Soul Travel: Spiritual Journeys in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe [New ed.] 1788745671, 9781788745673

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Soul Travel: Spiritual Journeys in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe [New ed.]
 1788745671, 9781788745673

Table of contents :
Dedication
Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Soul Travel: Spiritual Journeys in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe • Jennifer Hillman and Elizabeth Tingle
Part I: Modes of Spiritual Journeying
1 Reading as a Spiritual Journey: St Bridget of Sweden • Mark Edwin Peterson
2 Performing Pilgrimage in Late Medieval Wales • Kathryn Hurlock
3 Participatory Passions: Spiritual Landscapes of Fifteenth-Century Ferrara • Claudia Wardle
4 The Camino de Santiago and the Via dell’Angelo: Historical and Anthropological Contexts of their Routes • Antonella Palumbo
5 Pilgrimage Confraternities and Spiritual Travel in Catholic Reformation France • Elizabeth Tingle
Part II: Life Writing and Spiritual Travel
6 Seeing the Saviour in the Mind’s Eye: Burchard of Mount Sion’s Physical and Spiritual Travels to the Holy Land, c. 1274–1284 • Philip Booth
7 Spiritual Experiences in Portuguese Hagiographies and Sacred Biographies in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries • Paula Almeida Mendes
8 The ‘Contagiousness of the Sacred’: Writing Spiritual Biographies in Seventeenth-Century Le Puy-en-Vélay • Jennifer Hillman
Postscript: Spiritual Travel in the Twenty-First Century: Pilgrims or Tourists? • Tom Wilson
Notes on Contributors
Index

Citation preview

Soul Travel

Soul Travel Spiritual Journeys in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Jennifer Hillman and Elizabeth Tingle (eds)

PETER LANG Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • New York • Wien

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche National-bibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-1-78874-567-3 (print) • ISBN 978-1-78874-568-0 (ePDF) ISBN 978-1-78874-569-7 (ePub) • ISBN 978-1-78874-570-3 (mobi)

© Peter Lang AG 2019 Published by Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers, 52 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LU, United Kingdom [email protected], www.peterlang.com

Jennifer Hillman and Elizabeth Tingle have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this Work. All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. Printed in Germany

This volume is dedicated to Mary Hillman Jonathan Martin Tingle

Contents

List of Figures

ix

Acknowledgementsxi Jennifer Hillman and Elizabeth Tingle

Introduction Soul Travel: Spiritual Journeys in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe Part I  Modes of Spiritual Journeying

1 45

Mark Edwin Peterson

1 Reading as a Spiritual Journey: St Bridget of Sweden 

47

Kathryn Hurlock

2  Performing Pilgrimage in Late Medieval Wales 

81

Claudia Wardle

3 Participatory Passions: Spiritual Landscapes of Fifteenth-Century Ferrara

105

Antonella Palumbo

4 The Camino de Santiago and the Via dell’Angelo: Historical and Anthropological Contexts of their Routes 

125

Elizabeth Tingle

5 Pilgrimage Confraternities and Spiritual Travel in Catholic Reformation France

151

viii  Part II  Life Writing and Spiritual Travel

179

Philip Booth

6 Seeing the Saviour in the Mind’s Eye: Burchard of Mount Sion’s Physical and Spiritual Travels to the Holy Land, c. 1274–1284181 Paula Almeida Mendes

7 Spiritual Experiences in Portuguese Hagiographies and Sacred Biographies in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries

207

Jennifer Hillman

8 The ‘Contagiousness of the Sacred’: Writing Spiritual Biographies in Seventeenth-Century Le Puy-en-Vélay

235

Tom Wilson

Postscript Spiritual Travel in the Twenty-First Century: Pilgrims or Tourists? 267 Notes on Contributors

281

Index283

Figures

Figure 4.1. Figure 4.2.

Figure 4.3.

Figure 4.4. Figure 4.5. Figure 4.6. Figure PS.1.

The Miracle of Solidarity between Pilgrims, church of Santa Maria in Piano, Loreto Aprutino (PE), Italy. St James as Protector and Intercessor before the Virgin Mary, anonymous, Spanish School, seventeenth century, oil on canvas, Museo das Peregrinacións e de Santiago, Santiago de Compostela, La Coruña, Spain. ‘St James’s Bridge’, detail of the fresco of the Last Judgement, Maestro di Loreto, fourteenth century, church of Santa Maria in Piano, Loreto Aprutino (PE), Italy. Map of the tratturi, tratturelli, bracci and riposi, drafted by the Commissariato per la reintegra dei tratturi di Foggia, 1959, ASFG. The exterior of St James’s church, twelfth century, Pietracatella (CB), Italy. The ancient St James’s church, map (cabreo) of the clergy of Alberona (FG), 1774, Biblioteca Comunale of Barletta, Italy. The mural to David Bowie opposite Brixton tube station. Source: author’s photograph.

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133 142 143 145 277

Acknowledgements

The genesis for this volume of essays was a workshop at the University of Chester in 2016 followed by a conference at De Montfort University, Leicester, in September 2017. We would like to thank the University of Chester and the Society for Renaissance Studies for supporting the event in Chester. We are also grateful to De Montfort University and St Philip’s Centre, Leicester, for hosting the conference in Leicester. Thanks are also due to Professor Philip Soergel for chairing the Leicester conference and adding his wisdom to the proceedings. Along the way, we received much assistance from archivists and librarians. The Huntington Library in Pasadena CA was generous in its provision of a fellowship, which gave space and resources for some of the work on French confraternities. The Congrégation des Sœurs de l’Enfant Jésus in Paris gave generous access to, and invaluable advice about, manuscripts in their collection. We are grateful to the British Academy and Wellcome Trust which funded some of the research presented in this volume. We would also like to thank Philip Dunshea at Peter Lang for his guidance and the two anonymous reviewers for generous and useful advice. The volume is dedicated to Mary Hillman and Martin Tingle, who have travelled difficult paths in the last year, but who remain great souls.

Jennifer Hillman and Elizabeth Tingle

Introduction Soul Travel: Spiritual Journeys in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Great is the glee of the enemy of our nature when he sees a soul travelling – even on ways that are lofty and sublime – without caution and without the bridle of someone able to rule and govern. — Ignatius Loyola, Letters1

The Christian tradition has, at its core, spiritual journey. The Passion of Jesus Christ, written in the text of the Gospels as a narrative through Jerusalem from Gethsemane to Golgotha, was relived in the mind of every reader and listener from the first century ce onwards. Almost as early is the tradition of the Christian as a pilgrim, a traveller to places made holy by Christ and his apostles, then by His martyrs and confessor saints. Christians were also allegorical pilgrims, journeying through life from birth to the celestial kingdom. Body and soul travel were and are integral to Christian soteriology. In this volume, we will examine diverse ways in which different traditions have understood and experienced ‘soul travel’, in western Europe, across the period from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The concept of the spiritual journey gave structure to, and underpinned, life itself in medieval and early modern Europe. Across both the Catholic and Protestant traditions, the path to eternity was fraught; tests of spiritual resilience were part of everyday existence and only the most dedicated souls would endure them. For some, death marked only the 1

William S. Young, SJ, ed., Letters of Ignatius Loyola (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1959), 162.

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commencement of a new phase of spiritual travel – one pursued in the afterlife, as the soul journeyed through purgatory towards salvation. Indeed, the soul appears to have been imagined as fundamentally nomadic. In some contexts of course, ‘movements’ of the soul were not always spiritually beneficial and were often associated with the passions and sinful emotions or delusions.2 Yet the journeying soul could also yield spiritual fulfilment – whether ‘moving’ towards God during a religious conversion, ‘sailing’ relentlessly towards a mystical divine union, or in other forms of lofty spiritual travel. Soul travel therefore worked on a number of levels and scales in this period, from purposeful and intensive mystical journeys lasting only hours, to days or weeks, to the timeless and eternal progress of a peripatetic human soul through mortal life and the afterlife. As Dee Dyas reminds us, inner journeys included prayer, dreams, visions and use of the imagination. The first people for whom such journeys were devised were male and female religious as well as anchorites, whose enclosure in monastic communities meant they were unable to travel, whose religious culture ‘commonly insisted that physical stability, together with a corresponding degree of detachment from the world around, was a prerequisite for spiritual growth’.3 Subsequently, lay piety incorporated spiritual travel, sometimes partly from an incapacity to travel such as for women or the infirm, but also because accessing God through the personal interior was advocated by spiritual writers. Some clerics disapproved of physical pilgrimage. Even in the Early Church ‘it was difficult to reconcile sacrally charged space with the universality and spirituality of Jesus’s teachings and Pauline doctrine’ and ‘a thin line of principled objection’ ran through the medieval period, from Gregory of Nyssa to Bernard of Clairvaux.4 In the later Middle Ages,

2 3 4

Andrea Marculescu and Charles-Louis Morand Métivier, ‘Introduction’, in Andrea Marculescu and Charles-Louis Morand Métivier, eds, Affective and Emotional Economies in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (London: Palgrave, 2017), 5. Dee Dyas, Pilgrimage in Medieval English Literature 700–1500 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2001), 205–6. Robert Bartlett, Why Can the Dead do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 411.

Introduction

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Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ, also questioned the spiritual benefit of holy journeying, reminding Christians that salvation was an inward process better achieved at home; in the devotio moderna tradition, piety was increasingly focused on the eucharist and the interior life of the Christian was a pilgrimage toward eternal life, preferred to setting out physically on the road.5 It is clear that the importance of spiritual pilgrimage grew across the Middle Ages, particularly promoted by the mendicant orders and more especially the Observant Franciscans.6 Because of their strong Christological orientation, the mendicants sponsored new religious sensibilities that gave prominence to the life of Christ as a subject of meditation. This was to be an intimate experience, where the believer was encouraged to use her or his imagination to visualise the sacred events of Christ’s life, in proper sequence and full details, in their appropriate setting. It was to involve all the emotions and self-presencing in metaphorical space and time.7 By the turn of the sixteenth century, humanist criticism of externalities and ‘superstitions’ in religious practice became more prominent as exemplified by Desiderius Erasmus in his 1526 colloquy ‘The Religious Pilgrimage’ in which Ogygius travels to Compostela ‘for the sake of religion’ and returns home ‘full of superstition’ – and discretion and interiority were preferred.8 This trend towards inwardness augmented greatly in the Protestant and Catholic Reformations. Protestant reformers denied the efficacy of intercession, the existence of sacred space and the need for good works to achieve salvation: reading Scripture rather than bodily presence in a physical space, 5 6 7 8

Dominique Julia, ‘Pour une géographie européenne du pèlerinage à l’époque moderne et contemporaine’, in Philippe Boutry and Dominique Julia, eds, Pèlerins et pèlerinages dans l’Europe moderne (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 2000), 6. Larissa J. Taylor, Leigh Ann Craig, John B. Friedman, Kathy Gower, Thomas Izbicki and Rita Tekippe, eds, Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 693. See, for example, Stephen Kelly and Ryan Perry, eds, Devotional Culture in Late Medieval England and Europe. Diverse Imaginations of Christ’s Life (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014). D. Erasmus, The Colloquies of Erasmus, trans. N. Bailey, 2 vols (London: Reeves and Turner, 1878), 1–36, (accessed 4 February 2019).

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brought contact with God through the intermediary of the Holy Spirit.9 Catholics retained and restored ritual practice, focused particularly on Christ in the Mass and the intercession of the Virgin Mary. But in both traditions, mental prayer, meditation, conversion and a reformation of life were works of the spirit. The allegorical journey of a Christian soul moving towards heaven remained an important expression of piety and countless devotional works in both confessions used the concept of pilgrimage as spiritual travel to instruct the faithful in doctrine and piety. In this volume, we examine three types of spiritual journey. First, because of its longevity among Catholic and Protestant traditions, is the imagined pilgrimage, a journey to a sacred destination carried out in the mind. Such visualisation ‘was not only aimed at imagining presence in a particular place, but also motion through it, whether walking through the Temple to meditate on God’s law or following the footsteps of Christ in empathy with his Passion’.10 Textual and visual material aided and guided this activity in various ways. The second type is spiritual journeying in a physical place but conducted in a facsimile landscape. This might be a local reconstruction of a shrine or site, or an allegorical landscape of chapels and altars standing in for real places. The third type is the spiritual or devotional activity of pilgrims on their physical journeys, often supported by confraternities. In its most physical form, pilgrimage necessitated a corporeal journey to a holy site or shrine, but where the soul could also become enriched and spiritually ‘delighted’ by the experience.11 The volume is focused on ‘orthodox’ Christianity. ‘Soul travel’ is not used here in its folkloric sense, that is, journeys culminating in metaphysical connections with non-human or

9 10 11

For a discussion of Protestant responses to saints and sanctity, see Euan Cameron, ‘Saints, Martyrs and the Reformation: Reflections on Robert Bartlett’s Why Can the Dead do Such Great Things?’, Church History 85 (2016), 803–9. Lucy Donkin and Hanna Vorholt, ‘Introduction’, in Lucy Donkin and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Imagining Jerusalem in the Medieval West, special edition of Proceedings of the British Academy, 175 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 9. ‘Spiritual Delight’ is Christine Göttler’s phrase in ‘The Temptation of the Senses at the Sacro Monte di Varallo’, in Wietse de Boer, ed., Religion and the Senses in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 446.

Introduction

5

demonic spirits.12 Soul travel is not an out-of-body experience or a pretend rejection of the body as a shell that limits or impedes spiritual experiences. That would be anti-Christian. Rather, soul travel is used as simpler, prosaic shorthand for signifying the kinds of spiritual journeys Christians might undertake in body and/or soul in the late medieval and early modern periods through the concept of pilgrimage. Our approach in this volume speaks to the growing body of scholarship on late medieval and early modern pilgrimage which has used anthropological frameworks to recover and interpret pilgrim experiences. The concept of ‘liminality’ first proposed in Edith and Victor Turner’s pioneering analyses of pilgrimage continues to be relevant to the study of spiritual journeys. Pilgrims were, Turner and Turner argued, transitioning through different liminal states as they progressed through the journey to a shrine.13 The concept of soul travel used in this volume is premised on the notion of liminality, because it forces us to confront the fact that pilgrimage was never either corporeal or spiritual, but a confluence of the two. Pilgrimage has often been categorised unhelpfully by historians as either physical or ‘imagined’ – with virtual pilgrimage cast as a consolatory devotional act for those unable or forbidden to travel (generally lay women, or the female religious). In practice, pilgrimage appears to have been more various – conducted with different kinds of physical, external stimuli and requiring varying degrees of sensory, or imagined mental participation. The complexity of pilgrimage as a spiritual journey which, as we shall see, was often undertaken for the enrichment of both body and soul requires a more nuanced approach. Using soul travel as a lens through which to explore pilgrimage will, it is argued here, help us to reconfigure our understanding of spiritual pilgrimage as a devotional act in late medieval and early modern Europe. The case studies presented in this volume of essays also reveal, in a myriad of ways, the types of liminal spaces that practitioners of physical, virtual and imagined pilgrimage might have occupied. 12 13

As used by Owen Davies in Popular Magic: Cunning Folk in English History (London: Hambledon, 2003), 184. Victor Turner and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: An Anthropological Perspective (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978).

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To provide context for the essays in the volume, we turn next to the origins and evolution of soul travel. The framing historiography and chronology for this volume begins, along with Christianity itself, in Jerusalem and then spreads out across Europe and beyond.

Origins: Imagining Jerusalem and its Passion-Scape Spiritual journeys to Palestine and guidebooks to inform them are almost as old as Christianity itself. The central importance of Jerusalem for the history of salvation made it the object of intense study and devotion throughout the Middle Ages, which in turn ‘involved a process of imagination not as a means of envisaging entirely new creations but rather as a way of gaining a closer understanding of distant realities’.14 As early as around 380 ce, Egeria’s account of her Holy Land pilgrimage, written for ‘sisters’ who remained at home, shows that there was an active and well-organised religious tourism to the Middle East and a thirst for descriptions of the sites by sedentary Christians.15 Jerusalem was therefore the earliest recorded – and remained the most literarily prominent – destination for spiritual travel in the Middle Ages. Scholarly studies of this tradition have taken three broad directions: examinations of guidebooks and how they were used; explorations of visual and material culture, principally images including maps, replica landscapes and buildings, and their role in virtual travel; and considerations of devotional changes over time and their vision of life as pilgrimage. Here, the latter scholarship will be described only as it informs the other two areas. Traditionally, literary and historical studies of guidebooks, their authors, contents, influences and uses have been the main field of study for spiritual pilgrimage. In the Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage, the entry on spiritual pilgrimage privileged the fifteenth century for the emergence of spiritual guides to the Holy Land, stating that at this time ‘a literary genre 14 15

Donkin and Vorholt, ‘Introduction’, 1. Egeria’s Travels, trans. John Wilkinson (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1999).

Introduction

7

of spiritual guidebooks emerged that mapped the holy topography for such imaginary travel in analogy to traditional guidebooks. These texts tended to privilege experiential narratives of sacred places over a mere accounting of them’.16 In fact, there are numerous earlier guides with this objective. As literacy levels rose across the later Middle Ages, devotional texts, including pilgrimage literature and its audiences, increased in number, as the work of Jennifer Bryan has shown for late medieval England.17 Philip Booth’s essay in this volume, ‘Seeing the Saviour in the Mind’s Eye: Burchard of Mount Sion’s Physical and Spiritual Travels to the Holy Land, c. 1274–1284’, provides a study of early pilgrimage accounts which were used for spiritual effect. He observes that the ability of accounts relating to the Holy Land to provoke soul or imagined travel has been clearly documented, but he argues that what has been less clearly discussed is the way in which the pilgrim embarked on similar imagined travels into the biblical past when actually viewing the sites of the Holy Land themselves. Just as reading a pilgrimage text allowed the armchair pilgrim to embark on an imagined pilgrimage, so too seeing the sites of the Holy Land allowed a place-pilgrim to become an imagined pilgrim. Accordingly, the essay examines the relationship between the imagined experiences of ‘stationary’ or ‘armchair’ pilgrims and the imagined experiences of those Holy Land pilgrims who wrote accounts of their travels. Focusing primarily on the writings of Burchard of Mount Sion, Booth shows that mystical connections with the biblical past were as much a part of place-pilgrimage as imagined pilgrimage in the later Middle Ages and illustrates how both place and text served as witnesses of salvation history for these pilgrims. Richard Newhauser and Arthur Russell argue, however, that between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries, the focus of pilgrimage to the Holy

16 17

Taylor et al., eds, Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage, 693. Jennifer Bryan, Looking Inward: Devotional Reading and the Private Self in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). See also Christian K. Zacher, Curiosity and Pilgrimage. The Literature of Discovery in Fourteenth-Century England (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976); Elke Weber, Traveling through Text: Message and Method in Late Medieval Pilgrimage Accounts (London: Routledge, 2005).

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Land narrowed, from the wider landscape of the Bible to sites relating to the Passion: ‘no longer were pilgrims merely walking in the footsteps of the Master; rather, they were retracing the salvific steps from Pilate’s prison to Calvary’.18 They cite the example of Margery Kempe, who would meditate on the stages of the Passion until she was moved to tears. Margery actually visited the Holy Land but her physical presence there was not the cause of her imaginative and emotional interaction with the sites of the Passion: rather, ‘they live on, as her Book says, in “the city of her soul”’.19 The mendicant orders, particularly the Franciscans, were active promoters of spiritual pilgrimage based on the Passion, and the work by Maureen Bolton and Barry McCann on ‘fictional’ biographies of the lives of Jesus and the Virgin Mary has shown the importance of narrative theology to late medieval meditative devotions.20 The widely read Giardino de oration of 1454, probably by Nicholas of Osimo, proposed a way of meditating that was described as locative memory: the devotee had first to visualise Christ’s body in a very detailed way and second, to give shape mentally to the places, lands and rooms where he talked, as well as the people who were, one by one, in his company. When thinking of the Passion he or she was supposed to figure out the urban space of Jerusalem as if it were that of a familiar town … each scene had to be staged and set up in one’s own imagination.21

Such texts abounded in the fifteenth century and there have been numerous analyses of them. For example, Kathryn Rudy’s study of the late fifteenthcentury Oxford Queen’s College MS 357 reconstructs how it was used as 18

Richard G. Newhauser and Arthur J. Russell, ‘Mapping Virtual Pilgrimage in an Early Fifteenth-Century Arma Christi Roll’, in Lisa H. Cooper and Andrea Denny-Brown, eds, The Arma Christi in Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 100. 19 Newhauser and Russell, ‘Mapping Virtual Pilgrimage’, 101. 20 Maureen Boulton and Barry McCann, Sacred Fictions of Medieval France: Narrative Theology in the Lives of Christ and the Virgin, 1150–1500 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015). 21 Michele Bacci, ‘Locative Memory and the Pilgrim’s Experience of Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages’, in Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 70.

Introduction

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an aid to virtual pilgrimage. The manuscript contains Holy Land guides in Latin and English, prayers to be said at specific locations in the Holy City, and illustrations. Rudy argues that this is for spiritual and not physical travel, for while practical guides to Jerusalem followed the topographical layout of the city, spiritual guides such as MS 357 used a different organising principle, that of the chronology of Christ’s life and/or his Passion. Thus, the textual organisation reveals a central premise of Christian pilgrimage, that ‘walking in Christ’s physical footsteps will open the gates to the heavenly Jerusalem for the rest of time’.22 Another example of this genre is the study by Tsafra Siew of an illuminated German manuscript of the 1470s which belonged to the Franciscan monastery at Mainz. The manuscript lists the holy places along the pilgrimage route in and around Jerusalem; each station is represented either by an architectural picture of the site or by a depiction of the historical event that occurred there, accompanied by prayers to be read while looking at the image. For some of the stations on the itinerary, the reader-pilgrim was granted indulgences for saying the relevant prayers, as was the ‘real’ Jerusalem pilgrim at the corresponding sites.23 Such examples of devotional textual aids could be multiplied. Nuns were frequent spiritual pilgrims, for enclosure confined them to convents.24 Many works were produced for female religious use. The account of the Jerusalem pilgrim and Dominican friar Felix Fabri, prepared in 1492 and often known as Sionpilger, offered a guidebook for imagined journeys for the sisters of the convents of Medingen and Medlingen. This has been studied in detail by Kathryne Beebe. Fabri divided the Sionpilger into 208 22 Kathryn Rudy, ‘An Illuminated English Guide to Pilgrimage in the Holy Land: Oxford, Queen’s College MS 357’, in Lucy Donkin and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Imagining Jerusalem in the Medieval West, special edition of Proceedings of the British Academy, 175 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 219, 242. 23 Tsafra Siew, ‘Pilgrimage Experience: Bridging Size and Medium’, in Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 84. 24 See, for example, June L. Mecham, ‘A Northern Jerusalem: Transforming the Spatial Geography of the Convent of Wienhausen’, in S. Hamilton and A. Spicer, eds, Defining the Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 139–60.

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daily readings or ‘journeys’. The Rules given in the preface recommend that the virtual pilgrim consult the text before going to sleep in order to prepare for the next day’s journey. Provision was made for those who could not read but who listened to the guide. For example, Rule XIII allowed that if the virtual pilgrim could not read the Latin Psalter, she (or he) could substitute five or six Pater Nosters and Ave Marias for the daily psalm.25 As well as texts, historians have been increasingly interested in visual representations of the Holy Land and how these were used for spiritual pilgrimage. Kathryn Rudy suggests that ‘The Jerusalem cityscapes offer a uniquely intense empathetic experience by offering the viewer the sense of being on a virtual pilgrimage, of being within the image rather than merely a viewer of it’.26 Some of these are early in date. Thomas O’Loughlin, for example, argues that the plans of Jerusalem included in the treatise De locis sanctis by Adomnán, abbot of Iona, were ‘a response to the needs and assumptions of the seventh-century monastic community of Iona, which knew of the buildings and topography of Jerusalem primarily through textual descriptions in the Bible and later commentaries and accounts’; Adomnán presented his work as based on the accounts of a certain Arculf, who had visited the Holy Land in person.27 However, it was from the central Middle Ages and especially after 1400 that the rise in popularity of mental pilgrimage encouraged the creation of new images, plans and cityscapes of Jerusalem, often adapted from the real life layout, for the easier comprehension of the virtual rather than the real traveller.28 25

Kathryne Beebe, ‘The Jerusalem of the Mind’s Eye. Imagined Pilgrimage in the Late Fifteenth Century’, in Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 409, 414. 26 Kathryn M. Rudy, ‘Virtual Pilgrimage through the Jerusalem Cityscape’, in Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 381. 27 Thomas O’Loughlin, ‘Adomnán’s Plans in the Context of his Imagining The Most Famous City’, in Lucy Donkin and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Imagining Jerusalem in the Medieval West, special edition of Proceedings of the British Academy, 175 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 15–40. 28 Donkin and Vorholt, ‘Introduction’, 7. See also Blake Leyerle, ‘Landscape as Cartography in Early Christian Pilgrimage Narratives’, Journal of the American

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One of the best-known – and best-studied – examples is by the Benedictine monk of St Albans, Matthew Paris. In around 1250, Paris produced a set of maps to accompany his history of the world, Chronica Majora, which allowed the reader to make a visit to Jerusalem. The destined audience was not physical pilgrims but his fellow monks at home in England. Daniel Connolly’s work shows how Paris’s maps physically and visually conveyed the experience of a journey to Jerusalem. Readers were provided with a daily itinerary, together with accompanying lessons on Christian and imperial history.29 Paris deployed the turning of their pages to progress through that space … manipulating the flaps, reading aloud, turning the pages, engaged the body of the reader and created for their users, the experience of virtual travel through their spaces. … a series of cities linked to each other emphatically leading to the centre of Christendom at Jerusalem.30

The routes always begin at the lower edge of the book and move up the page; at a passage’s end, there is some natural feature, a river or a mountain range, and the turning of the page crosses its space. The physicality was to ‘excite both visual and aural senses’ and ‘created an experience of virtual travel for his fellow brethren. The pages thereby helped to create the devotional experience of an imagined or spiritual pilgrimage to Jerusalem’.31 One of the most popular guides, real and virtual, was the 1486 pilgrimage account of Bernhard von Breydenbach, Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam, with woodcuts produced by Erhard Reuwich actually en route. This was the first illustrated guide to the Holy Land. Its impact is shown in the twelve Academy of Religion 64 (1996), 119–43; and Keith D. Lilley, ed., Mapping Medieval Geographies. Geographical Encounters in the Latin West and Beyond 300–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 29 Daniel K. Connolly, ‘Copying Maps by Matthew Paris: Itineraries Fit for a King’, in Palmira Brummett, ed., The ‘Book’ of Travels: Genre, Ethnology and Pilgrimage, 1250–1700 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 159–203. See also Laura J. Whatley, ‘Experiencing the Holy Land and Crusade in Matthew Paris’s Maps of Palestine’, in Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 295–305. 30 Connolly, ‘Copying Maps by Matthew Paris’, 167. 31 Connolly, ‘Copying Maps by Matthew Paris’, 169.

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reprints of the work down to 1522 and the use of the woodcuts in several centres across Europe.32 The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw a number of processes at work which reduced the opportunity for European pilgrims to visit the Holy Land. The Ottoman invasion of the Balkans and eastern Mediterranean, Protestant Reformation in central and northern Europe, wars and economic instability throughout the region, all reduced pilgrim traffic. However, the period saw increased popularity in spiritual travel as Marie-Christine Gomez-Géraud’s study of more than eighty early modern pilgrimage accounts has shown.33 Wes Williams argues that in early modern period, Jerusalem gradually ceases to exist as a primarily real place in the European imagination, a place to be seen, witnessed and described in situ. It is gradually replaced by an imagined Jerusalem conjured up by description; less a place than a topic, part of a narrative or devotional sequence: a means to prayer and a prelude to the expression of desire.34

He shows that the expansion of print allowed even greater numbers of people who had never travelled to experience an imagined Jerusalem; in any case, many of these believed that the true pilgrimage was that undertaken in the mind.35 The aim was ‘the individual’s cultivation of the self, in private, and according to regulatory systems of meditation, articulated by means of directed reading’.36 There are examples of such texts in Latin and vernacular languages, particularly for Catholic use. Nicolas de Leuze’s reworking of Jean Pascha’s La Peregrination spirituelle vers la terre saincte, a day-by-day, year-long guide Bernhard von Breydenbach, Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam (Mainz: Erhard Reuwich, 1486). 33 Marie-Christine Gomez-Géraud, Le crépuscule du grand voyage: les récits de pèlerins à Jérusalem (1458–1612) (Paris: Champion, 1999). 34 Wes Williams, Pilgrimage and Narrative in the French Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 172. 35 Wes Williams, ‘A Mirrour of Mis-Haps/A Mappe of Miserie: Dangers, Strangers and Friends in Renaissance Pilgrimage’, in Palmira Brummett, ed., The ‘Book’ of Travels: Genre, Ethnology and Pilgrimage, 1250–1700 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 210. 36 Williams, Pilgrimage and Narrative, 172. 32

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to meditation in the form of a journey to Jerusalem, is just one of many pilgrim texts of the mid- to late sixteenth century designed for the spiritual traveller.37 From the early seventeenth century date Louis Balourdet’s La guide des Chemins pour le voyage de Hierusalem, et autres villes et lieux de la Terre Saincte (1601) and Henri de Castela’s La guide et adresse pour ceux qui veulent faire le S. voyage de Hierusalem (1604).38 The practice of harnessing the imagination to undertake spiritual journeys was central to Jesuit spirituality in particular. The Jesuit technique of constructing biblical scenes in the mind – the composition of place (or compositio loci) – was the cornerstone of Ignatius Loyola’s (1491–1556) Spiritual Exercises and was adapted by the writers of devotional guides. More directly aimed at the spiritual traveller were works by Luis de Granada (1501–88), Guía de pecadores and Vida de Cristo: para conocer, amar e imitar a nuestro Señor. Williams argues that ‘the text is structured as a journey towards Jerusalem, but the devotional pilgrim learns not by progressing merrily along the road, so much as by encountering and overcoming obstacles to forward movement’.39 For Williams, ‘the rhetoric of travel is redirected to construct an internally impregnable space within the body of the immobile believer’ and that this is a spiritual guide is shown by its address to young women, who were the least likely social group to undertake a long-distance pilgrimage overseas.40 Such texts were certainly meditational. The English version of Jan van Paeschen, The spiritual pilgrimage of Hierusalem, containing three hundre sixtie five dayes iourney, wherein the devoute person may meditate on sondrie pointes of his redemption. With particular declaration of divers saints bodies and holy places which are to be seene in the said voyage (Brussels, 1604–1605) was clearly for daily use at home. The very act of writing an account of a pilgrimage, in order to remember it in the spirit, either for oneself or for one’s immediate family or religious community, also increased from the later fifteenth century. Fabri, Breydenbach and other travellers to Jerusalem wrote and disseminated 37 Williams, ‘A Mirrour of Mis-Haps’, 211. 38 Williams, Pilgrimage and Narrative, 51. 39 Williams, Pilgrimage and Narrative, 77, 81. 40 Williams, Pilgrimage and Narrative, 84–5.

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accounts of their pilgrimage for others to use. But Anne-Sophie Germain de Franceschi has shown that in France at least across the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, there was also a growth in private, manuscript accounts, some of which were disseminated but others were private, intimate documents.41 Jerusalem was at the heart of spiritual pilgrimage and soul travel, throughout the medieval and early modern periods.

Beyond Jerusalem: Spiritual Pilgrimage and European Shrines in the Later Middle Ages and Reformation Period Spiritual Pilgrimage and European Shrines By the central Middle Ages, pilgrimage ad sanctos had become a key feature of Christian devotional life throughout Europe, for all social groups. Travel to a sacred place in search of saintly intercession was commonplace.42 Some shrines grew to be major cult centres and destinations, in particular Rome and Santiago de Compostela, but important inter-regional centres grew up, such as Cologne, Canterbury, Monserrat, La Baume and many others, and local shrines proliferated. Guided spiritual pilgrimages to these shrines were uncommon. Across medieval and early modern Europe, pilgrimages were often motivated by bodily, corporeal concerns, as well as spiritual ones. Some shrines were known for their thaumaturgical powers of healing and became choice destinations for pilgrims in search of cures, or even relief, from physical ailments. Collections of miracle stories connected to shrines present historians with some obvious methodological challenges, but they Anne-Sophie Germain de Franceschi, D’encre et de poussière: l’écriture du pèlerinage à l’épreuve de l’intimité du manuscrit: récits manuscrits de pèlerinages rédigés en français pendant la Renaissance et la Contre-réforme (1500–1620) (Paris: Champion, 2009). 42 Diana Webb, Medieval European Pilgrimage c. 700–c. 1500 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 30. 41

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also constitute some of our most important, and prolific, evidence for the social groups who visited shrines and their motivations for doing so.43 Ronald Finucane’s work on pilgrimage miracles reveals, for example, the large number of pilgrimages undertaken by parents seeking cures for their children – and, in particular, mothers suffering from pregnancy and birthrelated problems.44 Occasionally, pilgrims journeyed to shrines after a miracle had already been performed – having made a promise or ‘vow’ to do so. Childless couples, for example, would visit a shrine after conceiving a baby.45 Pilgrimage was, then, sometimes a ritual connected to everyday illnesses and family life in this period, and women were often important participants in it. Thomas Noonan argues that within Europe there was not the same tradition of extensive literary description of pilgrimage as there was for journeys to Palestine, the implication being that spiritual pilgrimage concerning such sites was also less frequent. The literature that was produced was usually more descriptive, of sites and shrines, or miracles and donations: ‘in place of a full-fledged travel narrative, was a vaguer noetic animal that was merely associated – often by way of advertisement or of historical description – with the goal of the pilgrim’.46 The pilgrim for whom this was designed was a traveller of the flesh rather than the spirit. There were exceptions, however. Vicarious pilgrimage was sometimes undertaken by proxy, where a pilgrim unable to travel would sponsor the journey of a substitute, usually via a testamentary bequest.47 Spiritualisation of travel could take many forms: a lively visualisation of a journey with holy people or to holy places, or an ‘out of body’ experience such as the revelations of St Bridget of Sweden or Margery Kempe. Mark Petersen’s 43 Webb, Medieval European Pilgrimage, 52. 44 Ronald Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents: Endangered Children in Medieval Miracles (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000). 45 Susan S. Morrison, Women Pilgrims in Late Medieval England: Private Piety as Public Performance (London: Routledge, 2000), 19. 46 F. Thomas Noonan, The Road to Jerusalem. Pilgrimage and Travel in the Age of Discovery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 128. 47 Leigh Anne Craig, Wandering Women and Holy Matrons: Women as Pilgrims in the Later Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 221.

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essay for this volume, ‘Reading as a Spiritual Journey: St Bridget of Sweden’, contributes to the studies of the complexities of female spiritual travel with a study of the making and reception of St Bridget’s writings. The fourteenthcentury saint spent many years meditating on the messages that God sent to her personally in visions, often a result of focused preparation and prayer, introspection and thought. Just as St Bridget went on pilgrimage, she also went inward, frequently, in journeys of contemplation to meet God or his messengers. Towards the end of her life, Bridget began to prepare a book explaining her visions to others, working actively with her confessors to record her visions and even to shape questions for God in order to provide greater clarity for her audience in their spiritual journey to faith. Readers such as Margery Kempe found the text and the revelations inspirational in their own spiritual journeys. An important correction to the text-centred approach of historians is Kathryn Hurlock’s contribution to this volume, ‘Performing Pilgrimage in Late Medieval Wales’, in which she examines poetic performance in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Wales. Hurlock argues that this allowed members of the gentry and nobility to experience pilgrimage collectively, to sites within and beyond the borders of Wales, without actually leaving their homes. Welsh pilgrims did not have to go physically on crusade to experience it collectively; as opposed to the more solitary activity of reading experienced by users of pilgrimage accounts, the very nature of Welsh poetry meant that it was heard communally, as the poets of the Beirdd yr Uchelwyr (the Poets of the Nobility, active in the late Middle Ages) performed for their patrons, family members and friends. Through the performance of the works of the poets, listeners could experience the journeys to Rome or Santiago, visualise the sights of the churches of Rome or the pilgrimage churches of north Wales, and experience the actions of pilgrims when they reached their destinations. In cases where poets had been on pilgrimage specifically for the benefit of their patrons – as was the case with Huw Cae Llwyd and Lewis Glyn Cothi – the performance of descriptive works after their return allowed the patrons and their families to experience the pilgrimages which had brought them spiritual reward without risking the dangers of a lengthy overseas journey.

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The Counter Reformation saw three developments that augmented virtual journeys to European shrines. First, religious conversion and experience continued to be – and indeed perhaps more so – a highly introspective and interiorised process. Soul travel was favoured by the devout even above visiting sacred places. Secondly, with greatly reduced travel to the Holy Land from the mid-sixteenth century and the augmented status of Rome as a destination in the post-Tridentine Church, spiritualisation of the Holy See also grew in devotional importance. Even in the Middle Ages, Rome as an imagined destination was used for devotions in some churches. As with the Jerusalem pilgrimage, women religious enclosed in their convents were particular devotees of these exercises, such as those at St Katherine’s Convent in Augsburg studied by Marie-Luise Ehrenschwendtner.48 The papacy was often willing to grant indulgences to pilgrims who had the means to make offerings, but who were unable to get to Rome. In 1451, for example, Henry VI helped to secure a substitute pilgrimage for Richard Tunstall, who could not leave England for Rome because of his refusal to abandon his duties to the king. Tunstall was to instead visit St Peter’s Westminster and St Paul’s London several times in order to ‘mimic’ the pilgrimage to Rome.49 It was the great post-Tridentine and post-Lepanto Roman Jubilee of 1575, organised by Gregory XIII, that began a century of large-scale influxes followed by virtual pilgrimages all over Europe. As in the Middle Ages, many could not travel. For them, the devotional works written for pilgrims, physical and spiritual, were important. Gaspard Loarte, Jesuit, produced Trattato delle sante peregrinationi, a devotional handbook for those on the road but also for those who stayed at home, for the Christian life wherever it was led was a pilgrimage.50 The English cleric Gregory Martin published two works to encourage visits in body or, more likely, in spirit, Roma sancta (1581) and

48 Marie-Luise Ehrenschwendtner, ‘Virtual Pilgrimages? Enclosure and the Practice of Piety at St Katherine’s Convent, Augsburg’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 60 (2009), 45–73. 49 Diana Webb, Pilgrimage in Medieval England (London: Hambledon, 2000), 109. 50 Gaspard Loarte, Trattato delle sante peregrinationi (Rome: Guiseppe delle Angeli, 1575).

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A treatyse of Christian peregrination (1583).51 This tradition continued into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Associated with the Roman pilgrimage was the Holy House of Loreto on the Adriatic coast of Italy, for it lay within the papal jurisdiction and pilgrims often visited both sites. The Holy House was claimed to be the cottage where the Annunciation had taken place, the meeting between the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary where Christ was conceived. The house was miraculously transported from Palestine, via the Dalmatian coast, to Loreto and here a major cult centre was developed across the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Holy House became a major inspiration for spiritual journeying in early seventeenth-century Europe, part of a widespread upsurge in Marian devotions in the Counter Reformation. The earliest and one of the most influential aids was Luis de Grenada’s 1575 Istruttione de’ Peregrini che vanno alla Madonna di Loreto, et ad altri luoghi Santi which stressed that the journey is only fruitful if the heart is well intended. Confession and communion are crucial preparations; purity must be sustained in its growth by devotional exercise.52 The Jesuit Orazio Torsellini followed with a Latin text, Historiae Lauretanae libri quinque in 1597.53 One of best-known guides was Louis Richeome’s work of 1604, Le Pelerin de Lorète, which took the form of a travelogue to Loreto over forty days, with meditations to accompany each day.54 In essence a form of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, Richeome’s work has received much scholarly attention.55 Gomez-Géraud argues that the point of the work is to Gregory Martin, Roma sancta (Rome, 1582); Gregory Martin, A treatyse of Christian peregrination (Paris, 1583). 52 Williams, Pilgrimage and Narrative, 77. 53 Orazio Torsellini, Historiae Lauretanae libri quinque (Rome, 1597). 54 Jean Chelini and Henry Branthomme, Les Chemins de Dieu. Histoire des pèlerinages chrétiens des origines à nos jours (Paris: Hachette, 1982), 255; Louis Richeome, Le Pèlerin de Lorète, voeu à la glorieuse vierge Marie, mère de Dieu, pour Monseigneur le Dauphin (Paris: S. Millange, 1604), English version, Louis Richeome, The Pilgrime of Loreto. Performing his vow made to the Glorious Virgin Mary Mother of God (Paris, 1629). 55 For example, Marie-Christine Gomez-Géraud, ‘Entre chemin d’aventure et parcours d’initiation. Le pèlerin de Lorette de Louis Richeome’, in Pierre-André Sigal, ed., 51

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lead the Christian to the heart of the mysteries of the life of Christ and of the Virgin, ‘a dive into the soul of God, through contemplation of the mysteries of the incarnation … the personalities of Scripture and the pilgrim occupy the same space, inhabit the same universe and walk together’.56 For Richeome, the true pilgrimage was interior and could take place at home. The pilgrim is no longer that of the Middle Ages, a person sanctified by physical contact with the holy place, but someone who inhabits and spreads out God’s strength. The traveller in God opens him or herself to personal sanctification to win other souls, by becoming a spiritual guide and an apostle.57 Works on Loreto were translated into several languages. Thomas Price published an English translation of Torsellini’s text in 1608 and John Sweetnam, SJ, published The Paradise of Delights, Or the B Virgins garden of Loreto. With briefe discourses upon her divine letanies by way of meditation (1620). Richeome’s The Pilgrim of Loreto was translated into English by Edward Walpole in 1629. In 1635, Robert Corbington published The miraculous origin and translation of the church of our B. Lady of Loreto, a translation of the work of Pietro di Giorgio Tolomei, and in the same year he also translated the work into the Scottish dialect, The wondrous flittinge of the kirk of our B. Ledy of Loreto. For beleaguered Catholics in the British Isles, spiritual journeys to pilgrimage sites were necessary substitutes for real travel. Thirdly, regional and even some local shrines produced literature for pilgrims that could be used for spiritual as well as practical travel, either by the returning pilgrim who practised devotions in remembrance of the journey, or for a wider public. There are examples for every Catholic region, such as Jean Halin’s guide for pilgrims to Maastricht of 1623; Thomas Messingham’s Florilegium Insulæ Sanctorum of 1624 which included details of the St Patrick’s Purgatory pilgrimage in north-west Ireland; and Robert Quatremaire’s history and guide for the pilgrimage to the Mont

56 57

L’image du pèlerin au Moyen Age et sous l’Ancien Régime (Gramat: Association des Amis de Rocamadour, 1994), 231–52. Gomez-Géraud, ‘Entre chemin d’aventure et parcours d’initiation’, 235. Gomez-Géraud, ‘Entre chemin d’aventure et parcours d’initiation’, 238.

