rome of two brothers, soldiers who had been serving in the Irish regiment in Flanders. Having visited the Marian shrine of Loreto (north-east of Rome) on the way, while in Rome they made a petition to be employed in the papal military service. Their request is at several levels. Irish participation in Spanish military forces both in Flanders and Spain in the early seventeenth century has been of interest to scholars in recent decades; Irish involvement with the papal military forces in the same period is less well noted.3 Early modern soldiers regularly faced unemployment arising from a cessation of hostilities; in the case of two soldiers in the Spanish Netherlands, this document throws light on the need to find a new employer, and on strategies adopted to that end. Further, in presenting themselves to the Pope as a prospective employer, the petition illustrates how Irish soldier exiles fashioned an assertive Catholic identity for themselves, in which the family’s experience of religious persecution in their homeland was linked with subsequent military service against heretics on the Continent. Hence the significance of the text presented here. The brothers’ army career was outlined, with referees indicated, and some possible openings in the papal forces were suggested. These professional elements were integrated into a family narrative of persecution for the Catholic faith, and personal religious devotion, with a view to making an informed request for employment in papal service.

Enchantments of stone: Confronting other-than-human agency in Irish pilgrimage practices

In contemporary Ireland, mountains, holy wells, and islands attract people from various geographic and religious backgrounds to participate in annual pilgrimages. Scholars and participants continue to debate the historical links of these events to 19th-century turas, “journey” traditions, early medieval penitential liturgies, and even prehistoric veneration of natural phenomena. Drawing from recent participant observation at Croagh Patrick mountain and excavations on Inishark Island, I analyze how modern and medieval pilgrimage practices generated “enchantments” through movements and embodied encounters with stones that materialize both past human action and other-than-human agency. Rather than products of timeless continuity of experience, such enchantments have varied widely across time. Viewing pilgrimage movements and materials in their taskscape settings highlights the articulation between the embodied affects and political and ideological effects of pilgrims’ engagement with stones in particular historic contexts. Questioning simple narratives of continuity, this study demonstrates how a relational approach can enhance analyses of pilgrimage as scenes of social reproduction, ideological controversy, and political contest.

Saint Patrick’s Purgatory – a fresco in Todi, Italy

This essay deals with the tradition of the revelation of Purgatory to St. Patrick on Station Island in Lough Derg, whose popularity is testified not only in literary texts in the various languages of Medieval Europe but also in a unique work of art in the convent of the Sisters of Saint Clair at Todi, Umbria, a town along the Via Francigena , the road of medieval pilgrimages from Canterbury to Rome. It is a fresco which represents St. Patrick’s Purgatory, attributed to Jacopo di Mino del Pellicciaio, dated 1346. In 1974, following restoration carried out by Marcello Castrichini and Leonilde Dominici, the splendid fresco came to light again. The work was completed in 1985, but is not open to the public without special permit because it is located in the old refectory of the closed area of the convent. The fresco is discussed in some detail, comparing the forms and rituals of the Irish pilgrimage, the medieval legend of Owen to the life of Filippo Benizi, the Saint portrayed among the protagonists of the painting. In order to prove the ever-lasting popularity of the legend related to the Irish Saint in the same area another monument, the so-called ‘St. Patrick’s Well’ in Orvieto, designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger in 1527, is briefly referred to.

Inflamed with Seraphic Ardor: Franciscan Learning and Spirituality in the Fourteenth-Century Irish Pilgrimage Account

