Read an Excerpt
INTRODUCTION
In the early twenty-first century, pilgrimage in the West is enjoying
a boom, perhaps more so than at any time since the Middle Ages.
Shrines such as Lourdes in France, Santiago de Compostela in Spain,
and the basilicas of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico and Sainte-
Anne-de-Beaupré in Canada receive millions of pilgrims every year.
At the heart of this attraction is a spiritual impulse that has existed
from time immemorial. It is a desire that connects us with our medieval
forebears and, indeed, ancient ancestors, and which in turn will
connect us with our descendants. Pilgrims of every era and every
faith are bonded by comparable aspirations, hopes, doubts, physical
endeavors, rituals, and prayers.
The reasons for pilgrimage are numerous. They include giving
thanks to God, fulfilling a vow, petitioning a holy figure for a cure,
performing a penance, reinvigorating one’s faith, and, more unofficially,
experiencing the sights and sounds of the journey. A pilgrimage
also traditionally has a number of recognized stages: preparation,
including putting one’s affairs in order before departing and acquiring
the right traveling clothes and accessories; the journey itself; the
arrival, accompanied by sacred rituals (such as saying prayers and
lighting a candle); the return journey; and reintegration into the
world the pilgrim had left behind.
It is these stages and rituals that have created a coherent pilgrimage
tradition down the ages. To take just one example: contemporary
pilgrims often leave at a shrine ex-voto offerings—symbolic tokens
of the physical ailments from which they hope to be delivered or
have been delivered, for example an image of an eye or a leg. Tokens
of gratitude were also left by ancient Greek visitors at the healing
sanctuary of the god Asclepius at Epidaurus, long before the time of
Christ. And they were a staple of medieval pilgrimage. For instance,
in Exeter Cathedral in southwest England, the masonry above the
tomb of a fifteenth-century bishop named Edmund Lacy was damaged
(in 1942, during World War II) and revealed a cache of wax
votive offerings—miniature models of arms, legs, feet, and torsos left
by medieval pilgrims to show which parts of their bodies had been
healed. Ex-votos are one of the many links between modern pilgrims
and their predecessors.
———
Like pilgrims, readers may benefit from a route map to give them
an overview of the journey ahead: what follows is an outline of the
various stages of this book. Its principal aim is to describe the course
of Christian pilgrimage over the last two thousand years and place
it in a historical context. Part of the fascination of the story of this
pilgrimage tradition is that it has had its high and low points, comparable
to the vicissitudes of an actual sacred journey. It evolved tentatively
in the early centuries of Christianity, flourished in the Middle
Ages, diminished after the Reformation, became diluted in the Age of
Enlightenment, and revived in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
But even at its lowest ebb, it has never disappeared.
The book’s first two chapters set out some of the key questions about
the nature of pilgrimage and explore possible pilgrimage traditions
in the ancient world. Chapter One discusses the importance of the
pilgrimage journey itself and investigates what makes a pilgrimage
shrine different from other sacred places. It asks what makes a site
holy, and whether inner transformation is central to the goal of the
pilgrim. The second chapter investigates the possibility of sacred
journeys in prehistoric societies and discusses “pilgrimages” in ancient
classical times, including those to the healing sanctuary of Epidaurus
and the oracle center of Delphi.
Chapters Three to Six describe the beginnings of the Christian
cult of relics and saints, especially at Rome, and how the Holy Land
became a key pilgrim destination during the reign of Emperor Constantine
in the early fourth century. They relate how, in early medieval
Europe (between the demise of the Roman Empire and the High Middle
Ages), Christianity blossomed in Ireland, from where a stream of
pilgrims, missionaries, and scholars flowed out to continental Europe;
how pilgrimage was disrupted by the spread of Islam and the Viking
incursions; and how conditions improved toward the end of the tenth
century, when Europe became more peaceful and the church more
vital and authoritative.
The next several chapters begin with the new millennium and the
period of the Crusades from the late eleventh to the thirteenth century.
By this time pilgrim shrines were established all around Europe,
and pilgrimage was an accepted aspect of Christian life. This part of
the book looks at some fundamental concepts associated with medieval
pilgrimage, such as heaven, hell, purgatory, and indulgences; the
importance of relics; and also the practicalities of making a journey to
a shrine. It highlights key pilgrimage destinations. And it shows that
by the later Middle Ages, the idea of pilgrimage was being challenged
by religious critics and, in a more subtle way, by a nascent interest
in travel and sightseeing. It describes how, after the Reformation,
pilgrimage, especially in Protestant countries, declined dramatically,
even ceased—or transmuted into quasi-pilgrimage activity such as the
Grand Tour of the eighteenth century. Also discussed is the venerable
place that pilgrimage holds in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The last three chapters show how, in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, pilgrimage was revitalized, perhaps because of a reaction to
increasing industrialization and a need to supplement conventional
forms of church worship with a more participatory approach. These
chapters discuss the cult of the Virgin Mary and the rise of Marian
shrines such as Lourdes, Knock, and Fátima; the revival of medieval
sanctuaries such as Walsingham; and how Christian pilgrimage
became a thriving phenomenon in parts of the New World, for example
at the shrines of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, Sainte-
Anne-de-Beaupré near the city of Quebec, and Chimayo in New
Mexico.
Finally, the Afterword recapitulates and reflects on the meaning,
definition, and significance of pilgrimage. It discusses the present-day
revival of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain and the
phenomenon of Taizé in France, the possibility of secular pilgrimage
today, as well as the outlook for pilgrimage in the future.