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Saint-Michel in Normandy of 1668.58 Bruno Maës has made a detailed study of almost 600 extant pilgrimage booklets for the shrines of France from the later fifteenth to the early eighteenth centuries. He argues that there is a clear move towards interiority, with late medieval booklets focusing on miracles, those of the sixteenth century on polemical debate and orthodox doctrine, but those of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries privileging prayers and meditations. As literacy rose in France, so reading and meditative travel became part of the strategy of salvation for ever wider social groups.59 Jennifer Hillman’s essay in this volume is concerned with the textual, devotional culture of a pilgrimage town in south-central France: Le Puy-enVélay. In the medieval and early modern periods, pilgrims flocked to Le Puy from all over Europe to seek the intercession of the Black Madonna of Le Puy: one of the most significant Marian shrines of the era and the starting point for soul travellers embarking on the Way of St James – the route to Santiago de Compostela. The important work of Virginia Reinburg has already revealed much about the episcopal reforms which aimed to bring rituals, processions and devotions into line with the Tridentine agenda, as well as the activism of Jesuit scholars in the documentation and authentication of miracles occurring at the shrine.60 Building upon this, Hillman’s essay aims to uncover the contributions that local, spiritual biographers were making to the Catholic revival in Le Puy by exploring an corpus of Jean Halin, Brief dialogue d’un homme passant son chemin and d’un honeste et scavant prestre qui conduit des pelerins a Maestrecht, auquel est mostre le proffit des pelerinages et la manière de bien les faire (Liege, 1623); Thomas Messingham, Florilegium Insulæ Sanctorum (Paris, 1624); Histoire abrégée du Mont-S.-Michel en Normandie; avec les motifs et la méthode pour utilement et saintement faire le pèlerinage du glorieux archange S. Michel et de tous les saints anges. Par un religieux Bénédictin de la congrégation de Saint-Maur (Paris, 1668). 59 Bruno Maës, Les livrets de pèlerinage. Imprimerie et culture dans la France moderne (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2016). 60 Virginia Reinburg, ‘Les pèlerins de Notre-Dame du Puy’, Revue de l’histoire de l’Eglise de France 75.195 (1989), 297–313; Virginia Reinburg, ‘Archives, Eyewitnesses and Rumours: Writing about Shrines in Early Modern France’, Past and Present supplement 11, 201 (2016), 174–5; Virginia Reinburg, French Books of Hours: Making An Archive of Prayer, c. 1400–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 58

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intersecting vitae or ‘Lives’ produced in the mid-to-later seventeenth century. The chapter concentrates on the healing miracles that spiritual biographers exhorted their readers to consider as ‘proof ’ of the sanctity of local pious individuals – miracles which, it is argued, were strongly inflected by the traditions surrounding the shrine of the Black Virgin. The significance of sacred biographies and hagiographies as sources for imagined spiritual journeys is further elucidated by Paula Almeida Mendes’s essay in this volume. As her work reveals, the spiritual journey was often an important narrative device in the vitae (or ‘Lives’) of the devout. Mendes shows how Portuguese ‘Lives’ of saints, sacred biographies and autobiographies, narrated spiritual journeys which were intimately associated with ‘travel’ to the ‘Beyond’ – whether Paradise, Purgatory or Hell. Mendes shows that while the authors rarely used the semantics of the ‘journey’ directly in their texts, the spiritual experiences they described went beyond simple, or static ‘visions’. Pious individuals did ‘travel’ in these visions and biographers clearly envisaged the geography of the afterlife. Concentrated periods of imagined spiritual travel were therefore situated within a broader spiritual journey constructed by biographers and hagiographers. Finally, as with the Jerusalem pilgrimage, images and objects played an important role in facilitating soul travel to distant places. Images were produced by shrines in great numbers from the later fifteenth into the eighteenth centuries; they were taken home and, among other uses, were the focus of prayer and meditation. Megan H. Foster-Campbell has argued that pilgrimage badges sewn into late medieval Flemish prayer books could permit owners to practise mental pilgrimage – ‘whether through memory or imagination’.61 In particular, images showed the important events that had taken place in a sanctuary, encouraging meditation and mental travel to that point in time: the Jesuits particularly used such means of pedagogy.62 The practice continued to be important across the centuries.

61

Megan H. Foster-Campbell, ‘Pilgrimage through the Pages: Pilgrims’ Badges in Late Medieval Devotional Manuscripts’, in Sarah Blick and Laura D. Gelfand, eds, Push Me, Pull You: Imaginative, Emotional, Physical and Spatial Interaction (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 229. 62 Maës, Les livrets de pèlerinage, 131.

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Spiritual Landscapes: Facsimile Shrines and Interior Devotions Virtual pilgrimage could occur in reconstructed landscapes, designed to evoke and sometimes replicate or reproduce holy sites. As the work of many scholars has demonstrated, from the early Middle Ages, religious and then urban communities began to construct facsimile or allegorical physical landscapes, primarily representations of Jerusalem or the Passion-scape of Christ.63 Tamila Mgaloblishvili argues that as early as the first half of the fourth century, the first replicas of the city of Jerusalem began to appear in Christendom, among them the ancient capital of Georgia, Mtskheta.64 As Beebe states, virtual pilgrimage sought to re-appropriate Jerusalem as a Christian city by constructing it in the mind’s eye of the virtual pilgrim and transposing Jerusalem to the pilgrim’s own convent or town … virtual pilgrims enact, through the contemplation of textual guides as well as the material fabric of their own convents, the transformation of their surroundings into Jerusalem itself.65

Entirely devotional in their conception, such reconstructions of pilgrimage landscapes permitted small-scale travel around the sites themselves – virtual pilgrimage ‘enacted through bodily movement’ as Kathryn Blair Moore has put it.66 Bianca Kühnel argues that many aspects of the Holy Landscapes point to their being intended as mnemonic devices to help people remember the essentials of Christian doctrine. The use of known, contemporary physiognomies, artefacts and costumes, rendered naturalistically, was

63 Yamit Rachman-Schrire, ‘Sinai Stones on Mount Zion: Mary’s Pilgrimage in Jerusalem’, in Renana Bartel and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Between Jerusalem and Europe. Essays in Honour of Bianca Kühnel (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 57. 64 Tamila Mgaloblishvili, ‘How Mtskheta Turned into the Georgians’ New Jerusalem’, in Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 59–66. 65 Beebe, ‘The Jerusalem of the Mind’s Eye’, 413. 66 Kathryn Blair Moore, The Architecture of the Christian Holy Land (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 162.

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meant to smooth the way of the spectator through identification with the scene, in order to remember or internalise it without difficulty.67

A similar function was performed through the integration of local topographical features into of Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Facsimile pilgrim landscapes took two broad forms: firstly, actual reconstructions of features of the Holy Land and City, based loosely on the original landscape and architecture, and secondly, the use of alternative buildings and features, such as chapels or altars within a church, to provide allegorical Holy Land sites. Kühnel has examined western European recreations of Jerusalem in the German and Italian lands. Before the twelfth century, she argues, reconstructed landscapes focused almost entirely on Christ’s sepulchre, such as the rotunda built by the bishop of Constance near to his cathedral in 940.68 Similarly, in late medieval Gouda, a Gothic chapel named the ‘Jeruzalem Chapel’ was designed as a replica of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.69 From the twelfth century onwards, reconstructions incorporated a greater number of holy sites as increased interest in the Holy Land and the period of the Crusades gave an incentive and provided first-hand knowledge about Palestine. Bologna and Pisa, the two earliest known Italian Jerusalem sites, seem to have been the first to expand their reference to the holy city beyond the church of the Holy Sepulchre; Bologna probably had a Jerusalem complex that extended over a good portion of the town.70 But the larger-scale landscape transformations to make facsimile Jerusalems really began in the fifteenth century. Michele Bacci shows that in this period, more structured forms of ‘kinetic’ devotions had become

67 Bianca Kühnel, ‘Virtual Pilgrimages to Real Places: the Holy Landscapes’, in Lucy Donkin and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Imagining Jerusalem in the Medieval West, special edition of Proceedings of the British Academy, 175 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 264. 68 Kühnel, ‘Virtual Pilgrimages to Real Places’, 246. 69 Henry Luttikhuizen, ‘Still Walking: Spiritual Pilgrimage, Early Dutch Painting and the Dynamics of Faith’, in Sarah Blick and Laura D. Gelfand, eds, Push Me, Pull You: Imaginative, Emotional, Physical and Spatial Interaction (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 200–1. 70 Kühnel, ‘Virtual Pilgrimages to Real Places’, 248.

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fairly widespread, especially in Germany and the Low Countries: ‘devotees were encouraged to combine meditation on the Passion with a stroll along the streets of a familiar city and to stop of regular intervals corresponding to the distances separating the holy sites of Jerusalem’.71 The cycle of seven stations by Adam Kraft in Nuremberg is a prominent example; stations are marked by columns topped by relief representations of the respective events of the Passion. The columns are spread at equal distances (1,100 paces) throughout the city, beginning at Pilate’s House, near one of the city gates and ending at St John’s Cemetery outside the city walls. There are two other similar complexes in Franconia – Bamberg and Volkach – and an even more extensive one in Gorlitz.72 In Leuven, a series of stations were set out based on the observations of a pilgrim, Pieter Sterckx, who had returned from the Holy Land in 1505.73 Examples of the sanctification of cityscapes could be multiplied. The oldest of Italy’s northern sacrimonti, Varallo, was begun in 1481, by the Franciscan Bernardo Caimi, former Custos in the Holy Land. The site was a combination of architecture (chapels), sculpted figures and frescos linked by pathways, with scenes in each chapel representing either the Passion narrative or major topographical features of Jerusalem. Pilgrims progressed around the landscape, spiritually envisioning the scene in Jerusalem itself.74 The slightly later Gerusalemme di Valdelsa in Tuscany (1500–15) is an open, unwalled landscape shaped according to the topography of the Holy City, with loca sancta commemorating New and Old Testament events, ‘peopled’ with life-sized statue scenes. Another example is the Holy Mountain of San Vivaldo in Tuscany, built in 1500 and associated with the Franciscan monastery at the site. Like Varallo, it represents the holy places of Jerusalem and its environs with chapels which contain terracotta statues

71 Bacci, ‘Locative Memory and the Pilgrim’s Experience of Jerusalem’, 71. 72 Kühnel, ‘Virtual Pilgrimages to Real Places’, 251–3. 73 Moore, The Architecture of the Christian Holy Land, 210. 74 Dominique Julia, ‘Identité pèlerine, identité du passage’, in Catherine Vincent, ed., Identités pèlerines, Actes du colloque de Rouen, 15–16 mai 2002 (Rouen: Université de Rouen, 2004), 243.

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and frescos depicting events from sacred history.75 These landscapes allowed for individual and group devotion, exercised inside or outside the official liturgy, and were particularly suited to the laity. Kühnel argues that the mediatory role assigned to the visual arts is based on the medieval notion of memory … painting, like writing induces remembrance. … memory can include not only the mind’s recall of the historical past but also of transcendental realities. The religious image thus appeals to the memory of the events of the salvation history and implicitly commemorates their orientation to the future.76

Allegorical use of church buildings also presenced Jerusalem for the purpose of meditation and spiritual travel. ‘Labyrinths’ were constructed on the floors of Gothic cathedrals across Europe and required virtual pilgrims to crawl through mazes towards the altar, where they would reach ‘Jerusalem’.77 Kathryne Beebe and June L. Mecham have shown that throughout the Rhineland and Germany in the fifteenth century, enclosed convents of nuns created their own visual constructs of the city of Jerusalem. In particular, they used their material surroundings to create mental images of the city for the mind and the heart.78 Kathryn Rudy has provided a detailed study of the stationary and somatic spiritual pilgrimages of nuns of the Low Countries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which used locally produced manuscript texts. Rudy has identified seventeen such surviving manuscripts as well as images and objects that helped the pilgrim to imagine walking alongside Christ during his journey to Calvary.79 Elsewhere, it seems that profane spaces could also be appropriated by virtual pilgrims for whom travel was not an option. In 1500, for example, Swiss theologian Johann Geiler von Kaiserberg (1445–1510) designed a pilgrimage to Rome

75 Siew, ‘Pilgrimage Experience’, 86. 76 Kühnel, ‘Virtual Pilgrimages to Real Places’, 263. 77 Lynn F. Jacobs, Threshold and Boundaries: Liminality in Netherlandish Art (1385–1530) (London: Routledge, 2017). 78 Beebe, ‘The Jerusalem of the Mind’s Eye’, 409; Mecham, ‘A Northern Jerusalem’, 139–60. 79 Kathryn M. Rudy, Virtual Pilgrimages in the Convent. Imagining Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011).

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for prisoners and calculated that convicts could mimic the journey by pacing their cells for seven miles a day, for seven weeks.80 The reconstruction of Jerusalem continued after the Reformation, at least in Catholic territories. There were changes such as the growth of importance of the devotion of the stations of the cross as an alternative to pilgrimage to the Holy Land. For example, in Paris a shrine of Calvary on Mont Valérien was granted letters patent from Louis XIII in 1640. To support and promote the pilgrimage, a Confraternity of the Cross was established in 1644, and its statutes confirmed in 1707. René-François du Breil de Pontbriant, in Pèlerinage du calvaire sur le mont Valérien (1779), considered Mont Valérien ‘a Calvary that ceaselessly calls to mind that of Jerusalem where Jesus Christ was sacrificed and died for our salvation’; one is led by the experience on the mountain to be ‘inflamed’ with love and touched by the edifying sites. One sheds tears. One enters into ‘transports’ of sympathy in imagining the sufferings and triumphs of the Saviour.81 Other shrines stimulated facsimile pilgrimage landscapes as well, but these are much less well known than the Jerusalem sites. There were few in the Middle Ages, but the phenomenon became more popular in the Counter Reformation. In Italy, the model of the sacro monte Varallo was used for sites other than Jerusalem. For example, meditative landscapes were created at Crea in 1590, dedicated to St Eusebius, bishop of Vercelli, and to the Mysteries of the Rosary; at Orta in 1592, dedicated to the posthumous miracles of St Francis; and Varese, constructed in 1604–90, again dedicated to the Mysteries of the Rosary.82 The Holy House of Loreto was also ‘transported’ over the Alps and life-sized copies built, particularly in eastern and central Europe, such as Prague. Claudia Wardle’s essay in this volume, ‘Participatory Passions: Spiritual Landscapes of Fifteenth-Century Ferrara’, takes the medium of painting to show how allegorical pilgrimages could be represented in art. She argues

80 D. K. Smith, The Cartographic Imagination in Early Modern England (Farnham: Ashgate, 2008), 36. 81 Noonan, The Road to Jerusalem, 123. 82 Kühnel, ‘Virtual Pilgrimages to Real Places’, 259.

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that for the Church Fathers such as John Chrysostom and Gregory of Nyssa an interaction existed between the inner, spiritual landscape and the exterior, physical world. Owing to Christianity’s theology of typology and the divine transcendence of time and space, which is critical to patristic thought and landscape-consciousness, sacred artworks can depict scenes which break out of objective and linear time. Old Testament evocations of type may be found within New Testament landscapes, or a saint’s vision may be present to blur the line between interior spiritual reality and exterior landscape experience. In Ferrara, where humanists were avidly studying and translating the works of the Latin and Greek Church Fathers, artworks with fantastically ‘anachronic’ landscapes flourished. The condition of the souls of human figures, presented as desired and destined landscapes, overlap and merge with exterior and physical place. This essay explores some examples of scenes in which both the visible and invisible, exterior and interior, are depicted in interaction, that is, ‘soul journeys’. Antonella Palumbo’s essay in this volume examines the iconography of St James the Greater and St Michael Archangel on the pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela and Monte Sant’Angelo. Her essay reveals that along the main pilgrimage routes and the alternative routes known as tratturi or sheep tracks, images drawn from the two cults were frequently used, sometimes together, representing a sacred landscape separate from but leading to the cult centres. She argues, therefore, that virtual pilgrimage landscapes were an important part of spiritual journeys – even for pilgrims who were able to travel. Indulgences and Virtual Pilgrimage From the later Middle Ages, spiritual travel to major shrines was stimulated by the increasing granting of papal plenary indulgences to communities, religious and lay, who wanted to offer their members the same spiritual advantages as those available to Christians living close to the holy sites. The origin of this practice was again associated with the mendicant orders although it rapidly spread to other congregations and secular churches. Apart from a brief hiatus during the middle years of the sixteenth century,

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it grew enormously popular in the Counter Reformation, as the work of Elizabeth Tingle has shown.83 Indulgences became instruments for the widest possible radiation of pilgrimage outward from its ancient centres.84 Some pilgrimage sites throughout Europe were ‘franchised’ by the use of indulgences well before the Reformation, to increase access to those who could not travel and to augment the revenue of the ‘home’ institutions. The plenary indulgence available by the fourteenth century to pilgrims who visited the Franciscan chapel of the Portiuncula outside Assisi, rebuilt by St Francis, was gradually extended to all the churches of the order and its affiliates. In 1622, Gregory XV granted it to the Observantines and Recollects and in 1643, Urban VIII extended it to the churches of the Tertiary Order.85 It was available in many towns and cities throughout Catholic Europe. More famously and popularly, Roman sites were offered via pardons. The introduction of a Holy Jubilee Year by Pope Boniface VIII in 1300 was initially repeated every fifty years, before being reduced to every twenty-five years in 1470. It promised a plenary indulgence to pilgrims who visited the Roman churches of St Peter, St John Lateran, St Paul Fuori le Mura and St Maria Maggiore.86 Pilgrims from across Europe came in their droves; the indications are that as many as 5,000 visited Rome per day in 1300.87 The jubilee of 1575 attracted 100 times the number of pilgrims journeying to Jerusalem that year and pilgrimage guidebooks reveal that the Tridentine Church was exhibiting some of its most holy and precious relics including St Veronica’s veil.88 At first, the Roman Jubilee was offered only to pilgrims Elizabeth Tingle, Indulgences after Luther: Pardons in Counter-Reformation France (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2015). 84 Noonan, The Road to Jerusalem, 106. 85 Henry Charles Lea, A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church, 3 vols (London: Swan Sonnenschien, 1896), III, 245. 86 Tingle, Indulgences, 62. 87 Simon Ditchfield, ‘Reading Rome as Sacred Landscape’, in Will Coster and Andrew Spicer, eds, Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 167. 88 Andrew R. Casper, ‘Display and Devotion: Exhibiting Icons and their Copies in Counter-Reformation Italy’, in Wietse de Boer, ed., Religion and the Senses in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 43–6. 83

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visiting Rome during the Holy Year. Alexander VI extended the Roman Jubilee of 1500 to all Christians, such that everyone could participate in the great indulgence on condition that they contribute a specified sum to the costs of the war against the Turks. Although the financial element was later dropped, it remained the custom for the pope to extend the Roman indulgence to the rest of the Catholic world in the year following the Jubilee, whereby designated churches in diocesan centres acted as surrogates for the Roman churches, and a pilgrimage around them carried the same indulgences.89 As Noonan argues, indulgences proved extremely flexible spiritual instruments for coping with the problem of distance.90

The Spiritualisation of Physical Pilgrimage From the earliest days, pilgrims were urged to penitence, devotion and humility on their journeys to see the saints. From the later sixteenth and more particularly the seventeenth centuries, historians have shown that there was an attempt on the part of clergy to spiritualise pilgrimage, such that physical journeys were also spiritual journeys, a reformation of life and an interior conversion to faith, linked to introspection, interiority, mental prayer and finding God in one’s inner space. For example, Jesuit-authored booklets were informed by their spirituality based on the senses, and emphasised work which the devotee had to do to create a place in which he had to situate himself in order to receive grace, an interior road along which he had to travel. Exercises allowing for spiritual retreat appeared in pilgrimage literature; devotional exercises were intended to effect a transformation of the heart and of comportment; the devout journey allowed the pilgrim to change his heart through imitation of the saints. A complete conversion

89 F. Beringer, Les indulgences, leur nature et leur usage, trans. E. Abt and E. Fayerstein, 2 vols (Paris, 1890), I, 480. 90 Noonan, The Road to Jerusalem, 106.

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was obtained by imitating the saint in all aspects of his or her life.91 Prayers and meditations were provided, in particular those associated with the sacraments of confession and communion. The anonymous writer of a pilgrimage pamphlet for the shrine of Notre-Dame-de-Benoiste-Vaux in France remarked that few had accomplished the pilgrimage who did not feel some interior transformation, having received extraordinary enlightenment and knowledge from God and feeling unaccustomed movements of piety and religion, love of God, devotion towards the Virgin Mary, an inclination towards virtue, a horror of sin and other similar emotions.92 Pilgrims were encouraged to visit shrines to ask for cures of the soul even above cures of the body. They were also encouraged, through emotional language in texts, to have intimate, personal relationships with the Virgin and saints to whom they were praying.93 One of the most important means by which pilgrimage was spiritualised for ordinary Catholics was through participation in confraternities. P. Charpentrat has argued for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that important shrines and cult centres created a confraternity or congregation, which devotees were encouraged to join, and by participating in its rites and devotions they acquired the same graces as if they had taken to the road.94 Elizabeth Tingle’s essay in this volume, ‘Pilgrimage Confraternities and Spiritual Travel in Catholic Reformation France’, examines their role. She argues that early modern confraternities were related to pilgrimage in several ways. They could be founded by ex-pilgrims and offer a means of celebrating and commemorating their activity and favoured cult, and offer practical support to those people who wanted to go on pilgrimage. There were also three key ways in which pilgrimage confraternities fostered the concept of pilgrimage as a spiritual endeavour, linked to meditation and prayer. The first of these was the creation of prayer societies through 91 Maës, Les livrets de pèlerinage, 111, 125. 92 Anon., Histoire et miracles de Nostre Dame de Benoiste-Vaux ensemble les exercices and devotions du pelerin (Verdun, 1644), 38. 93 Maës, Les livrets de pèlerinage. 94 Pierre Charpentrat, ‘L’architecture et son public: les églises de la Contre-Réforme’, Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 28 (1973), 92.

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subscription to a confraternity based at a shrine – a sort of ‘virtual’ confraternity. Secondly, confraternities could organise imitation or proxy pilgrimages, which emulated at a local and reduced level one of the great pilgrimages. It could endow the participant with some and sometimes all of the same privileges as attendance at the distant shrine and did so by encouraging an imagining of the experience of pilgrimage itself as a devotional exercise. Thirdly, there was full spiritual journeying itself, where the participant did not need to leave his or her dwelling or chapel. From the later sixteenth century and more frequently from the seventeenth century confraternities were active commissioners of literature for their members. The content focused on the interior reform of the Christian through pious exercises, particularly a daily examination of conscience, meditations and prayers including offices for various Masses or festivals, and there was usually a list of indulgences which could be obtained by certain orations and actions. Spiritual pilgrimage – at the least as meditation and prayer and at the more expansive end, imagined journey – was fostered together with physical journeying.

Protestantism and Spiritual Pilgrimage ‘True Christian Pilgrimage’, asserted Martin Luther, was not to Rome or Compostela, but ‘to the prophets, the psalms and the Gospels’. As Luther’s statement epitomises, the early Protestant Reformation saw an attack on the bases of pilgrimage culture. As the reformers rejected saints’ cults, shrines and the soteriology of good works, all over Europe pilgrimage diminished in volume or ceased altogether. In post-Tridentine Catholic Europe, pilgrimage was soon restored and celebrated by the Church, sometimes with polemical purposes. As we have already outlined, it was also embraced by the Catholic devout, for whom pilgrimage in all its forms (physical, virtual, imagined) afforded innumerable spiritual and physical benefits. While the Protestant Churches never officially accepted or promoted pilgrimage, the more recent scholarship on spiritual travel emphasises greater

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continuity in practice than historians have traditionally supposed.95 The cross-confessional approach to soul travel presented in this volume aligns well with this shift in the scholarship. It is argued here that Protestants, too, were spiritual pilgrims who re-appropriated aspects of pilgrimage culture. What did this re-appropriation of spiritual pilgrimage look like? Firstly, there is now a significant body of evidence to suggest that even if Protestants rejected the efficacy of journeys to local shrines and sites dotted throughout the landscape in Europe, they did not abandon travel to the Holy Land altogether. After all, even Jean Calvin himself had recognised the spiritual value of visiting the sites of Christ’s suffering in Jerusalem; it was, rather, the idolatrous veneration of relics and images there which he abhorred.96 There are surviving regulations attesting to the presence of Protestant pilgrims in the Holy Land in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Scholars have also recovered Protestant experiences of pilgrimage to the Holy Land – replete with their own sense of superior spiritual appreciation. In 1575, for example, the Lutheran Botanist Leonhard Rauwolf described his pilgrimage to Mount Sion: ‘I had not undertaken the pilgrimage as they did, to get anything by it, as by a good work; nor to visit stone and wood to obtain indulgence’.97 Some Protestants, it seems, were prepared to practise what Noonan has called a ‘stripped down, de-Catholicized’ form of pilgrimage.98 Dutch Calvinists visited Huguenot strongholds and other lieux de mémoire – particularly sites where Huguenots had been ‘martyred’ during the Wars of Religion.99 Many scholars have also suggested that the age of discovery brought with it an increased tendency to view physical 95 Gomez-Géraud, Le crépuscule du grand voyage; Anne Simon, Sigmund Feyerabend’s ‘Das Reyssbuch Dess Heyligen Lands’: A Study in Printing and Literary History (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1998). 96 Jean Calvin, Traité des Reliques (Geneva, 1599), 129–30, cited in Zur Shalev, Sacred Words and Worlds. Geography, Religion and Scholarship 1550–1700 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 96. 97 Shalev, Sacred Words and Worlds, 98. 98 Noonan, The Road to Jerusalem, 236. 99 Gerrit Verhoeven, ‘Calvinist Pilgrimages and Popish Encounters: Religious Identity and Sacred Space on the Dutch Grand Tour (1598–1685)’, Journal of Social History 43 (2010), 623–5.

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pilgrimages in more secular terms.100 This culminated, for some, in the Grand Tour – secular, touristic travel which could also have religious sites on the itinerary. Following this interpretation, Protestants could engage in touristic journeys to visit sacred sites, but dissociate it from the Catholic tradition. More widespread and accepted in the reformed tradition was, however, pilgrimage as a purely spiritual journey. As scholars such as Neil Keeble have persuasively argued, Protestants adopted the pilgrim as emblematic of the true Christian.101 This allowed the reformers to distance themselves from the superstition and popery of shrines and towards a more spiritually elevated practice. In England, Bishop Latimer preached in 1552 of the ‘Christian Man’s Pilgrimage’, by which he exhorted his audience not to be reminded of ‘the Popish pilgrimage, which we were wont to use in times past, in running hither and thither’.102 As scholars have recognised, pilgrimage was understood in allegorical terms as symbolic of the Christian life and was a prominent feature of Protestant conversion narratives and spiritual autobiographical writings. The narrative spiritual journey was also an important tool for reformed Churches in the monitoring of confession and penance. As Charles Parker has found in his study of the consistory records in the Dutch Reformed Church, sin, confession and penance were imagined as a spiritual journey undertaken by ‘pilgrims’.103 Perhaps the bestknown example of the spiritual journey as a literary metaphor in devotional literature is John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress of 1678.

100 Jonathan Sumption, Pilgrimage (London: Faber and Faber, 2002). 101 Neil Keeble, ‘“To Be a Pilgrim”: Constructing the Protestant Life in Early Modern England’, in Colin Morris and Peter Roberts, eds, Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 238–55. 102 Colin Morris and Peter Roberts, ‘Introduction’, in Colin Morris and Peter Roberts, eds, Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 10. 103 Charles Parker, ‘Pilgrims’ Progress: Narratives of Penitence and Reconciliation in the Dutch Reformed Church’, Journal of Early Modern History 5 (2001), 222–40.

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The reformed Churches adopted the spiritual pilgrimage as the only ‘meaningful Christian journey’.104 However, it seems reductive to assume that pilgrimage could only ever be allegorical or a convenient narrative device for Protestant pilgrims. Spiritual pilgrimage could, even in its Protestant form, permit soul travel. For example, in England, other seventeenth-century Protestant writers such as George Herbert adapted the spiritual pilgrimage further for his readers. In his hands, these pilgrimages seemed more than allegorical, but actually contained descriptions of spiritualised landscapes. For example, in ‘The Pilgrimage’, Herbert evoked the landscape of a ‘life pilgrimage’: I travelled on, seeing the hill, where lay My expectation A long and weary way the gloomy cave of Desperation I left on th’one and on the other side The rock of Pride. And so I came to phansies meadow strow’d with many a flower.105

In this case, pilgrimage becomes far more than just a general metaphor for the Christian life. The movement of a spiritual journey across a landscape was, in this case, as important to Protestant spiritual pilgrimage as it was to Catholic. The goal of pilgrimage across Protestant and Catholic traditions – whether physical, virtual or imagined – was the Imitatio Christi and emotional closeness to Christ. In the Catholic tradition, Christ’s Passion was significant to pilgrimage and the imagined spiritual journey. Devotions to the five wounds grew in the fourteenth century, as what Caroline Bynum

104 Grace Tiffany, Love’s Pilgrimage: The Holy Journey in English Renaissance Literature (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2006), 33. 105 George Herbert, ‘The Pilgrimage’, in The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (Cambridge: Thomas Buck and Roger Daniel, 1633), 135–6, cited in Hilary Hinds, ‘Going Nowhere: The Stranger and the Pilgrim in the Journey of George Foxe’, Quaker Studies 20.1 (2015), 95.

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referred to as ‘blood devotion’.106 Blood cults and blood relics were later part of the medieval culture of pilgrimage, as attested to by innumerable sites in northern Europe, such as Wilsnack. The wounds of Christ were imagined as part of the topography of the spiritual journey by Thomas Aquinas, who referred to them as ‘the gates of Paradise’. In particular, Christ’s side wound was considered as a significant gateway to his heart and therefore to his love in devotional literature of the period.107

Coda: The Modern Via Peregrina: Mindfulness and Walking The later twentieth and twenty-first centuries have seen a resurgence of spiritual travel in the Western, if not specifically Christian, tradition. Decline in formal religious observance has been paralleled with a growth of informal, often individual, spiritual practices in which the mind or soul is privileged. Paradoxically, the recent revival of spiritual travel comes from modern movements of immobility. The most prominent of these is mindfulness, which is part philosophy and part practice.108 Mindfulness had its origins in the 1970s USA, when Jon Kabat-Zinn began to treat chronically ill patients at the MIT Medical Center using Buddhist meditation techniques in a programme called mindfulness-based stress reduction. Mindfulness 106 Caroline Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvia Press, 2007). 107 Annette Lermack, ‘Spiritual Pilgrimage in the Psalter of Bonne of Luxembourg’, in Robert Bork and Andrea Kann, eds, The Art, Science and Technology of Medieval Travel (Farnham: Ashgate, 2008), 105–6. 108 Jon Kabat-Zinn and Mark Williams, Mindfulness – Diverse Perspectives on its Meanings, Origins and Applications (London: Routledge, 2012); Manu Bazzano, After Mindfulness: New Perspectives on Psychology and Meditation (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); R. D. Siegel, The Mindfulness Solution: Everyday Practices for Everyday Problems (New York: Guilford, 2010); Jeff Wilson, Mindful America: Meditation and the Mutual Transformation of Buddhism and American Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

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is a practice of stillness, where the mind concentrates on the moment; over time, it is believed to lead to self-knowledge, a reduction of stress, anger and pain. This practice received wide application as a psychological therapy and has spread into many programmes for the sick and the well, in schools, prisons and other centres.109 Since the turn of the millennium it has entered into popular culture and daily life as a mode of being and a way of seeing the world. Putting the mind into ‘now’, in tranquillity and immobility, almost an anti-journey, has had an important impact on spiritual travel in different ways, however. One result of the new mindful spirituality is the popularity of ‘new’ pilgrimage, long- and short-distance journeys on foot, which combine tourism, leisure, outdoor activities and interior reflection. The long-distance routeway of the Camino de Compostela has become enormously popular and there is a burgeoning infrastructure of handbooks, guides, confraternities, accommodation and tour operators servicing the ‘pilgrimage’.110 Some undertake this for entirely religious reasons, as with pilgrims of the past; others because they want to think, reflect, have time away from their ordinary lives, for their soul to travel alongside their body. At a regional and local level, pilgrimages as long-distance footpaths have blossomed; in England alone there are various Canterbury ways, Walsingham paths and Celtic pilgrimage routes. All have at their heart a mindfulness of walking, reflection and exercise. They offer physical and spiritual travel. Similarly, tourism to religious sites is very popular, both to the traditional heritage sites of cathedrals, monasteries, ancient and modern shrines,

109 See, for example, the NHS site (accessed 4 February 2019). 110 For the Confraternity of St James UK, see (accessed 4 February 2019); Jane Leach, ‘Camino de Santiago: The Value and Significance of Pilgrimage in the Twenty-first Century’, Epworth Review 33 (2006), 31–9; Samuel Sánchez y Sánchez and Annie Hesp, eds, The Camino de Santiago in the 21st Century. Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Global Views (London: Routledge, 2015); Anthony Kevin, Walking the Camino: A Modern Pilgrimage to Santiago (Melbourne: Scribe, 2008); Gary Waller, Walsingham and the English Imagination (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011).

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but also to ‘New Age’ sites such as prehistoric henges and burial sites.111 The awe of great architecture, its hushed prayerfulness, the attractions of high-quality music and liturgies such as evensong, allow the visitor to contemplate and encourage interiority. Similarly, the phenomenology of prehistoric and ‘Celtic’ landscapes is again about the spiritual experience of deep time and the cadences of nature and landscape. Even for people who eschew formal belief systems, the effective response to place and time frequently induces contemplation of eternal questions. The essay by Tom Wilson in this volume, ‘Spiritual Travellers in the Twenty-First Century: Pilgrims or Tourists?’, offers a postscript to the studies of medieval and early modern spirituality, with a reflection on the same themes in the contemporary world. He examines the interface between religious tourism and spiritual pilgrimage in modern Britain. First, Wilson discusses the Leicester St Philip’s Centre’s work with small groups of Christians, and how it enables them to encounter and understand lived religion. The theme of going without leaving, present throughout Soul Travel, undergirds the initial discussion. Many of the essays in this volume develop different understandings of ‘vicarious’ and ‘spiritual’ pilgrimage whereby another goes in the pilgrim’s stead, or a pilgrimage is spiritual, not physical. This also occurs in modern Christian engagement with those of other faiths, where training run by Christians for Christians can become a precursor – or a substitute – for real encounter, and face-to-face encounter is sometimes outsourced to interfaith ‘professionals’. This leads on to a discussion of the physical movement and interiority of pilgrimage, including self-management upon entry into sacred space. The discussion is illustrated via the example of trainee Christian ministers being offered prashad as a Hindu mandir, an example of the use of the senses in spiritual travel. Second, the importance of a guide for soul travel is discussed. Utilising the

111 Timothy Dallen and Daniel Olsen, eds, Tourism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys (London: Routledge, 2006); Centre for Pilgrimage Studies (accessed 4 February 2019) and their project Pilgrimage and Cathedrals (accessed 4 February 2019); M. Winter and R. Gasson, ‘Pilgrimage and Tourism: Cathedral Visiting in Contemporary England’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 2 (1996), 172–82.

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author’s own experience as a practising Christian entering the sacred space of other religions, the spiritual discipline of becoming a pilgrim in such a context is explained. Theories related to management of groups taking part in such encounters are explained, focusing on the necessary dispositions for successful inter-religious encounter and the means of establishing trust that enables tourists to become pilgrims. Third, the complexity of public vigils in response to tragedies is utilised to elucidate the complexity of soul travel. The need to create and copy rituals is explained using three examples: the shrine to David Bowie in Brixton; vigils following the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida; and vigils and the concert after the Manchester Arena bombing. This is contrasted with the historical rituals discussed throughout Soul Travel, bringing out points of connection and disconnection. Finally, returning to the theme of interiority, the conclusion is reached that personal status as a tourist or a pilgrim is primarily a matter of individual disposition and intent rather than being determined by the circumstances of the encounter. Wilson argues that worship is a personal choice, and unless the choice is made to become a pilgrim we remain tourists or spectators. Wilson’s essay draws together some of the central themes of this discussion of soul travel, especially the prominence of interiority, the use of the senses in spiritual travel, and the question of what constitutes pilgrimage or spiritual travel. Across all ages, then, we might conclude that ‘if we live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit’.112 The essays in this volume illustrate some of the many ways in which the soul travelled, in the medieval and early modern Christian west and indeed in the present age.

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Bacci, Michele, ‘Locative Memory and the Pilgrim’s Experience of Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages’, in Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 67–75. Bartlett, Robert, Why Can the Dead do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013). Bazzano, Manu, After Mindfulness: New Perspectives on Psychology and Meditation (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Beebe, Kathryne, ‘The Jerusalem of the Mind’s Eye. Imagined Pilgrimage in the Late Fifteenth Century’, in Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 409–20. Beringer, F., Les indulgences, leur nature et leur usage, trans. E. Abt and E. Fayerstein, 2 vols (Paris, 1890). Boulton, Maureen, and Barry McCann, Sacred Fictions of Medieval France: Narrative Theology in the Lives of Christ and the Virgin, 1150–1500 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015). Breydenbach, Bernhard von, Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam (Mainz: Erhard Reuwich, 1486). Bryan, Jennifer, Looking Inward: Devotional Reading and the Private Self in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). Bynum, Caroline Walker, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). Calvin, Jean, Traité des Reliques (Geneva, 1599). Cameron, Euan, ‘Saints, Martyrs and the Reformation: Reflections on Robert Bartlett’s Why Can the Dead do Such Great Things?’, Church History 85 (2016), 803–9. Casper, Andrew R., ‘Display and Devotion: Exhibiting Icons and their Copies in Counter-Reformation Italy’, in Wietse de Boer, ed., Religion and the Senses in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 43–62. Charpentrat, Pierre, ‘L’architecture et son public: les églises de la Contre-Réforme’, Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 28 (1973), 91–108. Chelini, Jean, and Henry Branthomme, Les Chemins de Dieu. Histoire des pèlerinages chrétiens des origines à nos jours (Paris: Hachette, 1982). Connolly, Daniel K., ‘Copying Maps by Matthew Paris: Itineraries Fit for a King’, in Palmira Brummett, ed., The ‘Book’ of Travels: Genre, Ethnology and Pilgrimage, 1250–1700 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 159–203. Craig, Leigh Anne, Wandering Women and Holy Matrons: Women as Pilgrims in the Later Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2009). Dallen, Timothy, and Daniel Olsen, eds, Tourism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys (London: Routledge, 2006).

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Davies, Owen, Popular Magic: Cunning Folk in English History (London: Hambledon, 2003). Ditchfield, Simon, ‘Reading Rome as Sacred Landscape’, in Will Coster and Andrew Spicer, eds, Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 167–92. Donkin, Lucy, and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Imagining Jerusalem in the Medieval West, special edition of Proceedings of the British Academy, 175 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Dyas, Dee, Pilgrimage in Medieval English Literature 700–1500 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2001). Egeria’s Travels, trans. John Wilkinson (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1999). Ehrenschwendtner, Marie-Luise, ‘Virtual Pilgrimages? Enclosure and the Practice of Piety at St Katherine’s Convent, Augsburg’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 60 (2009), 45–73. Erasmus, Desiderius, The Colloquies of Erasmus, trans. N. Bailey, 2 vols (London: Reeves and Turner, 1878), 1–36. Finucane, Ronald, The Rescue of the Innocents: Endangered Children in Medieval Miracles (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000). Foster-Campbell, Megan H., ‘Pilgrimage through the Pages: Pilgrims’ Badges in Late Medieval Devotional Manuscripts’, in Sarah Blick and Laura D Gelfand, eds, Push Me, Pull You: Imaginative, Emotional, Physical and Spatial Interaction (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 227–74. Germain de Franceschi, Anne-Sophie, D’encre et de poussière: l’écriture du pèlerinage à l’épreuve de l’intimité du manuscrit: récits manuscrits de pèlerinages rédigés en français pendant la Renaissance et la Contre-réforme (1500–162) (Paris: Champion, 2009). Gomez-Géraud, Marie-Christine, Le crépuscule du grand voyage: les récits de pèlerins à Jérusalem (1458–1612) (Paris: Champion, 1999). Gomez-Géraud, Marie-Christine, ‘Entre chemin d’aventure et parcours d’initiation. Le pèlerin de Lorette de Louis Richeome’, in Pierre-André Sigal, ed., L’image du pèlerin au Moyen Age et sous l’Ancien Régime (Gramat: Association des Amis de Rocamadour, 1994), 231–52. Göttler, Christine, ‘The Temptation of the Senses at the Sacro Monte di Varallo’, in Wietse de Boer, ed., Religion and the Senses in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 393–452. Halin, Jean, Brief dialogue d’un homme passant son chemin and d’un honeste et scavant prestre qui conduit des pelerins a Maestrecht, auquel est mostre le proffit des pelerinages et la manière de bien les faire (Liege, 1623). Herbert, George, ‘The Pilgrimage’, in The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (Cambridge: Thomas Buck and Roger Daniel, 1633), 135–6.

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Hinds, Hilary, ‘Going Nowhere: The Stranger and the Pilgrim in the Journey of George Foxe’, Quaker Studies 20.1 (2015), 84–102. Jacobs, Lynn F., Threshold and Boundaries: Liminality in Netherlandish Art (1385–1530) (London: Routledge, 2017). Julia, Dominique, ‘Identité pèlerine, identité du passage’, in Catherine Vincent, ed., Identités pèlerines, Actes du colloque de Rouen, 15–16 mai 2002 (Rouen: Université de Rouen, 2004), 229–47. Julia, Dominique, ‘Pour une géographie européenne du pèlerinage à l’époque moderne et contemporaine’, in Philippe Boutry and Dominique Julia, eds, Pèlerins et pèlerinages dans l’Europe moderne (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 2000), 3–115. Kabat-Zinn, Jon, and Mark Williams, Mindfulness – Diverse Perspectives on its Meanings, Origins and Applications (London: Routledge, 2012). Keeble, Neil, ‘“To Be a Pilgrim”: Constructing the Protestant Life in Early Modern England’, in Colin Morris and Peter Roberts, eds, Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 238–55. Kelly, Stephen, and Ryan Perry, eds, Devotional Culture in Late Medieval England and Europe. Diverse Imaginations of Christ’s Life (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014). Kevin, Anthony, Walking the Camino: A Modern Pilgrimage to Santiago (Melbourne: Scribe, 2008). Kühnel, Bianca, ‘Virtual Pilgrimages to Real Places: The Holy Landscapes’, in Lucy Donkin and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Imagining Jerusalem in the Medieval West, special edition of Proceedings of the British Academy, 175 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 243–64. Lea, Henry Charles, A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church, 3 vols (London: Swan Sonnenschien, 1896). Leach, Jane, ‘Camino de Santiago: The Value and Significance of Pilgrimage in the Twenty-first Century’, Epworth Review 33 (2006), 31–9. Lermack, Annette, ‘Spiritual Pilgrimage in the Psalter of Bonne of Luxembourg’, in Robert Bork and Andrea Kann, eds, The Art, Science and Technology of Medieval Travel (Farnham: Ashgate, 2008), 97–114. Leyerle, Blake, ‘Landscape as Cartography in Early Christian Pilgrimage Narratives’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64 (1996), 119–43. Lilley, Keith D., ed., Mapping Medieval Geographies. Geographical Encounters in the Latin West and Beyond 300–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Loarte, Gaspard, Trattato delle sante peregrinationi (Rome: Guiseppe delle Angeli, 1575). Luttikhuizen, Henry, ‘Still Walking: Spiritual Pilgrimage, Early Dutch Painting and the Dynamics of Faith’, in Sarah Blick and Laura D. Gelfand, eds, Push Me, Pull You: Imaginative, Emotional, Physical and Spatial Interaction (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 199–226.

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Maës, Bruno, Les livrets de pèlerinage. Imprimerie et culture dans la France moderne (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2016). Marculescu, Andrea, and Charles-Louis Morand Métivier, ‘Introduction’, in Andrea Marculescu and Charles-Louis Morand Métivier, eds, Affective and Emotional Economies in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (London: Palgrave, 2017), 1–16. Martin, Gregory, Roma sancta (Rome, 1582). Martin, Gregory, A treatyse of Christian peregrination (Paris, 1583). Mecham, June L., ‘A Northern Jerusalem: Transforming the Spatial Geography of the Convent of Wienhausen’, in S. Hamilton and A. Spicer, eds, Defining the Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 139–60. Messingham, Thomas, Florilegium Insulæ Sanctorum (Paris, 1624). Mgaloblishvili, Tamila, ‘How Mtskheta Turned into the Georgians’ New Jerusalem’, in Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 59–66. Moore, Kathryn Blair, The Architecture of the Christian Holy Land (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Morris, Colin, and Peter Roberts, eds, Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Morrison, Susan S., Women Pilgrims in Late Medieval England: Private Piety as Public Performance (London: Routledge, 2000). Newhauser, Richard G., and Arthur J. Russell, ‘Mapping Virtual Pilgrimage in an Early Fifteenth-Century Arma Christi Roll’, in Lisa H. Cooper and Andrea DennyBrown, eds, The Arma Christi in Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 83–112. Noonan, F. Thomas, The Road to Jerusalem. Pilgrimage and Travel in the Age of Discovery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). O’Loughlin, Thomas, ‘Adomnán’s Plans in the Context of his Imagining The Most Famous City’, in Lucy Donkin and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Imagining Jerusalem in the Medieval West, special edition of Proceedings of the British Academy, 175 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 15–40. Parker, Charles, ‘Pilgrims’ Progress: Narratives of Penitence and Reconciliation in the Dutch Reformed Church’, Journal of Early Modern History 5 (2001), 222–40. Quatremaire, Robert, Histoire abrégée du Mont-S.-Michel en Normandie; avec les motifs et la méthode pour utilement et saintement faire le pèlerinage du glorieux archange S. Michel et de tous les saints anges (Paris, 1668). Rachman-Schrire, Yamit, ‘Sinai Stones on Mount Zion: Mary’s Pilgrimage in Jerusalem’, in Renana Bartel and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Between Jerusalem and Europe. Essays in Honour of Bianca Kühnel (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 57–74.

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Reinburg, Virginia, ‘Archives, Eyewitnesses and Rumours: Writing about Shrines in Early Modern France’, Past and Present supplement 11, 201 (2016), 171–90. Reinburg, Virginia, French Books of Hours: Making An Archive of Prayer, c. 1400–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Reinburg, Virginia, ‘Les’ pelèrins de Notre Dame du Puy’, Revue de l’histoire de l’Eglise de France 75.195 (1989), 297–313. Richeome, Louis, Le Pèlerin de Lorète, voeu à la glorieuse vierge Marie, mère de Dieu, pour Monseigneur le Dauphin (Paris: S. Millange, 1604). Richeome, Louis, The Pilgrime of Loreto. Performing his vow made to the Glorious Virgin Mary Mother of God (Paris, 1629). Rudy, Kathryn, ‘An Illuminated English Guide to Pilgrimage in the Holy Land: Oxford, Queen’s College MS 357’, in Lucy Donkin and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Imagining Jerusalem in the Medieval West, special edition of Proceedings of the British Academy, 175 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 381–93. Rudy, Kathryn M., Virtual Pilgrimages in the Convent. Imagining Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011). Rudy, Kathryn M., ‘Virtual Pilgrimage through the Jerusalem Cityscape’, in Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 381–93. Sánchez y Sánchez, Samuel and Annie Hesp, eds, The Camino de Santiago in the 21st Century. Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Global Views (London: Routledge, 2015). Shalev, Zur, Sacred Words and Worlds. Geography, Religion and Scholarship 1550–1700 (Leiden: Brill, 2011). Siegel, R. D., The Mindfulness Solution: Everyday Practices for Everyday Problems (New York: Guilford, 2010). Siew, Tsafra, ‘Pilgrimage Experience: Bridging Size and Medium’, in Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 83–93. Simon, Anne, Sigmund Feyerabend’s ‘Das Reyssbuch Dess Heyligen Lands’: A Study in Printing and Literary History (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1998). Smith, D. K., The Cartographic Imagination in Early Modern England (Farnham: Ashgate, 2008). Sumption, Jonathan, Pilgrimage (London: Faber and Faber, 2002). Taylor, Larissa J., Leigh Ann Craig, John B. Friedman, Kathy Gower, Thomas Izbicki and Rita Tekippe, eds, Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage (Leiden: Brill, 2010). Tiffany, Grace, Love’s Pilgrimage: The Holy Journey in English Renaissance Literature (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2006). Tingle, Elizabeth, Indulgences after Luther: Pardons in Counter-Reformation France (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2015).

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Torsellini, Orazio, Historiae Lauretanae libri quinque (Rome, 1597). Turner, Victor, and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: An Anthropological Perspective (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978). Verhoeven, Gerrit, ‘Calvinist Pilgrimages and Popish Encounters: Religious Identity and Sacred Space on the Dutch Grand Tour (1598–1685)’, Journal of Social History 43 (2010), 615–34. Waller, Gary, Walsingham and the English Imagination (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011). Webb, Diana, Medieval European Pilgrimage c. 700–c. 1500 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002). Webb, Diana, Pilgrimage in Medieval England (London: Hambledon, 2000). Weber, Elke, Traveling through Text: Message and Method in Late Medieval Pilgrimage Accounts (London: Routledge, 2005). Whatley, Laura J., ‘Experiencing the Holy Land and Crusade in Matthew Paris’s Maps of Palestine’, in Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 295–305. Williams, Wes, ‘A Mirrour of Mis-Haps/A Mappe of Miserie: Dangers, Strangers and Friends in Renaissance Pilgrimage’, in Palmira Brummett, ed., The ‘Book’ of Travels: Genre, Ethnology and Pilgrimage, 1250–1700 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 205–39. Williams, Wes, Pilgrimage and Narrative in the French Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). Wilson, Jeff, Mindful America: Meditation and the Mutual Transformation of Buddhism and American Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). Winter, M., and R. Gasson, ‘Pilgrimage and Tourism: Cathedral Visiting in Contemporary England’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 2 (1996), 172–82. Young, William S., SJ, ed., Letters of Ignatius Loyola (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1959). Zacher, Christian K., Curiosity and Pilgrimage. The Literature of Discovery in Fourteenth-Century England (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976).

Part I

Modes of Spiritual Journeying

Mark Edwin Peterson

1 Reading as a Spiritual Journey: St Bridget of Sweden

Abstract This essay examines the complexities of female spiritual travel with a study of the making and reception of St Bridget’s writings in Reading as a Spiritual Journey. The fourteenthcentury saint spent many years meditating on the messages that God sent to her personally in visions, often a result of focused preparation and prayer, introspection and thought. Just as St Bridget went on pilgrimage, she also went inward, frequently, in journeys of contemplation to meet God or his messengers. Towards the end of her life, Bridget began to prepare a book explaining her visions to others, working actively with her confessors to record her visions and even to shape questions for God in order to provide greater clarity for her audience in their spiritual journey to faith. Readers such as Margery Kempe found the text and the revelations inspirational in their own spiritual journeys.

Europeans read more in the fourteenth century than ever before. There have been many explanations for this. While most scholarship traditionally has highlighted the preceding changes in the economy and the growth of the merchant class, the administrative tools of Church and state clearly played a role, as did overall changes in religious practices.1 All of these developments, 1

Charles F. Briggs, ‘Literacy, Reading, and Writing in the Medieval West’, Journal of Medieval History 26 (2000), 397–420; On literacy and listening to books, see Joyce Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); also D. H. Green, Women Readers in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2007). For a reassessment of lay literacy, see Kathryn Kirby-Fulton and Sarah Baechle, eds, New Directions in Medieval Manuscript Studies and Reading Practices: Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014); Sabrina Corbellini, ed., Cultures of Religious Reading in the Late Middle Ages: Instructing the Soul, Feeding the Spirit, and Awakening the Passion (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013). For changes to book production and trade, it is useful to look at Andrew Pettegree, The

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though, meant growing opportunities for learning and book buying, and as more universities and monasteries appeared across Europe over the course of the Middle Ages, all the mechanisms of manuscript production and trade kicked into high gear. By the late fourteenth century, lay readers had taken the monkish notion of reading and contemplation to understand books as routes to deepen their access to the divine and to bring their souls closer to God in ways that were private, personal and emotional. A wealth of recent scholarship has sought better to understand the notion of reading for medieval people, including discussions of the details of the experience for readers. With the growth of literacy and the book trade, the varieties of reading, both in public and in private, were many, of course, though it has often taken great ingenuity on the part of scholars to get at clear ideas of what these were. Women participated in the literate world a great deal. Here, especially, it has been difficult to get a full picture of how female readers experienced books and what they meant to them, because of the scarce sources. One group of readers who tell us about their relationship with books, however, has been the female saints who sought to record their experiences with religious visions in the late Middle Ages. They tell us of their lives, their prayers to God, their revelations and the meanings of what they had experienced. Along the way, these women often reveal the importance of reading in its various forms to their religious understanding and their interaction with the divine. Certainly, the large body of visions left to us by St Bridget of Sweden show a life enriched by reading. This essay examines The Revelationes of St Bridget to show that she felt that texts not only shaped her religious education substantially, but that reading formed a central part of her devotional practices, providing one of the ways for Bridget to draw closer to God. For St Bridget, reading gave her a way to travel the distance between her human self and the divine. It held a place among the Book in the Renaissance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). There is some discussion of the reading of St Bridget in Carol F. Heffernan, ‘The Revelations of St Bridget of Sweden in Fifteenth-Century England’, Neophilogus 101 (2017), 337–49, and more importantly V. O’Mara and B. Morris, eds, The Translation of the Works of St Birgitta of Sweden into the Medieval European Vernacular (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000).

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powerful Christian experiences of pilgrimage and confession at the time. And Bridget’s great influence among lay believers would help to uphold reading as an important part of popular devotional practice in the following century. In this essay, that experience and its impact will be explored.

Approaching God St Bridget of Sweden (1303–73) built her reputation as a holy woman and seer on the letters that she sent to prominent people of her time, having studied the Scriptures and the lives of the saints from her earliest days. From a prominent noble family, Bridget had been highly educated and was a devout follower of the Catholic Church during her years as a wife and mother. As she turned to a life of religion upon becoming a widow, her holiness seemed a marked contrast to the life of privilege that she had had before, and that helped to make her famous as an example of popular piety. But her lifetime of reading helped to shape her understanding of religion, and it formed the basis for the questions that she asked of her faith.2 As her life drew to a close, she brought together the hundreds of descriptions that she had created of her visions to make up a substantial text of her holy revelations. This book encouraged the Church quickly to name her a saint, and it brought her understanding of faith to many people across Europe for centuries.3 Examining the work of St Bridget, it becomes 2 3

Bridget Morris, St Birgitta of Sweden (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1999), 56. Around 1377, illuminated copies of a manuscript of Bridget’s visions were prepared to show that the holy woman deserved to be canonised. One copy of this form survives in Warsaw National Library MS 3310. After Pope Urban VI called for a formal hearing, Alphonso of Jaen had a new version of the text prepared in 1380, adding introductions and a flattering vita that stressed the seer’s obedience. We can see this in Pierpont Morgan Library MS M498. Many national variations of the manuscripts can be traced to original versions that were first circulated before the end of the fifteenth century. They often contained just portions of the Bridget text, but numerous religious houses created full copies. In 1491, the mother house of the Brigittines at

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clear that she thought of books as an entry point to a communion with God that came with understanding, contemplation and grace. Reading did not bring Bridget to flights of spiritual ecstasy, but it did move her into a mental space where she could turn away from the sinful concerns of the body and focus on the needs of her soul. As reading, and writing, became part of her daily devotions, reading, like fasting and pilgrimage, helped her soul to travel closer to God both internally and in terms of her personal advancement along a holy life. When others sought to imitate the attitudes they read about in Bridget’s book, we begin to see the full force that reading had acquired in bringing people to God even when they felt limited in their access to the Church because of poverty, ignorance or gender.4 By the late Middle Ages, religious devotion for many people meant constantly striving for improvement, both in terms of personal behaviour and a more abstract notion of closeness to God. Members of the religious orders and the laity, in their own interpretation of long clerical traditions, worked to purify their souls through introspection, penance, prayer, pilgrimage, confession, reading, singing and fasting. Part of this activity involved the constant need for forgiveness of individual faults that all sinners required to make it to heaven in a cycle that few would perfect before death. Even the redemption of Christ’s sacrifice would not be enough to free Christians from the pains of Purgatory. In a similar way, the interior striving for God that many believers practised in their lives by the fourteenth century involved a long effort towards improving the mind and its appreciation of Christ. This struggle also would never bring one to spiritual perfection. Rather, Christians showed their devotion in working to be closer to God, in the spiritual journey. In fact, travelling was a common metaphor for the whole religious experience.5 One development of popular piety over the course of the Middle Ages was the idea that people could join this spiritual journey

4 5

Vadstena in Sweden worked with a printer in Lubeck to create a printed version: St Bridget of Sweden, Revelationes caelestes (Lubeck: Bartholomäus Ghotan, 1492). Heffernan, ‘Bridget in Fifteenth-Century England’, 343. Hector Scerri, ‘Wayfaring and Seafaring: A Theological Reading of the Mediterranean Journey’, The Person and Challenges 1/2 (2011), 77.

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even as they remained in the world; living active lives marked by religious contemplation. After her own years as mother and wife before becoming a holy woman, St Bridget wrote that there was no evil in living the active life, but that it was better to be like Mary and focus on contemplation.6 In order to seek God in this interior way and keep up with their responsibilities, many women and men of the fourteenth century practised the methods of meditation, prayer, reading and contemplation that had grown from skills developed in the religious cloisters of previous centuries.7 Focused meditation formed the main steps of the trip closer to God, sometimes imagined as climbing a mountain or a ladder to reach the heavens.8 Bridget herself wrote of this in her book of more than 700 visions, ‘There are hard stones in the road before your feet, difficulties and precipices you will meet during the climbing’.9 Many Christians saw reading and focused contemplation as tools that could direct them towards God, and if done correctly, could bring about moments when the divine reached out and drew closer to a person.10 Of course, some Christians had experience with pilgrimage as another way that they combined an active life with efforts to focus the mind and soul on God. Travel to religious sites had been part of Christianity since the days of the New Testament.11 But by the time of the Crusades, pilgrimage had become closely connected to ideas of penance; the toil of the trip to a

6 7 8 9

10

11

Heffernan, ‘Bridget in Fifteenth-Century England’, 341. Duncan Robertson, Lectio Divina: The Medieval Experience of Reading (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2011), 225. Jessie Gutgsell, ‘The Gift of Tears: Weeping in the Religious Imagination of Western Medieval Christianity’, Anglican Theological Review 97.2 (2015), 247. Birgit Klockars, ‘S. Birgitta and Mysticism’, Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 5 (1970), 111–12. Most translations of her visions come from the organised, complete printed texts that were produced at the end of the fifteenth century, with few attempts to compare the versions to earlier manuscripts in circulation before then. Diana Stanciu, ‘Accomplishing One’s Essence: The Role of Meditation in the Theology of Gabriel Biel’, in Karl Enenkel and Walter Melion, eds, Meditatio – Refashioning the Self: Theory and Practice in Late Medieval and Early Modern Intellectual Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 148. Scerri, ‘Wayfaring and Seafaring’, 62.

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holy site helped the sinner to take on the punishment they would otherwise suffer in Purgatory.12 Willingness to undertake the arduous journey also made someone more likely to receive grace, hopefully. Many took on the peregrination of pilgrimage as a direct way to set off on a journey towards God. By the fourteenth century, this could be done by travelling to numerous holy shrines in Europe, but the most earnest pilgrims sought to make it to Santiago de Compostela, Rome or Jerusalem, by then especially dangerous.13 At the holy sites, Christians often experienced the presence of the divine in ways very different from what happened during everyday devotion. For some, this was similar to the trances or visions brought on by focused contemplation, but it was also common to feel connected to the eternal story of the events that had occurred at the places.14 Though it followed a long process of toil and prayer, being at the pilgrimage site could be what brought a person closer to God in a very personal way, in some cases an experience of direct communion with the divine.15 In 1350, St Bridget wrote that she had visions earlier in life in her homeland that the bishops had declared came from the Holy Spirit. When she came to Rome, however, she was caught up in a spiritual vision while her body fell into a torpor and the Virgin appeared to her. Mary told her not to be afraid of what she was about to see and hear, because Bridget was experiencing an ‘ardent love for God and a perfect illumination of the Catholic faith’, two things that accompany the coming of the Holy Spirit.16 St Bridget makes the point that while her visions had been from God, it was when she went to Rome that the Virgin herself came to Bridget and told her that what she experienced 12

Anne E. Bailey, ‘Flights of Distance, Time and Fancy: Women Pilgrims and their Journeys in English’, Gender & History 24.2 (2012), 294. 13 Andrew Hadfield, ‘Travel’, in Brian Cummings and James Simpson, eds, Cultural Reformations: Medieval and Renaissance in Literary History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 137. 14 Naoe Kukita Yoshikawa, ‘“Meditacyon” or “Contemplacyon”? Margery Kempe’s Spiritual Experience and Terminology’, Leeds Studies in English 33 (2002), 117. 15 Hadfield, ‘Travel’, 138. 16 Denis Michael Searby and Bridget Morris, The Revelations of St Birgitta of Sweden, 4 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006–15), II, 150.

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in her trances could be trusted as holy. In response to her extreme faith, the saint received affirmation of that faith, and of her role as a conduit to God. Later, she would go on a lengthy pilgrimage to Jerusalem, taking along her learned confessor and communicating regularly with popes and kings to share the divine messages she was receiving. In the following century, Margery Kempe would follow in the footsteps of Bridget with her own pilgrimages to Compostela, Rome and Jerusalem, where she experienced an intense visitation from God, as described in her book.17 Other female mystics found that going on difficult international pilgrimages could bring on powerful visions, events that could give foundations to their claims of legitimacy and power as holy women to those who read about them.18 By the fourteenth, and certainly the fifteenth, century, we have numerous accounts of common people travelling on pilgrimage, striving towards God in body and soul, and receiving some sort of transport to divine space, similar to what other Christians achieved through fasting, prayer and contemplation. Both routes of devotion involved a type of spiritual ascension driven by the practices, and often sufferings, of the believer, which could sometimes be answered by the grace of transport to a divine, visionary space. These experiences often felt as if one were carried over to another world or lifted up to heaven.19 Clearly, St Bridget pursued every way to experience the divine that the Church endorsed for a woman in the fourteenth century, and her revelations describe her successes in managing to draw closer to Mary, Christ and the Holy Spirit, frequently through religious visions that she then sought to pass on to readers. Her efforts at personal piety included reading, and eventually writing for other religious readers, as shown many times in her book of revelations. Reading could be a form of devotion, and it could further the soul along the path to connecting with God. Before addressing the connection that Bridget makes between reading and soul travel, it is necessary to examine further

17 18 19

Yoshikawa, ‘“Meditacyon” or “Contemplacyon”’, 117 Bailey, ‘Flights of Distance, Time and Fancy’, 295. John J. Pilch, Flights of the Soul: Visions, Heavenly Journeys, and Peak Experiences in the Biblical World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 54.

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her understanding of the role that the soul played in both contemplation and pilgrimage and how this fits into her notions of her spiritual journey.

The Soul and Pilgrimage Medieval people believed that the human soul had its own substance, so that it could travel to Purgatory (a physical place in some sense) and feel the pains of punishment.20 With regard to one of her visions from the 1340s, St Bridget wrote, ‘When he reached the final end of his life and his soul left his body, the demons charged out to meet him … “This is the reward of your pride: you will descend handed by one demon down to the next until you reach the lowest part of hell”’.21 She felt that the soul could move separately from the body, and even in life her soul could awaken and have its own experiences apart from her motionless body. ‘You then raise up my soul as if from sleep for seeing and hearing and also for feeling spiritually’.22 Like other visionaries, St Bridget felt that these moments of direct communication from God involved a special kind of contact between her human soul and the divine. And yet, for Bridget, the separation of her soul did not mean that it could move about in geographic space away from her body as the souls of the dead could. At one point, Mary told her in a vision, ‘Nor will you come to us before your removal from the life of your body. Yet your soul along with your understanding is by the power of God’s Spirit lifted up in order to hear God’s words in heaven’.23 In several

20 John Lancaster Murphy, ‘The Idea of Purgatory in Middle English Literature’, PhD Diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1995, 15; Janine Larmon Peterson, ‘Visions, Inquisitors, and Challenges to Christian Doctrine in the Later Middle Ages’, English Language Notes 56.1 (2018), 9. 21 Searby, Revelations, I, 197. 22 Quoted in Claire L. Sahlin, Birgitta of Sweden and the Voice of Prophecy (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2001), 63. 23 Searby, Revelations, VI, 113.

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cases, she writes that her physical mind could not understand the spiritual world, so God had to show her likenesses of the divine world, things that she was not yet allowed to see in spirit.24 One of her confessors, Alfonso, wrote in his ‘Letter from the Hermit to the King’, that You may ask how this blessed lady could see Christ and his Virgin Mother, the angels and saints as often as she did during the blessed raptures of her prayer vigils … When she saw these things was she outside her body? … It is stated there that it occurred by a miraculous elevation and enlightenment of the mind and intelligence of blessed Bridget for the benefit of the whole body of the Church through the action and ministry of the Holy Spirit. She received at the same time great inspirations in her mind.25

What happened in her raptures was similar to the other moments of divine contact in her life: God elevated her mind and soul to bring them up close to the spiritual world. These usually occurred as infrequent results of the saint’s dedicated fasting, prayer and meditation, but it is important to remember that they were gifts of grace given to God’s chosen conduit for his message. The record of the saint’s life describes a vision in which the Virgin Mary appeared to Bridget when she was seven and placed a crown on her head.26 She knew that she could never deserve this honour but attempted to please God by living a religious life and doing penance while still living her life as a wife and mother. In preparation to receive visions, Bridget took part in many of the practices of late medieval popular piety that we have already mentioned: fasting, prayer, meditation, reading and contemplation. After she dedicated herself to being a holy woman, she worked at these skills daily under the guidance of trained confessors. These men taught her the tools that monks had used for centuries to prepare their minds for contemplation, aspects of which had been taken up with the growth of popular piety in the fourteenth century by many educated laypeople seeking an interior experience of God.27

24 Sahlin, Birgitta of Sweden, 67. 25 Searby, Revelations, IV, 26. 26 Sahlin, Birgitta of Sweden, 59. 27 Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 5; Michelle Karnes,

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By this time, the heart and emotions had come to be seen as integral to the spiritual journey.28 Thirteenth-century Beguines were advised to hold a meditational image in their minds and then to respond to it emotionally, participating in the scene.29 For Bridget, however, a significant focus of her devotional preparations seems to have centred on traditional notions of the mind and the training it required to approach God. Certainly she approached reading as an exercise requiring mental skills, skills such as memory and understanding that could be developed by prayer and meditation to put the intellect in a position to receive grace.30 Much of this depended on calm, silence and the study of mental images.31 By concentrating the memory on Christ’s passion and other religious images, one could not only open up the possibility of aid from God’s grace but also improve the mind in order to keep it striving for Christian behaviour and maintaining a clarity of faith.32 Being a holy woman meant training the mind, body and spirit to bring her closer to God. She worked at this her entire life, going on pilgrimages to Cologne, Aix-la-Chapelle and Compostela while she was still married.33 We have already heard about her visions as as child, but a few of the prayers in her writing seem to have come from earlier in life too. After her husband died, on the way back from pilgrimage with her, Bridget worked diligently at her vocation. Her Vita says that she slept on the floor, ate bitter herbs on Fridays, gave alms, fasted, scrutinised herself for things to bring to confession and took the Eucharist every day.34 Not only did

‘Nicholas Love and Medieval Meditations on Christ: Interiority, Imagination, and Meditations on the Life of Christ’, Speculum 82.2 (2007), 380–2. 28 Gutgsell, ‘The Gift of Tears’, 246. 29 C. Annette Grise, ‘Holy Women in Print: Continental Female Mystics and the English Mystical Tradition’, in Edward Alexander Jones, ed., The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Papers Read at Charney Manor, July 2004 (Cambridge: Brewer, 2004), 91. 30 Stanciu, ‘Accomplishing One’s Essence’, 142–3. 31 Carruthers, The Craft of Thought, 3. 32 Stanciu, ‘Accomplishing One’s Essence’, 127. 33 Klockars, ‘S. Birgitta and Mysicism’, 109. 34 Kirsi Irmeli Stjerna, ‘St Birgitta of Sweden: A Study of Birgitta’s Spiritual Visions and Theology of Love’, PhD diss., Boston University, 1995, 49.

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she go on more pilgrimages, but during her extended stay in Rome she was forced to beg at one point to provide for the household. This is all to say that we should not think of her devotions as solely a mental exercise, rather that the mind was component part of the Christian whole that she did not neglect in her devotions. Self-reflection had been requisite for Christians seeking knowledge of God since at least twelfth century and by Bridget’s time this had become an expectation for those who wanted a personal, internal relationship with Him.35 Just as she did penance, fasted and confessed, St Bridget meditated, contemplated and read.

Reading and Soul Travel Over the course of the Middle Ages, women religious had taken up reading more and more as part of the devotional practices that had become part of their contemplative lives.36 Nuns regularly listened in groups to books being read throughout the day, such as in the refectory,37 or in some cases they could read devotional passages or the liturgy in their private cells.38 Most important were the liturgical passages containing portions of Holy Scripture. The reading of the time made medieval people familiar with much of the Psalms and the New Testament. Advisors also recommended that cloistered women, especially, read the lives of the female saints for examples of behaviour and devotion.39 These types of written works came to be copied and distributed in a widespread manuscript trade that developed Jennifer Bryan, Looking Inward: Devotional Reading and the Private Self in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 68. 36 Yoshikawa, ‘“Meditacyon” or “Contemplacyon”’, 121. 37 C. Annette Grise, ‘The Textual Community of Syon Abbey’, Florilegium 19 (2002),150. 38 Rebecca Krug, ‘Reading at Syon Abbey’, in Reading Families: Women’s Literate Practice in Late Medieval England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), 157. 39 Alexandra Barratt, ‘“Take a Book and Read”: Advice for Religious Women’, in Cate Gunn and Catherine Innes-Parker, eds, Texts and Traditions of Medieval Pastoral Care: Essays in Honour of Bella Millett (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2009), 204. 35

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by the late thirteenth century, with the Church still being its largest customer.40 A surprising number of these texts, including the religious works, were produced in the vernacular. Certainly works produced specifically for women or by women at this time tended to be in the local language, since even highly educated women such as St Bridget were given little formal training in Latin.41 For much of the Middle Ages, people thought reading transformed the reader. The understanding of cognition at the time involved the imagination presenting the sense experiences gathered in the memory to the mind, which could then process experience to turn it into intellectual knowledge.42 Readers were expected to go through a manuscript at least twice, the first time to memorise the syllables and the second to memorise the ideas.43 Readers developed the skills of memory, just as they learned to understand letters and grammar, not just for conversation and writing but to build up material for the imagination to work with. On the second pass through the reader put an understanding of logic and doctrine to use to master the text as well as the cited sources and the glosses that often accompanied it, getting a handle on the whole conversation that readers had had with these ideas in the past.44 Contemplation was supposed to follow. A reader dwelled on the material until it was understood, as the mind synthesised the information, hopefully with a little grace when needed to grasp the complexities of faith.45 With further meditation, one could then engrave the lessons of religious literature on the heart, improving belief and behaviour.46 This was 40 Andrew Pettegree, ‘Centre and Periphery in the European Book World’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 18 (2008), 105. 41 Krug, ‘Reading at Syon Abbey’, 161. 42 Karnes, ‘Nicholas Love and Medieval Meditations on Christ’, 384. 43 Carruthers, The Craft of Thought, 30. 44 Sarah Baechle, ‘Chaucer, the Continent, and the Characteristics of Commentary’, in Kathryn Kirby-Fulton and Sarah Baechle, eds, New Directions in Medieval Manuscript Studies and Reading Practices: Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), 387, 400. 45 Robertson, Lectio Divina, 205. 46 Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, ‘The Tongues of the Nightingale: “hertely redyng” at English Courts’, in Kathryn Kirby-Fulton and Sarah Baechle, eds, New Directions in Medieval

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best done in small segments, sometimes without any order.47 Some writers even recommended that readers focus on particular portions of their own books.48 When a person had understood and internalised what they could from reading a text, it did not add to their knowledge like information coded in a computer, but rather the reader had a whole new portion of the self that had been added in the process, with new ideas to draw on and an improved relationship with the world.49 This built on a tradition, going back as far as Augustine, that reading and contemplation revealed eternal truths that the reader had already known, but not understood before.50 That is why quick, unreflective reading was considered useless.51 Reading had to be focused and engaged, without distraction, to gain its full benefits.52 We can see why reading could be such a powerful experience for the laity, who often felt spiritually neglected by the Church in the Later Middle Ages. Reading not only brought greater understanding of faith with it but also a closer, transformative connection to the divine in ways that could be just as powerful as participating in the sacraments or going on pilgrimage. More than in earlier monastic circles, lay reading had begun to involve a new respect for the authority of the contents of the texts by the fourteenth century.53 The specific conversation contained in each book was not just a spur to improved faith but contained seeds for the unique knowledge and faith that a reader could gain from consuming that particular text. Many people treasured books and the late medieval trade in bound manuscripts

Manuscript Studies and Reading Practices: Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), 84–5. 47 Jessica Brantley, Reading in the Wilderness: Private Devotion and Public Performance in Late Medieval England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 22. 48 Sarah Noonan, ‘Bodies of Parchment: Representing the Passion and Reading Manuscripts in Late Medieval England’, PhD diss., Washington University, 2010, 183. 49 Carruthers, The Craft of Thought, 31. 50 Brian Stock, ‘Petrarch’s Portrait of Augustine’, in After Augustine: The Meditative Reader and the Text (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 72. 51 Robertson, Lectio Divina, 206. 52 Barratt, ‘“Take a Book and Read”’, 196. 53 Stock, ‘Petrarch’s Portrait of Augustine’, 77.

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gave them many options from which to choose.54 In addition to liturgical texts and devotionals, readers by the mid-fourteenth century could find collections of sermons, saints’ lives, prayers, religious advice and mystical visions, many of them sanctioned by the Church. Authors addressed directly the desires of lay readers to find new ways to express their piety and to learn their faith. Most religious works available in the vernacular could be divided up into short meditations to be read again and again, with deeper understanding gained each time. Medieval readers left few records of their reactions to any of these texts, but the importance of reading to Bridget’s religious life, the power of her visionary experiences, and the evidence of similar divine visions mentioned in discussions of other popular saints across Europe at the time suggest the potential for reading to connect people to God.55 A particular thread running through much of the devotional literature was the focus on the imagery of the Passion, sometimes with gruesome details of the Crucifixion included.56 By combining the practices of reading with familiar notions of meditation on Christ’s suffering and imaginary pilgrimage to Jerusalem, surrounded by meaningful paratext of the manuscript to guide readers, authors gave the ordinary laity something to contemplate without the need for the tools and time that were only available to clerics.57 These writers called upon their readers to imagine public spectacles, which perhaps they had seen staged already, and to use that

54 Sabrina Corbellini, Mart van Duijn, Suzan Folkerts and Margriet Hoogvliet, ‘Challenging the Paradigms: Holy Writ and Lay Readers in Late Medieval Europe’, Church History and Religious Culture 93 (2013), 172. 55 See Amtower for a discussion of the evidence of a widespread change to the appreciation of reading’s ability to influences a person’s thinking in the period. Laurel Amtower, Engaging Words: The Culture of Reading in the Later Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave, 2016). 56 Kathryn M. Rudy, ‘Virtual Pilgrimage through the Jerusalem Cityscape’, in Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 381–2. 57 Katherine Breen, Imagining an English Reading Public, 1150–1400 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 9.

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imagery to create an individual meditation.58 In some cases, accompanying vernacular commentary from devotional writers such as Eckhart or Suso elaborated on the deeper meaning of each image and methods by which one could use them to gain in faith.59 The laity in general may have been more comfortable with simpler, shorter texts that spoke more to religious emotions, but they shared that medieval expectation that readers would mull over a work and develop powerful, personal understandings of what it meant about faith using focused contemplation. Some books took the connection between the written manuscript and the message it could bring from God quite seriously, in instructing believers to think of the skin of Christ on the cross as the parchment of the very book being read, written with ink made from blood and engravings made with nails. Christ is the Word of God and readers could feel His presence in the words of the book.60 As a highly educated Swedish noblewoman, St Bridget spent her life swimming in the world of the religious literature that was available in Sweden during the fourteenth century. We know that she learned to read early, probably before she was married, and that she herself was considered an educator at court. Nearly fifty years ago, Birgit Klockars wrote about the religious texts Bridget read that had clear influences on what she wrote about in her revelations. There has not been a scholarly discussion of the topic since. Klockars found that the imprint of devotional literature on the work of the holy woman can be seen clearly. St Bridget had heard of the mystical traditions of Europe in her youth while attending church and, perhaps, already being advised by confessors and tutors. More importantly she knew about the lives of mystics from books. In her education she read, or heard, the Old Swedish Legendary from the early Middle Ages, a chronological survey of history as seen in the stories of individual saints, emperors and kings. She learned of other saints from the literature that circulated in Swedish convents of the time, with its heavy emphasis on 58 Brantley, Reading in the Wilderness, 3. 59 Kathryne Beebe, ‘Reading Mental Pilgrimage in Context: The Imaginary Pilgrims and Real Travels of Felix Fabri’s “Die Sionpilger”’, Essays in Medieval Studies 25 (2008), 56. 60 Noonan, ‘Bodies of Parchment’, 5.

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the exemplary lives of holy women who did good deeds and had mystical visions. She also knew the hagiographical stories of the early Church from books such as Vitas Patrum.61 We know that Bridget also had access to deeper discussions of mystical union and the religious thought of the day in general. Not only did she know scripture, from her Bible that she had translated into Swedish,62 but she had also read the Dialogues of Gregory the Great on the power of the pope; Speculum Virginum and De Modo Bene Vivendi (a book she is said to have carried around constantly), two books of advice for female believers; and at least one work from the Rhineland school of mysticism that had grown out of the teachings of Meister Eckhart, Henry Suso’s Little Book of Eternal Wisdom.63 In many of these works, we find themes of dedicating oneself to God and the behaviour expected from a devout daughter of the Church. Her education in this religious literature clearly had a great influence on St Bridget. In the iconograpy of the time, she is often depicted reading a book, or even receiving a book directly from Christ.64 This is not just because of the influence that her book of revelations had on the Church, but also because of her frequent mentions of imagery of books and reading in her visions. During her time in Rome in the 1350s, she learned more about Purgatory from a vision in which the book of justice spoke to her.65 She pronounced, again as the result of analysing her own visions, around the same time, that God ordained clerics to be disciples through constant

61 Klockars, ‘S. Birgitta and Mysticism’, 108–10. 62 Searby, Revelations, I, 10. 63 Searby, Revelations, I, 10; Klockars, ‘S. Birgitta and Mysicism’, 110. 64 St Bridget’s Eucharistic Vision, from Revelations and other texts, Naples, late fourteenth century, (accessed 4 February 2019); Image 7 of the Sunte Birgitten Openbaringe, Lubeck: 1496, (accessed 4 February 2019); Image 25 of Revelationes sanct Birgitte, Nuremberg: 1521, (accessed 4 February 2019). 65 Searby, Revelations, II, 100.

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reading of Holy Scripture. That is why they are given a book in the same way a knight is given a sword.66 Priests, for their part, should have a book and oil. The book is for instructing the imperfect, for it contains spiritual and physical learning.67 An undated vision showed her another book of justice, this one with Mercy written on one page and Justice written on the facing one, with the message that he who scorns mercy will receive the harshness of divine justice.68 This clarifies the point of a later message that the laws of man are written on dead animal skins, but the spiritual law is not. Instead it is written in the book of life that can never be lost. Here is where the record is kept of all who will receive eternal life.69 Bridget wrote to Pope Clement VI that he should look in the book of his conscience to see if Bridget is lying. If he will but look at Christ’s words that have been given to him and written in books, the pope will become better.70 These visions describe books as records, as laws, as the word of God, as the memory held in one’s own conscience. Nor does she forget the importance of the Scriptures as the connection to God. At one point, Christ spoke to her, saying, ‘I, God taught this by my word and example’.71 For medieval people, of course, that word came to them in bound books made of parchment. The Catholic Church had controlled access for centuries, but by Bridget’s time more and more people could get their hands on books, because of the growth of literacy and the explosion in vernacular manuscript production. Readers of the fourteenth century knew the power that these changes had given them, particularly in how they could develop their own personal faith. Bridget took this to heart, looking to her books to show her the foundations of religion and to guide her in developing her faith. In one of her visions from the 1340s, she describes a bishop reading three pages. He rarely reads the third page, which makes him sad though

66 Searby, Revelations, II, 108. 67 Searby, Revelations, II, 111. 68 Searby, Revelations, II, 163. 69 Searby, Revelations, II, 195. 70 Searby, Revelations, II, 246. 71 Searby, Revelations, I, Interrogation 2, book iv.

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it shows the love of God. If the man could but take heed of what he read, ‘the love of God would never be extinguished from his heart’.72 Bridget read about female saints and their visions from an early age.73 After her husband died returning from a pilgrimage to Compostela, Bridget stayed at a monastery where they stopped to rest, acquiring a learned confessor and dedicating her life to God in her grief. She writes that soon afterwards she heard a voice from a bright cloud, saying, ‘I am your God and I wish to speak to you’, setting her on a course that would eventually involve many hundreds of intense visions of personal communication with Christ and the Virgin Mary.74 For the remaining decades of her life, St Bridget focused on being a holy woman, working diligently, as already described, and seeking out visions, not so much mystical union like many seers of her time, but clear messages from God about faith, the afterlife and the future. In many cases, what she saw came in answer to her questions. She even returns to issues from earlier visions to clarify them with more holy answers.75 Bridget regularly described these visions to a scribe ‘as though she were reading from a book’,76 perhaps because reading played such a large role in her preparations for receiving them. For her entire religious life, she contemplated the word after reading or being read to.77 The Vita describing her life praises Bridget for her scholarly interests.78 But reading was more than just information, stories or exemplars. Reading seems to have been as important as prayer for Bridget as she set to prepare herself to receive her divine visions, so that God could show her the realms of heaven, hell and the future. She would read, pray and contemplate, waiting to hear a divine voice. When the visions came to her, Bridget entered a trance, sometimes 72 Searby, Revelations, I, 281. 73 Julia Bolton Holloway, ‘Bride, Margery, Julian, and Alice: Bridget of Sweden’s Textual Community in Medieval England’, in Sandra J. McEntire, ed., Margery Kempe: A Book of Essays (New York: Garland, 1992), 204. 74 Sahlin, Birgitta of Sweden, 45. 75 Searby, Revelations, I, 201 76 Morris, St Birgitta of Sweden, 3. 77 Morris, St Birgitta of Sweden, 56. 78 Krug, ‘Reading at Syon Abbey’, 160.

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completely insensitive to the world around her, and heard divine voices, often seeing figures and the visions they wanted her to see. Though in a few cases her prophecies came to her in dreams, Bridget and her confessors were adamant that she was having divine visions, not illusions sent by the devil.79 We know, they tell us, because of her reverence, the truth of the visions and her own belief that they were true.80 The visions were powerful experiences that showed the nature and possibilities of two-way communication between an exceedingly devout woman and her God. Christ told her that she did not travel in any real sense, he was showing things to her, even spiritual things, nor did she have many instances of union with the Holy Spirit, but what she experienced brought her to a new internal space of devotion, and reading, again and again, played a central role in making that happen.

The Brigittine Spiritual Legacy The Brigittine Order, established in the fifteenth century from a rule that Bridget received in one complete vision and immediately wrote down, emphasised reading as much as anything.81 Books were allowed in the joint houses for both teaching and reading to the nuns in their cells.82 In fact, a good part of each day was simply spent reading.83 The nuns imitated Bridget in focusing on devotional books, and they cemented the community 79 Searby, Revelations, IV, 316. 80 Rosalynn Voaden, God’s Words, Women’s Voices: The Discernment of Spirits in the Writing of Late-Medieval Women Visionaries (York: University of York Press, 1999), 50. 81 Krug, ‘Reading at Syon Abbey’, 157. 82 Morris, St Birgitta of Sweden, 165. 83 C. Annette Grise, ‘Prayer, Meditation and Women Readers in Late Medieval England: Teaching and Sharing through Books’, in Cate Gunn and Catherine Innes-Parker, eds, Texts and Traditions of Medieval Pastoral Care: Essays in Honour of Bella Millett (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2009), 181.

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by performing the liturgy together, a liturgy that Bridget wrote for them.84 Prizing wisdom over knowledge, the liturgy reflects the view that comes across from Bridget’s visions, that spiritual scholarship built from prayer, reading and contemplation is far superior to mere bookishness.85 It was thought that reading was how God talked to the nuns, so that reading and prayer created a two-way conversation.86 Contemplation could bring greater understanding to the mysteries of Scripture and faith. All of this was to be done in isolation when possible, without distraction.87 Bridget’s order of women, and the men who served as their pastors and confessors, show how much she treasured reading, and how important it was for her notion of private devotion. Even though she herself lived a very engaged and active life, and the visions that her devotions brought made her a powerful religious figure in the fourteenth century world, what she wanted for the nuns was the chance to learn, to pray and to read. A number of these Brigittine houses took up the creation of their own manuscripts, and then printed books, by the late fifteenth century, amassing vast, significant libraries.88 The devotional texts they made were largely for their own consumption at the convents. In some ways, this too imitated the work of St Bridget, in that she recorded her holy experiences initially for her own education, then in private letters to others. Two manuscripts at the national library in Stockholm show definitively that Bridget could

84 Katherine Zieman, ‘Playing Doctor: St Birgitta, Ritual Reading, and Ecclesiastical Authority’, in Linda Olson and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, eds, Voices in Dialogue: Reading Women in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 307. 85 Zieman, ‘Playing Doctor: St Birgitta, Ritual Reading, and Ecclesiastical Authority’, 119–20. 86 Elizabeth Schirmer, ‘Reading Lessons at Syon Abbey: The Myroure of Oure Ladye and the Mandates of Vernacular Theology’, in Linda Olson and Kathryn KerbyFulton, eds, Voices in Dialogue: Reading Women in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 349. 87 Bryan, Looking Inward, 46. 88 Julia Boffey, Manuscript and Print in London, c. 1475–1530 (London: British Library, 2012), 142; Ulrich Montag, Das Werk der heiligen Birgitta von Schweden in oberdeutscher Überlieferung (Munich: CH Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1968), 5–7.

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write, though perhaps she dictated more regularly.89 Descriptions of her writing process actually depict her telling scribes of her holy visions. Then the text was translated into Latin, and Bridget looked over the translation and approved it in concert with her confessors. She seems to have improved her Latin over her lifetime, so it remains unclear how much control Bridget had over the final product or why she bothered to produce Latin texts for decades when so many of them did not become letters to popes or kings. Certainly, this method assured that the record of her experiences kept her revelations orthodox. Perhaps the Latin texts helped churchmen advise her on any meanings of the visions that remained unclear. One should consider too, whether this description reflects the situation specifically when she lived in Rome and was interacting with international churchmen, building her reputation as a visionary. In all likelihood, though, St Bridget intended for her religious legacy to live on after her death, but she did not wish to place herself in the ranks of the saints she had read about until her story was complete. It was only towards the end of her life, after several commands from Christ, that she asked her confessor, Alfonso of Jaen, to help her organise the material into a book. Alfonso put together the various letters and records into a manuscript organised into various books introduced with his own description of Bridget’s holiness by 1377, several years after Bridget’s death. No copy of this original work survives.90 Shortly afterwards, the Church started the canonisation process to name Bridget a saint. With the political turmoils going on, however, this took some time, and in the process, Alfonso had new copies created that went even further to stress Bridget’s orthodoxy, devoutness and connection to God. These were large, illustrated manuscripts written by church scribes. After canonisation, many copies of the book of Bridget’s revelations were produced in monasteries throughout Europe. Convents became centres of the cult of St Bridget and they were soon producing texts as well. The various courses of development that 89 Morris, St Birgitta of Sweden, 5. 90 Roger Ellis, ‘“Flores ad Fabricandam … Coronam”: An Investigation into the Uses of the Revelations of St Bridget of Sweden in Fifteenth-Century England’, Aevum 51 (1982), 164.

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copies of the book took over these years meant that different traditions developed for the text, different versions of the Revelationes. This becomes clear when vernacular versions of the book came to be made in the fifteenth century, especially as the Brigittine houses spread across Europe and specific Carthusian scribes became enthusiastic copiers of the Revelationes. Latin copies survive from this period, but women and lay readers in general clearly drove a great deal of the enthusiasm for Bridget’s book as shown by the spread and multiplication of it in local languages. Though the visions she saw included prophecies of a dark future, the suffering of souls in hell, Christ’s demand that sinners, especially churchmen, repent, and criticism of the papacy in general, along with her Rule for the Brigittine Order, the popularity of the text rested on its message of religious devotion and connection. Part of the power of this message stemmed from a new focus on devotion to the Virgin Mary, who had come to hold real power over the fate of Christians in the afterlife. Bridget also gave new respect to wives and mothers like herself who sought the benefits of contemplation even as they went on with life. We can see all this in the favoured topics in the collections of short portions of her revelations that became much more popular texts than copies of the entire book in the fifteenth century. Often accompanied by simple illustrations, the small books of popular piety made from the Revelationes provided believers with a powerful aid in their devotions, to be used in contemplation and prayer.91 Brigittine literature joined the mystical movement of the fifteenth century, and many felt a religious responsibility to spread her work to more lay readers. Johannes Torsch wrote early in the century: Any person into whose hands this little book comes should preserve it diligently and make every effort that the things that are written in it should be made known to other people. And whoever has this book should not only lend it to other people, but should also lead people to it and tell them about it, so that he may receive a greater reward from God in the next life, for it is written: He who preaches me will have eternal life. Any person who wants to have it copied in such a size that it will be a small volume separate from other books, in order that it might more easily come to the attention of many people. For if this little book were to be combined with another

91

Noonan, ‘Bodies of Parchment’, 210, 157.

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large book, it would be all but lost and would not become so well known, especially since there are few people who read and diligently search the material of large books.92

He expected people to read the entire text and to then study specific passages, dwelling on them in way that only worked in small, personal books, books that functioned, in many ways, just as Bridget had experienced her visions in that she never developed an overarching philosophy or method. Her communications with Christ or the Virgin Mary were separate events, dealing with individual issues or questions that she approached after reading short passages of hagiography or Scripture. Through grace she sometimes got an answer, and she recorded that for her later study. People reading Bridget in their own languages received simple insights on faith and prayers of devotion. They could then pray on their own and contemplate how the text brought them to God. While we cannot say how many had visions, maybe quite a few; reading moved people and deepened their faith in very personal ways. The advent of print brought greater opportunities to sell books and to spread popular devotion. Just before the end of the fifteenth century, the mother house of the Brigittine Order at Vadstena sought out printers in Lübeck to create more copies for the nuns to read. Soon, other houses followed in getting books printed for nuns, clerics and theologians, but then German printers came to realise that the little devotional manuscripts had a large audience. They found it easy to produce many copies of small simple books that townspeople could afford, and Brigittine literature, even pseudo-Brigittine literature, spread even further, especially in areas that were already centres of devotion to St Bridget, such as Sicily and Bavaria. The spread of variations on Bridget’s text and the growth in the number of her readers over the course of the fourteenth century meant that many people across Europe read about her visions, using them as devotional texts as part of their personal piety. As the enthusiasistic followers began to put together books of their own on Brigittine practices and beliefs, produced by Brigittine houses, theologians and mystics, the influence of the Revelationes 92

Jonathan Green, Printing and Prophecy: Prognostication and Media Change 1450–1550 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011), 62.

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continued to spread. And yet little of this popular religious literature covered the bulk of what St Bridget wrote about her visions. Instead of criticism of kings, prophecy or descriptions of hell, readers looked to the expressions of love, emotional prayer and the power of the Virgin Mary. Included in these later versions of the visions were often instructions on how to get value from the text, how to be pious reader. In England, Brigittine texts, such as Myroure of Our Ladye and The Orcherd of Syon, a translation of Catherine of Siena’s dialogue, treat reading as a devotional exercise to be returned to again and again.93 The Catholic Church had a complicated relationship with these developments throughout the Middle Ages. While reading was encouraged for devotion, clerics feared the directions that lay interpretation could take.94 As popular movements criticising the Church arose in areas such as Bohemia and England, two areas where Bridget was very popular,95 concerns grew about the production of radical texts.96 Bridget’s holiness and obedience to the Church had always kept her in its good graces, even as some theologians questioned the veracity of what she saw.97 And royal support of elite houses such as Syon in England meant that the works of the Brigittines faced little of the anxiety from authorities that other books did.98 Bridget’s orthodoxy certainly helped her work to remain popular and respected, copied by monks, studied by nuns, proclaimed by preachers.99 For her

93 Grise, ‘Prayer, Meditation and Women Readers in Late Medieval England’, 179; Allyson Foster, ‘A Shorte Treatyse of Contemplacyon: The Book of Margery Kempe in Early English Print Culture’, MA thesis, University of Alberta, 2004, 51 94 Foster, ‘A Shorte Treatyse of Contemplacyon’, 3. 95 Bridget Morris, ‘St Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes (1492) in York Minster Library’, The Journal of the Early Book Society for the Study of Manuscripts and Printing History 13 (2010), 224; Drahomira Breedveld-Barankova, ‘St Bridget of Sweden in the PreReformation Bohemia Matthaeus De Cracovia: Proposicio Pro Canonizatione B. Brigide’, Communio Viatorium. A Theological Journal 46.2 (2004), 151. 96 Melissa Ann Crofton, ‘Textual Reconstruction: The Deployment of Late Medieval Texts in Early Modern Britain’, PhD diss., University of South Carolina, 2011, 6. 97 Voaden, God’s Words, Women’s Voices, 39. 98 Schirmer, ‘Reading Lessons at Syon Abbey’, 348. 99 Holloway, ‘Bride, Margery, Julian, and Alice’, 209.

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readers, though, it cannot be denied that the processes of pious reading that her book encouraged could lead them in directions that put them at odds with Church orthodoxy, or at least promoted the independence of the individual reader and the right of women to find their own paths to faith. We have few descriptions of how the ordinary laity understood reading as an approach to the divine. These come mostly from theologians or holy women hoping to imitate Bridget in seeking visions. Still, despite the limitations, figures such as Margery Kempe show that reading St Bridget inspired people to make pious reading part of their own lives and that doing so, with prayer and devotions, brought them closer to God.100 In the fifteenth century, women still read the literature that encouraged them to read even more texts, such as The Book of the Knight of the Tower which became available in English around this time.101 The lives of medieval female saints stood as models for proper behaviour, as before, but figures such as Catherine of Siena and Mechtild of Hackeborn joined the devotional treatises produced by the Brigittines and Carthusians in encouraging women to pray and meditate for access to God.102 It was St Bridget who made the link between reading and devotion for lay people; as one of the more popular authors of the fifteenth century, to the point that she can be considered a local saint for many who read her in the vernacular.103 Kempe, for her part, had the Revelationes read to her several times over the course of her earlier life.104 At first, she doubted the revelations, but in a vision of her own Christ told her, ‘I tell you truly that every word that is written in Bridget’s book is true, and through you shall be recognised as

100 Sahlin, Birgitta of Sweden, 4. 101 Catherine Sanok, Her Life Historical: Exemplarity and Female Saints’ Lives in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 8–11. 102 Paul J. Patterson, ‘The Book and Religious Practice in Late Medieval England’, Religion & Literature 37.2 (2005), 5. 103 Sanok, Her Life Historical, 115. 104 Sandra Straubhaar, ‘Birgitta Birgersdotter, Saint Bride of Sweden (1303?–1373)’, in Laurie J. Churchill, Phyllis R. Brown and Jane E. Jeffrey, eds, Women Writing in Latin: From Roman Antiquity to Early Modern Europe, vol. 2: Medieval Women Writing (New York: Routledge, 2002), 310.

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truth indeed’.105 St Bride, as she called Bridget, became a model in many ways, in that Kempe went to Syon, she visited Julian of Norwich, a mystic whose own book imitates the Revelationes in some ways, and she went on pilgrimage.106 In her own dictated book, Kempe describes her experiences of travelling to get closer to God and, we could say, closer to the memory of St Bridget. Kempe visited the house in Rome to interview Bridget’s aged maid. She roamed the same streets of the holy city.107 We read of the deep emotional effect that her calling has on Kempe, the trials of isolation that this brings on, and her efforts to get even closer to God, as Bridget did. At one point, Christ speaks to Kempe in a vision of the Eucharist, saying, ‘My daughter, Bride, never saw me in this manner’.108 The fact that Margery Kempe may have been illiterate only serves to illustrate how the deep impact of Bridget’s views on reading and piety could be felt among the laity. Like Bridget, Kempe read the Scriptures with the help of confessors and dictated her book to scribes. She did not, however, share many of the theological truths revealed in her visions. Instead, she was inspired by a sermon about Bridget to seek out similar experiences and to have similar books of devotion read to her. She then set about a course of imitating the life of St Bridget, through confessing, praying, fasting and pilgrimage. Like Bridget, she became abstinent, but remained married to her husband. She worried about her ability to be a holy woman, having been a wife and mother. Reading Bridget assured Kempe that she was like Mary, purified in the righteous sufferings of motherhood. After she began her career as a holy woman, Kempe took on the role of the voice of Christ, based on the power of her visions and the visible emotions of devotion she expressed, which allowed her to engage with the role of the Church as holy mother, the believer as the bride of Christ.109 She also found her visions to be sweeter than any reading from the books of Bridget, Bonaventure

105 Sahlin, Birgitta of Sweden, 162. 106 Holloway, ‘Bride, Margery, Julian, and Alice’, 211. 107 Laura L. Howes, ‘Romancing the City: Margery Kempe in Rome’, Studies in Philology 111.4 (2014), 683. 108 Holloway, ‘Bride, Margery, Julian, and Alice’, 215. 109 Noë Kukita Yoshikawa, ‘Searching for the Image of New Ecclesia: Margery Kempe’s Spiritual Pilgrimage Reconsidered’, Medieval Perspectives 11 (1996), 126.

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or Hilton.110 These were books that had been read to her by a priest. Her visions prepared her so that, ‘sche evyr encresyd in contemplacyon and holy meditacyon’ to the point that she had countless thoughts and revelations, both from the words of others and on her own.111 By the time Margery Kempe travelled on pilgrimage, her visions began to support her knowledge of faith. She writes that when she heard sermons that Germans and others were preaching, Kempe got upset because of her lack of understanding, but then Christ said to her that he was pleased with her efforts to know God and would himself help her to understand.112 Peregrination sat at the centre of her understanding of the Christian life. A divine reward awaited her at the end of her personal journey, a spiritual travel that often involved imitation.113 Kempe imitated Mary in her weeping, she imitated Christ while in the holy places of Jerusalem, and she imitated Bridget both in seeking out visions and in having them written down. Listening to the holy texts started Kempe on a mission to travel towards God, and she found other ways along the journey to focus her meditation such as imitation, contemplating the Passion, weeping and exultations for when reading was not available to her.114 Still, books and reading remained important to her faith practices. She mentions repeatedly the religious texts that she read, even though she does not seem always to have had someone to read to her in the years that followed. And, just like Bridget, she describes an eternal book of justice. Even for someone who did not have reading as part of her everyday practice and perhaps could not read, certainly could not write, reading and writing for other devout readers remained part of the powerful religious experiences that could come through personal attempts at approaching God in the late Middle Ages. We find another example of the power of reading for pious believers in a description of pilgrimage that was only meant for readers back home in Europe, originally cloistered nuns. Not so much a guidebook for the trip to Jerusalem as a fantasy pilgrimage to an imagined Holy Land, 110 Lynn Staley, ed., The Book of Margery Kempe (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Press, 1996), Book I, Part, I, line 899. 111 Staley, ed., The Book of Margery Kempe, Book I, Part II, lines 3401–4. 112 Staley, ed., The Book of Margery Kempe, Book I, Part II, lines 2304–10. 113 Hadfield, ‘Travel’, 138–9. 114 Bryan, Looking Inward, 140; Gutgsell, ‘The Gift of Tears’, 249.

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Die Sionpilger by Felix Fabri allowed fifteenth-century readers access to the benefits of pilgrimage through their books. Not everyone could handle the rigours of travel, so they sought other ways to see holy places.115 The sisters at the Bavarian cloister at Medingen and Medlingen requested the text from their confessor for contemplation. They wanted all the rough details to imagine the entire trip, similar to how late medieval believers often concentrated on Christ’s Passion to commune with God. With this more demanding exercise, the community could also share in some of the spiritual benefits of pilgrimage.116 Fabri obliged, creating a book of daily exercises that matched up with the activities of a group of believers on pilgrimage, with psalms and prayers, and imagined tribulations as well: troubles that illustrated the power of faith.117 Precise details of the path of the Via Dolorosa helped believers to commune with Christ in a way that brought together reading, contemplation and pilgrimage. Playing to his audience, Fabri did not always get these details right, and he sometimes ironed out the complexities of Christian travel to a region controlled by Muslims.118 What was important was the spiritual journey that reading and meditation could provide to experience God.

Conclusion St Bridget of Sweden spent nearly three decades of life as a pilgrim and a mystic, travelling throughout Europe and the Holy Land. Her life embodied the Christian notion of journeying towards God.119 Along the way, she read, 115 116 117 118

Rudy, ‘Virtual Pilgrimage through the Jerusalem Cityscape’, 381. Beebe, ‘Reading Mental Pilgrimage in Context’, 39–40. Beebe, ‘Reading Mental Pilgrimage in Context’, 42–3. Rudy, ‘Virtual Pilgrimage through the Jerusalem Cityscape’, 383; Beebe, ‘Reading Mental Pilgrimage in Context’, 44–5. 119 Vicente Almazán, ‘Saint Birgitta on the Pilgrimage Route to Santiago’, in Enrique Martínez Ruiz and Magdalena de Pazzis Pi Corrales, eds, Scandinavia, Saint Birgitta and the Pilgrimage Route to Santiago de Compostela: Proceedings of the VIII Spain

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prayed and meditated on faith, which brought on visions of Christ and the Virgin Mary showing her the future, the lessons of hell and expressions of God’s love. Pilgrimage helped to bring on her visions just as much as her contemplation; travel to holy places helped to bring her into the inner space where she could see more clearly.120 And reading sat at the centre of all of these practices of Bridget’s piety. Theologians and the saints inspired her, while Scripture provided her with guidance but also questions about which to pray. It is no coincidence that she acquired more books while on pilgrimage to Spain.121 Reading set her on the journeys of soul and body that made her the writer who influenced popes and kings, as well as centuries of believers who followed. During the fifteenth century, and into the sixteenth, lay readers moved away from the contemporary issues that engaged Bridget. Also, they seemed less interested in the need for repentance and penance that she wrote so much about. For these Christians, the power of her revelations lay in the explanations of faith and the illustrations of love from both Christ and the Virgin Mary.122 Bridget served as a conduit for the divine message for each individual believer, that everyone could direct the soul towards the divine and find a closer connection to God. By reading and imitating the author Bridget in her penance, fasting, pilgrimage and prayer, medieval people could find their own paths.

and Sweden Encounters throughout History, Santiago de Compostela, October 18–20, 2000 (Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 2002), 16. 120 Robert Plötz, ‘The Mentality of the Pilgrim’, in Enrique Martinez Ruiz and Magdelena de Pazzis Pi Corrales, eds, Scandinavia, Saint Birgitta and the Pilgrimage Route to Santiago de Compostela: Proceedings of the VIII Spain and Sweden Encounters throughout History, Santiago de Compostela, October, 18–20, 2000 (Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 2002), 33. 121 Almazán, ‘Saint Birgitta on the Pilgrimage Route to Santiago’, 19. 122 Tore Nyberg, ‘Saint Birgitta and her Projection on Modern Time: Marinade Escobar and the Order of the Holy Saviour’, in Enrique Martinez Ruiz and Magdelena de Pazzis Pi Corrales, eds, Scandinavia, Saint Birgitta and the Pilgrimage Route to Santiago de Compostela: Proceedings of the VIII Spain and Sweden Encounters throughout History, Santiago de Compostela, October, 18–20, 2000 (Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 2002), 237.

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Bibliography Almazán, Vicente, ‘Saint Birgitta on the Pilgrimage Route to Santiago’, in Enrique Martínez Ruiz and Magdalena de Pazzis Pi Corrales, eds, Scandinavia, Saint Birgitta and the Pilgrimage Route to Santiago de Compostela: Proceedings of the VIII Spain and Sweden Encounters throughout History, Santiago de Compostela, October 18–20, 2000 (Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 2002), 13–20. Amtower, Laurel, Engaging Words: The Culture of Reading in the Later Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave, 2016). Baechle, Sarah, ‘Chaucer, the Continent, and the Characteristics of Commentary’, in Kathryn Kirby-Fulton and Sarah Baechle, eds, New Directions in Medieval Manuscript Studies and Reading Practices: Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), 384–405. Bailey, Anne E., ‘Flights of Distance, Time and Fancy: Women Pilgrims and their Journeys in English’, Gender & History 24.2 (2012), 292–309. Barratt, Alexandra, ‘“Take a Book and Read”: Advice for Religious Women’, in Cate Gunn and Catherine Innes-Parker, eds, Texts and Traditions of Medieval Pastoral Care: Essays in Honour of Bella Millett (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2009), 293–308. Beebe, Kathryne, ‘Reading Mental Pilgrimage in Context: The Imaginary Pilgrims and Real Travels of Felix Fabri’s “Die Sionpilger”’, Essays in Medieval Studies 25 (2008), 39–70. Boffey, Julia, Manuscript and Print in London, c. 1475–1530 (London: British Library, 2012). Brantley, Jessica, Reading in the Wilderness: Private Devotion and Public Performance in Late Medieval England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). Breedveld-Barankova, Drahomira, ‘St Bridget of Sweden in the Pre-Reformation Bohemia Matthaeus De Cracovia: Proposicio Pro Canonizatione B. Brigide’, Communio Viatorium. A Theological Journal 46.2 (2004), 149–67. Breen, Katherine, Imagining an English Reading Public, 1150–1400 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Briggs, Charles F., ‘Literacy, Reading, and Writing in the Medieval West’, Journal of Medieval History 26 (2000), 397–420 Bryan, Jennifer, Looking Inward: Devotional Reading and the Private Self in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). Carruthers, Mary, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

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Coleman, Joyce, Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Corbellini, Sabrina, Mart van Duijn, Suzan Folkerts and Margriet Hoogvliet, ‘Challenging the Paradigms: Holy Writ and Lay Readers in Late Medieval Europe’, Church History and Religious Culture 93 (2013), 171–88. Corbellini, Sabrina, ed., Cultures of Religious Reading in the Late Middle Ages: Instructing the Soul, Feeding the Spirit, and Awakening the Passion (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013). Crofton, Melissa Ann, ‘Textual Reconstruction: The Deployment of Late Medieval Texts in Early Modern Britain’, PhD diss., University of South Carolina, 2011. Ellis, Roger, ‘“Flores ad Fabricandam … Coronam”: An Investigation into the Uses of the Revelations of St Bridget of Sweden in Fifteenth-Century England’, Aevum 51 (1982), 163–86. Foster, Allyson, ‘A Shorte Treatyse of Contemplacyon: The Book of Margery Kempe in Early English Print Culture’, MA thesis, University of Alberta, 2004. Green, D. H., Women Readers in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Green, Jonathan, Printing and Prophecy: Prognostication and Media Change 1450–1550 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011). Grise, C. Annette, ‘Holy Women in Print: Continental Female Mystics and the English Mystical Tradition’, in Edward Alexander Jones, ed., The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Papers Read at Charney Manor, July 2004 (Cambridge: Brewer, 2004), 83–96. Grise, C. Annette, ‘Prayer, Meditation and Women Readers in Late Medieval England: Teaching and sharing through Book’, in Cate Gunn and Catherine Innes-Parker, eds, Texts and Traditions of Medieval Pastoral Care: Essays in Honour of Bella Millett (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2009), 178–92. Grise, C. Annette, ‘The Textual Community of Syon Abbey’, Florilegium 19 (2002), 149–62. Gutgsell, Jessie, ‘The Gift of Tears: Weeping the Religious Imagination of Western Medieval Christianity’, Anglican Theological Review 97.2 (2015), 239–53. Hadfield, Andrew, ‘Travel’, in Brian Cummings and James Simpson, eds, Cultural Reformations: Medieval and Renaissance in Literary History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 134–52. Heffernan, Carol F., ‘The Revelations of St Bridget of Sweden in Fifteenth-Century England’, Neophilogus 101 (2017), 337–49. Holloway, Julia Bolton, ‘Bride, Margery, Julian, and Alice: Bridget of Sweden’s Textual Community in Medieval England’, in Sandra J. McEntire, ed., Margery Kempe: A Book of Essays (New York: Garland, 1992), 203–21.

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Howes, Laura L., ‘Romancing the City: Margery Kempe in Rome’, Studies in Philology 111.4 (2014), 680–90. Karnes, Michelle, ‘Nicholas Love and Medieval Meditations on Christ: Interiority, Imagination, and Meditations on the Life of Christ’, Speculum 82.2 (2007), 380–408. Kirby-Fulton, Kathryn, and Sarah Baechle, eds, New Directions in Medieval Manuscript Studies and Reading Practices: Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014). Klockars, Birgit, ‘S. Birgitta and Mysticism’, Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 5 (1970), 106–14. Krug, Rebecca, Reading Families: Women’s Literate Practice in Late Medieval England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002). Montag, Ulrich, Das Werk der heiligen Birgitta von Schweden in oberdeutscher Überlieferung (Munich: CH Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1968). Morris, Bridget, St Birgitta of Sweden (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1999) Morris, Bridget, ‘St Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes (1492) in York Minster Library’, The Journal of the Early Book Society for the Study of Manuscripts and Printing History 13 (2010), 221–36. Murphy, John Lancaster, ‘The Idea of Purgatory in Middle English Literature’, PhD Diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1995. Noonan, Sarah, ‘Bodies of Parchment: Representing the Passion and Reading Manuscripts in Late Medieval England’, PhD diss., Washington University, 2010. Nyberg, Tore, ‘Saint Birgitta and her Projection on Modern Time: Marinade Escobar and the Order of the Holy Saviour’, in Enrique Martinez Ruiz and Magdelena de Pazzis Pi Corrales, eds, Scandinavia, Saint Birgitta and the Pilgrimage Route to Santiago de Compostela: Proceedings of the VIII Spain and Sweden Encounters throughout History, Santiago de Compostela, October, 18–20, 2000 (Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 2002), 233–46. O’Mara, V., and B. Morris, eds, The Translation of the Works of St Birgitta of Sweden into the Medieval European Vernacular (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000). Patterson, Paul J., ‘The Book and Religious Practice in Late Medieval England’, Religion & Literature 37.2 (2005), 1–8. Peterson, Janine Larmon, ‘Visions, Inquisitors, and Challenges to Christian Doctrine in the Later Middle Ages’, English Language Notes 56.1 (2018), 203–7. Pettegree, Andrew, The Book in the Renaissance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). Pettegree, Andrew, ‘Centre and Periphery in the European Book World’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 18 (2008), 101–28. Pilch, John J., Flights of the Soul: Visions, Heavenly Journeys, and Peak Experiences in the Biblical World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011).

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Plötz, Robert, ‘The Mentality of the Pilgrim’, in Enrique Martinez Ruiz and Magdelena de Pazzis Pi Corrales, eds, Scandinavia, Saint Birgitta and the Pilgrimage Route to Santiago de Compostela: Proceedings of the VIII Spain and Sweden Encounters throughout History, Santiago de Compostela, October, 18–20, 2000 (Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 2002), 21–53. Robertson, Duncan, Lectio Divina: The Medieval Experience of Reading (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2011). Rudy, Kathryn M., ‘Virtual Pilgrimage through the Jerusalem Cityscape’, in Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 381–93. Sahlin, Claire L., Birgitta of Sweden and the Voice of Prophecy (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2001). St Bridget of Sweden, Revelationes caelestes (Lubeck: Bartholomäus Ghotan, 1492). Sanok, Catherine, Her Life Historical: Exemplarity and Female Saints’ Lives in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). Scerri, Hector, ‘Wayfaring and Seafaring: A Theological Reading of the Mediterranean Journey’, The Person and the Challenges 1.2 (2011), 55–74. Schirmer, Elizabeth, ‘Reading Lessons at Syon Abbey: The Myroure of Oure Ladye and the Mandates of Vernacular Theology’, in Linda Olson and Kathryn KerbyFulton, eds, Voices in Dialogue: Reading Women in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 345–76. Searby, Denis Michael, and Bridget Morris, The Revelations of St Birgitta of Sweden, 4 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006–15). Staley, Lynn, ed., The Book of Margery Kempe (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Press, 1996). Stanciu, Diana, ‘Accomplishing One’s Essence: The Role of Meditation in the Theology of Gabriel Biel’, in Karl Enenkel and Walter Melion, eds, Meditatio – Refashioning the Self: Theory and Practice in Late Medieval and Early Modern Intellectual Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 127–52. Stjerna, Kirsi Irmeli, ‘St Birgitta of Sweden: A Study of Birgitta’s Spiritual Visions and Theology of Love’, PhD diss., Boston University, 1995. Stock, Brian, After Augustine: The Meditative Reader and the Text (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2001). Straubhaar, Sandra, ‘Birgitta Birgersdotter, Saint Bride of Sweden (1303?–73)’, in Laurie J. Churchill, Phyllis R. Brown and Jane E. Jeffrey, eds, Women Writing in Latin: From Roman Antiquity to Early Modern Europe, vol. 2: Medieval Women Writing (New York: Routledge, 2002), 309–18. Voaden, Rosalynn, God’s Words, Women’s Voices: The Discernment of Spirits in the Writing of Late-Medieval Women Visionaries (York: University of York Press, 1999).

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Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn, ‘The Tongues of the Nightingale: “hertely redyng” at English Courts’, in Kathryn Kirby-Fulton and Sarah Baechle, eds, New Directions in Medieval Manuscript Studies and Reading Practices: Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), 78–98. Yoshikawa, Noë Kukita, ‘“Meditacyon” or “Contemplacyon”? Margery Kempe’s Spiritual Experience and Terminology’, Leeds Studies in English 33 (2002), 114–34. Yoshikawa, Noë Kukita, ‘Searching for the Image of New Ecclesia: Margery Kempe’s Spiritual Pilgrimage Reconsidered’, Medieval Perspectives 11 (1996), 125–38. Zieman, Katherine, ‘Playing Doctor: St Birgitta, Ritual Reading, and Ecclesiastical Authority’, in Linda Olson and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, eds, Voices in Dialogue: Reading Women in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 307–34.

Kathryn Hurlock

2  Performing Pilgrimage in Late Medieval Wales*

Abstract In the late Middle Ages, narrative accounts of pilgrimage became increasingly popular as a way of engaging with virtual soul travel. Medieval Wales lacked this tradition of narrative texts. As a result, this chapter argues that this gap was filled by the poems composed in Welsh by a professional class of poets who produced works to reflect their own interests, or in response to the requirements of a patron. In the latter case, this might be because the poet had engaged in proxy pilgrimage for that patron, who then wanted an account of the journey and the pilgrimage sites visited by the poet. These works, focusing on domestic and overseas locations, were composed to be performed by the poets or professional reciters in, for the most part, the households of the elite in Wales. The chapter concludes by arguing that listening to pilgrimage poetry was especially beneficial because of the transformative possibilities of sound, and that the collective experience of listening in family, household, or community groups meant that performing poetry created a way for collective and communal engagement that created a communitas of virtual pilgrimage in late medieval Wales.

Virtual, armchair or non-corporeal pilgrimage, where an individual takes part in a spiritual pilgrimage by engaging with texts or objects associated with pilgrimage, has a long and well-recognised tradition. Since Egeria wrote an account of her Holy Land pilgrimage in the 380s for her female audience in Galicia, Christian pilgrims have written about the sights and sounds of their pilgrimage experiences so that others can benefit from mentally visiting holy sites.1 In the late Middle Ages, narrative accounts – first *

Aspects of this article are considered in Kathryn Hurlock, Medieval Welsh Pilgrimage, c. 1100–1500 (New York: Palgrave, 2018). I am grateful to the editors for their invitation to speak at the ‘Soul Travel’ symposium at De Montfort, Leicester, in September 2017, and to contribute to this volume.

1

George E. Gingras, ed. and trans., Egeria: Diary of a Pilgrimage (New York: Newman Press, 1970), 88–9; Donald Roy Howard, Writers and Pilgrims: Medieval Pilgrimage Narratives and Their Posterity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).

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in manuscripts and then, more widely, in print – were instrumental in facilitating this kind of armchair pilgrimage as they offered often detailed descriptions of the routes taken by pilgrims and their experiences during pilgrimage, recreating the sights and sounds of far-off destinations for those at home. Between 1100 and 1500, across Europe, over 500 accounts of Christian pilgrimage were written, and many more descriptions of Santiago de Compostela, Rome and other local pilgrimages were produced with the intention of providing descriptions of holy sites and guides for those who wished to visit them, both in person and as a virtual exercise.2 Wales lacked these narrative accounts that were so popular in England and continental Europe. The only reference to late medieval pilgrimage narratives is to the now-lost works written and kept by the Stradling family in their private library at St Donat’s in Glamorgan, three generations of whom undertook the pilgrimage to Jerusalem.3 There were no printed Welsh pilgrimage accounts in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries; indeed the first printed book in Welsh was not produced until 1546, and the first published (illegally) in Wales was in 1585, so there was little scope for printing vernacular texts for wider dissemination.4 Nor is there any hard evidence that manuscript or printed pilgrimage accounts in English found their way to Wales despite the fact that English was spoken across Wales, in varying degrees, by the end of the Middle Ages.5 Yet the Welsh were keen pilgrims to sites at home and overseas, and among the elite they were also keen

2 3

4

5

Elka Weber, Travelling Through Text: Message and Method in Late Medieval Pilgrimage Accounts (London: Routledge, 2005), 46. ‘Extract of a Letter from the Rev. E. Gamage to Llywelyn ab Ifan, Nov 12, 1726’, in Taliesin Williams, ed., The Doom of Colyn Dolphyn: A Poem, with notes illustrative of various Traditions of Glamorganshire (London: Longman, Rees, Orme & Co., 1837), 90. John Price, Yny lllywvyr hwnn (London: Edward Whitchurch, 1546); R. Geraint Gruffydd, ‘Yny lhyvyr hwnn (1546): the earliest Welsh printed book’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies XXII (1969), 105–16; Anon., Y Drych Cristianogawl (Rotomagi, 1985). Llinos Beverley Smith, ‘The Welsh and English Languages in Late-medieval Wales’, in David Trotter, ed., Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), 17.

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patrons of religious and devotional works to Welsh saints and universal figures of the Church. Something must have filled the void for those who wanted the benefits of pilgrimage but could not, or would not, go. That something was the poetry composed and performed primarily in the elite households of late medieval Wales. This chapter examines the ways in which these poems on pilgrimages and shrines recreated and conveyed pilgrimage within Wales and to overseas destinations, and analyses what this meant for the experience of virtual pilgrimage for those who heard this poetry. It argues that several of these vernacular poems, the dominant form of literary culture in late medieval Wales, were composed at the behest of patrons to describe their own experiences or those of proxies, by poets who sought to describe their own experiences, and by those wishing to promote particular shrines, so that these works could be performed to a lay audience and provide a way to embark on a mental journey. A substantial number of poems refer to overseas and domestic pilgrimage in brief, but some provide lengthy descriptions of pilgrimage sites. Most of the poems discussing overseas pilgrimage focus on pilgrimage to Rome, particularly in the fifteenth century, or on the more important pilgrimage sites in Wales such as the Holy Rood of Brecon, or the holy well and statue of the Virgin Mary at Penrhys in the Rhondda.6 Throughout, they emphasise what has been seen and heard and experienced by the poets, descriptions which allowed listeners to reconstruct mentally both the itinerary of the pilgrimage and the experience of being at a shrine. Finally, this chapter argues that the performance of pilgrimage, as opposed to the text-based reading of pilgrimage accounts found elsewhere, enriched the virtual pilgrimage experience by engaging with the sense of hearing and, because the poems were performed to an audience rather than an individual, they allowed for a collective, communal, pilgrimage experience which bound families and groups together in a common devotional exercise. This provides an interesting counterbalance 6

For the popularity of pilgrimage to Rome, see Katharine Olson, ‘Ar ffordd Pedr a Phawl: Welsh Pilgrimage and Travel to Rome, c. 1200–1530’, The Welsh History Review 24 (2008), 1–40; Christine James, ‘“Y Grog Ddoluriog Loywrym”: Golwg ar y Canu I Grog Llangynwyd’, Llen Cymru 29.1 (2006), 64–109.

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to the existing literature on virtual pilgrimage, which presents it as a largely solitary experience.

Poets and Poetry in Late Medieval Wales Poetry was the leading form of literary and oral culture in medieval Wales, where the vernacular was given greater prominence than in many other countries because it was protected by the elite.7 In the centuries before the last of independent Wales was conquered by Edward I (1272–1307), the court poets who composed for the native princes were afforded a particular status in native Welsh law. The highest-ranking was the pencerdd or chief poet, and he could be accompanied by the bardd teulu [household poet] and carfwrwydd [a professional storyteller]. This latter position may have referred to a designated individual, or be taken on by someone in an ad hoc fashion.8 This status was in marked contrast to poets elsewhere in Europe, who were often viewed as marginal figures, especially by the Latin-speaking ecclesiastical elite.9 In addition, some households might have a datgeiniad (a professional reciter who appears to have risen to prominence as the cywydd, a poem usually of seven-syllable rhyming couplets and the form in which many of the pilgrimage poems was composed, became more popular), cerddor or puror who could learn and perform poetry composed by someone else; indeed, it is likely that they had to learn the most famous poems of the day as part of their training.10 Though the exact roles of these individuals 7 8 9 10

There were poems composed in the vernacular written across Europe in the late Middle Ages, but armchair or virtual pilgrimage was predominantly achieved through narrative texts. Dafydd Jenkins, ‘Bardd Teulu and Pencerdd’, in Thomas Charles-Edwards, Morfydd E. Owen and Paul Russell, eds, The Welsh King and His Court (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000), 142–4. Thomas O’Loughlin, Celtic Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1999), 40. Brynley F. Roberts, ‘Oral Tradition and Welsh Literature: A Description and Survey’, Oral Tradition 3.1–2 (1988), 65; Dafydd Johnston, ‘Dafydd ap Gwilym and Oral

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should not perhaps be designated too strictly, it is obvious that poets and reciters functioned in a number of ways, and that in larger households several individuals might be in attendance in order to perform poetry.11 After the conquest of 1282 the uchwelyr, the new elite of Wales who replaced the Welsh princes but were on a rough social par with the English gentry, became the main patrons of the Welsh-language poets in Wales, and thus of the poetry discussed in this chapter.12 The contents of the poets’ compositions now tended to reflect the interests of this newly emergent class, praising them, their families and their lineage, eulogising their dead, and providing poems in praise of God or particular saints. In relation to the latter, the role of the poets as transmitters of religious information was arguably augmented by their belief, seen in a fourteenth-century instruction manual for Welsh poets, that inspiration for poetry came from the Holy Spirit.13 These poets were known as the Beirdd yr Uchelwyr [Poets of the Nobility]. As with their predecessors, they composed poems for oral recitation. As a result in many cases their works were not committed to writing until many years later; indeed the survival of most of the late medieval poetry from Wales was due to the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Tradition’, Studia Celtica 37 (2003), 145; Daniel Huws, Medieval Welsh Manuscripts (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000), 90; Sally Harper, Music in Welsh Culture Before 1650: A Study of the Principal Sources (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 16–18; Sioned Davies, ‘Storytelling in Medieval Wales’, Oral Tradition 7.2 (1992), 232. 11 Dafydd R. Johnston, Llên yr Uchelwyr: Hanes Beirniadol Llenyddiaeth Gymraeg 1300–1525 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2nd edn, 2014), 28–9. 12 Monastic and clerical patronage was also common, though the majority of pilgrimage poetry was secular in origin. For clerical patronage, see Hywel Rheinallt, ‘St Dwynwen of Llanddwyn’, in Barry Lewis, ed. and trans., Medieval Welsh Poems to Saints and Shrines (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 2015), 75–7, trans. 346–8. See also the notes, 149–50; Sabine Baring Gould and John Fisher, The Lives of the British Saints: the saints of Wales and Cornwall and such saints as have dedications in Britain, 4 vols (London: The Honourable Society of the Cymmrodorion, 1907–13), IV, 395–6; Johnston, Llên yr Uchelwyr; and for Welsh pilgrimage to Chester, see Barry Lewis, Welsh Poetry and English Pilgrimage: Gruffudd ap Maredudd and the Rood at Chester (Aberystwyth: University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 2005), 21. 13 O’Loughlin, Celtic Christianity, 41.

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gentlemen and clergy who went to pains to copy out poems into large collections.14 The fact that the memories of the professional reciters might alter the exact wording of these works accounts for the variations seen in surviving versions of the same composition.15 The Beirdd yr Uchelwyr were often itinerant, travelling around the elite houses of Wales in search of patronage, but it was the case that some areas of late medieval Wales, such as the south-east and Glamorgan, had a particularly rich cultural scene that resulted in extensive patronage of the leading bards of their day. Many of the patrons they composed for were multilingual and highly educated, their patronage of the poets forming part of a wider patronage of prose works and other manuscript collections that often mixed with literary culture from England, but it remained the case that vernacular oral cultural and the performance of poetry were dominant in the private households of late medieval Wales.16 There is no evidence, as there was for narrative accounts written elsewhere, that late medieval Welsh pilgrimage poetry was specifically used for virtual devotion in religious communities from where lengthy pilgrimage was not possible, despite the fact that Welsh abbots were patrons of poetry on a whole range of topics.17 Their essentially domestic performance to a largely mixed lay 14 Graham C. G. Thomas, ‘From Manuscript to Print. I. Manuscript’, in R. Geraint Gruffydd, ed., A Guide to Welsh Literature, c. 1530–1700. Volume III (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1997), 251–2. 15 Dafydd Johnston, ‘Oral Tradition in Medieval Welsh Poetry: 1100–1600’, Oral Tradition 18.2 (2003), 192–3. 16 For a discussion of this culture in south-east Wales, the area where many of the poems discussed in this chapter were composed and performed, see Helen Fulton, ‘The Geography of Welsh Literary Production in Late Medieval Glamorgan’, Journal of Medieval History 41 (2015), 325–40; Ceri W. Lewis, ‘The Literary Tradition of Morgannwg Down to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century’, in T. B. Pugh, Glanmor Williams and M. Fay Williams, eds, Glamorgan County History III: The Middle Ages. The Marcher Lordships of Gower and Kilvey from the Norman Conquest to the Act of Union of England and Wales (Cardiff: Glamorgan County History Committee, 1971), 449–554. 17 For monastic patronage of Welsh poetry, see Dafydd Johnston, ‘Monastic Patronage of Welsh Poetry’, in Janet Burton and Karen Stöber, eds, Monastic Wales: New Approaches (Cardiff: Cardiff University Press, 2013), 177–90.

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audience meant that not only the poets’ immediate patrons were the audience, but also family members, visitors and servants, and anyone else who heard the poems repeated by professional reciters in other locations.18 In those cases where the poets were describing their own experiences this would have been interesting to any listening Christian, but it was arguably even more important when the poet had gone on pilgrimage as a proxy for the patron or patrons who then heard about that pilgrimage in this way as the poet was describing the journey undertaken specifically on their behalf. If the poet had gone on pilgrimage to secure a pardon for another person then they would presumably want a decent account of what that journey had entailed and be particularly interested in hearing about the holy sites visited by the poet as proxy, as each one would have brought some sort of spiritual reward. The Welsh poetry composed before the mid-fourteenth century relating to overseas pilgrimage was primarily concerned with the salvation of the individual poet’s soul.19 From around the mid-fourteenth century onwards, however, poetry on overseas pilgrimage became more descriptive, arguably to provide a virtual pilgrimage experience for their audiences. The length of these works means that they are necessarily less detailed that their narrative equivalents, but they did not have to recreate every detail of either the pilgrim journey or the final destination to be effective in functioning as a virtual form of pilgrimage. Kathryn M. Rudy has argued that images of Jerusalem in the Middle Ages did not have to provide a ‘literal map’ to be effective in aiding virtual pilgrimage.20 In several works the poets described their reasons for going on pilgrimage in the first place as well as their route or the difficulties of the journey, and a list of the sites they 18

Literacy and bilingualism are alluded to in other works, such as Guto’r Glyn, ‘In Praise of Rhys ap Siancyn of Glyn-Nedd’, (accessed 1 August 2018), lines 41–52. 19 See, for example, the poem in the Black Book of Carmarthen: Jenny Rowland, Early Welsh Saga Poetry: A Study and Edition of the ‘Englynion’ (Cambridge: Brewer, 1990), 452–3, trans. 499–500. 20 Kathryn M. Rudy, ‘Virtual Pilgrimage through the Jerusalem Cityscape’, in Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 381–96.

