PILGRIMAGE TO HERESY is a tale of intrigue which asks disturbing questions about the nature of faith and pilgrimage. The Catholic Church would rather you didn't learn the answers! Trier, Gaul, 385 C.E.Priscillian of Avila: A wealthy former Senator, a charismatic bishop with a huge following in his native Galicia, argues for his life against his accusers, two powerful Spanish bishops who win the ready ear of the new Emperor, Maximus. Priscillian and his entourage are accused of witchcraft and heresy.Yet his message is one of celibacy, simplicity, and gentleness. Is he guilty? For centuries, it has been claimed that St. James is buried in the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain-the Holy Grail of pilgrims for over 1200 years. But what if he is not? What if the occupant is none other than Priscillian, a man whose Gnostic message threatened to undo the power of the newly formed Roman church?The Camino de Santiago, Spain, 2000 C.E.Miranda has left her untenured position at the University of Toronto to go on a 800 kilometers hike in the north of Spain. On her second day walking in the Pyrenees, she meets Kieran, a lapsed candidate for the priesthood, who is translating a book written in Latin: a book he shouldn't have! The next day, Kieran is missing, and so is his translation. A religious injustice ... Two love stories: one doomed from the start ... And a mystery ... perhaps

It was perhaps England's darkest hour. It was a time when reading the Bible was against the law, and there was a death penalty in place to stop heresy; even Catholic priests were being burned alive. Margery Kempe was born into this world. She dared to follow her truth, and the calling she knew came from Jesus Christ himself. But she paid mightily for it, and she was repeatedly arrested, put on trial, even threatened with death. Kempe's only lifeline was her wit, determination, and a few influential friends who believed in her cause.

They were long-shot underdogs and if they were to survive, they needed a miracle.The armies of Islam had swept like wildfire into the Iberia peninsula. By the beginning of the 9th century, King Alfonso's Kingdom of Asturias was one of a couple of enclaves of Christianity remaining in Espania. It was the year 814 and King Alfonso II had just received word that Charlemagne, the Frankish conqueror and protector of the Catholic Church, was dead. Alfonso's small northern kingdom was no match for the Caliphate of Cordoba which had orchestrated a vast economic revival known as the Andalusian Enlightenment in the south. The sophisticated Arabs minted silver coins, printed paper, read poetry, funded massive libraries, reconfigured the old Roman trading routes and created a far reaching Islamic legal system. The armies of Islam were large, disciplined and well-armed.By contrast, King Alfonso's kingdom was a land of small farms with little in the way of urban culture, learning, industry or secular institutions. His people were resigned to a meager subsistence economy based on agriculture, fishing and herding. The standing army was small, but the men of Asturias were excellent horsemen and skilled at "hit and run" mountain warfare. The miracle they sought arrived with the news that the beheaded body of Saint James the Apostle was found by a wandering hermit in a Roman cemetery in Galicia. Alfonso's kingdom might now have the powerful protection of a patron saint. The local Catholic bishop asked King Alfonso to make a pilgrimage to the burial site to confirm the identity of the body and to grant royal protection to the shrine that would be built there. In time, the place would become the holy city of Santiago de Compostela and the path to it would be known as the Camino.This is the story of the first pilgrimage.Accompanying King Alfonso is his Benedictine confessor Father Julian who foresees how Saint James would unite the Christian kingdoms and help to drive the Moors out of Spain. Musa is Alfonso's foreign minister, born to an Arab father and a Jewish mother - he is a worldly traveler and is married to Doctor Ruth, a skilled herbalist and physician. All four characters are transformed by the inner journey of their spiritual pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. But Musa is skeptical about the beheaded body that was found in an unmarked grave with no clues left behind to identify it. If it is not the remains of Saint James, then who is buried in the grave?The First Pilgrim is an account of the aspirations of a nation, the determination of its King and the faith of its people. It is also a medieval detective mystery.

This book attempts both to take stock of directions in the field and to suggest alternative perspectives on some central aspects of the period.

Pilgrimage was an integral part not only of medieval religion but medieval life, and from its origins in the 4th-century Meditteranean world rapidly spread to northern Europe as a pan-European devotional phenomenon. Drawing upon original source materials, this text seeks to uncover the motives of pilgrims and the details of their preparation, maintenance, hazards on the route, and their ideas about pilgrimage sites - especially Jerusalem, Compostela and Rome - and gives an account of the multiplicity of interest which grew up around the many shrines along the way. The period covered is from about 1000 AD to 1500 AD - before the first crusade and the beginning of the great growth in pilgrimage in the Orthodox church, Byzantine of Russia. The bibliography includes printed sources and a listing of secondary works.