Inflamed with Seraphic Ardor: Franciscan Learning and Spirituality in the Fourteenth-Century Irish Pilgrimage Account Malgorzata Krasnodebska D’Aughton (bio) Introduction In March 1323 two Franciscan friars, Simon Semeonis and Hugo Illuminator “inflamed with seraphic ardor” left Ireland to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, having attended the provincial chapter in Clonmel in October the previous year. 1They sailed across the Irish Sea, and travelled via London, “the most famous and wealthy city under the sun” to Canterbury, where they venerated the relics of Thomas Becket. In France having made their way through Amiens and Paris, they travelled down the Saone and the Rhone. From there they passed through the mountainous area of Lombardy to Bobbio, where “reposes the body of the blessed Irish abbot Columbanus,” and then went to Padua and Venice. From Venice they traversed through Dalmatia and sailed to Crete and Alexandria, which they reached in October. When they [End Page 283] travelled up the Nile to Cairo, they saw exotic animals, crocodiles, elephants and giraffes, and admired a chicken farm. It was here in Cairo that Hugo died, and the grief-stricken Simon continued his journey. Simon’s account of the Holy Land is incomplete in its surviving format and it breaks at the description of Jerusalem. Simon was back in Cairo in February 1324 as may be gathered from passing references. He most probably visited Rome on his return journey. This paper places the text of Simon Semeonis’s Itinerarium in the context of a Franciscan intellectual and spiritual tradition. Firstly, by discussing the surviving copy of the text, it suggests its possible means of transmission as well as its significance as being representative of a particular genre. Secondly, by looking at references to literary sources, the paper illustrates how travelling friars acted as important agents in the transfer of cultural ideas, including those on Islam. Finally, through an analysis of the references to Bonaventure in Simon’s Itinerarium, the paper argues that the Irish friar was not only familiar with the Legenda maior, but used the text in a nuanced and creative manner to convey his attitude to the Franciscan vows of obedience and poverty, that were hotly debated amongst the friars at that time. The Manuscript This colorful, though incomplete description of the friars’ journey survives in a manuscript preserved in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 407. The codex also includes two other Franciscan travel texts: an account of a mission to the Mongols by William of Rubruck, a Flemish friar who went East between 1253–55 at the instigation of King Louis IX, and a very popular Itinerarium of friar Odoric of Pordenone describing his missionary travels to Tartary, between 1314/18–1329, compiled sometime before Odoric’s death in 1331.2 Each of the three itineraries in MS 407 is [End Page 284] written in a different hand and bound in a separate collection of quires, suggesting that originally they were copied as individual texts.3 What brought these three texts together into a single codex would not only have been their Franciscan origin, but more than likely the manuscript’s owner’s interest in each text’s detailed description of both places and people. From the Irish friar’s wonderment at the sight of Paris as the place of moral and theological virtues, or the wonderfully woven silk clothes worn by Cairo inhabitants, to Rubruck’s feeling that he was “entering some other world” as he arrived at the encampment of the Mongol Great Khan, to Odoric’s descriptions of Hinduism and Buddhism, the three authors shared [End Page 285] interests in new sites, customs and beliefs.4 The arrangement of the three narratives in the Cambridge manuscript presents the reader with a description of the areas gradually removed farther and farther from the center of the Latinitas. The three authors wrote polemically about non-Latin Christians or non-Christians, and they were acutely aware of the challenges of a culturally and religiously diverse society, in which they themselves had to function.5 The alien places and [End Page 286] people they encountered are described with a great attention to detail, but their wonderment...

:Saints and Their Cults in the Atlantic World

Saints and Their Cults in the Atlantic traces the changing significance of a dozen saints and holy sites from the fourth century to the twentieth and from Africa, Sicily, Wales, and Iceland to Canada, Boston, Mexico, Brazil, and the Caribbean. Scholars representing the fields of history, art history, religious studies, and communications contribute their perspectives in this interdisciplinary collection, also notable as the first English language study of many of the saints treated in the volume. Several chapters chart the changing images and meanings of holy people as their veneration traveled from the Old World to the New; others describe sites and devotions that developed in the Americas. The ways that a group feels connected to the holy figure by ethnicity or regionalism proves to be a critical factor in a saint's reception, and many contributors discuss the tensions that develop between ecclesiastical authorities and communities of devotees. Exploring the fluid boundaries between pilgrimage and tourism, ritual and knowledge, articles assess the importance of place in saint veneration and shed new light on the relationship between a saint's popularity and his or her association with holy relics, healing waters, and keepsakes purchased at a pilgrimage site. In addition to St. Benedict the Moor, medieval Irish pilgrimage art, and Ponce de Leon's Fountain of Youth, the authors discuss figures such as the Holy Child of Atocha, St. Winefride of Wales, Father Patrick Power, St. Amico of Italy and Louisiana, Our Lady of Prompt Succor, and the Icelandic bishop Gumundr Arason.

Irish Pilgrimage: Holy Wells and Popular Catholic Devotion. By Michael P. Carroll (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. pp. ix plus 226. $38.00)

Journal Article Irish Pilgrimage: Holy Wells and Popular Catholic Devotion. By Michael P. Carroll (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. pp. ix plus 226. $38.00) Get access David W. Miller David W. Miller Carnegie Mellon University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Social History, Volume 35, Issue 2, Winter 2001, Pages 450–452, https://doi.org/10.1353/jsh.2001.0131 Published: 01 December 2001

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:Christian Smith, Christian America? What Evangelicals really wantNancy Eiesland, A Particular Place: Urban Restructuring and Religious Ecology in a Southern SuburbJanet Duitsman Cornelius, Slave Missions and The Black Church in the Antebellum SouthLinda Boynton Arthur, (ed) Religion, Dress and The BodyWilliam M. Newman and Peter L. Halvorson, Atlas of American Religion: The De‐nominational EraMichael P. Carroll, Irish Pilgrimage: Holy Wells and Pop‐ular Catholic DevotionPaul Eli Ivey, Prayers in Stone: Christian Science Architecture in The United States, 1894‐1930Andrew Greeley, The Catholic ImaginationR. Scott Appleby, The Ambivalence Of The Sacred: Re‐Ligion, Violence, And ReconciliationAna María Díaz‐Stevens and Anthony M. Stevens‐Arroyo, Recognizing The Latino Resurgence In U.S. ReligionWendy Griffin, (ed) Daughters Of The Goddess: Studies Of Healing, Identity, And EmpowermentCarole Bell Ford, The Girls: Jewish Women Of Brownsville, Brooklyn, 1940‐1995Thomas A. Idinopulos and Brian C. Wilson, (eds) What Is Religion? Origins, Definitions, And ExplanationsToby E. Huff and Wolfgang Schluchter, (eds) Max Weber And IslamWade Clark Roof, Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers And The Remaking Of American ReligionJames A. Wellman, The Gold Coast Church And The Ghetto: Christ And Culture In Main‐Line ProtestantismMark Juergensmeyer, Terror In The Mind Of God

Irish Pilgrimage: Holy Wells and Popular Catholic Devotion. By Michael P. Carroll. Baltimore, Md.: John Hopkins University Press, 1999. x + 226 pp. $38.00 cloth.