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visited once they reached their destination. In this way the poems had a rather practical aim in that they informed listeners about what to expect or conveyed to them the experiences of pilgrimage. The nature of these poems did, however, mean that the information contained in them was brief and to the point, the poets not having the space or flexibility of the narrative form at their disposal. Brevity did not, however, mean that these poems were not useful to audiences as either practical or virtual guides to pilgrimage. When outlining the routes followed by pilgrims, for examples, even a brief list of place-names could be useful to a listener who had access to, or knowledge of, information drawn from other geographical works such as the Imago Mundi, or David Morgan’s late fifteenth-century ‘Geography of Wales’.21 Listeners could thus create a mental map drawing on these sources which would allow them to envisage the route taken by pilgrims to reach their destinations. In the mid-fifteenth century the Carmarthenshire bard Lewis Glyn Cothi (fl. 1447–89), one of the first poets to write down his compositions, went on pilgrimage to Rome. On his return he composed a cywydd outlining his journey through mainland Europe: I am doing penance Three roads to Peter and Paul I walked in search of them From Anglesey to Rome yonder, The Rhine Valley and the extensive land of Burgundy, Italy, Lombardy once again, Brabant and Germany together, Swabia, and Flanders as well.22

The three northern roads into Rome were well known, as was the overland route via Burgundy and Germany which was taken to Rome by Dafydd ap Siôn of Kilvey, a commote (a secular division of land) of Gower, and subject

21 22

T. Matthews, ‘Welsh Records in Foreign Libraries’, Reports and Transactions of the Cardiff Naturalists Society 43 (1910), 23. E. D. Jones, ed., ‘Cywydd y Farf ’, in Gwaith Lewis Glyn Cothi (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1953), 206–7, lines 9–16.

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of another of Lewis Glyn Cothi’s works.23 The familiarity of routes to the Holy Land was also reflected in the poems of Guto’r Glyn (c. 1440–93) to Sieffrai Cyffin ap Morus of Oswestry (fl. 1460–75), one of his patrons. In one poem he likened Sieffrai to the widely travelled Joseph of the Old Testament, and described him … following the paths of Jason son of Aeson and his retinue, roaming, walking and running, similar to Friar Odoric, insisting upon quartering lands, going ahead, he was Mandeville.24

In another he praised him for his pilgrimage to ‘St Peter and St Paul … to Jaffa and the tomb’.25 The poems are not, themselves, specifically about pilgrimage, as Guto’r was focused more widely on his relationship with his patron; indeed, in his second poem he devotes only ten lines to a journey which would have taken Sieffrai many months. Despite the lack of detail, in both works Guto’r was clearly trying to convey the breadth of travel undertaken by Sieffrai, and though the journeys of Jason to retrieve the Gold Fleece from Colchis or Friar Odoric into Asia did not outline pilgrimage routes, reference to them here does reflect the way in which poets could allude to other well-known journeys as a way of illustrating

‘Awdl I Ddafydd ap Siôn pan oedd yn Rhufain’, in Gwaith Lewis Glyn Cothi, 223–4, lines 50–2. 24 Eurig Salisbury, ed., ‘96 – In praise of Sieffrai Cyffin ap Morus of Oswestry’, (accessed 20 August 2018), 27–9, 31–6. For references to Mandeville in other late medieval Welsh poetry, see ‘Moliant Rhisiart Twrberfil’, in Gwaith Lewis Glyn Cothi, 237–8, line 38; Rosemary Tzanaki, Mandeville’s Medieval Audiences: A Study on the Reception of the Book of Sir John Mandeville (1371–1550) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 16. 25 Eurig Salisbury, ed., ‘97 – In praise of of Sieffrai Cyffin ap Morus of Oswestry and his wife, Siân daughter of Lawrence Stanstry’, (accessed 20 August 2018), lines 6, 8. 23

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the journeys of pilgrims.26 His interest in the more practical (rather than spiritual) aspects of Sieffrai’s journey also reflects his own lack of interest in composing overly religious works, a failing that was drawn to his attention by the abbot of Valle Crucis.27 Other poets were particularly interested in describing the holy sites and relics that they saw when they reached their goal. The Glamorgan poet Gwilym Tew (fl. c. 1460–80), for example, referred to the ‘Stations of Christ and His Ages’ in his description of the sites visited by Sir John ap Morgan of Tredegar when he was in Jerusalem.28 In his description of the pilgrimage of Dafydd ap Sion to Rome, Lewis Glyn Cothi mentioned the Vernicle, the cloth imprinted with Christ’s face.29 The poets who composed works on the pilgrimages of others who went, however, tended to be less detailed, and less passionate about relating the sites of Rome, than those composed from direct experience. Lewis Trefnant’s (fl. 1550–80) poem for his patron Rhys ap Dafydd ap Llwyd describing the latter’s pilgrimage to Rome, for example, lacked the depth and immediacy of other works in describing the city, concentrating instead on Rhys’s reasons for going on pilgrimage, and the worries of the family he left behind.30 Poets who were also pilgrims were another matter. Hywel Dafi (fl. c.  1450–80) composed I Rufain a’I Rhyfeddodau [To Rome and its Wonders], describing the relics of Rome in language which suggested he Odoric of Pordenone, The Travels of Friar Odoric: 14th Century Journal of the Blessed Odoric of Podenone, trans. Henry Yule (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002). For the fifteenth-century Welsh translations, see Stephen J. Williams, ed., Fford y Brawd Odrig (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1929); Anthony D. Carr, ‘Inside the Tent Looking Out: The Medieval Welsh World View’, in R. R. Davies and Geraint H. Jenkins, eds, From Medieval to Modern Wales: Historical Essays in Honour of Kenneth O. Morgan and Ralph A. Griffiths (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004), 34–5. 27 Ann Parry Owen, ed., ‘118 – Meditation at the End of Life’, (accessed 20 August 2018), lines 10–12. 28 D. R. Thomas, ‘Sir John Morgan of Tredegar, Knt’, Archaeologia Cambrensis (1884), 44. 29 ‘Awdl I Ddafydd ap Siôn pan oedd yn Rhufain’, in Gwaith Lewis Glyn Cothi, 23–4. 30 Lewis Trefnant, ‘Cywydd I Rhys Ab Dafydd Llwyd Aethai I Rufain Yn Bererin’, in Griffith Hartwell-Jones, Celtic Britain and the Pilgrim Movement (London: The Honourable Society of the Cymmrodorion, 1912), 226–8. 26

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had visited them in person, probably during the pontificate of Calixtus III (1455–58).31 Robin Ddu (fl. 1450), a poet from Anglesey, sailed to Rome for the Jubilee of 1450, and described the Vernicle of Christ and Porta Aurea, among other things.32 The most detailed surviving description of Roman pilgrimage in a Welsh poem comes, unsurprisingly, from a bard who went to Rome as a proxy for his patron: Huw Cae Llwyd (fl. 1431–1504). Huw Cae Lwyd undertook this pilgrimage with his son Ieuan (fl. 1475–1500) in 1475 at the behest of his patron Ieuan ap Gwilym of Breconshire. In this ninety-line poem, Huw Cae Llwyd gave over two-thirds to the places that he had visited on Ieuan ap Gwilym’s behalf. His extensive tour of the Holy City included a visit to see the Vernicle; the corporeal relics of Sts Peter, Paul, Lawrence, Anne; the secondary relics of Aaron, Christ and St Paul; the unspecified attractions of Sts Petronilla, Andrew, Luke, Sebastien, Simon, Jude, Jerome, Mathias and Stephen the Protomartyr; a holy cup; a coat which could resurrect the dead; Jesus’s blood; the Virgin Mary’s milk; a speaking image of Christ; a piece of the True Cross; and nine thorns from the Crown of Thorns.33 He clearly composed his work with a view to ‘walking’ his patron through this recreated journey, as at one point he directly addressed his audience as if they were undertaking this spiritual journey with him: Let us go to the chapel to see it; No woman of Christendom goes inside. Let us come to the blessed stair, under God’s grace, Which our true God trod. Let us go from the court there to the church Where a hundred altars have been gathered.34 31 Hartwell-Jones, Celtic Britain, 186–8; A. Cynfael Lake, ed., Gwaith Hywel Dafi II (Aberystwyth: University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 2015), 521–3; A. Cynfael Lake, ‘The Fifteenth-century Poet Hywel Dafi and his Connection with Breconshire’, Brycheiniog 46 (2015), 67. 32 Robin Ddu, ‘Cywydd y Llong Pan Aeth Y Bardd I Rufain Gida Phererinion Eraill, 1450, Pan Oedd Nicolas Yn Bab’, in Hartwell-Jones, Celtic Britain, 223–6, lines 18, 24. 33 Huw Cae Llwyd, ‘A Poet-Pilgrim Visits Rome in 1475’, in Lewis, ed. and trans., Medieval Welsh Poems, 107–10, trans. 378–81, lines 18–78. 34 Ibid., 107–10, trans. 378–81, lines 35–40.

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In this way Huw Cae Llwyd brought his audience together with him on a virtual journey they enjoyed as one. As he took Ieuan Gwilym around Rome, Huw Cae Llwyd ‘showed’ him the spiritually beneficial places to which he had been and thus, by implication, the spiritual reward he had brought him as his proxy. Proxy pilgrimage had a long tradition based on the penitential sacrifice of Christ when he died for the sins of others, and by the late Middle Ages it was accepted that if a proxy went on pilgrimage on one’s behalf, the sponsor or patron would receive the same spiritual benefit as if they had been themselves. Thus, the list of sites visited and seen by the proxy were of great importance to the patron as they wanted both to recreate the experience of the pilgrimage they had funded and understand the spiritual benefits they had accrued. Each of the sites of Rome had a particular spiritual value; sight of the Vernicle, for example, earned pilgrims 12,000 years of indulgence by the end of the Middle Ages.35 This is no doubt why it was highlighted by Harry Stradling of St Donat’s when he wrote from Rome to his wife, Elizabeth, on whose behalf he was in the Holy City, that he and his companions had been: to see the Vernicle. And so we saw it Friday, Saturday, and Sunday: and on Sunday before Mass the Pope assoiled us of ‘plena remissio’, and after he had sung his Mass he came against and assoiled them as free as that day they were born; and for that there was people, there was without number, and so for other places of remission without number. And also as touching your absolution, I had great labour and cost to get it under lead.36 Adrian R. Bell and Richard S. Dale, ‘The Medieval Pilgrimage Business’, Enterprise and Society 12 (2011), 610; F. J. Furnivall, ed., Stacions of Rome and the Pilgrims Sea Voyage (London: Early English Texts Society, 1867), 2. The Vernicle was one of the most commonly referred to relics in medieval Rome. See also Robin Leia, ‘Kywydd y Verngal’, in Hartwell-Jones, Celtic Britain, 183–4; a modern rendering can be found in ‘Cywydd i’r Iesu a’r Fernagl a roddwyd iddo ar y ffordd i Galfaria’, in John Berbard Taylor, ‘Gwaith Barddonol Ieuan ap Gruffudd Leiaf, Robert Leiaf, Syr Siôn Leiaf a Rhys Goch Glyndyfrdwy’, PhD Thesis, University of Bangor, 2014, 171–3 and the notes to the poem on 208–12; ‘Awdl I Ddafydd ap Siôn pan oedd yn Rhufain’, in Gwaith Lewis Glyn Cothi, 223–4, line 31; Chris Given-Wilson, ed. and trans., The Chronicle of Adam of Usk, 1377–1421 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 201 36 Letter of Harry Stradling to his wife, Elizabeth (1476). West Glamorgan Archive Service, RISW GGF 3. 35

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The spiritual attractions of the sites of Rome were widely advertised in the fifteenth century: the Indulgentiae ecclesiarum Urbis Romae, for example, listed the churches of Rome with their relics and associated indulgences, as well as a list of stations that pilgrims could attend.37 The values attached to particular sites varied depending on the time of year, such as Lent, or whether the pilgrim visited on a saint’s day, and the indulgences on offer were continually evolving, but Huw Cae Llwyd’s pilgrimage in the Jubilee year of 1475 means that we know what spiritual reward he would have received for this particular pilgrimage.38 According to the terms of Ineffabilis providentia, the papal bull issued by Pope Paul II on 19 April 1470 that proclaimed the Jubilee of 1475, the terms of this jubilee were based on those which had developed since the Jubilee of 1300, meaning that in order to gain full remission of sins Huw had to visit St Peter’s (the Vatican), St Paul’s, St John Lateran (added to the requirements in 1350) and Santa Maria Maggiore (added in 1373), and contritely confess his sins for fifteen days.39 As a result, Huw Cae Llwyd was very clear in stating that he had visited these sites. Though his poem describes a range of tombs and relics, the majority were in fact housed in the main four churches he needed to visit to gain plenary indulgence for his patron, and so his description of them added to the veracity of his account by mentally depicting what could be seen in each location.

37 The Indulgentiae was copied with small additions by John Caprave (c. 1450) and William Brewyn (c. 1470–77), among others, which made it accessible in England. John Capgrave, Ye Solace of Pilgrimes: A Description of Rome c. A.D. 1450, ed. C. A. Mills and H. M. Bannister (London: Frowde, 1911); Frederick J. Furnivall, ed., Political, Religious, and Love Poems (London: Early English Text Society, 1866). 143–73. 38 For an indication of the range and number of indulgences available in Rome and elsewhere in the early seventeenth century, see also Arcangelo Tortello, The Pope’s Cabinet Unlocked: or, a catalogue of all the indulgences belonging to the Order of S. Mary (London: Isaac Cleave, 1680). 39 Stuart Jenks, ed., Documents on the Papal Plenary Indulgences 1300–1517, Preaching in the Regnum Teutonicum (Turnhout: Brill, 2018), 21–2. For the texts of the 1475 bull, see 206–11.

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Virtual Pilgrimage in Wales Virtual pilgrimage to sites in Wales could also be experienced through Welsh poetry. A substantial number of poems describing pilgrimages, shrines and cult centres have survived from late medieval Wales. As with those on overseas pilgrimage they vary in the breadth and depth of detail they provide but in several cases they are detailed in their depiction of the visual displays seen at pilgrimage sites, and recreate pilgrim actions at the shrine sites: how the pilgrim prayed while clutching rosaries in hand, drank holy water that tasted to them better than wine, or lay down beside the grave of a saint in the hope of some sort of cure. In his poem to the Virgin Mary at Penrhys in the Rhondda, the Glamorgan poet Lewys Morgannwg (fl. 1520–65) created an impression of the setting of the shrine and the number of supplicants who flocked around it by referring to her ‘image where there is crying’ that had miraculously appeared in an oak tree but was now set on the ‘mountainside’ surrounded by the weeping sick.40 In these descriptions the poets placed considerable emphasis on what they had seen on their pilgrimage as this was the best way to conjure up that experience in the mind’s eye of the listener, and the act of seeing, even if only virtually, could transfer something of the sanctity of the pilgrimage experience. Sight was, after all, the highest of the senses according to Aristotle’s De Anima (c. 350 bce), and had the ability to transform people physically, thus healing them.41 Indeed there was considerable emphasis in the poems describing Welsh sites on the way they looked: Hywel Rheinallt (fl. c. 1471–94) described the statue of the Virgin at Penrhys in the Rhondda as a ‘fair image’, while St Peter’s at Rhosyr on Anglesey, where pilgrims flocked to see the statute of its titular saint, had a ‘choir golden and candles great’ according to Lewis Daron (fl. 1520).42 The importance 40 Lewys Morgannwg, ‘The Virgin Mary of Pen-rhys’, in Barry, ed. and trans., Medieval Welsh Poems, 125–7, trans. 396–8, lines 43–53. 41 Aristotle, De Anima, trans. Mark Shiffman (Indianapolis, IN: Focus Publishing, 2011), book II, 7–11. 42 Hywel Rheinallt, ‘The Virgin Mary of Pwllheli’, in Barry, ed. and trans., Medieval Welsh Poems, 78, 349, line 42; Lewis Daron, untitled, in Hartwell-Jones, Celtic Britain, 320–1, lines 50–2.

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of seeing statues, relics and other holy objects was highlighted in Ieuan ap Huw Cae Llwyd’s (fl. 1490) claim that he was ‘healed by the sight of you’ when he gazed on the Holy Rood in Brecon’s Benedictine Priory.43 This Rood was the subject of several praise poems which referred to the ‘Golden Rood’ placed high on a rock, flanked by the two crucified thieves as well as statues of the four Evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), several Archangels and the Lamb of God.44 The detail with which these poets described the Rood and other pilgrimage sites made it easy for listeners to reconstruct mentally the shrine site, appreciating the gilded statues and fine vestments decorating various images and roods even if they could not see them in person. Such detailed decoration was relayed to the poet’s audience not just as a way to create a mental image, but also to give information about the message of sanctity these sites were trying to project. One decorative feature highlighted on several occasions was the use of jewels (or possibly coloured glass), as the choice of jewels conveyed a symbolic meaning that many in the poet’s audience would have appreciated. The Brecon Rood, for example, was probably finished with jewels, or glass made to look like rubies, as a way of depicting the blood of Christ. Rubies also had a symbolic value as they were thought to cure sick animals.45 Another decorative feature was the addition of clothing, something that usually happened to images and statues for their feast days or other holy days of the year. At Carmarthen the ‘shining living image’ of the Rood was decorated with a gilded cloak which had been commissioned by the English community, and the gilded statue of St Dwynwen on Anglesey was probably dressed as

43 Ieuan ap Huw Cae Llwyd, ‘I Aberhodni’, in L. Harries, ed., Gwaith Huw Cae Llwyd ac Eraill (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1953), 118–19, line 48. 44 Brynach Parri, ‘Crog Aberhodni’, Brycheioniog 35 (2003), 26–7, 28–30. 45 Christine James, ‘“Y grog ddoluriog loywrym”: golwg ar y canu I grog Llangynwyd’, Llên Cymru 29 (2006), 81; Paul Binski, Becket’s Crown: Art and Imagination in Gothic England, 1170–1300 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 9; Dafydd ap Llywelyn, ‘St Morderyn of Nantglyn’, in Barry, ed. and trans., Medieval Welsh Poems, 83, 354, line 41; Tomas Derllys, ‘St Margaret of Llanfaches’, in ibid., 129, 400, line 1; Parri, ‘Crog Abehodni’, 25–7; Christopher M. Woolgar, The Senses in Late Medieval England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 150–1; David Greene, ‘A Welsh Lapidary’, Studia Celtica (1952), 98–9.

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a nun at certain times of the year.46 The more lavish the clothing and draped fabric the better for conveying the sanctity of the site to the person who saw it directly, and those who experienced it through poetry, as ‘exotic textiles woven with gold, silver, and brilliantly-covered threads were believed to possess “special” properties of light – properties that not only reflected the essence or presence of the Divine light, but could direct one’s thoughts to the Divine in mystical meditation’.47 The visual nature of these sights was augmented by other sensory stimuli conveyed by the poets to their listeners. In his poem praising St David and his cathedral, Ieuan ap Rhydderch (fl. 1430–70) referred to the ‘well-lit choir’, presumably ablaze with beeswax candles which would also have given off a their own aroma. Coupled with this were the ‘clouds of incense’ that filled the cathedral with a pleasant scent that ‘materialised the presence of the divine’.48 The smell of incense would have been familiar to Ieuan’s audience. Finally he described the sounds of the cathedral, with its ‘utterly fine singing, / Of clear song’ as well as the ‘clear sound of music and bells’.49 One aspect of the performance of pilgrimage poetry which arguably augmented the virtual pilgrimage experience, is that the virtual pilgrim heard about the sights and sounds of pilgrimage. The use of the senses was important in all aspects of medieval religious devotion, and each sense was believed to have a different role and significance based primarily on the hierarchy of senses as explained by Aristotle in his De Anima. For this reason, shrine custodians and patrons expended considerable effort and 46 Dafydd ap Gwilym, ‘1: I’r Grog o Gaer/To the Rood at Carmarthen’, lines 109, 136, (accessed 20 August 2018); Dafydd ap Gwilym, ‘48: Gal war Ddwynwen/Appealing to Dwynwen’, line 36 (accessed 20 August 2018). 47 Donna M. Cottrell, ‘Unravelling the Mystery of Jan van Eyck’s Cloths of Honor: The Ghent Altarpiece’, in D. Koslin and Janet E. Snyder, eds, Encountering Medieval Textiles and Dress: Objects, Texts, Images (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 175. 48 Ieuan ap Rhydderch, ‘The Life of St David’, in Barry, ed. and trans., Medieval Welsh Poems, 116, 387, lines 107–10; Holly Dugan, The Ephemeral History of Perfume: Scent and Sense in Early Modern England (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 26. 49 Ieuan ap Rhydderch, ‘The Life of St David’, 116, 387, lines 111–14.

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expense decorating shrine sites, burning candles for the light and scent they offered, arranging music, decorating images, statues and reliquaries with gold, silver, jewels and stones, and using visual and auditory stimulation to create the impression of sanctity, as we have seen. Written accounts of pilgrimage could describe these sights for the reader, but performing this poetry arguably had the added benefit of stimulating the listener through the sense of hearing. According to Aristotle’s rationale, hearing was the second most important sense after sight. It was thought of as a physical sense in that it had the ability to have a physically transformative impact on those who heard.50 Hearing descriptions of pilgrimage also had a different effect on the listener to seeing sites in person for, as Mary Hayes put it, ‘listening entails a different sort of religious experience’.51 Drawing on the work of Jonathan Sterne on ‘audio-visual litany’, she explains how hearing differs from sight in that it immersed the subject and came to the listener (whereas sight travelled towards the thing being seen); that hearing ‘concerned interiors’; it ‘brings us into the living world’; and ultimately hearing ‘is a sense that immerses us in the world’.52 In addition, it was believed that the quality of sound heard was also important, good sounds being more beneficial than bad ones. The logical conclusion of this belief is that the pilgrimage poems themselves, if skilfully composed and performed with suitable reverence and effect, might also have a beneficial impact on the souls of the listeners because they were, in themselves, ‘good’ sounds, and that they could do this more effectively than words that were seen on the page.53 This emphasis on hearing and virtue foreshadowed the changes of the sixteenth-century reformers for whom

50

Charles Burnett, ‘Perceiving Sound in the Middle Ages’, in Mark Michael Smith’ ed., Hearing History: A Reader (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2004), 70. 51 Mary Hayes, Divine Ventriloquism in Medieval English Literature: Power, Anxiety, Subversion (New York: Palgrave, 2011), 12. 52 Ibid., 12–13. For Sterne’s own theories on sound, see Jonathan Sterne, ‘The Theology of Sound: A Critique of Orality’, Canadian Journal of Communication 36.2 (2011), 207–25. 53 Woolgar, Senses, 63.

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hearing the Word of God preached increasingly became more important than reading the Bible as a way to gain salvation.54 Armchair or virtual pilgrimage was particularly important for women who were less able to undertake overseas pilgrimage.55 Pilgrimage, particularly long-distance overseas journeys, was considered particularly dangerous, women being prey to both the perils of travel and the temptation of sin when away from home.56 In the households where these poems were performed, female members of the family would have benefited from hearing about pilgrimage routes and the sights which could be seen. In late medieval Wales there is very little evidence of women engaging in overseas pilgrimage, and comparatively little domestic pilgrimage when compared with men, but some women were obviously keenly interested in pilgrimage as they supported pilgrim movement in Wales by providing hospitality, as Elspeth Matthew did for pilgrims travelling to the Marian shrine of Penrhys in the Rhondda.57

Communal Soul Travel Physical pilgrimage that took a pilgrim away from their home has often been described as an activity that removes the pilgrim to a place of liminality, where even if the route they traverse is familiar or well known, the pilgrim is in a space between because of their status as pilgrims, and the fact that they do not entirely know what will happen on the journey. The theory

54 Arnold Hunt, English Preachers and their Audiences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 21–5. 55 Leigh Ann Craig, Wandering Women and Holy Matrons: Women and Pilgrims in the Later Middle Ages (Leiden: Brepols, 2009), 222–34. 56 Marta González, ‘Women and Pilgrimage in Medieval Galicia’, in Carlos Andrés González-Paz, ed., Women and Pilgrimage in Medieval Galicia (London: Routledge, 2016), 35–7. 57 Hurlock, Medieval Welsh Pilgrimage, 132.

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of pilgrim liminality and the idea that pilgrims formed a communitas due to their common experiences was first made popular by Victor and Edith Turner in the 1970s and has been extensively challenged in the intervening years, not least because local pilgrimage did not necessarily take pilgrims outside their normal life and society, and because even longer-distance pilgrimages might form part of other non-religious modes of travel, such as royal progresses or campaigns, which meant such pilgrims were not really separate from their quotidian lives.58 Virtual pilgrimage in Wales did not take the pilgrim to a liminal space, but as it was experienced collectively it could create a communitas of virtual pilgrims who travelled the mental route of the pilgrimage and visited its sacred sites at the same time. Whereas reading pilgrimage narratives was often a solitary affair, and thus did not create a communitas of virtual pilgrims, the fact that the poems on medieval Welsh pilgrimage to overseas and domestic destinations was performed to a household, family or broader social group means that it was heard and virtually experienced as a collective act. Thus, virtual pilgrimage through performed poetry, unlike physical pilgrimage, did not take a pilgrim to a liminal place outside of the norm; instead, it reinforced the bonds he or she had with their family and community. This was even the case if the poem focused on the journey of a pilgrim who was still absent, such as when Lewys Glyn Cothi composed a poem to Gruffudd ap Rhys while he was away on pilgrimage to Santiago, as the audience considered that pilgrim’s experience while they were still actively engaged on the pilgrimage.59 The role of poetry in creating a real experience for the virtual pilgrim was arguably most important when the 58

59

Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Antistructure (Chicago: Aldine Publishing, 1969), 94–113; Victor Turner and Edith L. B. Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978); John Eade and Michael J. Sallnow, ‘Introduction’, in John Eade and Michael J. Sallnow, eds, Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Religion (Urbana, IL: Illinois University Press, 1991), 5; Nicholas Vincent, ‘The Pilgrimages of the Angevin Kings of England, 1154–1272’, in Colin Morris and Peter Roberts, eds, Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 12–45. ‘Pererindod Gruffudd ap Rhys’, in Gwaith Lewis Glyn Cothi, 500, lines 13–16.

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poem described a proxy pilgrimage either for an individual patron, as discussed above, or for a wider community of the faithful: Dafydd ap Sion of Kilvey, for example, was going to Rome to collect ‘parchment pardons’, suggesting that he travelled on behalf of a number of people, while Huw Cae Llwyd suggested that in each cantref (a medieval Welsh division of land) ‘one go from every country or town’ on behalf of everyone else.60

Conclusion The oral tradition in medieval Wales meant that poetry was the medium of choice for describing and recreating pilgrimage in and from Wales. It reflected both the interests of the poets who composed it and the patrons who paid for many of the works. This poet–patron relationship also meant that where poets went as proxies on overseas pilgrimage there was a particular need for the experience of pilgrimage to be recreated in more detail, as with the poem of Huw Cae Llwyd on his Roman pilgrimage in 1475, so that his patron could fully envisage how the indulgences he sought via pilgrimage had been secured through Huw’s visit to the necessary holy sites. First-hand experience of pilgrimage also lent itself to more detailed and heart-felt responses from the poets which more meaningfully recreated the pilgrimage for those listening. The recitation of late medieval Welsh pilgrimage poetry also had two effects which are arguably absent from the experience of reading narrative accounts, and which mark the Welsh experience out. The first related to the sense of hearing, and the idea that the poet’s (or the reciter’s) audience might benefit more from hearing about pilgrimage because of the transformative possibilities offered to the body and soul by sound. The second is that oral performance, most usually in this case in an elite household, was heard by a family, household or wider community as a collective act, and as a result pilgrimage poetry of this 60 ‘Y Seintiau’, in ibid., 108–9, lines 65–6.

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kind created a communitas of virtual pilgrims who experienced that virtual pilgrimage as one, just as they would have done if they had physically walked the road together.

Bibliography Anon., Y Drych Cristianogawl (Rotomagi/Rouen: Iathroy Favonis, 1585). Aristotle, De Anima, trans. Mark Shiffman (Indianapolis, IN: Focus Publishing, 2011). Baring Gould, Sabine, and John Fisher, The Lives of the British Saints: The saints of Wales and Cornwall and such saints as have dedications in Britain, 4 vols (London: The Honourable Society of the Cymmrodorion, 1907–13). Bell, Adrian R., and Richard S. Dale, ‘The Medieval Pilgrimage Business’, Enterprise and Society 12 (2011), 601–27. Beverley Smith, Llinos, ‘The Welsh and English Languages in Late-medieval Wales’, in David Trotter, ed., Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), 7–24. Binski, Paul, Becket’s Crown: Art and Imagination in Gothic England, 1170–1300 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004). Burnett, Charles, ‘Perceiving Sound in the Middle Ages’, in Mark Michael Smith, ed., Hearing History: A Reader (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2004), 69–84. Capgrave, John, Ye Solace of Pilgrimes: A Description of Rome c. A.D. 1450, ed. C. A. Mills and H. M. Bannister (London: Frowde, 1911). Carr, Anthony D., ‘Inside the Tent Looking Out: The Medieval Welsh World View’, in R. R. Davies and Geraint H. Jenkins, eds, From Medieval to Modern Wales: Historical Essays in Honour of Kenneth O. Morgan and Ralph A. Griffiths (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004), 225–47. Cottrell, Donna M., ‘Unravelling the Mystery of Jan van Eyck’s Cloths of Honor: The Ghent Altarpiece’, in D. Koslin and Janet E. Snyder, eds, Encountering Medieval Textiles and Dress: Objects, Texts, Images (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 173–94. Craig, Leigh Ann, Wandering Women and Holy Matrons: Women and Pilgrims in the Later Middle Ages (Leiden: Brepols, 2009). Davies, Sioned, ‘Storytelling in Medieval Wales’, Oral Tradition 7.2 (1992), 231–57. Dugan, Holly, The Ephemeral History of Perfume: Scent and Sense in Early Modern England (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).

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Johnston, Dafydd, ‘Monastic Patronage of Welsh Poetry’, in Janet Burton and Karen Stöber, eds, Monastic Wales: New Approaches (Cardiff: Cardiff University Press, 2013), 177–90. Johnston, Dafydd, ‘Oral Tradition in Medieval Welsh Poetry: 1100–1600’, Oral Tradition 18.2 (2003), 192–3. Jones, E. D., ed., ‘Cywydd y Farf ’, in Gwaith Lewis Glyn Cothi (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1953), 206–7. Lake, A. Cynfael, ‘The Fifteenth-century Poet Hywel Dafi and his Connection with Breconshire’, Brycheiniog 46 (2015), 67–82. Lewis, Barry, Welsh Poetry and English Pilgrimage: Gruffudd ap Maredudd and the Rood at Chester (Aberystwyth: University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 2005). Lewis, Ceri W., ‘The Literary Tradition of Morgannwg down to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century’, in T. B. Pugh, Glanmor Williams and M. Fay Williams, eds, Glamorgan County History III: The Middle Ages. The Marcher Lordships of Gower and Kilvey from the Norman Conquest to the Act of Union of England and Wales (Cardiff: Glamorgan County History Committee, 1971), 449–554. Llwyd, Ieuan ap Huw Cae, ‘I Aberhodni’, in L. Harries, ed., Gwaith Huw Cae Llwyd ac Eraill (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1953), 118–19. O’Loughlin, Thomas, Celtic Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1999). Olson, Katharine, ‘Ar ffordd Pedr a Phawl: Welsh Pilgrimage and Travel to Rome, c. 1200–1530’, The Welsh History Review 24 (2008), 1–40. Odoric of Pordenone, The Travels of Friar Odoric: 14th Century Journal of the Blessed Odoric of Podenone, trans. Henry Yule (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002). Owen, Ann Parry, ed., ‘118 – Meditation at the End of Life’, (accessed 20 August 2018). Parri, Brynach, ‘Crog Aberhodni’, Brycheioniog 35 (2003), 19–36. Price, John, Yny lllywvyr hwnn (London: Edward Whitchurch, 1546). Rheinallt, Hywel, ‘St Dwynwen of Llanddwyn’, in Barry Lewis, ed. and trans., Medieval Welsh Poems to Saints and Shrines (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 2015). Roberts, Brynley F., ‘Oral Tradition and Welsh Literature: A Description and Survey’, Oral Tradition 3.1–2 (1988), 61–87. Rowland, Jenny, Early Welsh Saga Poetry: A Study and Edition of the ‘Englynion’ (Cambridge: Brewer, 1990). Rudy, Kathryn M., ‘Virtual Pilgrimage through the Jerusalem Cityscape’, in Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 381–96.

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Salisbury, Eurig, ed., ‘96 – In praise of Sieffrai Cyffin ap Morus of Oswestry’, (accessed 20 August 2018). Salisbury, Eurig, ed., ‘97 – In praise of of Sieffrai Cyffin ap Morus of Oswestry and his wife, Siân daughter of Lawrence Stanstry’, (accessed 20 August 2018). Sterne, Jonathan, ‘The Theology of Sound: A Critique of Orality’, Canadian Journal of Communication 36.2 (2011), 207–25. Taylor, John Berbard, ‘Gwaith Barddonol Ieuan ap Gruffudd Leiaf, Robert Leiaf, Syr Siôn Leiaf a Rhys Goch Glyndyfrdwy’, PhD thesis, University of Bangor, 2014. Thomas, D. R., ‘Sir John Morgan of Tredegar, Knt’, Archaeologia Cambrensis 1, 5th series (1884), 35–45. Thomas, Graham C. G., ‘From Manuscript to Print. I. Manuscript’, in R. Geraint Gruffydd ed., A Guide to Welsh Literature, c. 1530–1700. Volume III (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1997), 241–62. Tortello, Arcangelo, The Pope’s Cabinet Unlocked: or, a catalogue of all the indulgences belonging to the Order of S. Mary (London: Isaac Cleave, 1680). Trefnant, Lewis, ‘Cywydd I Rhys Ab Dafydd Llwyd Aethai I Rufain Yn Bererin’, in Griffith Hartwell-Jones, Celtic Britain and the Pilgrim Movement (London: The Honourable Society of the Cymmrodorion, 1912), 226–8. Turner, Victor, The Ritual Process: Structure and Antistructure (Chicago: Aldine Publishing, 1969). Turner, Victor, and Edith L. B. Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978). Tzanaki, Rosemary, Mandeville’s Medieval Audiences: A Study on the Reception of the Book of Sir John Mandeville (1371–1550) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003). Vincent, Nicholas, ‘The Pilgrimages of the Angevin Kings of England, 1154–1272’, in Colin Morris and Peter Roberts, eds, Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 12–45. Weber, Elka, Travelling Through Text: Message and Method in Late Medieval Pilgrimage Accounts (London: Routledge, 2005). Williams, Stephen J., ed., Fford y Brawd Odrig (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1929). Williams, Taliesin, ed., The Doom of Colyn Dolphyn: A Poem, with notes illustrative of various Traditions of Glamorganshire (London: Longman, Rees, Orme & Co., 1837). Woolgar, Christopher M., The Senses in Late Medieval England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006).

Claudia Wardle

3 Participatory Passions: Spiritual Landscapes of Fifteenth-Century Ferrara

Abstract In this essay the medium of painting is used to show how allegorical pilgrimages could be represented in art. It is argued that for the Church Fathers such as John Chrysostom and Gregory of Nyssa, an interaction existed between the inner, spiritual landscape and the exterior, physical world. Owing to Christianity’s theology of typology and the divine transcendence of time and space, which is critical to patristic thought and landscape-consciousness, sacred artworks can depict scenes which break out of objective and linear time. Old Testament evocations of type may be found within New Testament landscapes, or a saint’s vision may be present to blur the line between interior spiritual reality and exterior landscape experience. In Ferrara, where humanists were avidly studying and translating the works of the Latin and Greek Church Fathers, artworks with fantastically ‘anachronic’ landscapes flourished. The condition of the souls of human figures, presented as desired and destined landscapes, overlap and merge with exterior and physical place. This essay explores some examples of scenes in which both the visible and invisible, exterior and interior, are depicted in interaction, that is, ‘soul journeys’.

Fifteenth-century Ferrara was a city-state permeated by increasing public religious observance and lay devotional practices. It was also a centre for the study and diffusion of texts discussing sacred landscapes, both Latin and Greek patristic texts and contemporary writings. The acquisition of Byzantine manuscripts was partly owing to the Council of Ferrara–Florence (1438–45) and partly to the scholarly milieu of humanists and theologians who lived and worked here.1 The ‘spiritual landscape’ is a concept which was central to contemporary fifteenth-century texts, as well as historical

1

For more on Byzantine manuscripts in late medieval Italy, see Robert S. Nelson, ‘The Italian Appreciation and Appropriation of Illuminated Byzantine Manuscripts, ca. 1200–1450’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 49 (1995), 209–35.

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texts in circulation in this period – especially patristic works by Latin and Greek authors such as St John Chrysostom – as this essay will discuss. Quattrocento Ferrara was home to figures whom Kurt Barstow has deemed ‘prominent models of piety’,2 such as Ferrara’s beloved Gesuato bishop, Giovanni Tavelli da Tossignano (1386–1446) and writer and artist St Caterina Vegri (1413–63) (also known as Caterina Vigri or Catherine of Bologna), who served for a time as novice mistress at Ferrara’s Clarissan monastery of Corpus Domini. While the latter composed a treatise set within a spiritual battlefield, the former’s writings drew upon patristic sources, such as the works of John Climacus. Climacus’s Scala paradisi of around 600 is an iconic treatise centred upon the soul’s journey ascending a divine ladder. Tavelli’s 1444 De perfectione religionis [On the perfection of religion] is an ascetic tract in the same genre as that of Climacus’s. 3 The Scala paradisi was studied and translated into Latin by the eminent Ferrarese humanist and Camaldolese Prior General, Ambrogio Traversari (1386–1439) – again demonstrating continuity of interest in the theme of ascetic soul travel.4 Traversari also translated works of Chrysostom, Ephrem the Syrian and Pseudo-Dionysius. Guarino da Verona, influential educator to the ruling Este family and the figure around whom the Ferrarese hub of studia humanitatis was elaborated, amassed an extensive array of manuscripts including works by Chrysostom and Gregory Nazianzen. Considering the notable study within Ferrara and the wider Italian peninsula of the Church Fathers, it is useful to bear in mind these theological traditions as well as their thematic continuation in the composition of contemporary texts when analysing concepts of spiritual landscape and soul travel in relation to sacred painting.

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Kurt Barstow, The Gualenghi–d’Este Hours: Art and Devotion in Renaissance Ferrara (Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum), 101. Stephen Campbell, Cosmè Tura of Ferrara: Style, Politics and the Renaissance City, 1450–95 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 85–6. For a detailed discussion of Traversari’s work and humanist interest in the Church Fathers, see Charles L. Stinger, Humanism and the Church Fathers: Ambrogio Traversari (1386–1439) and Christian Antiquity in the Italian Renaissance (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977).

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In this essay, selected paintings depicting Passion scenes will be examined with regard to concepts of spiritual landscape and spiritual travel. It will be argued here that these are works which juxtapose various landscapes within them in order to reinforce travel through biblical narrative, as well as key theological concepts which, in themselves, lead the soul on a journey. This chapter will also use Michel Foucault’s idea of ‘heterotopia’ as a tool for analysing the convergence of seemingly ‘incompatible’ landscapes within particular paintings.5 Finally, the functions of these depicted landscapes in relation to ‘interior landscapes’ will be explored – both of painted figures and of the intended viewers of the paintings – and in public and private contexts. In the course of this discussion, the chapter aims to bring a nuanced understanding to the role of landscape in the spiritual life of the fifteenth-century religious and laity.

The Passion as Spiritual Journey: Pietà The centrality of the Passion in matters of spiritual journeying is manifest in Caterina Vegri’s treatise written in 1438 for her fellow Clarissan sisters in Ferrara, Le sette armi spirituali [The Seven Spiritual Weapons].6 The treatise is set on the spiritual ‘campo di battaglia’: a spiritual battlefield upon which the soul journeys, fighting against temptation, while the body remains within the monastery. The fourth of the seven weapons advocated revolves around the Passion; it consists in never forgetting the most glorious Incarnation of the immaculate lamb Christ Jesus, his most chaste and virginal humanity and, especially and above all, his most sacred Passion

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Michel Foucault, ‘Des Espaces Autres. Hétéotopies’, Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité 5 (1984), 46–9. The text was originally the basis of a lecture given by Foucault in 1967. For an overview of the saint’s life, see Serena Spanò Martinelli, ‘Caterina Vigri (1413– 63): Nascita e sviluppo di un culto Cittadino’, Revue Mabillon 17 (2006), 127–43.

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and death.7 The fact that this weapon is in fourth place within a scheme of seven sets it directly in the centre, with three weapons either side of it. Without this weapon, superior to any other, Vegri tells us that not only will we be unable to conquer our enemies, but that all the other weapons would be rendered useless: ‘Because, truly, the Passion is the wisest teacher who will lead you [beloved novices] to the beauty of all virtues, and by this means you will attain the mantle of victory’.8 Emphasising the didactic nature of her own work, she anthropomorphises the very event of the Passion as a most wise maestra, a metaphor that draws parallels with her own role and equates it with the Passion to the effect of reinforcing the event’s crucial place in pedagogy. What may we learn, then, from selected visual representations of the Passion from Ferrara and the role that these different paintings may have had in their viewers’ and users’ experiences of spiritual journeying? If a text is capable of emphasising the Passion’s crucial place from a pedagogical sense, what may contemporary images of the Passion have taught viewers in public and private, devotional and liturgical settings? The first Passion painting to be examined in terms of its juxtaposed landscape elements is Cosmè Tura’s Pietà from 1460, now in the Museo Correr in Venice.9 Cosmè Tura (c. 1430–95) was a favoured artist at the Este court, where he was paid a monthly salary to design and paint a wide

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The seven weapons are: 1. Diligence, or solicitude for doing what is right; 2. Mistrust in one’s own actions (when independent of Christ); 3. Trust in God and his love; 4. As stated above, that is, never to forget Christ’s Incarnation, humanity, and especially his Passion and death; 5. Never to forget one’s own death; 6. To remember the beatitudes of Paradise; 7. To remember the Holy Scriptures and to keep them in one’s heart. ‘Perché, veramente, la Passione è la sapientissima maestra che vi condurrà alla piena bellezza di tutte le virtù e, con essa, perverrete al palio della vittoria’. Sergio d’Aurizio, ed., Le sette armi spirituali: ristretto dello specchio di illuminazione di Illuminata Bembo (Milan: Tip. del Commercio, 1981), 9. The image can be found at (accessed 4 February 2019).

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range of subjects in varied media. In his Venice Pietà, the youthfully represented Virgin is not explicitly grief-stricken or in a state of lament, but has her head inclined away from her dead son’s at a similar but opposing angle, holding up his hand to inspect or to perhaps even kiss the wound, given the pursed nature of her lips. This seems to reflect the nature of the iconography itself, as one that does not necessarily aim to provoke emotion, but a journey of theological musing. Gertrud Schiller notes that the Pietà, or ‘Vesperbild’, as it is also referred to owing to its connexions with Good Friday Vespers, does not merely express maternal grief, but more complex theological premises, that ‘the mystery of the Incarnation of God and that of his sacraficial [sic] Death here stand face to face’.10 Schiller thus contrasts the iconography with the full Lamentation, which is regarded as one of the stations of the Passion and whose principal theme is ‘the lamentation and compassion of the mourners within the sphere of human emotion’.11 This perhaps explains the more pensive and at times contented countenance of the Virgin Mary in Pietà renderings. These images are not merely an expression of extreme grief but are imbued with deeper, theological meanings. The gesture of Tura’s Virgin seems to reaffirm a distinction between an image centred purely on lament and one centred more on theological mystery. Moreover, the youthfulness of the figure of Mary is more reminiscent of a Virgin Annunciate than of the Sorrowful Mother. This reiterates her relationship to Christ as God having been made flesh by her and also as her son condemned to a sacrificial death for all humanity. Her inspection of the wound invites the viewer to join her in the contemplation of the nature of all flesh and of Christ’s wounded flesh, which is the manifestation and meeting place – as Schiller notes – of the mystery of the Incarnation of God and of his sacrificial death. The scene of the Pietà is not described in biblical accounts, but in the painting the juxtaposed landscapes evoke the Passion narrative. The figures are placed before a sarcophagus, alluding to the Entombment, and this bears 10 11

Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, vol. 2, trans. Janet Seligman (Greenwich, CT: New York Geographic Society, 1971), 180. Ibid., 180.

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calligraphic pictorial relief emulating letters, a ‘pseudo-inscription’.12 This almost-accessible but inaccessible writing gives the foreground landscape an air of the arcane, the divine that cannot be comprehended or spoken. Mount Calvary looms in the background, surmounted by three crosses. It is a stylised twisted structure taking the form almost of a helter-skelter or Babylonian ziggurat, emphasising the journey required to ascend it. The Crucifixion mountain-scape and esoterically decorated tomb juxtaposed within one image are suggestive of successive parts of the Passion narrative and therefore to an extent of the travel it entails, a scene into which the viewer in his/her meditative state is invited to journey. The Passion narrative has traditionally been regarded with a participatory and performative character. A prominent example is the Via Crucis, or Way of the Cross, whereby the faithful recreate the last stages of the earthly life of Christ. The Vatican website states that the Church ‘loves the historical memory of the places where Christ suffered, the streets and the stones bathed in his sweat and in his blood’.13 Caterina Vegri states in Le sette armi spirituali: ‘God loves them [novices on the spiritual battlefield] with a paternal love and, for this reason, puts them as soon as possible on the way of the cross to make them coheirs to the goods of his Son’.14 The novices are exhorted to walk willingly the way of the cross spiritually while already on the spiritual battlefield, one spiritual landscape within another for her to traverse. The participatory and performative nature of the Passion as it may be understood in Quattrocento Ferrara outside of the monastery is reflected, for instance, by Duke of Ferrara Ercole I d’Este’s great interest in the enacting of sacred theatre. In 1476 he revived the theatrical aspects of Carnival and the feasts of St George and St John. Most importantly, however, extant documentation reveals a Passione ferrarese. The ‘rappresentazione della Passione’, performances of the Passion,

12 See Campbell, Cosmè Tura of Ferrara, 16. 13 (accessed 4 February 2019). 14 ‘Iddio le ama di amore paterno e, per questo, le mette al più presto sulla via della croce per farle coeredi dei beni del Figlio’. d’Aurizio, ed., Le sette armi spirituali, 20.

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are noted in 1481, 1489 and 1490, and of the Annunciation, Passion and of the Three Kings in 1503.15 The performative and participatory quality of the Venice Pietà is not only related to the landscape but also the figures’ interaction with it. As Jeffrey T. Schnapp has noted, ‘scenes of touching, carrying, and clinging are by their very nature symbolically surcharged’.16 He observes that they are ‘ritual symbols’ and, most pertinently to the iconography of the Pietà, that they ‘are capable of containing within them a universe of values encompassing those of nurture, parental guidance, filial dependency, submission to hierarchy, support, respect, obedience, rapture, and transport, particularly transport between this world and the next’.17 The Virgin looks unlikely to be transporting Christ’s body and certainly the relationship between mother and son is far more nuanced than Schnapp’s list of familial values, but the notion of transportation or travel between worlds is of relevance. The viewer in devotion is encouraged to transport him/herself out of his/ her own world and into that of Christ’s. Even the pseudo-inscription on the tomb brings a sense of liminality, of something behind or hidden: mystery more attainable by contemplation of and participation in Christ’s Passion. Another fifteenth-century Ferrarese Pietà is that by Ercole de’ Roberti (c. 1451–96), another artist working for the Este court and whose work follows that of Tura stylistically.18 Executed in 1482, the painting is now in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. It represents a bloodless, limp Christ held by the black-clad Virgin. Christ’s crown of thorns has been removed and the Virgin wipes his head, her countenance more sorrowful than in Tura’s image and her drapery angular and sombre. It was intended as the predella panel of an altarpiece in the church of San Giovanni in Monte in Bologna

Paolo Sanvito, Imitatio: L’Amore dell’immagine sacra: Il sentimeno devoto nelle scene dell’imitazione di Cristo (Città di Castello: Stampa Petruzzi, 2009), 230. 16 Jeffrey T. Schnapp, ‘Touch and Transport in the Middle Ages’, The Johns Hopkins University Press 124.5, Comparative Literature Issue Supplement: ‘Special Issue in Honor of J. Freccero: Fifty Years with Dante and Italian Literature’ (2009), S122. 17 Ibid. 18 The image can be seen at (accessed 4 February 2019). 15

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and would originally have been in front of the priest’s face as Mass was celebrated. The scene again juxtaposes landscapes which may participate in their context in the spiritual journey of the sacrifice of the Mass. While Tura’s Pietà features a fierce precipitous mountain, there are also hints of a stream and an orange tree holding a monkey to the left of the foremost scene. Ercole’s image on the other hand is completely barren and craggy. The Greek Fathers had a fascination with the connexion between fierce landscapes and the divine, the Holy involving both a sense of mysterium tremendum and fascinans.19 Chrysostom, whose work, as discussed earlier, was studied and translated in the Ferrarese humanist milieu, wondered at the inexplicable limitlessness of the sea, while Gregory of Nyssa and his brother Basil the Great were both awed and terrified by harsh landscapes, drawing on the terrain of their Cappadocian homeland to reiterate the incomprehensible greatness of God.20 It is the figure of Christ which is of particular intrigue in this image. He is represented twice, in the fore and also behind in the background Calvary landscape where he is crucified between the penitent and impenitent thieves. In the forefront scene Christ and the Virgin are resting on the tomb of Christ’s burial, an allusion to another element of the Passion narrative, the Entombment. Again, the narrative is suggested by the landscapes and particularly by the repetition of the figure of Christ in the background on the cross. Being in two places in the image makes Christ reminiscent of a figure in a painting employing ‘continuous narrative’, or ‘continuous representation’, a pictorial device whereby consecutive events feature within one image, repeating human figures.21 One of the longest sequences in Roman sculpture featuring this is the Column of Marcus Aurelius, the column’s relief emphasising human action through the repetition of figures. In sacred art, Pseudo-Jacopino di Francesco’s fourteenth-century The Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi is an example from nearby Bologna. Now in the Belden C. Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 105. 20 Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, 106. 21 See L. Andrews, Story and Space in Renaissance Art: The Rebirth of Continuous Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 19

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North Carolina Museum of Art, it depicts the Virgin Mary and child Jesus repeatedly side by side – once with three angels present in the scene and again with the adoring magi. Ercole’s Pietà is not strictly representing a narrative in this sense, but the repetition of Christ certainly implies different stages in the Passion history, a journey into which the viewer may enter. This is particularly pertinent in the painting’s context as it functions in the Eucharistic sacrifice. The priest would face the image at the altar, where he would also elevate the consecrated host. The juxtaposed landscapes would therefore assume another layer; starting from the painting’s background, Christ’s body would be found on the Cross at Calvary and coming forward in his mother’s arms by the tomb. Coming forward again, Christ’s body would be found as the transubstantiated host, the painting therefore emphasising the prominence of Christ’s corporeality in Christian theology and the Eucharistic sacrifice of Mass. In this way, for the priest and for the congregation, the painted landscapes representing Christ’s body participate in the consumption of it. Christ’s flesh in turn points to another world, the soul’s destination. As the hymn dating to the fourteenth century, Ave verum corpus, says: ‘Esto nobis praegustatum’, ‘let it be for us a foretaste’, meaning of the heavenly banquet.

The Passion as Spiritual Journey: The Crucifixion We now turn to assess two paintings which feature the Passion itself. The first is a tondo – a circular work of art – by another artist of the Ferrarese School, Francesco del Cossa (c. 1430–c. 77) from around 1473–4, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.22 It is part of the Griffoni Polyptych, the main panels of which were also executed by Cossa, while the side panels were painted by Ercole de’ Roberti. The polyptych was created for the Griffoni Chapel in the church of San Petronio, Bologna, 22

The image can be seen at (accessed 4 February 2019).

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to honour the cult of Valencian Dominican philosopher and logician, St Vincent Ferrer (1350–1419). This image does not juxtapose landscapes as overtly as the previous two paintings discussed in this essay; instead, it focuses on the crucified Christ still nailed to the Cross, his figure a blend between the slight, gaunt corpse of Ercole’s Pietà and the muscularly stylised Christ of Tura’s. In the previous works, very little blood is discernible. Yet the Christ of Cossa’s tondo – who appears to have just expired with a placid facial expression – is fastened to the dark wood by nails prominent as arma Christi and red trails pour forth from the pierced flesh, even on to the skull at the foot of the Cross. Given the adherence to Triclavian iconography – Christ crucified with three nails in a Trinitarian fashion, rather than four – Christ’s legs are contorted and his torso awkward. An allusion to three nails is found in Greek patristic writings; St Gregory Nazianzen in his poem Christus patiens, or ‘Χριστὸς Πάσχων’, writes a piece of dialogue intended for the role of Joseph (of Arimathea): Follow me, let us carry this blessed weight Which I have endured much to hold, By the gift of the governor, from many entreaties, Taking it naked from the three-nailed cross.23

Cossa has indeed opted for a three-nailed cross and has opted not to depict signs of the Calvary landscape other than the skull. This denotes Golgotha, which is translated as the ‘place of the skull’. Instead of any trace of mountain-scape, Christ, flanked by the Virgin and John the Apostle, is upon a semi-circular arch derived from the architecture of Roman antiquity. Its texture appears to be marble, a light grey hue not unlike that excavated in Carrara. Curiously, the arch appears in fact also to be the roof of a crypt housing bones within a dark eyelet formed by the painted ceiling and lower curve of the tondo. In terms of the historical site of Calvary, Thomas Aquinas draws upon Chrysostom and states that it is a dishonourable place for two reasons: 23 Gregory Nazianzen quoted in ‘Christos Paschon/Christus Patiens, or Christ Suffering’, Milton Quarterly 36.3, Special Issue (2002), 130–92.

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‘The place where Christ suffered was also dishonorable, and for two reasons. First, it was outside the city, he went out to the place called Calvary, which is outside the walls of the city: “So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood” (Heb 13:12)’.24 Secondly, Thomas proposes: this place was dishonorable because it was one of the lowest and basest, to the place called Calvary. ‘I am reckoned among those who go down to the Pit’ (Ps 88:4). Chrysostom tells us that there are some who say that Adam died and was buried at this very place. This is why it was called Calvary, from the skull (calvaria) of the first man. And just as death reigned there, so there also Christ erected the trophy of his victory.25

It is not uncommon to find the skull, which can indeed be inferred to be Adam’s skull, at the foot of the cross in Crucifixion iconography, but to find a hoard of bones is more unusual.26 Chrysostom writes in his eightyfifth homily on the Gospel of St John: ‘And He came to the place of the skull’. Some say that Adam died there, and there lieth; and that Jesus in this place where death had reigned, there also set up the trophy. For He went forth bearing the Cross as a trophy over the tyranny of death: and as conquerors do, so He bare upon His shoulders the symbol of victory.27

In this way, Christ’s Calvary landscape is juxtaposed with Adam’s as their respective reigns of death converge, the Crucifixion superimposed on the Old Testament funeral cache. Indeed, despite the Christus patiens effect of

24 Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John: Chapters 13–21, trans. Fabian Larcher, OP, and James A. Weisheipl, OP (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 236. 25 Ibid., 237. 26 See, for example, Mantegna’s Crucifixion of about 1457–9 now in the Louvre, Paris, or Fra Angelico’s Crucifixion of about 1420–3 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. This is also the case in a Crucifixion painting from about 1450–5 by Ferrarese artist Michele Pannonio, which is in a private collecton. 27 Philip Schaff, ed., Nice and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series: Volume XIV: Chrysostom: Homilies on the Gospel of St John the Epistle to the Hebrews (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2007), 317.

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the three nails and lowered position of Christ’s head, his facial expression is that of a tacit victory. As the worshipper observes the image, the presence of bones rather than merely the skull highlights Adam’s burial and the idea of Christ as the New Adam. As St Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:45–7: ‘So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven’.28 Chrysostom developed this equivalence in asserting that Adam is a prototype of Christ. The final Ferrarese painting to be explored which features Christ’s Passion is by Ercole de’ Roberti, the painter of the second Pietà studied in this essay. The artwork is a portable diptych from about 1490–3 now in the National Gallery, London, known as the ‘Este Diptych’. It comprises two devotional images: The Dead Christ, combining events from the Passion with scenes founded on hagiography, and The Adoration of the Shepherds.29 The work is small – the images’ dimensions only 17.8 × 13.5 cm – and it was most probably commissioned by or for the pious duchess Eleonora d’Aragona, wife of Ercole I d’Este, in view of inventory records listing two separate and book-like ‘anchonete’ [little altarpieces] of these subjects.30 According to Joseph Manca, in its intended use for personal worship and contemplation, it is an example of an Andachtsbild, a kind of image popularly used in affective piety in contemporary Europe.31 While images generally considered to be Andachtsbilder represent mysteries isolated outside narrative, Ercole’s diptych – and especially the half portraying the Passion

28 NIV. 29 The images can be seen at ; (accessed 4 February 2019). 30 Amanda Lillie, ‘Ercole de’ Roberti, The Nativity’, published online 2014, in ‘Building the Picture: Architecture in Italian Renaissance Painting’, The National Gallery, London. 31 Joseph Manca, The Art of Ercole de’ Roberti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 62.

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scene – transcend narrative by integrated or juxtaposed implied narratives.32 Manca suggests that this representation of space, ‘presumably a conscious archaism on Roberti’s part, is derived from the International Gothic tradition, with figures spread about on elevated platforms’.33 The left-hand side of the diptych shows the Virgin and two shepherds adoring the Christ child in the foreground before a stable assuming the form of an Albertian church. However, it is humble and rudimentary, the framework composed of tree trunks and branches and the walls woven hurdles, embodying architecturally the theme of ‘humility through rusticity’.34 Just as in Ercole’s Pietà Christ is repeated in the background landscape to indicate narrative and movement, so in this image the shepherds are also represented in the background on an elevated platform where they are stricken by the sight of a luminous angel shining with ‘the glory of the Lord’.35 However, while this recalls narrative coherent with the front scene, in the right-hand image, The Dead Christ, multiple scenes encourage the viewer to enter into further layers of devotion. In the foreground to the right, the dead Christ is seated on a tomb supported by angels, while to the left St Jerome looks on in ascetic adoration, indicating his desire for imitatio Christi. Above, Jerome’s cave merges with a configuration of Mount Calvary; to the left on an elevated plane is St Francis of Assisi; he too observing in an ascetic adoration the Crucifixion while receiving the stigmata from the Seraph, a physical mapping of his desire for imitatio Christi. The humility exemplified in the Nativity panel thus extends to this sister image particularly in this choice of saints, as will be discussed. Eleonora d’Aragona was a woman of notable piety, responsible for instance for rebuilding the monastery of Corpus Domini, the eminent 32 For an exploration of definitions within the sphere of devotional images and Andachtsbilder, see the Introduction to Søren Kaspersen, ed., Images of Cult and Devotion: The Function and Reception of Christian Images in Medieval and PostMedieval Europe (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2004). 33 Manca, The Art of Ercole de’ Roberti, 62. 34 Amanda Lillie, ‘Ercole de’ Roberti “The Nativity”’, (accessed 4 February 2019). 35 Luke 2:9.

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and influential institution of Caterina Vegri. Eleonora frequently retreated to the monastery and was eventually buried there, after which time her husband the duke’s piety further intensified, inspired partly by the Dominican preacher Girolamo Savonarola.36 In view of Eleonora’s connexion to the Franciscan foundation, the inclusion of Francis himself in her personal devotional image is hardly surprising. In understanding these juxtaposed landscapes, where the first, fourth and late twelfth/early thirteenth centuries converge, it useful to consider the notion of ‘heterotopia’. Michel Foucault elaborated the notion of ‘heterotopia’ in his text Des espaces autres, explaining that the heterotopia ‘is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible’.37 In this text, Foucault tends to discuss heterotopias as sociocultural sites, such as the theatre or cinema, bringing into the space a series of places foreign to one another, or an Oriental garden of superimposed meanings. Heterotopia is, however, used as a conceptual framework in literary criticism, especially considering the first reference to heterotopia having emerged after Foucault read a passage in Jorge Luis Borges’s ‘Celestial Empire of Benevolent Knowledge’, which classifies animals according to categories with ‘overlapping and open-ended qualities [which] preclude their simultaneous co-existence in any possible space’.38 Lorenzo Pericolo has suggested that heterotopia as a term and concept can also be applied appropriately to images, and he accordingly assesses Renaissance representations of architecture through this lens, visual works that overlap ancient topographical features with the contemporary.39 Using hybridisation, states Pericolo, ‘to concomitantly reflect, denature, and displace actual pieces of architecture, heterotopia serves as a comparative, magnifying mirror

36 37 38 39

Thomas Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara: Ercole d’Este (1471–1505) and the Invention of a Ducal Capital (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 17. Foucault, ‘Des Espaces Autres. Hétéotopies’, 46–9. Kelvin Knight, ‘Real Places and Impossible Spaces: Foucault’s Heterotopia in the Fiction of James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, and W. G. Sebald’, PhD diss., University of East Anglia, 2014, 7. Lorenzo Pericolo, ‘Heterotopia in the Renaissance: Modern Hybrids as Antiques in Bramante, Cima da Conegliano, and the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili’, Getty Research Journal 1 (2009), 1–16.

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through which modernity is exalted, transfigured into a utopia, or put into a historical perspective projected into the future’.40 In Ercole’s painting, incompatible landscapes are surely hybridised in order to enhance and participate in the devotional life of the users. The eminent Doctor of the Church, St Jerome (c. 345–420 ce) is represented in his role as desert hermit, on barren land before a cave. Jerome’s rapport with wild, harsh nature is firstly reflected in the optimistic etymology that the author of the Legenda aurea, Jacobus de Voragine, attributed in his hagiography of Jerome to the Latin form of his name, Hieronymus. In an eagerness, which was usual at the time, to draw parallels between a person’s character and their name, De Voragine rightly took hiero to mean sanctus, but overzealously suggested that nymus may derive from nemus, ‘grove’.41 This was an attempt to associate his name’s etymology with the period that Jerome spent immersed in the wilderness as a penitent, three years in the Syrian desert of Chalcis. Though the saint was equally considered, and depicted, contemporaneously as a noble clothed scholar in the locus of the study, it is fitting that in this devotional context he would be represented is the fierce landscape of penitence.42 Jerome even states himself that the civic environment is incompatible with Christianity: ‘Those who live in the city are not Christians’.43 As an intercessor for the devotional user of the object, Jerome in his contemplation of the heterotopically juxtaposed landscape of the dead Christ is ideal. He writes in Epistle 22 to the Desert Mother St Eustochium: ‘I remember crying out repeatedly joining the days with nights, and I did not cease from beating my breast until calm returned with the Lord’s rebuking’.44 40 Pericolo, ‘Heterotopia in the Renaissance’, 2. 41 Eugene F. Rice, Jr, Saint Jerome in the Renaissance (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 24. 42 See, for example, Antonello da Messina’s Saint Jerome in his Study (c. 1475) in the National Gallery, London or Ghirlandaio’s 1480 fresco in the church of Ognissanti, Florence. 43 ‘Quimcumque in civitate sunt, Christiani non sunt’. Stefan Rebenich, Jerome (London: Routledge, 2002) 17. 44 Memini me clamantem diem crebro iunxisse cum nocte nec prius a pectoris cessasse verberibus, quam domino rediret increpante tranquillitas’. F. A. Wright, Selected Letters of St Jerome (London: William Heinemann, 1933), 69.

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His extreme and focused penitence in this representation may encourage the pious viewer to transport him/herself to the desert mentally in prayer. In this heterotopia of landscapes, Jerome’s cave rises into a Mount Calvary, thus no longer in Syria at all, and the event of the Deposition is underway, Christ’s dead body being removed from the central cross. Again the figure of Christ is repeated, dead in both cases, reiterating the centrality to the Christian faith of Christ’s sacrificed flesh. The Calvary landscape also recalls, as it does in Ercole’s Pietà, the narrative of the Passion and takes the viewer on a contemplative journey of the events. This is not uncommon in Quattrocento Ferrarese painting. The Gualenghi–d’Este Hours is the small handheld personal prayer book of two aristocratic Ferrarese patrons, Orsina d’Este, the daughter of Niccolò III d’Este, and her husband, Andrea Gualengo, an advisor to the court. It was illuminated principally by Taddeo Crivelli (secondarily by Guglielmo Giraldi) around 1469 and among the twenty-one exquisite full-page miniatures, numerous depict saints engaged in acts of devotion themselves.45 Indeed, St Francis is depicted in Ercole’s image in religious rapture, receiving the stigmata from the Seraph while looking in meditation. His inclusion in a devotional image for Eleonora d’Aragona is unsurprising given her close connexions with the Clarissan Corpus Domini monastery. He is, like Jerome, an ideal saint to aid in intense devotional practices, especially within juxtaposed landscapes. It is fruitful to acknowledge the Franciscan philosopher St Bonaventure’s Legenda maior sancti Francisci, a common textual source for scenes from Francis’s legend in visual art. With regard to landscapes, we are told, for example: Christ Jesus Crucified was laid, as a bundle of myrrh, in his heart’s bosom, and he yearned to be utterly transformed into Him by the fire of his exceeding love. By reason of this chief and especial devotion unto Him, he would betake him unto desert places, and seclude himself in a cell, from the Feast of the Epiphany until the end of the forty days following, to wit, for the space of time wherein Christ had sojourned in the wilderness.46 45 Barstow, The Gualenghi–d’Este Hours, 185. 46 St Bonaventure, Legenda maior sancti Francisci, Cap. IX, par. 2, 1–3, ; St Bonaventure, The Life of Saint Francis by Saint Bonaventura (London: J. M. Dent, 1904), 95.

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St Francis’s dedication to imitatio Christi in the context of his exterior wilderness landscape can also, according to Bonaventure’s legend, be identified internally. His desire to imitate Christ is so fervent that his interior state is mapped on to his exterior person, transforming him into a likeness of Christ’s humanity. The Seraphic Doctor tells us that just as he had imitated Christ in the deeds of his life, it was befitting that Francis be made like Christ in the afflictions of the Passion before he died.47 Thus, one morning while praying, he witnessed the appearance of a resplendent sixwinged Seraph with an image of Christ crucified between its wings, which imprinted on his hands and feet the marks of the nails and of the lance in his side. Ercole retains the rays of light akin to lasers which are common in the iconography, hitting the two figures’ corresponding wounds. The rays act as visible signs of the outward mapping of the saint’s interior state, the Seraph becoming the agent. Bonaventure’s account has the stigmatisation event occurring on the side of the mountain La Verna, depicted for instance in Giotto’s fresco of the event from the cycle in the Upper Church of San Francesco in Assisi, whose direct source is Bonaventure’s legend. Ercole’s image, in depicting the Crucifixion, transforms the Umbrian mountain-scape into a simultaneous and heterotopic Calvary. The Crucifixion scene is ostensibly a configuration of the event that the saint desires to experience and to imitate, an outward realisation of the interior landscape that ‘lies like bundle of myrrh in his heart’s bosom’.48 One may relate Francis’s gaze, fixed in enraptured concentration on the Seraph above him, to a passage from Chapter X of Bonaventure’s legend. It tells of the saint’s zeal in prayer and his raptures, recounting that on a journey passing through Borgo San Sepolcro, he seemed not to recall having passed through the town at all: ‘For his mind, intent on heavenly glories, had not perceived

47 ‘Sane cum in trina libri apertione domini passio semper occurreret intellexit vir deo plenus quod sicut Christum fuerat imitatus in actibus vitae sic conformis ei esse deberet in afflictionibus et doloribus passionis antequam ex hoc mundo transiret’. St Bonaventure, Legenda maior sancti Francisci, Cap. XIII, par. 2, 5, . 48 See footnote 43.

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the changes of place and time, nor of the folk that met them’.49 As Francis in his striving for imitatio Christi is lifted beyond recognising his exterior environment, does the devotee not too, beholding the saint’s image in his landscape, become lifted out of her external environment and travel into the merging landscapes of the image?

Conclusion Given the notable and idiosyncratic representation of landscapes and the natural world in Quattrocento Ferrarese painting, it is useful to shift the focus away from merely the human figures and on to these other elements. In doing so, a subtler understanding is brought to the depiction of the human figures, as they are understood to interact with their surroundings. As has been demonstrated here, the converging of painted landscapes within one work can assist in reinforcing history and narrative as well as philosophical or theological concepts with which a viewer is likely to make associations. Christ’s Passion is the most critical event in salvation history, the doctrine central to a faith practised day to day by the fifteenth-century religious and laity, in devotional and liturgical contexts. In exploring four images of the Passion, it is clear how prominent notions of landscape, and indeed place, were in the mind of the Ferrarese faithful while they were engaged in acts of worship, aiding – especially in their juxtapositions and heterotopias – in the soul’s travel. Just as in the texts studied and produced contemporaneously in Ferrara landscapes and spiritual travel through them are key, this is seen reflected in visual culture, whether encouraging the viewer to travel through the Passion narrative or encouraging the soul’s ascent through imitatio Christi.

49 St Bonaventure, The Life of Saint Francis, 105.

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Bibliography Andrews, L., Story and Space in Renaissance Art: The Rebirth of Continuous Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Aquinas, Thomas, Commentary on the Gospel of John: Chapters 13–21, trans. Fabian Larcher, OP, and James A. Weisheipl, OP (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010). Barstow, Kurt, The Gualenghi–d’Este Hours: Art and Devotion in Renaissance Ferrara (Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum). Bonaventure, St, Legenda maior sancti Francisci, Bonaventura, St, The Life of Saint Francis by Saint Bonaventura (London: J. M. Dent, 1904). Campbell, Stephen, Cosmè Tura of Ferrara: Style, Politics and the Renaissance City, 1450–1495 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997. ‘Christos Paschon/Christus Patiens, or Christ Suffering’, Milton Quarterly 36.3, Special Issue (2002), 130–92. D’Aurizio, Sergio, ed., Le sette armi spirituali: ristretto dello specchio di illuminazione di Illuminata Bembo (Milan: Tip. del Commercio, 1981). Foucault, Michel, ‘Des Espaces Autres. Hétéotopies’, Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité 5 (1984), 46–9. Kaspersen, Søren, ed., Images of Cult and Devotion: The Function and Reception of Christian Images in Medieval and Post-Medieval Europe (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2004). Knight, Kelvin, ‘Real Places and Impossible Spaces: Foucault’s Heterotopia in the Fiction of James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, and W. G. Sebald’, PhD diss., University of East Anglia, 2014. Lane, Belden C., The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). Lillie, Amanda, ‘Ercole de’ Roberti “The Nativity”’, (accessed 4 February 2019). Manca, Joseph, The Art of Ercole de’ Roberti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Martinelli, Serena Spanò, ‘Caterina Vigri (1413–63): Nascita e sviluppo di un culto Cittadino’, Revue Mabillon 17 (2006), 127–43. Nelson, Robert S, ‘The Italian Appreciation and Appropriation of Illuminated Byzantine Manuscripts, ca. 1200–1450’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 49 (1995), 209–35.

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Pericolo, Lorenzo, ‘Heterotopia in the Renaissance: Modern Hybrids as Antiques in Bramante, Cima da Conegliano, and the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili’, Getty Research Journal 1 (2009), 1–16. Rebenich, Stefan, Jerome (London: Routledge, 2002). Rice, Eugene F., Jr, Saint Jerome in the Renaissance (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985). Sanvito, Paolo, Imitatio: L’Amore dell’immagine sacra: Il sentimeno devoto nelle scene dell’imitazione di Cristo (Città di Castello: Stampa Petruzzi, 2009). Schaff, Philip, ed., Nice and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series: Volume XIV: Chrysostom: Homilies on the Gospel of St John the Epistle to the Hebrews (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2007). Schiller, Gertrud, Iconography of Christian Art, vol. 2, trans. Janet Seligman (Greenwich, CT: New York Geographic Society, 1971). Schnapp, Jeffrey T., ‘Touch and Transport in the Middle Ages’, The Johns Hopkins University Press 124.5, Comparative Literature Issue Supplement: ‘Special Issue in Honor of J. Freccero: Fifty Years with Dante and Italian Literature’ (2009), 115–36. Stinger, Charles L., Humanism and the Church Fathers: Ambrogio Traversari (1386– 1439) and Christian Antiquity in the Italian Renaissance (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977). Tuohy, Thomas, Herculean Ferrara: Ercole d’Este (1471–1505) and the Invention of a Ducal Capital (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Wright, F. A, ed., Selected Letters of St Jerome (London: William Heinemann, 1933).

Antonella Palumbo

4 The Camino de Santiago and the Via dell’Angelo: Historical and Anthropological Contexts of their Routes

Abstract The essay provides an examination of the iconography of St James the Greater and St Michael the Archangel on the pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain and Monte Sant’Angelo at Gargano in southern Italy. The study demonstrates that along the main pilgrimage routes, particularly in the Italian peninsula, and the alternative routes known as tratturi or sheep tracks in the south, images drawn from the two cults were frequently used, sometimes together, representing a sacred landscape separate from but leading to the cult centres. Thus virtual pilgrimage landscapes were an important part of spiritual journeys – even for pilgrims who were able to travel.

Jerusalem and Rome have always been the most attractive places for devotees of the Christian religion. Over time, other religious centres also emerged, such as Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, north-western Spain, and the Monte Sant’Angelo in Puglia, south-eastern Italy. The Spanish town has St James the Greater as its patron and it preserves the saint’s relics; the saint had great appeal to pilgrims as he was one of closest apostles to Christ, together with Sts Peter and John.1 The discovery of St James’s tomb in the ninth century initially encouraged local and regional pilgrimages, which grew over time to involve all the Iberian territories and international travellers. The famous Camino Francés or Camino de Santiago emerged after

1

Peter, James and John were witnesses of some of Christ’s miracles such as the resurrection of Jairus’s daughter, the Transfiguration and the agony in the Garden of Olives. Paolo Caucci von Saucken, Il cammino italiano a Compostella. Il pellegrinaggio a Santiago di Compostella e l’Italia (Perugia: Università degli Studi di Perugia, 1984), 9–10.

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some centuries as a consequence of that expansion and it soon became an ‘natural linkage’, symbolically and materially, which connected the northern Christian kingdoms and the southern countries occupied by Muslims.2 This was a key feature of the origins of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and it influenced the most important artistic works concerning the saint and his worship. The first appearance of Michael occurred in Italy, in the fifth century, on the Monte Sant’Angelo. Because of the martial features of the Archangel, the Lombard dynasty was among the main promoters of St Michael’s worship in the Western world.3 The history of the cult of St Michael and its veneration is described in the eighth-century Liber de apparitione sancti Michaelis in monte Gargano, better known as Apparitio. In this work, three significant episodes concerning Michaelic devotion are explained: the episode of the bull and the arrow; the battle between the Lombards and the Byzantines; and the consecration of the basilica by the Archangel. Two other sacred Michaelic places grew up in early medieval Europe, the Mont SaintMichel of Normandy, France, and the Sacra di San Michele in Val di Susa of Piemonte in Italy.4 According to a famous passage of the Apparitio, the three Michaelic shrines had symbolic, historic and spiritual connections, as religious centres chosen by the Archangel himself. Moreover, the Sacra in Val di Susa is halfway between the other two, showing to contemporaries that the intention of the Archangel was to create a close connection

2 3

4

The epithet ‘Francés’ seems to indicate that many French pilgrims travelled along that path. Ibid., 51. King Grimoaldo I was among the first rulers of the Lombards to favour a policy related to the religious aspect of St Michael. Giorgio Otranto and Carlo Carletti, Il santuario di San Michele arcangelo sul Gargano dalle origini al X secolo (Bari: Edipuglia, 1995), 41–6. Giorgio Otranto, ‘Genesi, caratteri e diffusione del culto micaelico del Gargano’, in Pierre Bouet, Giorgio Otranto and André Vauchez, eds, Culte et pèlerinages à Sant Michel en Occident. Les trois monts dédiés à l’archange (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2003), 60–1.

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among the Michaelic centres through a single pathway, known as the Via dell’Angelo.5 This chapter explores the links between the two sacred routeways and foregrounds how the cults of St James and St Michael intersected in the spiritual journeys of pilgrims. Pilgrims on either of the sacred routes to their pilgrimage shrines were embarking on spiritual journeys which were richly symbolic and mutually reinforcing – since both cults, this chapter finds, were figures inextricably connected to ‘soul travel’. Before going on to examine the broader historical and anthropological context of the sacred routeways underpinning the pilgrimages, let us first turn to consider why Michael and James were both venerated for their connections to the journey of the soul after death.

St James the Greater and St Michael the Archangel as Soul Guides St James was represented mainly in three ways: as an Apostle, as a pilgrim and as Miles Christi or a knight of Christ. The latter image, known as Santiago Matamoros, found its most frequent expression in Spain, while the others were common to all countries.6 The image of St James as a pilgrim was the best known and most frequently portrayed, since his attributes referring to pilgrimages were iconic; also, the symbol that most strongly permeated the veneration of St James was the popular concha or cockleshell,

5 6

Giuseppe Sergi, ‘Peregrinatio e stabilitas in due tradizioni cronachistiche valsusine’, in Giampietro Casiraghi and Giuseppe Sergi, eds, Pellegrinaggi e santuari di San Michele nell’Occidente medievale (Bari: Edipuglia, 2009), 149–62. Literally ‘killer of Moors’. Isidro Bango Torviso, El Camino de Santiago (Madrid: Editorial Espasa-Calpe, 1993), 18–23.

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quintessential signum peregrinationis of the camino or routeways to the shrine at Santiago.7 Another holy routeway was one dedicated to the prince of heavenly armies, St Michael, which led to Monte Gargano in Puglia. The cult of St Michael was born in Phrygia, in the area of Colossae and Laodicea, and later spread into Constantinople, Egypt, Greece, Syria and the coasts and islands of Asia Minor.8 The Miles Dei was venerated especially for his thaumaturgical power. He was also, of course, God’s warrior against the Devil.9 The itinerary leading to St Michael’s cave, Via Michaelica or Via dell’Angelo, coincided approximately with the via Francigena, a communications artery developed from the ancient Roman road system and its successors in the Italian peninsula over the centuries. A document of the ninth century from Monte Amiata attests to the passage of pilgrims who came from the Alps using the name via Francisca. The appellation Francigena refers to most travellers coming from north-west Europe.10 This route was one of the most important communication roads connecting major shrines such as Rome, Monte Sant’Angelo and, via the ports of Puglia, the Holy Land. The Camino Francés and the via Francigena could be considered as a single, contiguous route, along which large numbers of pilgrims travelled to sacred destinations, especially during the Middle Ages.11 The cults of St James and St Michael have some features in common, including the role of psychopomp and the weighing of souls, or

7 The concha or cockleshell became the main symbol of Jacobean confraternities, hospitals and of the pilgrimage itself. Paolo Caucci von Saucken, El sermón Veneranda Dies del Liber Sancti Jacobi (Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia, 2010), 78. 8 Otranto and Carletti, Il santuario di San Michele, 6–12. 9 In the First Letter to the Thessalonians 4:16, St Paul refers to the Archangel who announces the end of time and the coming of Christ. Ruggero Ragonese, Dallo spazio all’immagine. La semiotica, la geografia e l’arcangelo (Bologna: I libri di Emil, 2011), 33. 10 Renzo Infante, I cammini dell’angelo nella Daunia tardoantica e medievale (Bari: Edipuglia, 2009), 33–5. 11 Pietro Dalena, Dagli itinera ai percorsi: viaggiare nel mezzogiorno medievale (Bari: Adda Editore, 2003), 68.

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psychostasia.12 Miracle IV of the second book of the Liber Sancti Jacobi, known as ‘The miracle of solidarity between pilgrims’, refers clearly to the Apostle’s role as psychopomp (see Figure 4.1).13 The miracle tells the story of thirty knights who travelled from Lorraine to the Galician tomb; during the journey, a knight suddenly became ill and only one companion gave him support. The sick knight worsened and then died. His friend remained alone and prayed to the saint, who miraculously appeared to him as a knight. St James took both the living and the dead knights near to the town of Compostela. At the end of the story, the apostle reveals himself and tells the other knights, through the surviving companion, to return to their homes, since they had not assisted their ill friend. This story shows St James as a psychopomp, since he takes not only the living knight but also the dead one with him, carrying them to his burial place and shrine. Another, more detailed, example can be seen in the ‘Letter of Saint James’ story, which was inspired by the episode of Charlemagne’s death narrated in the Historia Turpini, Book IV of Liber Sancti Jacobi. In this story, both the status of psychopomp and the psycostasia task of the apostle are well highlighted. The apostle weighs the good actions of the emperor on a scale in order to show that he deserves the Kingdom of Heaven and leads Charlemagne’s soul there.14 The saint appears as psychopomp and protector since he welcomes the souls at death’s door and guides them along the Milky Way to Paradise. For this reason, many cemetery areas, funeral chapels and pilgrim garment burials are dedicated to the saint or refer to him. Devotees used to recommend themselves to the saint for the afterlife.15

12 Antonella Palumbo, ‘I culti di Santiago e San Michele’, Santiago 23 (2013), 6–7. 13 The Liber Sancti Jacobi or the Codex Calixtinus relates the history of the cult and the cathedral of St James and the pilgrimage to Compostela. Paolo Caucci von Saucken, Guida del pellegrino di Santiago (Milan: Jaca Books, 2010), 10–15. 14 Abelardo Moralejo Losa, Casimiro Torres Rodríguez and Julio Feo García, Liber Sancti Jacobi, ‘Codex Calixtinus’ (Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia, 1999), 482. 15 Denise Péricard-Méa, Compostela e il culto di san Giacomo nel Medioevo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2004), 12–13.

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Figure 4.1.  The Miracle of Solidarity between Pilgrims, church of Santa Maria in Piano, Loreto Aprutino (PE), Italy.

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St Michael’s role as soul guide is better known. There is an image of St Michael accompanying souls in a passage of Luke (16:22), where angels escorts the dead Lazarus into the afterlife. Furthermore, this particular role of the Archangel – sent by God to pick up and lead devoted souls before the throne of Christ – emerges in other apocryphal texts as well. One example is the History of Saint Joseph and Dormitio Virginis.16 In this and other ancient texts the dying prayed to the Archangel to take the souls that were about to leave the Earth in his custody, and to accompany them to the afterlife.17 In addition to the task of leading souls to the afterlife, the Apostle and the Archangel have another important characteristic in common: the psychostasia. Both saints can weigh souls and judge them worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven, but their way of judging the souls is represented differently. There are some depictions of the saints together, or with just one of them in the act of weighing souls, as in the well-known painting St James Protector and Intercessor before the Virgin Mary in the Museo das Peregrinacións in Santiago de Compostela, whose original name was Santiago como protector e intercesor ante la Virgen (see Figure 4.2) and in The Last Judgement fresco in Santa Maria of Loreto Aprutino (Abruzzo, Italy) (see Figure 4.3).18 The latter work is of particular significance because shows St Michael weighing souls with a scale given by the Almighty, and also a bridge which souls have to cross, known as St James’s bridge or ‘St James’s Passage’, an explicit reference to the Galician saint and his sanctuary.19 The name of the bridge is clearly linked to the apostle and connects him with the ancient Bridge of Judgement: the souls had to cross the bridge so that the righteous 16 17 18

19

Otranto, ‘Genesi, caratteri e diffusione del culto micaelico del Gargano’, 43–64. Renzo Infante, ‘Michele nella letteratura apocrifa del giudaismo del Secondo Tempio’, Vetera Christianorum 34 (1997), 219–29. ‘Santiago como protector e intercesor ante la Virgen’, anonymous, seventeenth century, Museo das Peregrinacións e de Santiago, Santiago de Compostela. Inside the church of Santa Maria in Piano there are other frescoes depicting St James as pilgrim and there is the famous Miracle of Solidarity among Pilgrims. Luisa Lofoco, ‘Prime testimonianze del pellegrinaggio jacopeo in Abruzzo’, Compostella 31 (2010), 22–3. Annalisa Di Nola, ‘Il Passo di San Giacomo’, Italie et Mediterranée 103 (1991), 217–72.

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Figure 4.2.  St James as Protector and Intercessor before the Virgin Mary, anonymous, Spanish School, seventeenth century, oil on canvas, Museo das Peregrinacións e de Santiago, Santiago de Compostela, La Coruña, Spain.

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Figure 4.3.  ‘St James’s Bridge’, detail of the fresco of the Last Judgement, Maestro di Loreto, fourteenth century, church of Santa Maria in Piano, Loreto Aprutino (PE), Italy.

could reach the afterlife without any obstacle, while those guilty of serious sins fell into the infernal river below.20 It should also be noted that the psychostasia has classical roots, where the Greek god Hermes carries out this task; the prince of the angels inherited this role because of the origin of his cult in a Greek-Byzantine context.21 The weighing of souls is often associated with their journey to the afterlife; according to the liturgical prayers, the Archangel weighs souls and can intercede on their behalf during

20 Mario Sensi, ‘Monte Sant’Angelo al Gargano: il toro e la freccia avvelenata, la grotta e la stilla’, Compostella 33 (2011), 31–46. 21 Ragonese, Dallo spazio all’immagine, 37.

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the Last Judgement, amending the sins of those who were devoted to him during their lives.22 The representation of a bridge as a passage to the afterlife can be found in many cultures, so its presence in the Christian world is not surprising. Annalisa di Nola argues that the theme of the bridge appeared for the first time in the sixth century, possibly in the writings of Gregory the Great.23 In some Italian regions such as Abruzzo and Sicily, the bridge represents a journey of atonement or a place that the souls passed before arriving in the afterlife and it is linked to the pilgrimage of St James.24 The widespread belief in crossing St James’s bridge or walking along the road to Santiago could date back to the real pilgrimage made by devotees to the Galician sanctuary, with its many difficulties: the bridge has been represented by blades, swords, knives and nails, and sometimes is simply described as ‘thin as a hair’.25 Still today it is believed that one who has not made the journey to Galicia to pay homage to the saint in life must accomplish the journey in death.26 The anthropologists Luigi Satriano Lombardi and Mariano Meligrana have conducted research in Sicily, Calabria and Basilicata where they have found popular traditions similar to those in Abruzzo and Molise, where the path to the afterlife coincides with the Milky Way and is presented as an arduous and painful itinerary that souls have to face after death. The journey to the afterlife therefore is represented symbolically as

22

In liturgical prayers, St Michael does not abandon souls until he has carried them in front of the tribunal of Christ. Infante, ‘Michele nella letteratura apocrifa’, 223–4. 23 Di Nola, ‘Il Passo di San Giacomo’, 250–1; Luigi Moraldi, Apocrifi del Nuovo Testamento. Lettere, dormizione di Maria, Apocalissi, III (Casale Monferrato (AL): Edizioni Piemme, 2001), 369–425. 24 In Persian tradition it was believed that the souls of the deceased cross the bridge of trial and judgement, called the bridge Çinvaut-perethu [the bridge which gathers]. If the souls were without fault, the bridge remained solid; otherwise, souls fell into a great limbo. Angelo De Gubernatis, Storia comparata degli usi funebri in Italia e presso gli altri popoli Indo-Europei (Bologna: Forni Editore, 1890), 92–3. 25 Luigi Satriani Lombardi and Mariano Meligrana, Il Ponte di San Giacomo (Milan: Rizzoli Editore, 1982), 129–30; Giuseppe Arlotta, ‘San Giacomo psicopompo nella tradizione popolare siciliana’, Compostella 29 (2008), 56–8. 26 Gennaro Finamore, Tradizioni popolari abruzzesi (Palermo: Edikronos, 1981), 98–9.

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a way of atonement for those who had not observed Christians rules in life and were therefore not worthy of entering the Kingdom of Heaven.27 The custom of soul travel to Galicia was influenced by the fact that Compostela always attracted many devotees. St James’s charisma contributed to the spread of his cult and the development of his sanctuary in the remote land of Galicia, which became one of the most important religious centres and, simultaneously, one of the most difficult to reach. The belief of the journey to the afterlife is attested in another ancient text which was well known in the Middle Ages, the fourth-century apocrypha Visio Pauli.28 In the text, the image of the bridge appears again, and it highlights the role of St Michael as the interpreter and conductor of St Paul during his short journey into the afterlife. The Miles Dei accompanies and protects St Paul during his lifetime; before arriving in Paradise, the angel accompanies Paul to visit Hell and its pains, including a ‘bridge thin as a hair’ which the souls of the honest cross successfully, while the souls of sinners fall down to be swallowed by a black river and devoured by an infernal beast.29 It is clear, then, that the bridge as journey of expiation or a frontier which souls have to cross to reach the heavenly world is a popular legend in many central and southern Italian regions, above all in Abruzzo and Sicily.30 Similar stories are found for the Monte Sant’Angelo and even for Jerusalem. The first pilgrimages led to the Holy Land and also came to represent the final journey of souls to the Heavenly Jerusalem. This influenced belief in many places in the south of Italy, especially in the area of Benevento 27 28

Di Nola, ‘Il Passo di San Giacomo’, 267–8. According to Anita Seppilli, the theme of the bridge passed into Christian literature through the Letter to the Corinthians 12:2–4, which tells of the kidnapping of the Apostle Paul to the third heaven. Anita Seppilli, Sacralità dell’acqua e sacrilegio dei ponti (Palermo: Sellerio, 1977), 250–4. 29 Paolo Villari, Antiche Leggende e Tradizioni che illustrano la Divina Commedia (Bologna: Arnaldo Forni Editore, 1974), 77–81. 30 According to De Gubernatis, the sun, the moon and the stars were the immortal place of the souls. After death, souls go to the stars and the Milky Way is designed as the bridge of the souls over a funereal swamp. Gubernatis, Storia comparata degli usi funebri, 97.

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and the ancient Sannio – an important travel hub on the Via Francigena – and led to the development of the concept of the ‘Souls’ Procession’. This traditional belief is a symbolic representation of ordinary pilgrimage and it has the same characteristics as the Compostelan legend which states that whomsoever has not visited the shrine while alive, would have to do so in death. In this case the souls have to visit Jerusalem or Monte Sant’Angelo. This latter is more than a belief, because St Michael is the Angel of Death and he is, by definition, a psychopomp. In fact, the pilgrims who headed to the Michaelic shrine in Puglia would ask the Archangel for his benevolence, for the remission of their sins, and for his intercession and protection in the last moments of their lives.31 Thus, St James’s bridge as a step towards the afterlife, St Michael’s psychostasia and the journey of souls were significant aspects of the medieval cults of the two saints which could be traced both in the sacred liturgy and in popular ideas. St James accompanied and protected people during real-life pilgrimage, while St Michael watched and guarded those who journeyed; both saints had the task of guiding souls towards the afterlife.

Pilgrimage Routes to Compostela and Monte Sant’Angelo Compared Links between the two cults are also highlighted by the many chapels, sacred buildings and places dedicated to the saints along their pilgrimage routes. Along the Camino de Santiago there were many churches or shelters for pilgrims dedicated to the Archangel, while numerous sacred buildings dedicated to the apostle could be found along the Via Micaelica or Via dell’Angelo.32 For example, along the Way of St James in Spain there was the well-known church of San Miguel de Escalada, which dates back 31 32

Sensi, ‘Monte Sant’Angelo al Gargano’, 35. Mario Sensi, ‘La “Francigena”. Via dell’Angelo’, in Paolo Caucci von Saucken, ed., Francigena, santi, cavalieri, pellegrini (Milan: Serra Club International, 1999), 240–2.

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to the eighth century and whose remains have been recently restored.33 Another important building is one of the oldest in Santiago, the church of San Miguel dos Agros, whose origins go back to the tenth century.34 The presence of the above-mentioned buildings witnesses the strong devotion to the Archangel, which is put into even sharper focus inside the cathedral of Compostela itself. The church of Santiago is carefully described in the Guide of the Pilgrim, the fifth book of the Liber; it housed an altar dedicated to St Michael located near to the apse, facing west.35 The altar no longer exists, but in the interior of the Capilla del Salvador there is a remarkable retable of the fifteenth century with a statue of the Miles Dei, evidence of his previous presence in the church.36 Also with reference to the Guide, there were nine towers in the Middle Ages, one of which was dedicated to the Miles Dei. Researchers are still debating the location of this tower since its ancient site is difficult to determine.37 The custom of consecrating altars or towers to St Michael at the western end of churches dates back to a Carolingian tradition that stressed the role of the warrior saint as a defence against the Devil, emphasising his role as protector and guardian of humanity.38 We must not forget that the Ricardo Puente, La Iglesia mozárabe de San Miguel de Escalada (León: Editorial Albanega, 1997). 34 Francisco Singul and Enrique Fernández Castiñeiras, San Miguel dos Agros. Santiago de Compostela (Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia, 2001), 5–63. 35 The altar was located on the top of the Capilla del Salvador and it reflected a precise architectonic scheme; it was the Triduum Sacrum, a symbolic and liturgical pattern celebrated during the Easter period. The Carolingian ritual consisted in the officium of the Adoratio Crucis, the Depositio, the Elevatio and the Visitatio Sepulchri. Manuel Antonio Castiñeiras González, ‘La catedral románica: tipología aequitectónica y narración visual’, in Manuel Núñez Rodríguez, ed., Santiago, la catedral y la memoria del arte (Santiago de Compostela: Consorcio de Santiago, 2000), 39–97. 36 Ramón Otero Túñez, ‘El retablo del Salvador de la catedral de Santiago’, Abrente 32–4 (2000–2), 41–56. 37 See Julio Vázquez Castro, ‘A falta de torres, buenos son campanarios. Las desaparecidas Torres del Ángel y del Gallo en la Catedral de Santiago de Compostela’, Quintana 6 (2007), 245–61. 38 Giorgio Otranto, ‘Note sulla tipologia degli insediamenti micaelici in Europa’, in Pierre Bouet, Giorgio Otranto and André Vauchez, eds, Culto e santuari di san Michele nell’Europa medievale (Bari: Edipuglia, 2007), 410. 33

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prince of the angels was the patron of many Germanic peoples, such as the Lombards, under whom his worship became widespread, and he was also highly venerated by the Franks. In fact, it was a Carolingian practice to consecrate one or more altars or chapels to the Archangels inside major churches, as in the case of the cathedral of Compostela. Following Byzantine tradition, the emperor Charlemagne decided that St Michael, St Gabriel and St Raphael had to be venerated as patrons of the guard and the army. Their titles followed a precise order: St Raphael to the north, St Gabriel to the south and St Michael to the west.39 Inside these spaces there was always an altar or a chapel positioned in a west-facing direction, even if it was not located at the west end. If there are references to the cult of St Michael in the pilgrimage of St James and in the city of Compostela, there are also deep traces of the cult of the apostle in the city of Gargano and on its pilgrimage routes. In addition to the mountain town itself, many signs can be found in other locations connected by the roads that lead to the shrine, such as in the port cities of Puglia, the villages along the via Francigena and other places close to the central-southern Apennines.40 The main routes that led to St Michael’s sanctuary were the Via Micaelica or Via dell’Angelo with the Via Sacra Langobardorum and the Strata Peregrinorum. The Via Sacra Langobardorum is a route which approximately coincided with the path of Valle di Stignano which included settlements such as San Marco in Lamis and San Giovanni Rotondo, which pilgrims passed through because there were other sacred places to visit, such as the monastery of San Matteo (which still has a very ancient library). There are also some traces related to the cult of St James.41 The Strata Peregrinorum almost coincided with the 39 Ragonese, Dallo spazio all’immagine, 58–71. 40 Rosanna Bianco, ‘San Giacomo di Compostella e la Puglia. Linee di una ricerca’, Compostella 35 (2014), 43–51; Pasquale Corsi, Pellegrinaggi, pellegrini e santuari sul Gargano (San Marco in Lamis: Quaderni del Sud, 1999), 9–33; Luisa Lofoco, ‘La Capitanata e la tradizione compostellana nel Medioevo’, in Antonio Gravina, ed., Atti del 31º Convegno nazionale sulla Preistoria-Protostoria-Storia della Daunia (San Severo: Archeoclub d’Italia, 2010), 124–32. 41 Vittorio Russi, ‘Note di topografia storica sulla cosiddetta “Via Sacra Langobardorum”’, in Pasquale Corsi, ed., La via sacra Langobardorum (Foggia: Edipuglia, 2007), 123–50.

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ancient via Traiana and it touched important centres like Benevento and Troia; other villages were the ancient Aequum Tuticum (near to Ariano Irpino), Aecae (Troia), Lucera, Arpi (near to Foggia), Siponto and Monte Sant’Angelo. According to many scholars, the Strata Peregrinorum can be considered the main path confirmed by a document that says: strata magnam que pergit ad Sanctum Michaelem.42 Some traces of the cult of St James have been found in Benevento, in Lucera – a church dedicated to St James that survives today – and in Troia.43

The tratturi Road System and the Case of Castel di Sangro–Lucera However, these were not the only traces of St James on the roads leading to the sacred cave at Gargano. In addition to the above-mentioned routes, there were other roads that led to St Michael’s shrine such as the famous vie d’erba [tracks of grass] or tratturi [sheep tracks].44 One of the main features of the pilgrimage of St Michael is the road network itself, which was both a communication route between settlements in the territory of the Apennines and also a pilgrimage route or sacred way. The via Francigena can be seen as part of this Italian road system, and according to the historian Guiseppe Sergi, the route cannot be defined ‘as a single path, but 42 Dora Donofrio Del Vecchio, ‘Itinerari e luoghi dell’antica viabilità in Puglia’, in Mimma Pasculli Ferrara, ed., Itinerari in Puglia tra arte e spiritualità (Rome: Edizioni De Luca, 2000), 27. 43 Luisa Lofoco, ‘L’Italia meridionale peninsulare ed il pellegrinaggio ad limina Sancti Jacobi tra XI e XV secolo’, PhD thesis, University of Lecce, 2006, 110–13. 44 The long ‘grass-ways’ have very ancient origins and they have always been linked to the pastoral world. They crossed the territories of the Apennines, the centre and the south of Abruzzo and Molise and led to more temperate areas such as the Tavoliere of Puglia, but also to some parts of Campania. Giorgio Otranto, ‘Le vie della transumanza’, in Giorgio Otranto, ed., Cento itinerari più uno in Puglia (Bari: Gelsorosso, 2007), 64.

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rather in dynamic sense as a “road axis” which is enriched in turn by trails, tracks, secondary roads, fittings, alternative routes or parallel: definitive as “road area” or “beam of roads”, which can have a prevailing path and convey toward a determined place’.45 The sheep tracks had their origin in the dense road system that existed since ancient times in the territories from the Apennines to the Apulian Tavoliere. The long grassy paths were used in the traditional practice of transhumance: since many flocks and herds passed along these tracks, many refreshment points appeared, as well as shelters for the animals, taverns, churches and wayside shrines. Moreover, since many tratturi largely led into today’s Capitanata district of Puglia, many places or mountain caves were dedicated to St Michael. St Michael was often adopted as a protector of pastoral communities; indeed shepherds of the region, before starting their journeys, went into the church of their patron to offer him a votive candle and forty hours of penance while, on their return from the mountainside, they went to the fair of Foggia on pilgrimage to both St Michael’s shrine and to the Madonna Incoronata.46 According to the anthropologist Maria Gorga, pastoral devotional places dedicated to a divinity such as these were normal, since this kind of cult was important to the transhumant.47 Shepherds asked for divine protection against dangers that they might encounter during their journey. As a consequence, there were many buildings such as churches and shrines along the sheep tracks where people

45 Giuseppe Sergi, ‘Premessa’, in Giuseppe Sergi, ed., Luoghi di strada nel Medioevo. Fra il Po, il mare e le Alpi occidentali (Turin: Scriptorium, 1996), 5. 46 Adriana Gandolfi, ‘I santuari, le feste e i pellegrinaggi nelle comunità pastorali centroappenniniche’, in Edilio Petrocelli, ed., La civiltà della transumanza, storia, cultura e valorizzazione dei tratturi e del mondo pastorale in Abruzzo, Molise, Puglia, Campania e Basilicata (Isernia: Cosmo Iannone Editore, 1999), 441–3. 47 One of the most important cult sites during the Roman period was at Ercole Clavigero; also in the pre-Roman period there were warrior divinities linked to the worship of water here. Maria Antonietta Gorga, ‘Feste religiose e luoghi di culto sugli antichi sentieri della transumanza’, in Enrico Narciso, ed., La cultura della transumanza (Naples: Guida Editori, 1991), 133–7.

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could rest; therefore, it is not surprising that shepherds were particularly sensitive to the cult of St Michael.48 The tratturi were important means of communication as well. Many pilgrims used the network of grass paths to reach the sacred centres of the region, particularly Gargano. The scholar Giovanni Bronzini points out that there is ‘a direct relationship between transhumance and pilgrimages’.49 He emphasises the strong connection between transhumance tracks and sacred routes. The road system consisting of tratturi, tratturelli [small tratturi] and mulattiere [mule tracks] was very extensive and it roughly coincided with the territories of Abruzzo, Molise, Campania, Puglia and Lucania. While there were many tratturi, it is possible to identify four significant, long tracks which went from Abruzzo to Puglia: l’Aquila–Foggia, Pescasseroli–Candela, Celano–Foggia and Castel di Sangro–Lucera (see Figure 4.4).50 Taking the Castel di Sangro–Lucera as a case study, along the routeway there is evidence for devotions to the cult of St Michael, the Virgin Mary, St Paschal and St Martin, and also many signs of the presence of St James, both in the centres traversed by the grassy track or on the path itself.51 In particular, the signs of deep devotion to St James have been noticed on the final part of the path, in the ancient region of Capitanata: many centres show traces of the cult of St James and there are more centres related to St

48 The Miles Dei was considered the official patron of both the pastoral and the peasant community. Mario Sensi, Santuari e culto di S. Michele nell’Italia centrale in Culto e santuari di san Michele nell’Europa medievale (Spoleto: CISAM, 2003), 250–66; Giorgio Otranto, ‘Il pellegrinaggio alla grotta di San Michele sul Gargano’, in Guiseppe Arlotta, ed., De peregrinatione (Naples: Edizioni Compostellane, 2016), 127–68. 49 Giovanni Battista Bronzini, ‘Transumanza e religione popolare’, in Enrico Narciso, ed., La cultura della transumanza (Naples: Guida Editori, 1991), 125. 50 These were called regi [royal] because they were under royal jurisdiction which periodically controlled their boundaries, in order to prevent landowners taking advantage of them. Paquale Di Cicco, ‘Percorsi delle vie armentizie del Tavoliere di Puglia’, in AA. VV., eds, Le vie della transumanza (Foggia: Archivio di Stato di Foggia, 1984), 77–97. 51 Bronzini, ‘Transumanza e religione popolare’, 125–7.

Figure 4.4.  Map of the tratturi, tratturelli, bracci and riposi, drafted by the Commissariato per la reintegra dei tratturi di Foggia, 1959, ASFG.

142 Antonella Palumbo

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James and St Michael and their attributes, than other cults.52 The town of Pietracatella is one example. Here, there is great devotion to St James and he is one of the protectors of both the living and the dead. His church is built on the top of a rocky hill whose interior is empty. The local community used to bury its dead in the interior of the hill, below the church of St James, so they could recommend themselves to the saint in the afterlife (see Figure 4.5).53

Figure 4.5.  The exterior of St James’s church, twelfth century, Pietracatella (CB), Italy.

In the region of Capitanata was one of the major road networks that led both to the Apulian ports and to the shrines of St Michael at Monte Gargano 52 53

Rosanna Bianco, ‘Culto iacobeo in Puglia tra medioevo e età Moderna. La Madonna, l’intercessione, la morte’, in Paolo Caucci von Saucken, ed., Santiago e l’Italia (Perugia: Edizioni Compostellane, 2005), 135–51. Currently, there is a municipal graveyard and the crypt of St Margaret below the church, which is de-consecrated. However, St James’s church remains one of the most important sacred places in Pietracatella. Donato Di Vita, Pietracatella (Campobasso: Palladino Editore, 2012), 130–2.

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and St Nicholas at Bari.54 These, too, had Jacobean links. According to Giovanni Cherubini, the spread of the cult of St James in villages along the extensive European road network was so great, despite the distance from the Galician sanctuary, that toponymic references and hospitals dedicated to the apostle became more and more numerous.55 This occurred even on the tratturi and the tratturo Castel di Sangro–Lucera.56 Among the many villages along the track can be cited Alberona, which not only celebrates the Galician saint, but also has St James as a patron together with St John the Baptist and San Rocco (see Figure 4.6). Furthermore, in the cathedral there is a statue of the Archangel that confirms the local devotion to St Michael.57 There are also traces of the cult of the apostle in the town in Gargano, such as the small church dedicated to the crowned Virgin Mary located in Valle Portella.58 This houses a statue of the apostle of recent manufacture and some scholars suppose that this hermitage was formerly dedicated to the Galician saint.59 Further, in the Sacred Cave is kept a marble slab placed above the entrance of the well-known Cava delle Pietre [Cave of the Stones]

54

Paolo Caucci von Saucken, ‘La Francigena e le vie romee’, in Paolo Caucci von Saucken, Il Mondo dei Pellegrinaggi. Roma, Santiago, Gerusalemme (Milan: Jaca Books, 1999), 137–86; Lucia Gai, Pistoia e il Cammino di Santiago. Una dimensione europea nella Toscana medioevale (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1987), 119–202. 55 Giovanni Cherubini, ed., Santiago di Compostella. Il pellegrinaggio medievale (Siena: Protagon Editori Toscani, 2000), 115. 56 Antonella Palumbo, ‘Peregrinatio ad limina Sancti Jacobi et Sancti Michaelis Archangeli: differenze e analogie nei culti di San Giacomo il Maggiore e San Michele Arcangelo’, PhD thesis, University of Chieti Pescara, 2017. 57 Gaetano Schiraldi, Storia di Alberona dalle origini al XIX secolo (Lucera: Catapano Grafiche, 2008), 254–60; Antonella Palumbo, ‘Il borgo di Alberona e la tradizione compostellana’, Santiago 24 (2014), 10–11. 58 Beyond the valley of Carbonara there were also the valleys of Fratta, Romiti, Malipassi, Jumitite, Scannamuliera, Stamburlante and Portella. In Vallone di Scannamugliera there is the known Scala Santa and the settlement of Jazzo Ognissanti. Infante, I cammini dell’angelo, 137–47; Otranto, ‘Note sulla tipologia degli insediamenti micaelici in Europa’, 155–6. 59 Alberto Cavallini, Per Omnia Saecula Saeculorum. L’antico Rithmus e il culto liturgico medioevale dell’abba Giovanni il Pulsanese, un grande santo meridionale e l’identificazione e la riscoperta della chiesa pulsanese di S. Giacomo “extra moenia” di Monte Sant’Angelo (Monte Procida (NA): Grafica Montese, 2004), 13–23, 141–5.

The Camino de Santiago and the Via dell’Angelo

Figure 4.6.  The ancient St James’s church, map (cabreo) of the clergy of Alberona (FG), 1774, Biblioteca Comunale of Barletta, Italy.

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which shows at its centre an image of the Virgin on the throne crowned by angels, while to her side is represented an image of a pilgrim saint who has been identified as St James. The icon has the typical attributes of pilgrimage such as the bordone [a pilgrim’s staff ] and the scarsella [a kind of purse, scrip], but the sign that identifies the image as an apostle is the presence of the book, symbol par excellence of the apostles.60

Conclusion This chapter has offered a comparative discussion of the devotions surrounding James and Michael and the journeys that pilgrims undertook to their respective shrines. It has reconstructed the broader social and anthropological significance of the routeways and explored their contemporary significance for pilgrims. We have seen that Jacobean and Michaelic worship have some features in common, especially in the funerary context, where both St James and St Michael can weigh and carry souls to Heaven – immortalised in the paintings of Santiago de Compostela and in Loreto Aprutino. Moreover, there is another connection with the devotional practice of the pilgrimage: the belief in the ‘souls’ procession’ that still exists in many Italian regional areas. While there are many fields still to investigate, such as the network of tratturi that is yet to be uncovered, this essay has tried to show that the close links between two of the emblematic figures of the medieval pilgrimage, St James the Greater and St Michael the Archangel, are preserved in a range of material and archaeological evidence. The countless pilgrims who travelled thousands of kilometres to pay homage to the saints strengthened and fortified these connections over time. Ultimately, this chapter has argued that the cults of God’s two warriors, James and Michael, were fundamentally connected by the concept of ‘soul travel’ because of their role in transporting the soul after death. The way in which pilgrims 60 Bianco, ‘Culto iacobeo in Puglia’, 142–6.

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were encouraged to recognise and reflect on this journey during physical pilgrimages to the shrines of James and Michael allows us to glimpse the spiritual experiences that ‘soul travellers’ were being invited to feel as they progressed on the sacred routes.

Bibliography Bango Torviso, Isidro, El Camino de Santiago (Madrid: Editorial Espasa-Calpe, 1993). Bianco, Rosanna, ‘Culto iacobeo in Puglia tra medioevo e età Moderna. La Madonna, l’intercessione, la morte’, in Paolo Caucci von Saucken, ed., Santiago e l’Italia (Perugia: Edizioni Compostellane, 2005), 135–51. Bianco, Rosanna, ‘San Giacomo di Compostella e la Puglia. Linee di una ricerca’, Compostella 35 (2014), 43–51. Brancaccio, Giovanni, ‘Le manifestazioni di culto negli Abruzzi del Cinque-Seicento’, in Giovanni Vitolo, ed., Pellegrinaggi e itinerari dei santi nel Mezzogiorno medievale (Naples: Gisem Liguori Editore, 1999), 231–48. Bronzini, Giovanni Battista, ‘Religione dei pellegrinaggi e religiosità garganica. Testimonianze letterarie e demologiche’, Lares XLVI (1980), 167–84. Bronzini, Giovanni Battista, ‘Transumanza e religione popolare’, in Enrico Narciso, ed., La cultura della transumanza (Naples: Guida Editori, 1991), 111–31. Castiñeiras González, Manuel Antonio, ‘La catedral románica: tipología aequitectónica y narración visual’, in Manuel Núñez Rodríguez, ed., Santiago, la catedral y la memoria del arte (Santiago de Compostela: Consorcio de Santiago, 2000), 39–97. Caucci von Saucken, Paolo, Guida del pellegrino di Santiago. Libro quinto del Codex Calixtinus, secolo XII (Milan: Jaca Books, 2010). Caucci von Saucken, Jacopo, El sermón Veneranda Dies del Liber Sancti Jacobi (Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia, 2010). Caucci von Saucken, Paolo, Il cammino italiano a Compostella. Il pellegrinaggio a Santiago di Compostella e l’Italia (Perugia: Università degli Studi di Perugia, 1984). Caucci von Saucken, Paolo, ‘La Francigena e le vie romee’, in Paolo Caucci von Saucken, ed., Il Mondo dei Pellegrinaggi. Roma, Santiago, Gerusalemme (Milan: Jaca Books, 1999), 137–86. Cavallini, Alberto, Per Omnia Saecula Saeculorum (Monte Procida (NA): Grafica Montese, 2004).

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Cherubini, Giovanni, Santiago di Compostella. Il pellegrinaggio medievale (Siena: Protagon Editori Toscani, 2000). Corsi, Pasquale, Pellegrinaggi, pellegrini e santuari sul Gargano (San Marco in Lamis: Quaderni del Sud, 1999). Dalena, Pietro, Dagli itinera ai percorsi: viaggiare nel mezzogiorno medievale (Bari: M. Adda Editore, 2003). De Gubernatis, Angelo, Mitologia comparata (Milano: Hoepli, 1980). De Gubernatis, Angelo, Storia comparata degli usi funebri in Italia e presso gli altri popoli Indoeruropei (Bologna: Forni Editore, 1971). Di Cicco, Pasquale, ‘Percorsi delle vie armentizie del Tavoliere di Puglia’, in AA. VV., eds, Le vie della transumanza (Foggia: Archivio di Stato di Foggia, 1984), 77–97. Di Cicco, Pasquale, ‘La transumanza e gli antichi tratturi del Tavoliere’, in AA. VV., eds, Civiltà della Transumanza. Giornata di studi (L’Aquila: Archeoclub d’Italia Sezione di Castel del Monte (Aq), 1992), 25–33. Di Nola, Alfonso, ‘Il ritorno dei morti’, Rivista Abruzzese 42 (1989), 278–9. Di Nola, Annalisa, ‘Il Passo di San Giacomo’, Italie et Mediterranée 103 (1991), 217–72. Di Vita, Donato, Pietracatella (Campobasso: Palladino Editore, 2012), 130–2. Donofrio Del Vecchio, Dora, ‘Itinerari e luoghi dell’antica viabilità in Puglia’, in Mimma Pasculli Ferrara, ed., Itinerari in Puglia tra arte e spiritualità (Rome: Edizioni De Luca, 2000), 21–9. Finamore, Gennaro, Tradizioni popolari abruzzesi (Palermo: Edikronos, 1981). Gai, Lucia, Pistoia e il Cammino di Santiago. Una dimensione europea nella Toscana medioevale (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1987). Gandolfi, Adriana, ‘I santuari, le feste e i pellegrinaggi nelle comunità pastorali centroappenniniche’, in Edilio Petrocelli, ed., La civiltà della transumanza, storia, cultura e valorizzazione dei tratturi e del mondo pastorale in Abruzzo, Molise, Puglia, Campania e Basilicata (Isernia: Cosmo Iannone Editore, 1999), 435–59. Gorga, Maria Antonietta, ‘Feste religiose e luoghi di culto sugli antichi sentieri della transumanza’, in Enrico Narciso, ed., La cultura della transumanza (Naples: Guida Editori, 1991), 133–7. Infante, Renzo, I cammini dell’angelo nella Daunia tardoantica e medievale (Bari: Edipuglia, 2009). Infante, Renzo, ‘Michele nella letteratura apocrifa del giudaismo del Secondo Tempio’, Vetera Christianorum 34 (1997), 219–29. Lofoco, Luisa, ‘La Capitanata e la tradizione compostellana nel Medioevo’, in Antonio Gravina, ed., Atti del 31º Convegno nazionale sulla Preistoria-Protostoria-Storia della Daunia (San Severo: Archeoclub d’Italia, 2010), 124–32. Lofoco, Luisa, ‘L’Italia meridionale peninsulare ed il pellegrinaggio ad limina Sancti Jacobi tra XI e XV secolo’, PhD thesis, University of Lecce, 2006.

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Lofoco, Luisa, ‘Prime testimonianze del pellegrinaggio jacopeo in Abruzzo’, Compostella 31 (2010), 22–3. Lombardi Satriani, Luigi, and Mariano Meligrana, Il Ponte di San Giacomo (Milan: Rizzoli Editore, 2002). Moraldi, Luigi, Apocrifi del Nuovo Testamento. Lettere, dormizione di Maria, Apocalissi, III (Casale Monferrato (AL): Edizioni Piemme, 2001). Moralejo Losa, Abelardo, Casimiro Torres Rodríguez and Julio Feo García, Liber Sancti Jacobi, ‘Codex Calixtinus’ (Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia, 1999). Otero Túñez, Ramón, ‘El retablo del Salvador de la catedral de Santiago’, Abrente 32–4 (2000–02), 41–56. Otranto, Giorgio, ‘Genesi, caratteri e diffusione del culto micaelico del Gargano’, in Pierre Bouet, Giorgio Otranto and André Vauchez, eds, Culte et pèlerinages à Saint Michel en Occident. Les trois monts dédiés à l’archange (Rome: École Française de Rome 2003), 50–72. Otranto, Giorgio, ‘Note sulla tipologia degli insediamenti micaelici in Europa’, in Pierre Bouet, Giorgio Otranto and André Vauchez, eds, Culto e santuari di san Michele nell’Europa medievale (Bari: Edipuglia 2007). Otranto, Giorgio, ed., Cento itinerari più uno in Puglia (Bari: Gelsorossso. 2007). Otranto, Giorgio, and Carlo Carletti, Il santuario di San Michele arcangelo sul Gargano dalle origini al X secolo (Bari: Edipuglia, 1995). Palumbo, Antonella, ‘Il borgo di Alberona e la tradizione compostellana’, Santiago 24 (2014), 10–11. Palumbo, Antonella, ‘I culti di Santiago e San Michele’, Santiago 23 (2013), 6–7. Palumbo, Antonella, ‘Peregrinatio ad limina Sancti Jacobi et Sancti Michaelis Archangeli: differenze e analogie nei culti di San Giacomo il Maggiore e San Michele Arcangelo’, PhD thesis, University of Chieti Pescara, 2017. Paone, Natalino, Il Molise: arte, cultura, paesaggi (Rome: Fratelli Palombi Editori, 1990). Paone, Natalino, La transumanza. Immagini di una civiltà (Isernia: Cosmo Iannone Editore, 1987), 119–24. Péricard-Méa, Denise, Compostela e il culto di san Giacomo nel Medioevo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2004). Puente, Ricardo, La Iglesia mozárabe de San Miguel de Escalada (León: Editorial Albanega, 1997). Ragonese, Ruggero, Dallo spazio all’immagine. La semiotica, la geografia e l’arcangelo (Bologna: I libri di Emil, 2011). Russi, Vittorio, ‘Note di topografia storica sulla cosiddetta “Via Sacra Langobardorum”’, in Pasquale Corsi, ed., La via sacra Langobardorum (Foggia: Edipuglia, 2007), 123–50.

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Russo, Saverio, Sulle tracce della Dogana: tra archivi e territorio (Foggia: Claudio Grenzi Editore, 2008). Schiraldi, Gaetano, Storia di Alberona dalle origini al XIX secolo (Lucera: Catapano Grafiche, 2008). Sensi, Mario, ‘La “Francigena”. Via dell’Angelo’, in Paolo Caucci von Saucken, ed., Francigena, santi, cavalieri, pellegrini (Milan: Serra Club International, 1999), 238–60. Sensi, Mario, ‘Monte Sant’Angelo al Gargano: il toro e la freccia avvelenata, la grotta e la stilla’, Compostella 33 (2011), 31–46. Seppilli, Anita, Sacralità dell’acqua e sacrilegio dei ponti (Palermo: Sellerio, 1977). Sergi, Giuseppe, ‘Peregrinatio et stabilitas in due tradizioni cronachistiche valsusine’, in Giampietro Casiraghi and Giuseppe Sergi, eds, Pellegrinaggi e santuari di San Michele nell’Occidente medievale. Pèlerinages et sanctuaires de Saint-Michel dans l’Occident médieval (Bari: Edipuglia, 2009), 149–62. Sergi, Giuseppe, ‘Premessa’, in AA. VV., eds, In Luoghi di strada nel Medioevo. Fra il Po, il mare e le Alpi occidentali (Turin: Scriptorium, 1996), 5–9. Singul, Francisco, and Enrique Fernández Castiñeiras, San Miguel dos Agros. Santiago de Compostela (Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia, 2001). Vázquez Castro, Julio, ‘A falta de torres, buenos son campanarios. Las desaparecidas Torres del Ángel y del Gallo en la Catedral de Santiago de Compostela’, Quintana 6 (2007), 245–61. Villari, Paolo, Antiche Leggende e Tradizioni che illustrano la Divina Commedia (Bologna: Arnaldo Forni Editore, 1974).

Elizabeth Tingle

5 Pilgrimage Confraternities and Spiritual Travel in Catholic Reformation France

Abstract Early modern confraternities were related to pilgrimage in several ways. They could be founded by ex-pilgrims and offer both a means of celebrating and commemorating their activity and favoured cult and practical support to those people who wanted to go on pilgrimage. There were also three key ways in which pilgrimage confraternities fostered the concept of pilgrimage as a spiritual endeavour, linked to meditation and prayer. The first of these was the creation of prayer societies through subscription to a confraternity based at a shrine – a sort of ‘virtual’ confraternity. Secondly, confraternities could organise imitation or proxy pilgrimages, which emulated at a local and reduced level one of the great pilgrimages. It could endow the participant with some and sometimes all of the same privileges as attendance at the distant shrine and did so by encouraging an imagining of the experience of pilgrimage itself as a devotional exercise. Thirdly, there was full spiritual journeying itself, where the participant did not need to leave his or her dwelling or chapel. Spiritual pilgrimage – at the least as meditation and prayer and at the more expansive end, imagined journey – was thus fostered together with physical journeying. We are setting out for the place of which the Lord said: ‘I will give it to you’. Come with us and we will treat you well, for the Lord has promised good things to Israel. — Numbers 10:29

In much of the devotional literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the spiritual traveller is a man of education and substance and he typically journeys alone. Ignatius Loyola, the ‘pilgrim’ of the Spiritual Exercises, was a soldier-hidalgo; the pilgrim of Loreto was a man of culture and some wealth; the hermit pilgrims such as Valérien, popular in early seventeenth-century works by Jean-Pierre Camus, François Langlois and

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F.-A. Sainct-Amour, were again noble solitaries.1 Historians studying the texts and images related to spiritual travel similarly privilege the elites for whom these works were created, female and male religious and lay dévots who were active in Catholic reform. But spiritual journeys were far from the preserve of the privileged and educated. Physical pilgrimage, taking to the road to visit local and distant shrines, was immensely popular among all social groups; also, the men and women who visited shrines rarely did so alone, but usually as part of a local group of parish or confraternity. It was to these Catholics of middling and lower social groups and their local organisations that shrine keepers and missionary orders addressed their teachings of salvation through endeavour or works. It we consider nonliterary texts created by local institutions, we see that spiritual travel was an important means by which new pieties were encouraged among the humble as well as the socially prominent. In this essay, the experience of soul travel of the ‘ordinary’ Catholic will be explored, through the activities of the widespread and popular institution of the confraternity. The increasing prominence of spiritual journeys in popular devotion needs to be considered in relation to one of the prominent historiographical debates of the Reformation era: the ‘rise’ of the individual as an autonomous, consciously expressed self and more particularly its relationship with personal, interiorised spirituality. John Bossy’s interpretation of the transformation of early modern Catholicism, from a communitarian to an individual and personalised faith, has been enormously influential on studies of this period. In his words, ‘the effect of the Counter-Reformation … was … to shift the emphasis away from the field of objective social relations 1

Ignatius of Loyola, Personal Writings, trans. Joseph A. Munitiz and Philip Endean (London: Penguin, 1996); Louis Richeome, Le Pélerin de Lorète, voeu à la glorieuse vierge Marie, mère de Dieu, pour Monseigneur le Dauphin (Bordeaux: S. Millange, 1604); F.-A. de Sainct-Amour, L’Hermite pelerin et de sa peregrination, perils, dangers et divers accidents tant mer que par terre (Lyons: P. Rigaud, 1616); François Langlois, Méditations de l’hermite Valerian / traduites du bon Normand en vieux Gaulois par un pelerin du Mont S. Michel en faveur de tous bons François (1621); Jean-Pierre Camus, L’Hermite pèlerin et sa pèregrination, perils, dangers et divers accidens, tant par mer que par terre, ensemble de son voyage de Mont Serrat, Compostelle, Rome, Lorette et Hierusalem (Douai: Bellère, 1628).

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and into a field of interiorized discipline for the individual’, the purpose of devotion becoming reconciliation to God rather than obligation to the community.2 Of course, we see in contemporary writings that already in the fifteenth century, Franciscan and Carthusian practices and Devotio moderna traditions encouraged withdrawal, self-examination and mental prayer. Advice to clerical and lay elites recommended private meditation and routine reflection upon personal unworthiness and sinfulness.3 Early modern historians have claimed that practices of interiority augmented further, during and after the Reformation. For example, Sara Nalle argues for the Spanish diocese of Cuenca that during the sixteenth century, spiritual life turned inwards, religious persons ‘adopted wholeheartedly the practice of mental prayer and the faith underwent a process of internalization and turning towards Christ’.4 Throughout Catholic Europe, sacramental penance altered with the practice of individual confession in the discretion of the confessional box; general confession became widespread, to evoke deeper contrition and more profound self-knowledge, and more frequent reception of communion was advised.5 The heightened interiority of piety often took on a pilgrim’s spiritual garb. Philip Soergel comments that already by the seventeenth century, clerical writers such as Martin Eisengrein ‘were beginning to link extra-sacramental practices such as pilgrimage to the examination of conscience and to insist that these institutions could deepen knowledge of an individual’s unworthiness’.6 Authors described the authentic Christian life as a pilgrimage; though internal, each test, each effort, was the occasion of an encounter with God. 2 3

4 5 6

John Bossy, ‘The Social History of Confession in the Age of the Reformation’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Fifth Series, 25 (1975), 21. Felicity Heal, The Reformation in Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 97–9; Robert Bireley, ‘Early Modern Catholicism as a Response to the Changing World of the Long Sixteenth Century’, Catholic Historical Review XCV (2009), 238–9. Sara T. Nalle, God in La Mancha. Religious Reform and the People of Cuenca, 1500–1650 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 135. Bireley, ‘Early Modern Catholicism’, 239. Philip M. Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints. Counter-Reformation and Propaganda in Bavaria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 119.

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The novelty of Catholic reform was the attempt to spread the movement of interiority out from elites to all social groups. It also adapted interiority to collective devotional practices. Confraternities in particular promoted, financed and supervised the use of new religious practices and moral standards, the best-known examples being rosary use and holy sacrament veneration, which incorporated daily examination of conscience and mental prayer.7 Confraternities dedicated to a specific saint’s cult and pilgrimage to his or her shrine were one such group which contributed to the adoption of new spiritual practices, notably soul journeys as well as physical travel. It is to a case study of French pilgrimage confraternities that we now turn, for they offer an interesting case study of how a religious organisation with a practical mission also adopted spiritual means of achieving what seems ostensibly to be a material goal.

Context: Confraternities, Counter Reformation and Interior Spirituality A confraternity is essentially a self-governing congregation of Christians with a mutual interest in promoting and engaging with a particular devotion or religious activity.8 Confraternities had their origins in the central Middle Ages and by 1500 had become both geographically widespread and numerous in membership. Before the Reformation, their main functions were charitable or pious works, intercession for living and deceased members, sociability and mutual aid, all mediated through the offices of the Church. They were relatively independent organisations, raising and

7 8

Donna S. Ellington, From Sacred Body to Angelic Soul: Understanding Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 246. Nicholas Terpstra, Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 49.

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administering their own funds under limited supervision by the clergy.9 There were different types of confraternities and individuals could be members of more than one association. The most common were craft fraternities where artisans of the same trade worshipped together; parish guilds dedicated to patron and other locally venerated saints; and charitable associations formed for a specific purpose such as the running of a hospital. Pilgrimage confraternities were usually a form of parish devotional group, dedicated to the veneration of a special saint through provision of rituals and promotion of good works. In their case, the central good work was pilgrimage, visiting and venerating the saint’s shrine, then perpetuating his or her cult upon return home. The Reformation attack on saintly and collective intercession caused a decline in long-distance pilgrimage and also led to a fall in confraternity membership. In regions and cities of Europe where Protestantism was established, confraternities were abolished. But Reformed ideas also undermined collective prayer associations in Catholic regions. Alan Galpern has shown that in Champagne across the sixteenth century, membership of confraternities dwindled and at the same time became more feminised, an indicator of their decreasing social importance.10 Further, there were criticisms of confraternities at the Council of Trent. In the 23rd session of the Council in 1562, canons VIII and IX ruled for episcopal control over confraternities to bring them under greater clerical supervision.11 But from the mid- to late sixteenth century, confraternities were renewed or reborn all over Catholic Europe, a result of religious revival and militancy. The chief features of the new and reformed fraternities were greater emphasis on the performance of charitable work, rejection of convivial festivities, new 9 10 11

Maureen Flynn, ‘Baroque Piety and Spanish Confraternities’, in J. P. Donnelly and M. W. Maher, eds, Confraternities and Catholic Reform in Italy, France and Spain (Kirkville, MO: Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, 1999), 233–5. Alan Galpern, The Religions of the People in Sixteenth-Century Champagne (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1976), 103, 188, 190. Christopher Black, ‘Confraternities and the Parish in the Context of the Italian Catholic Reform’, in J. P. Donnelly and M. W. Maher, eds, Confraternities and Catholic Reform in Italy, France and Spain (Kirkville, MO: Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, 1999), 8.

