Medieval Pilgrimage Research Articles

The history of dark tourism

ABSTRACTIt may be categorically unpleasant to visit cemeteries, crash sites, and death camps, but tourists queue up to see such places. Scholars have been attempting to explain this fascination with the macabre and morbid since the mid-1990s. Early analyses of dark tourism highlighted the modern and postmodern motivations underlying this novel form of travel. As a result, much of the subsequent work on this phenomenon has concentrated on contemporary visits to modern sites such as Auschwitz or Chernobyl. Yet, it is undeniable that ancient trips to the Roman Colosseum and medieval pilgrimages to locations of martyrdom had dark undertones, as many have noted. This round table discussion draws together five scholars to consider how a variety of forces have fuelled dark tourism in the past.

Description of Paths in the Travelogues of the Middle and Early Modern Age

Based on the assumption that space is not objectively given and that its construction depends on the individual’s perception, the author analyses two literary works, namely a late medieval pilgrimage travelogue by Konrad Grünemberg, and an educational travelogue by the Saxon nobleman Georg Christoph von Neitzschitz from the 17th century, whereby she uses mostly Certeau’s theory of space. Taking into consideration the genres and author’s intentions, she explores which conceptions of space are generated by path descriptions in the initial, transitional and destination space focusing on the relationship between the map and the parcours and selectively taking into account the relationship between the text and the visual materials.

Description of Paths in the Travelogues of the Middle and Early Modern Age

Based on the assumption that space is not objectively given and that its construction depends on the individual’s perception, the author analyses two literary works, namely a late medieval pilgrimage travelogue by Konrad Grünemberg, and an educational travelogue by the Saxon nobleman Georg Christoph von Neitzschitz from the 17th century, whereby she uses mostly Certeau’s theory of space. Taking into consideration the genres and author’s intentions, she explores which conceptions of space are generated by path descriptions in the initial, transitional and destination space focusing on the relationship between the map and the parcours and selectively taking into account the relationship between the text and the visual materials.

The North-East living quarter of the medieval pilgrim centre in Banganarti. Archaeological research in 2015 and 2016

Two seasons of fieldwork in the northeastern part of Banganarti site brought significant data on its stratification, as well as the architecture of medieval dwellings. This paper presents a summary of the results. Special attention was focused on the layout of the buildings and on vault usage. Remarks concern the functionality of the explored space, based on an interpretation of the stratigraphy. Evidence of strong water erosion in the early stages of the settlement is also discussed.

The Isle of Hermaphrodites: Disorienting the place of intersex in the Middle Ages

What is the place of intersex in medieval studies? How have non-binary bodies been oriented and reoriented as marginal by medieval literature and history? Might medieval intersex studies disorient such mappings of power? To provide inroads to these questions, this article puts medieval studies and intersex studies into conversation. Affirming the premise that non-binary scholarship offers necessary insights to the history of non-binary bodies, this critical analysis of the intersexual bodies on the Hereford Mappa Mundi and in the Book of John Mandeville utilizes the theoretical frameworks of Cheryl Chase and Hilary Malatino. In so doing, the essay proceeds to first orient the place of intersex using medieval pilgrimage as an experienced and imagined practice, generating and using objects such as Mappa Mundi to position certain places and communities as spiritual centers, loca sancta, eschewing other locations and peoples to the margins. Second, this essay unpacks how the second half of the Book of John Mandeville reorients relations to the margins through a sort of “boundary-lust,” imaginatively embodied by the Isle of “Hermaphrodites;” a medieval conception of intersex invoking the ancient parentage of Hermes the God of Travel and Boundaries and Aphrodite the God of Lust and Sex. To conclude, the passages describing the intersex bodies in Mandeville’s Book are close read alongside intersex and queer studies to conceive of how non-binary bodies disoriented the universality and centrality of binary gender for medieval writers and readers in much the same way that intersex continues to de-centralize the flow of power in modern mappings of gender and sexuality.

The Medieval Invention of Travel by Shayne Aaron Legassie

Reviewed by: The Medieval Invention of Travel by Shayne Aaron Legassie Anna Wilson shayne aaron legassie, The Medieval Invention of Travel. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2017. Pp. xiii, 302. isbn: 978–0–226–44662–2. $34.95. This ambitious book surveys western European travel literature from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, tracing the emergence in the medieval period of several styles, themes, and ethics of travel that would shape subsequent travel literatures until the industrial revolution. Legassie makes an argument for a distinct medieval genre of travel literature that includes two mutually influential strands: accounts of pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and of journeys to the far east for missionary purposes or trade. The methodology is primarily literary-critical, but there is a strong book history element throughout, wherein Legassie highlights specific material instances of works [End Page 115] in order to enhance close readings or to discuss the circulation and use of ideas about travel. The story this book tells is broadly one of historical development of the travel literature genre prior to its oft-presumed emergence with the early modern European colonial expansions; however, Legassie avoids a teleological narrative in favor of a 'rhizomatic' survey, making the important but frequently overlooked point that 'developments accrete and—at times—coexist unharmoniously' in this as in so many literary genres (p. 143). As such, the study is divided into three parts linked by theme rather than location in time or space. Part one focuses on constructions of narrative authority. Chapter one traces the differing approaches to the 'prestige economy of long-distance knowledge' (p. 22)—a concept Legassie develops in conversation with anthropologist Mary Helms' 'long-distance specialist'—in Marco Polo's Divisament dou monde and William of Rubruck's Itinerarium. Chapter two argues for an increasing emphasis on the labor and physical trials of travel by authors who apparently feared that their narratives might strain the credulity of their medieval readers; texts discussed here include John of Plano Carpini's Historia Mongolorum, Odoric of Pordenone's Relatio, and The Book of John Mandeville. Part two is a valuable and extensive survey of medieval pilgrimage literature, including clerical- and non-clerical narratives, Jerusalem Inventories, and logs or diaries. In chapter four, Legassie argues that these texts attest to a sophisticated mnemonic praxis—he draws heavily on Carruthers' classic studies on memory—through which pilgrimage becomes 'literate labor.' In what Legassie names 'the synthetic tradition' of (largely clerical) pilgrimage accounts, the composition of the text is part of the devotional work of pilgrimage, accomplished through 'memory work' before, during, and after the journey. The readings of these texts complement, but would benefit from greater engagement with, recent scholarship on 'virtual travel' or pilgrimage meditation by scholars such as Anthony Bale and Kathryn Rudy. Chapter five tackles the role of empirical observation in pilgrimage literature, tracing the rise in interest in writers' investigative methods for determining the history of places and objects in the Holy Land, and the rise of the 'Mediterranean turn' wherein places on the way to the Holy Land and the journey itself become subjects of scrutiny. Part three enters into the divergent styles of travel emerging post-1300, with a chapter on Petrarch and a chapter on Pero Tafur. Legassie's reading of Petrarch's travel letters in Familiares I–V and his Itinerarium reveals Petrarch's careful curation of a narrative arc that encompasses his change from an optimistic to jaded attitude to the ethical value of travel, corresponding to his changing political attitudes to Italian nationalism, and to his rejection of vernacular poetical modes for Latin epic. Legassie's intriguing approach to Petrarch's epistolary work as 'diasporic' rather than 'exilic' makes this a valuable addition to scholarship on Petrarch's relatively understudied travel letters. Chapter seven brings to the fore a theme which has run through much of the other travel literature Legassie discusses: concern with the ethics of travel. In Pero Tafur's fifteenth-century travel narrative, this concern is played out in the tension between the text's need to present Muslim lands as hostile territories in order to enhance the dramatic daring of its hero, and its investment...

‘Holiness’ from the Mud: Badges and Pilgrimage in German-Speaking Lands - A Case Study from the North German City of Stade (Lower Saxony) in the Former Archdiocese of Bremen

Remarkable finds of late medieval pilgrim badges excavated in the former harbour of the Hanseatic city of Stade have opened an unexpected window onto the pilgrimage history of northwestern Germany between the rivers Elbe andWeser. Approximately 160 pilgrim badges found in Stade come from twenty-six identified pilgrimage sites in Middle Europe. About a dozen sites are still awaiting identification. These findings overturn much received scholarship on late medieval pilgrimage in northern Germany and suggest instead the emerging contours of an understudied, dynamic, latemedieval landscape of pilgrimage.