Irish Pilgrimage: Holy Wells and Popular Catholic Devotion. By Michael P. Carroll. Baltimore, Md.: John Hopkins University Press, 1999. x + 226 pp. $38.00 cloth.

:Irish Pilgrimage: Holy Wells and Popular Catholic Devotion

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Irish Pilgrimage: Holy Wells and Popular Catholic Devotion

Irish Pilgrimage: Holy Wells and Popular Catholic Devotion

Irish Pilgrimage: Holy Wells and Popular Catholic Devotion

The study of pre-19th-century religion in Ireland has been dominated by a model which sees the extended pilgrimages and rituals performed at holy wells as remnants of an archaic, pagan tradition. The author of this study argues these rites were not ancient, but arose in the wake of the Reformation as ordinary Catholics attempted to merge ideas imported from Counter-Reformation Europe with distinctively Irish traditions. The variant that resulted provided a religious experience that appealed to all levels of Irish Catholic society, in both rural and urban areas - peasants and city dwellers alike thought pilgrimages essential to their identity as Irish Catholics. In the years just before the Famine, however, the structure of society changed, and the appeal of this variant would ultimately dissolve. A social, historical and psychological study of religion, history and literature in Romantic Ireland, the book is the story of a people struggling to express their religious identities in ways that were both impeccably Catholic and yet distinctively Irish.

Irish Pilgrimage: Holy Wells and Popular Catholic Devotion

Irish Pilgrimage: Holy Wells and Popular Catholic Devotion

Early Irish pilgrim archaeology in the Dingle Peninsula

Abstract Early Irish pilgrimage sites are documented through pilgrims’ deaths there as early as the seventh century AD. Though not included among them, the Dingle Peninsula provides a microcosm of most stone monument types which may be associated with early Irish pilgrimage: Saint's Road, tomb‐shrine, Ogham stones, slabs bearing a cross of arcs, bullaun stones, Romanesque church, sun‐dial, beehive huts and boat‐shaped oratories. On the peninsula, pilgrimage in honour of St Brendan was undertaken to Mount Brandon, a view of which must have been important in the choice of monument location. The main approach to the holy mountain was from the Atlantic Ocean end of the peninsula, showing that pilgrims must have come by sea. Maritime pilgrimage to islands along the west coast of Ireland and beyond must be postulated, and St Brendan's voyage, described as a peregrinado in the Navigatio Brendani, should be seen as a literary reflection of it.

Processional Aspects of Irish Pilgrimage

Processional Aspects of Irish Pilgrimage

Irish Pilgrimage: The Different Tradition

Abstract The geographer's contribution to the study of religious phenomena is of special importance under circumstances in which scholars representing various disciplines tend to make generalizations based on a few, possibly nonrepresentative examples. The understanding of contemporary Western European pilgrimage is currently clouded by lack of generally available data on continental shrines and a tendency toward overreliance on Irish cases without adequate consideration of the highly atypical nature of the Irish pilgrimage tradition. This paper, grounded in data on 5,130 currently active Roman Catholic shrines in Western Europe, provides a cultural-historical explanation for the uniqueness of Irish pilgrimage and analyzes the major structural differences between Irish pilgrimage traditions and those found elsewhere in Europe.

The Changing Theory and Practice of Irish Pilgrimage

‘I know’, says St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, ‘that if this earthly I tent of mine is taken down, I get a home from God made by no human hands, eternal in the heavens. It makes me sigh, indeed, this longing to be under cover of my heavenly habitation … to have my mortal element absorbed by life…. I know that while I reside in the body I am away from the Lord….’ St. Paul is considering the body as a flimsy tent, which may at any moment be taken down, and St. Columbanus takes up this passage in his eighth sermon on the essential instability, the transitory nature of earthly life. Here and elsewhere he speaks of life as a roadway, where Christians must travel in perpetual pilgrimage as guests of the world (hospites mundi), content with a sort of travelling allowance. The same spirit of detachment and urgency infuses much of the hagiographical literature: “Leave thy fatherland for my sake, and get thee out’, ‘This is not the place of thy resurrection’, or the wandering scholar to Brigid when she asks him to stay a while with her, ‘O nun, I have no leisure, for the gates of heaven are open now, and I fear they may be shut against me’.