Whether traveling to Jerusalem, Rome, Saint James of Compostela, Canterbury, or a small shrine not far from home, the pilgrim remains an iconic figure of medieval Christian travel and devotion. Edited by Andrew Jotischky and William J. Purkis, A Companion to Medieval Pilgrimage presents thirteen wide-ranging essays on various historical elements of—mostly—Christian pilgrimage during the Middle Ages. Overall, the essays in this volume are written in an accessible style for non-specialists, while offering original insights into the history of medieval pilgrimage that should be of interest to experts in the field.
As Jotischky and Purkis observe in their lucid introduction to this book, over the last forty years “there has been a noticeable resurgence of what might be called recreational pilgrimage across different Christian traditions” (1). This uptick of interest in pilgrimage can be tied to the European Culture Routes program; a growing list of pilgrimage-related additions to the UNESCO World Heritage sites; and by the expanding networks of logistical support for present-day travelers along medieval pilgrimage routes. In this sense, Jotischky and Purkis suggest, the time seems right for a fresh examination of medieval pilgrimage, taking into account the “material, cultural, and textual turns in medieval studies” (7). The first essay in the volume, “Aspects of Spirituality in Medieval Christian Pilgrimage,” written by Jotischky, offers in effect an extended introduction to the volume, sketching out the big picture of how medieval pilgrimage intersected with wider social values, monastic notions of stability, the crusades (a particular kind of armed pilgrimage), penitential practices, and Christian collective memory (above all, as related to holy scripture).
Geographically, the ensuing essays tend to deal one way or another with pilgrimage to Jerusalem and its surroundings, known to Christians as the Holy Land since the fourth century, although there are essays that focus on Saint James of Compostela (Purkis), Rome (Grahame MacKenzie), and Canterbury (Rachel Koopmans) as pilgrimage destinations. Chronologically, while pilgrimage spanned the entirety of the medieval era, for the most part the authors here focus on the years ca. 1000-1500, the period of the “High” and “Late” Middle Ages. Thematically, the essays touch upon the literary nature of pilgrimage texts (Michelle Campopiano); connections between pilgrimage and the miraculous (Philip Booth); pilgrimage and the liturgy (Cecilia Gaposchkin); pilgrimage and canon law (Kirsi Salonen); women and pilgrimage (Ora Limor); Jerusalem under crusader rule (E. J. MyLod); the broader material culture of pilgrimage (Amy Jeffs and Gabriel Bying); and on “imagined pilgrimages,” that is, pilgrimages that took place in the mind without physically traveling anywhere (Kathryne Beebe). There is a single essay that touches directly upon non-Christian pilgrimage, which explores the twelfth-century Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela’s enigmatic itinerary from Spain to Jerusalem (Marci Freedman).
Beyond its individual contributions, the strength and originality of this volume lies in its general attentiveness to the various kinds of sources available for the history of pilgrimage, along with a sensitivity to the literary nature of pilgrimage-related texts. As Campopiano observes, pilgrimage “was also a literary endeavour, with pilgrims writing down their travel experiences in different forms and languages” (43). In addition to Campopiano’s essay, “Writing Pilgrimage,” most of contributions in this collection highlight the mediated nature of how we, as modern historians, are able to recover a sense of medieval pilgrimage experiences through written accounts sometimes produced long after the act of travel and not always by the traveler himself or herself. Looking beyond written pilgrimage accounts per se, the essays in this volume cast a wide net to contextualize pilgrimage in its broader devotional settings, as related to miracles stories, relics, oral traditions, sites of memory, rituals, vows, and material “souvenirs” of all kinds (badges, ampullae, bells, staff mounts, whistles, and more). Medieval accounts of pilgrimage and pilgrimage-related phenomena weren’t just intended to capture the tastes, inclinations, and experiences of the individual pilgrim: often, they gestured towards wider cultural and intellectual worlds, classical and biblical histories, and even apocalyptic visions of the future. In many ways, medieval pilgrimage was just as much about time as space, above all where Jerusalem was concerned, the place where the Son of God had once walked the earth and where, someday, Antichrist would make his presence known.
A more apt title for this volume might have been A Companion to Christian Medieval Pilgrimage, since, with the exception of the essay on Benjamin of Tudela, all of the other essays deal with Christian travelers and devotional culture. Or the volume might have added essays on Islamic and Byzantine pilgrimages to accompany the contributions on western Christian and Jewish travelers, which would have made the volume a more comprehensive guide to medieval pilgrimage writ large. Still, this book on pilgrimage admirably captures the spirit of the Arc Humanities Press “Companions” series that also includes volumes on medieval crime, sexuality, translation, and queenship among other themes. Individual chapters could readily be assigned to students at both the undergraduate and graduate level, providing them with introductory guides to the subject matter and resources for further research projects. (Each essay comes with a helpful bibliography of primary and secondary sources.) If their goal was to spark further study of medieval pilgrimage among the next generation of scholars, the editors and contributors to this volume are to be especially commended on a job well done.