David II's Chapel Royal at St Monans in the context of medieval pilgrimage

This paper examines the medieval parish church at St Monans in the East Neuk of Fife, considering what its architecture tells us about the flourishing pilgrimage culture in the area during the medieval period. The structure remaining today mostly dates to the re-foundation of an earlier shrine to St Monan by King David II in the 1360s. The construction and circumstances of this donation are discussed to gain an impression of how David's Chapel Royal originally appeared. Its location was also important, and the spread of St Monan's cult around his shrine is addressed, alongside its role within the wider network of Scottish pilgrimage. These factors combine to explain why this small Fife fishing village retains one of Scotland's grandest medieval parish churches.

Cosmopolitanism or Competition?Late Medieval Pilgrims at the Eastern Christian Holy Places

This essay explores the Latin pilgrims in the Holy Land in the late medieval period and their reactions to Eastern Christian communities. Using two case-studies – the origins of the Cross and the Prison of Christ – I ask whether we might think of this interaction in medieval Jerusalem as a kind of cosmopolitanism.

The Road Network in the Longue Durée: A Reading Key of the History of Territories

AbstractThe historical study of routes has long remained confined to the great Roman roads, to the modern royal roads and to the medieval pilgrimage routes. For fifteen years, the French school of Archaeogeography has revisited this research field in great depth, following the first intuitions of the archaeologist Eric Vion. The innovative idea ‒ at least because it leads to a questioning of our methods ‒ is to consider the current road network as the starting point of the analysis. It is the true object of research for the historianarchaeologist because it represents a solid legacy whose logic one must unravel. Because this story is closely integrated with urban, political and economic matters, the study of this inherited road network represents a precious reading key to understanding the history of the territories in the longue durée. In the frame of this paper, we propose to recall these methodological advances and to present a case study in Brittany, around the small town of Chateaugiron. By this example, we want to show that the archaeogeographical analysis and interpretation offer a scientific narrative based on the paradigms of complexity and resilience to contemporary societies in charge of our territories.

Encounters with the Levant: the late medieval illustrated Jerusalem Travelogue by Paul Walter von Guglingen

The late medieval illustrated Jerusalem travelogue by the Franciscan friar Paul Walther von Guglingen has heretofore received scant scholarly attention, perhaps owing to the unusual nature of some of its images. Guglingen charts decidedly Islamic spaces with his maps and plan, instead of the conventional sacred shrines of Christianity; these topographical features are interlaced with personal travelling experiences. Illustrations of flora and fauna encountered along the way are the result of careful observation, and meticulous recording. The author experiments with forms to visually represent his own lived experience. In all cases, text and image are closely intertwined and testify that non-religious aspects form a legitimate aspect of this pilgrimage account. Consideration of the illustrations in Guglingen’s Itinerarium, alongside, for example, those in the travelogue of his famous travel companion Bernhard von Breydenbach, allows us to illuminate more facets of the late medieval pilgrimage experience.

The pilgrim’s badge: Water, air, and the flow of sacred matter

In the 1970s, thousands of medieval pilgrims’ badges were dredged from London’s River Thames. Further excavations in France and Germany revealed this was not an isolated case. Though no contemporary accounts directly attest the phenomenon, scholars have suggested that pilgrims tossed their badges into the river after pilgrimage as propitiatory or votive offerings. This essay expands on those theories by adopting a comparative approach focused on notions of flow and sacred materiality. It connects the practice of tossing badges into rivers with a similar post-pilgrimage tradition: the casting of badges onto church bells. Reading these badge practices into one another elicits richer understandings of both and helps to contextualize the river badges within broader discourses of purification ritual and fluid mechanics. Ultimately, this essay speculates that, for the medieval person, river badges comprised a communal deposit of sacred matter perceived to enact a flow of purifying blessings throughout the environment.

Medieval Pilgrims and Modern Tourists

This article examines the Marian shrines of Walsingham (England) and Meryem Ana (Turkey). Walsingham was a popular pilgrimage site until the Reformation, when Catholic sacred places were disestablished or destroyed by Protestants. Meryem Ana is linked to Walsingham, in that both shrines feature healing springs and devotion to the cult of the “Holy House” of the Virgin Mary. Walsingham is now home to multi-faith pilgrimages, New Age seekers and secular tourists. Meryem Ana is a rare Christian shrine in Islamic Turkey, where mass tourists rub shoulders with devout Christians supporting the small Greek Catholic community in residence. This article emerged from the experience of walking the Walsingham Way, a modern route based on the medieval pilgrimage in 2012, and visiting Meryem Ana in 2015 while making a different pilgrimage, that of an Australian attending the centenary of the Gallipoli landings. Both shrines are marketed through strategies of history and heritage, making visiting them more than simply tourism. Both sites offer a constructed experience that references the Middle Ages and Christianity, bringing modern tourism in an increasingly secular world into conversation with ancient and medieval pilgrimage and the religious past.

Pilgrimages of Princes in the 15th Century – Two Holy Land journeys of German Princes via Rome. A Distinction to the Lower Nobility Class Journeys

Throughout that work the differences and similarities of princely and non-princely, but noble, pilgrimages in the German-speaking part of the late medieval times should be outlined with the aid of two concrete examples. The main focus will be on the distinction of princely pilgrimages to pilgrimages of the lower nobility class. In this connection especially the fact is important that a more precise distinction between the two groups of persons rarely takes place in the widely-used German-speaking literature and both groups are used equivalent. To illustrate a more precise distinction throughout the analysis with the two chosen princely pilgrimages there will be used direct quotes at suitable text passages to enable a singularization of the similarities as well as the differences to the pilgrimages of the lower nobility class. Concrete examples constitute the pilgrimages of the dukes Eberhard I. of Wurttemberg and Bogislaw X. of Pomerania. As the analysis progresses there will be highlighted that princely pilgrimages differ in the intention, the effort of planning as well as the enactment in comparison to non-princely pilgrimages. For future scientific investigations with late medieval pilgrimages to Jerusalem and Rome therefore it will be necessary to defer to a concrete distinction between princely pilgrimages and non-princely, but noble, pilgrimages.

Investigation of a Medieval Pilgrim Burial Excavated from the Leprosarium of St Mary Magdalen Winchester, UK

We have examined the remains of a Pilgrim burial from St Mary Magdalen, Winchester. The individual was a young adult male, aged around 18–25 years at the time of death. Radiocarbon dating showed the remains dated to the late 11th–early 12th centuries, a time when pilgrimages were at their height in Europe. Several lines of evidence in connection with the burial suggested this was an individual of some means and prestige. Although buried within the leprosarium cemetery, the skeleton showed only minimal skeletal evidence for leprosy, which was confined to the bones of the feet and legs. Nonetheless, molecular testing of several skeletal elements, including uninvolved bones all showed robust evidence of DNA from Mycobacterium leprae, consistent with the lepromatous or multibacillary form of the disease. We infer that in life, this individual almost certainly suffered with multiple soft tissue lesions. Genotyping of the M.leprae strain showed this belonged to the 2F lineage, today associated with cases from South-Central and Western Asia. During osteological examination it was noted that the cranium and facial features displayed atypical morphology for northern European populations. Subsequently, geochemical isotopic analyses carried out on tooth enamel indicated that this individual was indeed not local to the Winchester region, although it was not possible to be more specific about their geographic origin.

Passages. Meyer Schapiro's Early Travels and the Uniting Mediterranean Sea

In July 1926, while preparing material for his doctoral thesis on the Romanesque sculpture of the abbey of Moissac, Meyer Schapiro (1904-1996) traveled along the shores of the Mediterranean. Departing from Paris to follow several itineraries over fifteen months, Schapiro, not yet twenty-two, explored medieval southern France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, and Turkey. Traveling over land and sea, he traced the medieval pilgrims’ routes. In doing so, he was in fact crossing borders of his fellow art historians’ disciplines and regional-studies’ categories. “I feel as if space is different and the whole world more accessible”, Schapiro wrote to his fiancee. This openness suggests that Schapiro was able to unite, in this journey, the many histories of the Mediterranean - the space that came to serve as the foundation for his inquiry of medieval aesthetics. This essay considers Schapiro’s drawings from the eastern Mediterranean. Not only do they illustrate his particular method of processing...

The Holy Blood of Wilsnack: Politics, Theology, and the Reform of Popular Religion in Late Medieval Germany

The main theme concerns the political uses made of a late medieval pilgrimage to the town of Wilsnack in Germany’s far northern province of Brandenburg. Three hosts preserved in the Wilsnack shrine were believed to possess traces of Christ’s blood shed at the crucifixion. They were further credited with producing miraculous cures and other benefits for worthy Christians. For over a century and a half until the Reformation this shrine drew enormous crowds of pilgrims and spread prosperity through a formerly poverty-stricken region. But in the mid-fifteenth century two political entities (the papal monarchy in Rome and a rising territorial state in Brandenburg) sealed a treaty that leveraged Wilsnack’s assets to their respective advantages. In effect the pilgrimage helped consolidate the papal monarchy while promoting the rise of a new political force in Germany. A sub-theme relates to how the “bleeding hosts” so notable in the formation of the Rome-Brandenburg alliance came under assault by church reformers who contested bitterly what they saw as the greed, the exploitation, and the heresy associated with the politicization of a mass religious movement.

‘When Going to Saint James’: An Old Russian Graffito from the 12th Century in Aquitania

In 2015 in Pons, in the former province of Saintonge, an Old Russian pilgrim graffito was found on the wall of the parish church of St. Vivien, a monument of the mid-12th century. It is the second graffito found in France after the one discovered at St. Gilles Abbey. The town of Pons is located on the westernmost route of Santiago de Compostela (via Turonensis) and is noteworthy because of the preserved pilgrim almshouse of the latter half of the 12th century. On the walls of its long archway are horseshoe drawings made by medieval pilgrims, the latest of which, dating from the 16th–17th centuries, bends around a name that is also apparently written in Cyrillic script. The earlier inscription, which appears at the base of the northern end wall of the original façade of the St. Vivien church, is made in the name of one Ivan Zavidovich: “Ivano ps[а]lo Zavi|doviche ida ko | svętomu Ię|kovu” (= ‘Ivan Zavidovich wrote this when going to Saint James’). The most probable palaeographic dating is in the 1160s–1180s. As suggested by birch bark manuscripts, the name of Ivan’s father, Zavid, was popular among Novgorod boyars. Novgorod is also the place with the greatest indirect evidence of the occurrence in Old Russia of the western cult of St. James. This well preserved inscription is an important epigraphic discovery, but its main value lies in the direct evidence of pilgrimages by Russians to the shrine of St. James in Galicia.

Producing the Route of St. James: The Camino de Santiago in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Producing the Route of St. JamesThe Camino de Santiago in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Barbara Abou-El-Haj (bio) Situated on the western coast of Galicia, Santiago de Compostela claims to hold the tomb of St. James the Apostle. According to tradition, James was martyred in Palestine in 44 CE; his body was then miraculously transferred by boat to the Galician coast and buried there, as James was reputed to have evangelized the Iberian Peninsula. Veneration of the relics of St. James began in the ninth century, and by the twelfth century, Compostela was the end-point of an elaborate network of pilgrimage routes—the Camino de Santiago—originating all over Western Europe. Since the Middle Ages, the historiography of the city of Santiago de Compostela has been overshadowed by the Camino de Santiago. The modern revival of pilgrimage along the Camino in the nineteenth century constructed a political ideology that in turn acquired considerable cultural capital in the twentieth century. A look at Santiago de Compostela under Diego Gelmírez (1093–1140), the twelfth-century administrator, bishop, and archbishop-count of the cathedral,1 allows us to consider what is overlooked and who is excluded in the rich historiography of the cult of St. James of Compostela, a historiography that has often obscured the intensive efforts at production of the cult in the first place. Compostela in the Twelfth Century Tension and violence in medieval towns were recorded by local clergy who addressed distinctly different audiences in their texts. On the one hand, the clergy recorded glowing accounts of their saints, the miracles of provision, and penitent labor on the part of the highest ranks of society for the building of their churches. They also [End Page 51] assembled cartularies to document possessions and privileges, and to appeal to wealthy donors; these cartularies selectively recorded and responded to all manner of disputes, deficits, and insolvencies.2 Clergy occasionally wrote lengthy attacks on their enemies in response to violent challenges to the clergy’s sweeping privileges. The documentary sources produced at Santiago de Compostela under the supervision of Diego Gelmírez are excellent examples of texts aimed at distinct constituencies. The principal textual sources for Santiago at the height of medieval pilgrimage were produced under the direction of Diego Gelmírez: Tumbo A, a cartulary assembled by the cathedral treasurer Bernard around 1129 to encourage Alfonso VII to emulate his royal predecessors’ donations to St. James, lavishly decorated with their portraits;3 the Historia Compostelana, a mixed chronicle and cartulary intermittently written under Gelmírez’s supervision from 1109 until shortly after his death in 1140;4 and the Liber Sancti Jacobi (Book of Saint James). The cathedral’s earliest extant copy of the Liber Sancti Jacobi, falsely attributed to and named for Pope Calixtus II, and known as the Codex Calixtinus,5 is an assemblage of disparate texts united by their celebration of St. James, his miracles, and his cult. The concluding fifth book of this text, known as the Pilgrim’s Guide, is a sometimes outrageous and salacious itinerary of routes, regions, churches, and shrines, ending with a lengthy description of the church of St. James. Long considered an outsider’s account—albeit a reliable documentary source for the Compostelan pilgrimage and its itineraries through the French kingdom and across the northern Iberian Peninsula—the Codex Calixtinus was actually produced at Santiago, cleverly posing as a French work, as Manuel Díaz y Díaz has shown.6 Based on the figurative style and foliage initials, art historians suggest a date around 1140 or slightly later with Gelmírez as the likely patron,7 which accords with the pattern of his activities recorded in the Historia. The costly political and artistic projects undertaken by Gelmírez to expand the apostolic cult of St. James—with the aim of elevating Gelmírez’s diocesan rank and extending his lordship in Galicia—prompted two communal rebellions.8 The pilgrims Gelmírez was able to attract in large numbers to the far northwest of the Iberian Peninsula consequently provided an alternative audience to his enemies: a hostile faction of cathedral canons angered by unequal prebends and [End Page 52...

Power and Paradise in Walt Disney's WorldCher KrauseKnight. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014.

Power and Paradise in Wall Disney's World Cher Krause Knight. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014.In 1976, when Cher Krause Knight was eight years old, she made her first to Disney World, an she found transformative and often repeated. She writes, was never just another family vacation when we went to Disney World, but journey to be savored and one we continue to share (xixii). In Power and Paradise in Disney's World, Knight, an art historian, analyzes Disney World through two disparate lenses: (1) as frequent visitor with deep emotional ties to the park and (2) as an academician drawing on scholarship in American and cultural studies; sociology; visual, material, and popular culture; urban planning and environmental design; cultural anthropology; critical studies; and theology (3). It is tall order, but Knight does fine job of balancing the perspectives, offering new insights into the park and those who visit it, often time and time again. In Power and Paradise in Disney's World, Knight places Disney World in historical perspective, explaining how Disney conceived it and how it was influenced by the concept of the World's Fair, especially the 1964-65 World's Fair in New York City, which he participated in. Disney was never interested in creating an amusement park but rather destination with theme as a frame that orders narrative and shapes experience (5). He did this with Disneyland, which opened in Anaheim, California, in 1955, but he envisioned Disney World as larger, more utopian site with integrated worlds that drew upon the real but made it better, more emotionally intense, happy, and satisfying. Whereas visitors came to Disneyland for day, they would come to Disney World for longer periods of time to refuel, reflect, reconnect, and feel special. Disney World promised cleanliness, order, conformity, and fun. In chapter titled Keeping the Faith: Disney World as Pilgrimage Center, Knight argues that Disney achieved some of his loftiest aspirations, including his explicit aim to provide transcendent experiences (24). Knight compares modern Disney World journey to medieval pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, showing how the two places similarly use space, ritual, and function. Knight writes that Walt and his designers purposefully conceived Disney World as ritualized space for devout followers, who were conditioned beforehand to participate in rites and recognize the symbols enshrined there (30). …