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, this book covers the period spanning the growth in pilgrimage during the seventh century to the Protestant Reformation in the 16-century, when pilgrimage ceased to be a vital part of European Christian culture. It 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).

Pilgrimage inspired and shaped the distinct experiences of commoners and nobles, men and women, clergy and laity for over a thousand years. Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages: A Reader is a rich collection of primary sources for the history of Christian pilgrimage in Europe and the Mediterranean world from the fourth through the sixteenth centuries. The collection illustrates the far-reaching significance and consequences of pilgrimage for the culture, society, economics, politics, and spirituality of the Middle Ages. Brett Edward Whalen focuses on sites within Europe and beyond its borders, including the holy places of Jerusalem, and provides documents that shed light upon Eastern Christian, Jewish, and Islamic pilgrimages. The result is an innovative sourcebook that offers a window into broader trends, shifts, and transformations in the Middle Ages.

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.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980.

"Every man who undertakes the journey to the Our Lord's Sepulcher needs three sacks: a sack of patience, a sack of silver, and a sack of faith."—Symon Semeonis, an Irish medieval pilgrim As medieval pilgrims made their way to the places where Jesus Christ lived and suffered, they experienced, among other things: holy sites, the majesty of the Egyptian pyramids (often referred to as the "Pharaoh's granaries"), dips in the Dead Sea, unfamiliar desert landscapes, the perils of traveling along the Nile, the customs of their Muslim hosts, Barbary pirates, lice, inconsiderate traveling companions, and a variety of difficulties, both great and small. In this richly detailed study, Nicole Chareyron draws on more than one hundred firsthand accounts to consider 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. Unlike the knights, princes, and soldiers of the Crusades, who traveled to the Holy Land for the purpose of reclaiming it for Christendom, these subsequent pilgrims of various nationalities, professions, and social classes were motivated by both religious piety and personal curiosity. 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, frequently simplistic, views of their Muslim hosts and their social and religious practices.

Medieval pilgrimage was, above all, an expression of religious faith, but this was not its only aspect. Men and women of all classes went on pilgrimage for a variety of reasons, sometimes by choice, sometimes involuntarily. They made both long and short journeys: to Rome, Jerusalem and Santiago on the one hand; to innumerable local shrines on the other. The routes that they followed by land and water made up a complex web which covered the face of Europe, and their travels required a range of support services, including the protection of rulers (who were themselves often pilgrims). Pilgrimage left its mark not only on the landscape but also on the art and literature of Europe. Diana Webb's engaging book offers the reader a fresh introduction to the history of European Christian pilgrimage in the twelve hundred years between the conversion of Emperor Constantine and the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation. As well as exploring this multi-faceted activity, it considers both the geography of pilgrimage and its significant cultural legacy.

A 200-page introduction to pilgrimage in the Middle Ages and its study, is followed by a thoroughly annotated bibliography of over 1000 primary and secondary, scholarly and popular, works on such aspects of the subject as the medieval concept of pilgrimage, specific sites, and its manifestation in literature, music, art, architecture, and political and religious history. Each topical section notes important primary sources and key scholarly works that provide an opening for research. Focuses on the period from the 4th century to the Renaissance, but also notes works describing pre-Christian and 20th-century pilgrimages. Includes an outline for beginning scholars. No index. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR