Medieval Christianity: Pilgrimage

We are apt to forget how much people traveled in the Middle Ages. Not only merchants, friars, soldiers and official messengers, but also crowds of pilgrims were a familiar sight on the roads of Europe. "The Age of Pilgrimage" brings alive the traditions of spiritual travel from the beginnings of Christianity to the early modern time, and vividly describes such major destinations as Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago de Compostela and Canterbury, as well as countless smaller shrines and sanctuaries. A fascinating work of history, "The Age of Pilgrimage" examines both major figures - popes, kings, queens, scholars, villains - and the common people of their day; it considers not only the genuinely devout who walked barefoot for months and years, but also the more worldly pilgrims of Chaucer's day who traveled with suites of servants or joined the first "package tours" - the earliest phrase books and postcards were products of this distant age of mass travel. With great sympathy and passion, this book evokes the achievements and failures of medieval pilgrims, and addresses the question of what motivated such extraordinary quests.-Back cover.

The enduring importance of pilgrimage as an expression of human longing is explored in this volume through three major themes:the antiquity of pilgrimage in what became the Christian world;the mechanisms of Christian pilgrimage (particularly in relation to the practicalities of the journey and the workings of the shrine);and the fluidity and adaptability of pilgrimage ideology.
In their examination of pilgrimage as part of western culture from neolithic times onwards,the authors make use of a range of approaches,often combining evidence from a number of sources,including anthropology,archaeology,history,folklore,margin illustrations and wall paintings.They suggest that it is the fluidity of pilgrimage ideology,combined with an adherence to supposedly traditional physical observances, which has succeeded in maintaining its relevance and retaining its identity.They also look at the ways in which pilgrimage spilled into,or rather was part of,secular life in the middle ages.-Flap cover.

Pilgrimage was an integral part of both medieval religion and medieval life, and from its origins in the fourth-century Mediterranean world it spread rapidly to Northern Europe as a pan-European devotional phenomenon. Concentrating on the medieval Latin West, Diana Webb covers the period spanning the growth in pilgrimage during the seventh century to the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, when pilgrimage ceased to be a vital part of European Christian culture. She draws extensively upon original source materials accounts of pilgrimage, guidebooks, chronicles, wills, covert memos and state documents, thereby seeking to uncover the motives of the pilgrims themselves as well as details of and attitudes towards their preparations, journeys, shrines and eventual destinations (particularly Jerusalem, Compostela and Rome). "Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in the Medieval West" makes a major contribution to our knowledge both of the central role that pilgrimage played in the religious life of the medieval Christian and of the history of medieval Europe in general.-Back cover.

The men and women who gathered at the Tabard Inn in Southwark in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are only the most famous of the tens of thousands of English pilgrims,from kings to peasants,who set off to the shrines of saints and the sites of miracles in the middle ages.As they travelled along well-established routes in the hope of a cure or a blessing,to fulfil a vow or to see new places,the pilgrims left records that let us see medieval people and their concerns and beliefs from a unique and intimate angle.As well as the most famous shrines,notably that of St.Thomas Becket at Canterbury,Diana Webb also describes the many local pilgrimages and cults,and their rise and fall,over the English middle ages as a whole.-Back cover.

"In this detailed study, Nicole Chareyron draws on more than one hundred firsthand accounts as she explores the journeys and worldviews of medieval pilgrims. Her work brings the reader into vivid, intimate contact with the pilgrims' thoughts and emotions as they made the frequently difficult pilgrimage to the Holy Land and back home again." "The travelers not only wrote journals and memoirs for themselves but also to convey to others the majesty and strangeness of distant lands. In their accounts, the pilgrims relate their sense of astonishment, pity, admiration, and disappointment with humor and a touching sincerity and honesty." "These writings also reveal the complex interactions between Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Holy Land. Throughout their journey, pilgrims confronted occasionally hostile Muslim administrators (who controlled access to many holy sites), Bedouin tribes, Jews, and Turks. Chareyron considers the pilgrims' conflicted, and frequently simplistic, views of their Muslim hosts and their social and religious practices."--Jacket.

Nine new studies address the phenomenon that sent Europe walking in the Middle Ages along the arduous road to Santiago de Compostela, the legendary burying place of St. James.

Covering both religious and secular pilgrimages,this comprehensive two-volume set focuses on the world's sacred sites,from Mecca to Masada.It explores legendary destinations,the pilgrims themselves,traditions,history,rites,terminology,and other subjects related to pilgrimage.