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devotional emphases on frequent confession and communion and above all overt statements or demonstrations of Catholic faith, the new-style confraternities playing an important role in the mobilisation of Catholics against heresy and in the shaping of confessional identity.12 Some pilgrimage confraternities also re-emerged at this time, for example, the confraternity of St James at Provins recorded by Claude Haton in 1578.13 After 1600, the confraternity again became a prominent institution of religious life for clergy and laity alike, in town and countryside, and there was a major expansion of numbers and membership of these groups. Historians have identified new departures in the nature and functions of Counter-Reformation confraternities. Primarily, Tridentine reformers sought to impose greater clerical authority over these voluntary associations and the separation of the sacred from the profane was one of their major preoccupations: clergy stressed the sanctifying aspects of fellowship but played down sociability.14 While new devotional confraternities were one of the great successes of the period, whether Holy Sacrament, Rosary or Agonisants/Ames du Purgatoire groups to pray for the dying and the dead, traditional patronal and saints’ guilds also flourished.15 The period thus saw the flowering of pilgrimage confraternities. Pilgrimage confraternities had an important role in the spirituality of Catholic communities for two reasons. Firstly, they drew from the middling and lower sort of early modern society. Membership was often exclusive, at least when they were founded, in that they frequently admitted only former pilgrims. Thus, the confraternity of Saint-Jacques of Chilhac was founded 12

John Bossy, ‘Leagues and Associations in Sixteenth-Century French Catholicism’, Studies in Church History 23 (1986), 175, 177; Philip Benedict, ‘The Catholic Response to Protestantism. Church Activity and Popular Piety in Rouen 1560–1600’, in James Obelkevitch, ed., Religion and the People 800–1700 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 173. 13 Félix Bourquelot, ed., Mémoires de Claude Haton, 2 vols (Paris: Imprimerie Imperiale, 1858), II, 926. 14 R. Po-Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal 1540–1770 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 202; Bossy, ‘Leagues and Associations’, 183. 15 Philip T. Hoffman, Church and Community in the Diocese of Lyon 1500–1789 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), 110–11.

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in 1527 by a party of returning pilgrims from Compostela and was for future pilgrims who made the journey to Santiago on foot.16 The confraternity of Saint-Jacques of Gisors was founded in the church of SS Gervase and Proteus some time before 1608 by a group of sixteen male parishioners who had made the journey to Compostela and it remained only for pilgrims.17 The confraternity of Saint-Michel, founded in Saint-Vivien of Rouen in 1656, was for pilgrims who had either visited Monte Gargano in Puglia or the Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy.18 Around the year 1712, a number of inhabitants of Pont l’Eveque undertook the pilgrimage to the Mont SaintMichel together and on their return, decided to found a confraternity to honour the saint, who was also the parish’s patron, and to keep company and honour the pilgrims who visited the Mont. Forty years later, in 1752, this foundation was remembered by another group of thirty-four returned pilgrims who wanted to restore the confraternity to its previous energy, for only six of the former group of pilgrims remained alive.19 But membership was also socially wide and here we see ‘ordinary’ Catholics at prayer. The members who enrolled in pilgrimage confraternities were largely male and mostly artisans, including younger journeymen, and merchants in towns, and farmers and craftsmen in the countryside, along with their sons. In 1615, the fifty-eight confrères of Saint-Jacques who assembled in Moissac in Quercy to draw up new statutes included two priests, six notaries and legal clerks, an apothecary, eight merchants, eight artisans in the textile trades, seven artisans in the leather trade and six labourers along with a rope-maker, a locksmith and several in the 16

17 18

19

Jean Chaize, ‘Le pèlerinage de Saint-Jacques de Compostelle vu à travers quelques pèlerins de notre région aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles’, Bulletin Historique, Scientifique, Littéraire, Artistique et Agricole de la Société Académique du Puy et de la Haute-Loire 50 (1974), 43. Archives Départementales de Seine-Maritime (ADSM) G 1752 Gisors. Confraternities. A. Laghezza and V. Juhel, ‘Saint-Michel-du-Mont-Gargan de Rouen, origines et développement d’un sanctuaire michaelique’, in Bernard Bodinier, ed., Pèlerinages et lieux de pèlerinage en Normandie, Actes du 44e congrès organisé par la Fédération des Sociétés historiques et archéologiques de Normandie (Fécamp 22–4 oct 2009) (Louviers: Fédération des Sociétés historiques et archéologiques de Normandie, 2010), 33. Archives Départementales de Calvados (ADC). 6G 580 Pont l’Évêque. Confraternities.

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hospitality trades.20 In 1703, the confraternity of Saint-Jacques of Laval had fifty-eight members, all tradesmen, of which nineteen were weavers, five butchers, three ditchers, two masons, two roofers, two laundrymen, two carders and range of other crafts.21 Most pilgrimage confraternities had similar constituencies. Women members were rare – as were longdistance female pilgrims – and were usually wives of confrères. Thus, traditional and new devotions were promoted at the grassroots level of masculine society. Secondly, these groups offered a wide range of spiritual supports. The role of confraternities in promoting new forms of piety and especially interior devotion is a marked feature of the period. Jacques Chiffoleau argues that medieval fraternities were not designed to promote a richer spirituality or pedagogy of prayer, except for attendance at weekly or daily Mass and the recitation of basic prayers such as the Pater and the Ave. That stated, he acknowledges that, limited as they were, the activities of late medieval confraternities did encourage participation in pious activities which surpassed the ordinary level of religious obligation.22 For the transitional sixteenth century, Nicole Lemaitre argues that in the Rouergue, for example, membership did presuppose an interior disposition towards piety. While the obligation of prayer remained medieval in form, confraternal life favoured a programme of moral reformation, mutual service and piety, offering an education of interior prayer and intercession.23 Marie-Hélène

20 Camille Daux, Le Pèlerinage à Compostelle et la Confrérie des pèlerins de Monseigneur Saint Jacques de Moissac en Quercy (Paris: Champion 1898; repr. Paris: Slatkine, 1981), 49.

21 Dominique Julia, ‘Pour une géographie européenne du pèlerinage à l’époque moderne et contemporaine’, in Philippe Boutry and Dominique Julia, eds, Pèlerins et pèlerinages dans l’Europe moderne (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 2000), 108.

22 Jacques Chiffoleau, La comptabilité de l’au-delà. Les hommes, la mort et la religion dans la région d’Avignon à la fin du Moyen Age (c. 1320–c. 1480) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1980), 286. 23 Nicole Lemaitre, Le Rouergue flamboyant. Le clergé et les fidèles du diocèse de Rodez 1417–1563 (Paris: Cerf, 1988), 307–8.

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Froeschlé-Chopard’s work on confraternity statutes and devotional works reveals an evolution in spirituality among these groups from the late fifteenth century onwards, but particularly in the seventeenth century: she argues for a rise in individual prayer and direct dialogue between the faithful and God.24 Historians such as Bruno Restif argue that this marks a departure from the past. Rather than a concern with intercession, confraternities’ chief activities were multiple exercises of collective piety and they were places where individual pious behaviour was formed and encouraged.25 This is supported by Nicholas Terpstra’s work. He observes that members gained training in and exercise of the communal rituals of the Catholic faith, Mass, confession and communion, and that encouraged by the mendicant example, they also inculcated and encouraged intense spirituality of private devotions that led members towards engaged worship.26 David Gentilcore characterised this as a vocation to internal missionism, ‘manifested in a religious drive to create a liturgical and sacramental consciousness within the brotherhood coupled with an increased awareness of the plight of one’s neighbour and the need to harmonise with the activities of the clergy’.27 Not content with simply evoking the aid of a saintly protector, these associations expected their members to engage personally in repeated acts of piety or asceticism.28 Pilgrimage confraternities did likewise, encouraging physical works, material worship and spiritual growth, as we shall see below.

24 Marie-Hélène Froeschlé-Chopard, Espace et sacré en Provence (XVIe–XXe siècle). Cultes, images, confréries (Paris: Cerf, 1994), 599. 25 Bruno Restif, La Révolution des paroisses: culture paroissiale et Réforme catholique en Haute-Bretagne aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2006), 179–80. 26 Terpstra, Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion, 49. 27 David Gentilcore, From Bishop to Witch. The System of the Sacred in Early Modern Terra d’Otranto (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 78. 28 Jean-Marie Mayeur, Charles Pietri, André Vauchez and Marc Venard, Histoire du Christianisme des origines à nos jours. Vol. VIII Le temps des confessions 1530–1620/30 (Paris: Desclée/Fayard 1992), 271.

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Confraternities and Pilgrimage of Body and Soul Pilgrimage was a good work for early modern Catholics and was linked to confraternities in several ways. Most obviously, confraternities could be founded by ex-pilgrims and offer a means of celebrating and commemorating their activity, venerating their favoured cult and offering practical support to people who wanted to go on pilgrimage. If we take the example of the long-distance pilgrimage to the Mont Saint-Michel in northern France, the role of confraternities is evident. In the Mont’s own province of Normandy, the importance of the pilgrimage is shown by the large number of confraternities associated with it.29 At Evreux, the confraternity of the pilgrims of Saint-Michel took part in general processions in the city dressed in a long robe or cape, a pilgrim’s satchel and staff.30 A confraternity in the parish of Gloët, near Pont-Audemer, had statutes of an ancient confraternity dedicated to St Michael confirmed in 1664. The statutes stated that ‘all those who make the journey and pilgrimage to the Blessed Archangel Saint Michael at the place commonly called Mont-Saint-Michel in Lower Normandy, can be associated with this confraternity and enjoy the same privileges as the confreres’, and women and girls who had undertaken the journey could join with fewer obligations than the male adherents.31 A confraternity of St Michael erected in the church of Freneuse, deanery of Périers, admitted only those who had undertaken the pilgrimage to the Mont. In 1665, there were thirty-three members.32 The tradition of the pilgrimage was particularly strong in the city of Rouen. Here, there were 29

30 31 32

Dominique Julia, ‘Le pèlerinage au Mont-Saint-Michel du XVe au XVIIIe siècle’, in Pierre Bouet, Giorgio Otranto and André Vauchez, eds, Culte et pèlerinages à Saint Michel en Occident. Les trois monts dédié s à l’archange (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 2003), 299. Marcel Baudot, ‘Diffusion et évolution du culte de Saint-Michel en France’, in Marcel Baudot, ed., Millénaire Monastique du Mont Saint-Michel, 5 vols (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1971), III, 109. Archives Départementales de la Seine-Maritime (ADSM) G 1332. Confraternities of the deanery of Pont-Audemer. ADSM G 1457. Confraternities of the deanery of Périers.

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three St Michael confraternities (re-)founded in the seventeenth century, specifically to promote or support journeys to the Mont. Examples could be multiplied. Confraternities of the pilgrimage to St James of Compostela were similar, more widespread in France and in some regions, such as the Auvergne and the south-west, relatively numerous in the early modern countryside. Again, they were for ex-pilgrims and also provided advice for those making the journey: in 1603, a guide dedicated ‘to the devout pilgrims of Rouen’ described the route to Compostela, passing through Elbeuf, Dreux, Chartres and Châteaudun to Tours, where pilgrims joined one of the major routeways south.33 A manuscript of 1690 for use of pilgrims of Senlis described the classic route of Paris to Tours via Orleans and Blois.34 Numerous communities had religious and cultural attachments to physical pilgrimage, fostered by confraternities. Pilgrimage was for the soul as well as the body. There were a number of ways in which pilgrimage confraternities fostered the concept of journey as a spiritual endeavour, linked to meditation and prayer, encouraging their members to interior devotions. The first of these was the creation of prayer societies through subscription to a confraternity based at a shrine – a sort of ‘virtual’ brotherhood. Pierre Charpentrat observes that CounterReformation shrines typically developed associated confraternities with spiritual benefits, such that the early modern pilgrim joined a group benefiting from particular privileges rather than launching him or herself heroically on to the routes of adventure, to conquer graces.35 Such confraternities had been a common feature of the medieval Church and as R. N. Swanson writes, membership ‘generally meant sharing in the benefits for the devotional works performed within the house, as something distinct from sharing in indulgences … Moreover, these confraternity grants were issued as fully personalised documents, not the mass-produced forms intended for

P. Barret and J.-N. Gurgand, Priez pour nous à Compostelle. La vie des pèlerins sur les chemins de Saint-Jacques (Paris: Hachette, 1978), 92 34 Ibid., 92 35 Pierre Charpentrat, ‘L’architecture et son public: les églises de la Contre-Réforme’, Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 28 (1973), 92. 33

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later completion characteristic of confessional letters’.36 The Reformation witnessed the disappearance of many of these guilds, perhaps superseded by the aggregated form of confraternity, where a local ‘branch’ was linked to a wider network of groups, with a central base in Rome, such as that of the Holy Sacrament first created in the church of Santa Maria della Maggiore in 1537.37 However, the shrine confraternity which enrolled geographically distant members in a prayer society re-emerged in the seventeenth century, usually linked to nationally and internationally important Marian shrines. For example, the Spanish shrine-monastery of Nuestra Señora of Monserrat regularly sent out collectors or commissioned local agents in France and the Spanish Netherlands to raise funds. There is evidence for an agent looking after the monastery’s interests in the Toulouse region by 1328, and in 1593, a Catalan merchant from Monistrol was operating for the monks in the same area. In 1606, the monastery acquired a property in Cazères, 50 kilometres south-west of Toulouse, which it used as a permanent base for its operations in France and the Low Countries. Its agents acquired episcopal licences to collect alms; 350 survive for the period 1603–62 and cover 111 of the 144 dioceses of seventeenth-century France and parts of the Spanish Netherlands. The agents traded candles and images in return for donations and inscribed members into the confraternity, recording their names on the guild roll. The members received prayers and indulgences for a subscription fee.38 Within France, another example is provided by the shrine of Notre Dame de Liesse in northern France, which stimulated two types of confraternity: the ‘great’ confraternity, based in the shrine church, with members enrolled from all over the kingdom, and independent local confraternities in the churches of north-eastern France.

36 Robert N. Swanson, Indulgences in Late Medieval England. Passports to Paradise (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 142. 37 See Elizabeth Tingle, Indulgences after Luther: Pardons in Counter-Reformation France (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2015). 38 Thomas Julien, ‘La Quête pour la Vierge Noire de Montserrat en France au 17 siècle. Un commerce international d’indulgences post-tridentin’, in Albrecht Burkardt, ed., L’Economie des dévotions. Commerce, croyances et objets de piété à l’époque moderne (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2016), 69–90.

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The former association was for spiritual purposes, with adherents such as Cardinal Richelieu, who wanted to participate in the prayers of the shrine. Indulgences were available, and an annual Mass was said for confreres. The latter were ‘normal’, independent confraternities of devotion, based in parish churches.39 At a more regional and local level, the shrine of Notre Dame de Verdelais, at Aubiac near Bordeaux, had a confraternity which radiated throughout Aquitaine with close to 6,000 members by the close of the seventeenth century.40 These confraternities did not require active membership and most of their adherents joined to acquire prayer benefits and indulgences rather than to participate in pilgrimage. Secondly, confraternities could organise imitation or proxy pilgrimages, which emulated at a local level one of the great pilgrimages. Participation could endow the confrere with some and sometimes all of the same privileges as attendance at the distant shrine; it did so by encouraging an imagining of the experience of the ‘home’ pilgrimage as a devotional exercise. This was a psychological or imagined pilgrimage but enacted in a material way. The origins of these lie in the work of the religious orders. Perhaps the most famous of these imagined landscapes were in the Italian alpine regions where Franciscans and reforming bishops patronised the building of Monti Sacri, artificial terrains of chapels and routeways which reconstruction a processional itinerary of Christ’s Passion in Jerusalem, with ‘stations’ for meditations.41 Another sort of proxy landscape was created inside churches, in the form of ‘seven altars’ which could be visited in imitation of the seven main pilgrimage churches of Rome, endowing the ‘pilgrim’ with the same indulgences. Then there were copies of shrines: the Holy House of Loreto had a number of large and small facsimiles built across Europe. Confraternities came to adopt and promote the concept of

Bruno Maës, Notre-Dame de Liesse. Huit siècles de libération et de joie (Paris: ŒIL, 1991), 68. 40 Jean-François Duclot, Verdelais à travers les siècles (Saint-Quentin-de-Baron: Editions de l’Entre-deux-Mers, 2006), 44. 41 Dominique Julia, ‘Identité pèlerine, identité du passage’, in Catherine Vincent, ed., Identités pèlerines, Actes du colloque de Rouen, 15–16 mai 2002 (Rouen: Publications de l’Université de Rouen, 2004), 243. 39

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proxy pilgrimage. For example, for the Mont Saint-Michel pilgrimage, there were substitute, shorter journeys which confreres could take to honour the Archangel rather than going to the Mont. The Parisian confraternity undertook an annual walk on 8 May to Saint-Cloud, about 12 kilometres from the capital, wearing pilgrim garb.42 Several of the Rouen confraternities organised pilgrimages to the nearby priory of Saint-Michel.43 That of Saint-Niçaise had a monthly procession there; members carried lighted candles, were accompanied by children dressed in white, said prayers at the priory and held a high Mass at Saint-Niçaise upon their return.44 Similarly, in the parish of Denestanville near Dieppe, a confraternity seems to have journeyed regularly to the local chapel of Mont-Sainte-Chapelle dedicated to Saint-Michel.45 At Evreux, Archdeacon Henri-Marie Boudon, who had a special devotion to the Holy Angels, went as a pilgrim to the Mont but when he founded a confraternity of the Holy Angels in his home town he did not prescribe the long-distance pilgrimage. Rather, the statutes enjoined the members on the first Tuesday of every month to visit the chapel of Saint-Michel-des-Vignes on the hill above Evreux.46 By these means, the Saint-Michel pilgrimage was made accessible to wider groups of people and was also more closely supervised by local clergy. In a different form, but related to landscapes of the imagination, some urban, post-Reformation St James confraternities organised dramatic reconstructions of the life of Christ and the apostles on their annual feast day of

42 Anne Lombard-Jourdain, ‘La confrérie parisienne des pèlerins de St Michel du Mont avec un tableau inédit du XVIIe siècle’, Bulletin de la société d’histoire de Paris et l’Ile de France 113–14 (1988), 141. 43 Laghezza and Juhel, ‘Saint-Michel-du-Mont-Gargan de Rouen’, 33. 44 Pierre le Charpentier, Instructions pour la confrérie des pellerins du Mont St Michel érigée en la paroisse de St Niçaise en Rouen (Rouen: Jacques Herault, 1668), Statute 6. 45 Catherine Vincent, ‘Les confréries et le culte de St Michel à la fin du moyen âge dans le royaume de France’, in Pierre Bouet, Giorgio Otranto and André Vauchez, eds, Culte et pèlerinages à Saint Michel en Occident. Les trois monts dédié s à l’archange (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 2003), 193. 46 Anon., La Vie de M. Henry-Marie Boudon, grand archidiacre d’Evreux, 2 vols (Paris, Hérissant, 1753); Dominique, ‘Le pèlerinage au Mont-Saint-Michel’, 302.

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25 July. These enactments provided a form of visual landscape with material and spiritual engagement with the Passion and subsequent history of Christ’s disciple James, for the confreres and for the wider community in which they were based. In 1578, the revival of the confraternity of St James in Provins saw the resurrection of the annual procession of confreres dressed as Jesus and his twelve disciples, dressed in wigs, beards and costumes.47 In Rheims, the procession of Christ and the Apostles also included confreres who dressed up at St John the Baptist, the men on the road to Emmaus and St Christopher, each player singing in turn – probably at stations along the route – a ‘Saying or Symbol of the Apostles recited by the Pilgrims of St James’ written for them by Gerard de la Lobe, parish priest of St James of the city between 1564 and 1609.48 In Limoges in 1596, Bernard Bardon de Brun wrote Saint Jacques, tragoedie, repraesentee publiquement a Lymoges par les Confreres Pelerins du dict saint, a ‘mystery’ play put on by the confraternity on the saint’s feast day of 25 July and then published as a souvenir and a devotional work.49 Such dramatic processions or stagings are recorded in the first half of the seventeenth century as well, the best known being from Paris.50 A confraternity’s most important spiritual function was to provide a framework of liturgy, worship and prayer for living and dead members, which it can be argued was promoting spiritual journey towards heaven in the classic sense. The statutes of confraternities, their most frequently surviving documentary output, show that their chief preoccupation was to provide a liturgical framework for their members, to provide company for them on their journey from this life to the next. Froeschlé-Chopard 47 Dominique Julia, Le Voyage aux Saints. Les pèlerinages dans l’Occident moderne (Xve–XVIIIe siècles) (Paris: Le Seuil, 2016), 165. 48 Julia, Le Voyage aux Saints, 165. 49 Bernard Bardon de Brun, Saint Jacques, tragoedie, repraesentee publiquement a Lymoges par les Confreres Pelerins du dict saint, en l’annee 1596 (Limoges: Hugues Barbou, 1596); Michel Cassan, Le temps des guerres de religion. Le cas du Limousin (vers 1530–vers 1630) (Paris: Publisud, 1996), 292–5. 50 Lombard-Jourdain, A., ‘La confrérie parisienne’, 144; Henri Bordier, ‘Les confréries des pèlerins de St Jacques et ses archives’, Mémoires de la société d’histoire de Paris et de l’Ile de France II (1876), 391–2.

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argues that statutes reveal an evolution in spirituality among these groups: from the late fifteenth century onwards, but particularly in the seventeenth century, she sees a rise in individual prayer and direct dialogue between the faithful and God.51 While the function of statutes was regulatory, the activities they document promoted spiritual pilgrimage in three main ways: they mandated mental prayer and meditation; they encouraged good works as part of a journey to grace; and they provided an important framework for the dying and deceased to continue their pilgrimage to heaven. This can be seen, for example, in the detailed statutes of St James of Compostela confraternities from south-west France. The confraternity of Azereix in the diocese of Tarbes renewed its statutes in 1713, and with them undertook to promote a series of spiritual activities. In the preamble, the confraternity’s stated aims were ‘to unite together by bonds of spiritual confraternity, to strive together for their mutual sanctification by the practice of virtues and keeping of regulations or statutes’.52 The collectivity promised to work for the salvation of individual members ‘by a uniformity in their works of piety and small regulations tending to moral correction’.53 Rule five outlined the most common way for confreres to achieve this, which was through the quarterly practice of confession and communion, on St James’s Day and on the other three great feasts of the Christian calendar. But more was necessary than mere observance and as rule nine outlined: Prayer is one of the most efficacious means for obtaining from God the graces necessary for our salvation. All confreres should begin and end each day with prayer; in the morning, after rising and while kneeling, after having adored God and asking for the grace to spend the day without offending him, offering their hearts and all the activities of the day, to Him … and the evening, before sleeping, again kneeling, and after having meditated a little, thanking God for the graces he has given to

51 Froeschlé-Chopard, Espace et sacré en Provence, 599 52 Azereix, statutes of 1713, at (accessed 24 October 2018); for detailed discussion of statutes, see Denise Péricard-Méa, Compostelle et cultes de Saint Jacques au Moyen Age (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2000). 53 Azereix, .

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them, asking him for pardon for all the faults they committed … and adding a little prayer of devotion.54

Many confraternities also provided weekly Masses for the benefit of members, such as Cléry-Saint-André in Orleans diocese, which in 1592 founded a Sunday Mass in its chapel in the parish church, to be said at 6 a.m. at the same hour as Matins, before the main parish Mass, and paid for by collections from the confreres.55 Confreres were also companions on the spiritual journey towards the afterlife, for dying and deceased brethren. In the confraternity of Azereix, the statues of 1713 stipulated in rule twelve that ‘when the Holy Sacrament is carried to a sick confrere all the others should do what they can to assist, at least the bailes and the nearest neighbours’, and when a confrere died, everyone, except those with a legitimate excuse, should assist in the procession and burial.56 At Bagnères-de-Bigorre, the bailes were obliged to take candles to the home of the deceased confrere and members were to carry lighted candles from the house to the church, accompanying the deceased on his final journey.57 Confraternities were concerned to provide ‘decent’ funerals, prayers for the dead and continuing perpetual intercession, as they had in earlier decades. The confraternity of Saint-Michel of Gloët in the archdiocese of Rouen had its ancient statutes reconfirmed in 1664. Each confrere, male and female, was obliged to provide one Mass a year at the altar of the confraternity for recently deceased brethren and to attend funerals.58 The confraternity of Saint-Michel in Saint-Niçaise, Rouen, refounded in 1623, held a requiem Mass on the day after its feast day on 29 September for all deceased confreres.59 The guild statutes laid out in detail the funerary rights and rites due to members and their wives. 54 55 56 57 58 59

Azereix, . Archives Départementales de Loiret (ADL) 2 J 2521 Fonds Jarry. Azereix, . J. Dejeanne and J. J. Pepouey, ‘Statuts de la confrérie de Saint-Jacques de l’église paroissiale de Saint-Vincent de Bagnères, 1325’, Explorations pyrénéennes, Bulletin de la Société Ramond (1897), 51–69. ADSM G 1332 Confraternities of the deanery of Pont-Audemer. ADSM G 1241. Saint-Niçaise de Rouen.

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After the death of an officer of the confraternity or his wife, there would be a vigil held with nine lessons and nine psalms, three high Masses and a sung Libera, followed by a distribution of alms to the poor. For ordinary members, there would be a vigil with three lessons and three psalms and all members were expected to contribute 12 deniers to the costs.60 Each year, every member was expecting to contribute prayers for the deceased of the company: priests were expected to say a Mass, those who could read should read and pray the seven penitential psalms and those who could not should say fifteen Pater Nosters and fifteen Aves for the intention of the company’s souls.61 At Bagnères-de-Bigorre, the statues of the confraternity of St James stipulate that after the death of a member, brothers were obliged to say 100 Paters and Aves for the soul within eight days of the death, while female members were to say 200 of these prayers and everyone was obliged to give a meal to a pauper for the soul of the deceased.62 A prime cause of the expansion of individual confession and communion in this period, confraternities were important providers of indulgences for their members, which combined a necessity for interior reflection with contemplation of mental pilgrimage to the shrine or saint in question. Philippe Desmette argues that it appears to have become normal practice in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for newly founded confraternities – and those already in place – to solicit the Holy See for indulgences, as a matter of course.63 This had not always been the case. Early sixteenthcentury confraternities did not endow their members with lavish pardons and indeed, not all seventeenth-century associations did so. Indulgenced confraternities seem to have originated in Italy and spread into France and the Low Countries from the later sixteenth century; they were particularly

60 Le Charpentier, Instructions pour la confrérie des pellerins du Mont St Michel, statutes of 1623, article 9. 61 Le Charpentier, Instructions pour la confrérie des pellerins du Mont St Michel, statutes of 1623, article 13. 62 Dejeanne and Pepouey, ‘Statuts de la confrérie de Saint-Jacques’, 51–69. 63 Philippe Desmette, Les brefs d’indulgences pour les confréries des diocèses de Cambrai et de Tournai aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: A. S. V. Sec. Brev. Indulg. Perpetuae, 2–9 (Brussels: Institut historique Belge de Rome, 2002), 27.

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associated with new devotional forms and were widespread by the end of the period. However, by the later sixteenth century, plenary indulgences issued for confraternities had assumed a standardised form. Full remission of penance was given to members on the day of their admission to the fraternity, on the death bed and for visiting the church on the annual festival. In addition, partial pardons of seven years and seven quarantines (forty days) were given for those who visited the church on each of the four secondary feasts, along with sixty days’ pardon for a range of pious works whenever they occurred, including attendance at the religious offices and meetings of the confraternity, succouring the poor, making peace between enemies, attending funerals and accompanying other processions.64 The plenary indulgence acquired in 1608 by the confraternity of St James in the church of SS Gervase and Proteus of Gisors is typical. It granted a plenary pardon to all members upon registration, if they had confessed and received the Eucharist, and similarly, on their death bed. A plenary pardon was available to members who attended the annual feast on 25 July, again having confessed, taken communion and said prayers for peace between Christian princes, for the exaltation of the Holy Church, the extirpation of heresy and the salvation of the pope, all standard for plenary indulgences of this period. Four further feast days brought lesser pardons of seven years and seven quarantines, to be selected by the Gisors confraternity with permission from the bishop. Confreres were also granted sixty days of indulgence at any time they did a variety of good works from attending divine service and processions, visiting the sick and accompanying the viaticum, burial of the dead, giving alms to the poor and making peace between enemies.65 There were also special occasions on which confraternities gained pardons for their members. In Le Puy in 1634, a special jubilee was held for the city’s five churches and certain days were reserved specially for confraternities: that of the pilgrims of Saint-Jacques were granted the Tuesday for their pardon.66

64 Tingle, Indulgences after Luther, 87ff. 65 ADSM G 1752. Confraternities of Gisors. 66 Chaize, ‘Le pèlerinage de Saint-Jacques de Compostelle’, 43.

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But local confraternities with plenary indulgences were only ever a minority of all associations. Most groups did not acquire such privileges. The main reason was the high cost of acquiring a papal pardon. Episcopal indulgences were obtained instead. From the Acts of the secretariat of Rieux diocese for 1605–6, it appears that the approval of confraternity statutes by the bishop would include a forty-day indulgence for membership, whether or not there was a plenary acquired from Rome.67 There could be further grants as well. For example, in 1606, Cardinal Archbishop François de Sourdis of Bordeaux, ‘desiring to augment the piety and devotion of confreres who go on pilgrimage to visit the holy places of St James in Galicia’, granted the confraternity of St James of Libourne a 100-day indulgence for participation in the two feast days held in its chapel on 1 May (Saints James and Philip) and 25 July (Saints James and Christopher).68 This was a reward for a spiritual journey to a local house of prayer. Finally, there was full spiritual journeying itself, where the participant did not need to leave his or her dwelling or chapel. This was most often text or pictorially based. Devotional booklets and pamphlets multiplied in the early modern period, very often written by members of religious orders, either of their own volition, as part of their pastoral mission or commissioned by shrines and confraternities. Shrines themselves produced pamphlets which included prayers and meditations to use on location or at home – where they became spiritual exercises – or stimulated devotional works which were entirely for the imaginary: Jerusalem of course, which became pretty much inaccessible in this period was therefore entirely a spiritual journey; Our Lady of Loreto in Italy for whom ‘guides’ were produced by Luis de Grenada and Louis Richeome among others; Notre Dame de Liesse, a royally favoured site near Paris; even small-scale shrines such as Verdelais near Bordeaux and others.69 Confraternities also promoted

67 Archives Départementales de la Haute-Garonne (ADHG) 2 G 73. Actes of Rieux Diocese. 68 Archives Départementales du Gironde (ADG). G 8. Actes of Bordeaux Archdiocese. 69 See Bruno Maës, Les livrets de pèlerinage. Imprimerie et culture dans la France moderne (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2016).

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pilgrimage to their votive shrine by a wider, virtual, audience by providing literature and other meditational aids for their members at the local level.70 Already in the later Middle Ages the literary genre of spiritual guidebooks mapping holy topography for imaginary travel in analogy to traditional guidebooks privileged experiential narratives of sacred places and encouraged meditational affectiveness. Both popular shrine publications and confraternities were a vector by which this practice was disseminated down to lower social groups. From the later sixteenth century and more frequently from the seventeenth century, confraternities were active commissioners of literature for their members, and pilgrim confraternities did so, both for those who had returned from their votive shrine or who might actually never go to the place in question. Confrères capable of reading became more numerous and as they did so, such works multiplied. These were largely livres de piété or livrets, handbooks which informed members about the statutes, devotions and pardons linked to membership, usually an octavo format publication, in French.71 The content focused on the interior reform of the Christian through pious exercises, particularly a daily examination of conscience, meditations and prayers including offices for various Masses or festivals and there was usually a list of indulgences which could be obtained by certain orations and actions.72 The booklets were for individual use and for reading aloud, in small groups. Much of this material was ephemeral but from that which survives we can make some observations. For the Mont Saint-Michel pilgrimage, there is only a scattering of surviving material. The Parisian confraternity commissioned printed pictures 70 Stefano Simiz, Confréries urbaines et dévotion en Champagne (1450–1830) (Villeneuved’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2002), 214–29; also M.-H. FroeschléChopard, Dieu pour tous et Dieu pour soi. Histoire des confréries et de leurs images à l’époque moderne (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006). 71 Philippe Martin, ‘Des Confréries face au livre (1750–1850)’, in B. Dompnier and P. Vismara, eds, Confréries et dévotions dans la catholicité moderne (mi-XVe–début XIXe siècle) (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2008), 39; M.-H. Froeschlé-Chopard, ‘La dévotion du Saint-Sacrement. Livres et confréries’, in ibid., 83. 72 Martin, ‘Des Confréries face au livre’, 46.

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on single sheets to give to its adherents annually on subscription day: a copy of the 1662 version survives – of St Michael, with a background of pilgrims crossing the bay to the Mont – and a new version was engraved in 1706. Such prints were pinned to walls or used for private prayer and meditation, offering a visual aid to spiritual pilgrimage.73 In 1668, the confraternity of Saint-Niçaise of Rouen sponsored the publication of a booklet authored by Pierre Le Charpentier, their chaplain. It provided details of the statutes and indulgences available to the confraternity and provided prayers for confreres to say in church and at home, for the feast of St Michael.74 Similar material survives sporadically for St James confraternities. In 1595, the confraternity of Orleans commissioned Jean Gouyn, Augustinian, to write Histoire de la vie, predication, martyre, translation et miracles de st Jacques le majeur … Plus la guide du chemin qu’il faut tenir pour aller de la ville d’Orleans aux voyages de Saint Jacques en Galice. It was a strongly anti-Protestant work, decrying the reformed attitude to saints and good works, but also combined hagiography, prayers and advice for the pilgrim to travel to Compostela, whether in reality or in imagination. It was designed to give ‘pleasure and spiritual profit, which proceeds from reading sacred histories’, to pilgrims and to gens de bien or good (Catholic) people.75 Spiritual pilgrimage – as meditation and prayer and at the more expansive end, imagined journey – was thus fostered together with physical journeying. This and many other confraternity booklets contained at least one woodcut which again could be used as a devotional aid. The objective was to enable all people to know the articles of faith and to draw upon them in everyday life.

73 Lombard-Jourdain, ‘La confrérie parisienne des pèlerins de St Michel du Mont’, 133–5. 74 Le Charpentier, Instructions pour la confrérie des pellerins du Mont St Michel. 75 Jean Gouyn, Histoire de la vie, predication, martyre, translation et miracles de st Jacques le majeur … Plus la guide du chemin qu’il faut tenir pour aller de la ville d’Orleans aux voyages de Saint Jacques en Galice (Sens: Robert Collot, 1595), Preface.

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Conclusion Two observations can be made in conclusion. Firstly, confraternities, in their form and function, were a meeting place for clerical promotion and popular initiative; they fostered communal and individual devotions. Communal by their very nature, confraternities brought people together to practise Catholicism; at the same time, they also promoted personal devotion – for example they fostered pilgrimage but also attendance at Mass and processions, regular individual prayer and meditation, frequent confession and communion often linked to indulgence acquisition.76 They were extremely important agents of the commissioning, enacting and adoption of new devotional practices among their members. Secondly, spiritual journeys or at least spiritual pilgrimage came in a variety of forms. It could be participation in a prayer community, which required minimal personal engagement. It could be an imaginary pilgrimage enacted in a simulated landscape of some sort. It could be a fully mental or spiritual journey. Confraternities could be involved in some or all of these. Finally, to return to the idea of the ‘rise’ of interiority as a religious and cultural practice, it is clear that within the confraternal framework, the encouragement of many ‘ordinary’ people to interiorised spirituality was enacted within a group framework. As Nicole Lemaitre wrote of the sixteenth-century Rouergue region of France, ‘the rise of individual egoism is evident, but still Rouergat Christianity seems to have continued to live out a profound ideal of solidarity … the ideal that one does not achieve salvation alone, that it is necessary to be able to count on the solidarity of others’.77 Spiritual imaginary and physical pilgrimages were inter-related just as personal piety and public devotion were closely allied in the activities of confraternities. For the confrere of a local group dedicated to pilgrimage to a shrine of a favoured saint, this quote from Ignatius Loyola is apposite: ‘We must 76 Marc R. Forster, Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque. Religious Identity in Southwest Germany 1550–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 133. 77 Lemaitre, Le Rouergue flamboyant, 363.

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remind ourselves that we are pilgrims until we arrive at our heavenly homeland, and we must not let our affections delay us in the roadside inns and lands through which we pass, otherwise we will forget our destination and lose interest in our final goal’.78 That journey was physical and spiritual, as the French confraternities of the early modern period recognised and propagated among their adherents, the ‘everyday’ Catholics of early modern France.

Bibliography Anon., La Vie de M. Henry-Marie Boudon, grand archidiacre d’Evreux, 2 vols (Paris, Hérissant, 1753). Bardon de Brun, Bernard, Saint Jacques, tragoedie, repraesentee publiquement a Lymoges par les Confreres Pelerins du dict saint, en l’annee 1596 (Limoges: Hugues Barbou, 1596). Barret, P., and J.-N. Gurgand, Priez pour nous à Compostelle. La vie des pèlerins sur les chemins de Saint-Jacques (Paris: Hachette, 1978). Baudot, Marcel, ‘Diffusion et évolution du culte de Saint-Michel en France’, in Marcel Baudot, ed., Millénaire Monastique du Mont Saint-Michel, 5 vols (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1971), III, 99–112. Benedict, Philip, ‘The Catholic Response to Protestantism. Church Activity and Popular Piety in Rouen 1560–1600’, in James Obelkevitch, ed., Religion and the People 800–1700 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 168–90. Bireley, Robert, ‘Early Modern Catholicism as a Response to the Changing World of the Long Sixteenth Century’, Catholic Historical Review XCV (2009), 219–39. Black, Christopher, ‘Confraternities and the Parish in the Context of the Italian Catholic Reform’, in J. P. Donnelly and M. W. Maher, eds, Confraternities and Catholic Reform in Italy, France and Spain (Kirkville, MO: Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, 1999), 1–26. Bordier, Henri, ‘Les confréries des pèlerins de St Jacques et ses archives’, Mémoires de la société d’histoire de Paris et de l’Ile de France II (1876), 330–97.

78 Monumenta ignatiana: Epistolae et instructions, 12 vols (Madrid, 1903–11), Ep 6:523.

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Bossy, John, ‘Leagues and Associations in Sixteenth-Century French Catholicism’, Studies in Church History 23 (1986), 171–89. Bossy, John, ‘The Social History of Confession in the Age of the Reformation’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Fifth Series, 25 (1975), 21–38. Bourquelot, Félix, ed., Mémoires de Claude Haton, 2 vols (Paris: Imprimerie Imperiale, 1858). Camus, Jean-Pierre, L’Hermite pèlerin et sa pèregrination, perils, dangers et divers accidens, tant par mer que par terre, ensemble de son voyage de Mont Serrat, Compostelle, Rome, Lorette et Hierusalem (Douai: Bellère, 1628). Cassan, Michel, Le temps des guerres de religion. Le cas du Limousin (vers 1530–vers 1630) (Paris: Publisud, 1996). Chaize, Jean, ‘Le pèlerinage de Saint-Jacques de Compostelle vu à travers quelques pèlerins de notre région aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles’, Bulletin Historique, Scientifique, Littéraire, Artistique et Agricole de la Société Académique du Puy et de la Haute-Loire 50 (1974), 41–4. Charpentrat, Pierre, ‘L’architecture et son public: les églises de la Contre-Réforme’, Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 28 (1973), 91–108. Chiffoleau, Jacques, La comptabilité de l’au-delà. Les hommes, la mort et la religion dans la région d’Avignon à la fin du Moyen Age (c. 1320–c. 1480) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1980). Daux, Camille, Le Pèlerinage à Compostelle et la Confrérie des pèlerins de Monseigneur Saint Jacques de Moissac en Quercy (Paris: Champion 1898; repr. Paris: Slatkine, 1981). Dejeanne, J., and J. J. Pepouey, ‘Statuts de la confrérie de Saint-Jacques de l’église paroissiale de Saint-Vincent de Bagnères, 1325’, Explorations pyrénéennes, Bulletin de la Société Ramond (1897), 51–69. Desmette, Philippe, Les brefs d’indulgences pour les confréries des diocèses de Cambrai et de Tournai aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: A. S. V. Sec. Brev. Indulg. Perpetuae, 2–9 (Brussels: Institut historique Belge de Rome, 2002). Duclot, Jean-François, Verdelais à travers les siècles (Saint-Quentin-de-Baron: Editions de l’Entre-deux-Mers, 2006). Ellington, Donna S., From Sacred Body to Angelic Soul: Understanding Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2000). Flynn, Maureen, ‘Baroque Piety and Spanish Confraternities’, in J. P. Donnelly and M. W. Maher, eds, Confraternities and Catholic Reform in Italy, France and Spain (Kirkville, MO: Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, 1999), 233–45. Forster, Marc R., Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque. Religious Identity in Southwest Germany 1550–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

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Froeschlé-Chopard, Marie-Hélène, Espace et sacré en Provence (XVIe–XXe siècle). Cultes, images, confréries (Paris: Cerf, 1994). Froeschlé-Chopard, M.-H., ‘La dévotion du Saint-Sacrement. Livres et confréries’, in B. Dompnier and P. Vismara, eds, Confréries et dévotions dans la catholicité moderne (mi-XVe–début XIXe siècle) (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2008), 81–101. Froeschlé-Chopard, M.-H., Dieu pour tous et Dieu pour soi. Histoire des confréries et de leurs images à l’époque moderne (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006). Galpern, Alan, The Religions of the People in Sixteenth-Century Champagne (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1976). Gentilcore, David, From Bishop to Witch. The System of the Sacred in Early Modern Terra d’Otranto (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999). Gouyn, Jean, Histoire de la vie, predication, martyre, translation et miracles de st Jacques le majeur … Plus la guide du chemin qu’il faut tenir pour aller de la ville d’Orleans aux voyages de Saint Jacques en Galice (Sens: Robert Collot, 1595) Heal, Felicity, The Reformation in Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Hoffman, Philip T., Church and Community in the Diocese of Lyon 1500–1789 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984). Hsia, R. P., The World of Catholic Renewal 1540–1770 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Julia, Dominique, ‘Identité pèlerine, identité du passage’, in Catherine Vincent, ed., Identités pèlerines, Actes du colloque de Rouen, 15–16 mai 2002 (Rouen: Publications de l’Université de Rouen, 2004), 229–47. Julia, Dominique, ‘Le pèlerinage au Mont-Saint-Michel du XVe au XVIIIe siècle’, in Pierre Bouet, Giorgio Otranto and André Vauchez, eds, Culte et pèlerinages à Saint Michel en Occident. Les trois monts dédié s à l’archange (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 2003), 271–320. Julia, Dominique, ‘Pour une géographie européenne du pèlerinage à l’époque moderne et contemporaine’, in Philippe Boutry and Dominique Julia, eds, Pèlerins et pèlerinages dans l’Europe moderne (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 2000), 3–115. Julia, Dominique, Le Voyage aux Saints. Les pèlerinages dans l’Occident moderne (Xve– XVIIIe siècles) (Paris: Le Seuil, 2016). Julien, Thomas, ‘La Quête pour la Vierge Noire de Montserrat en France au 17 siècle. Un commerce international d’indulgences post-tridentin’, in Albrecht Burkardt, ed., L’Economie des dévotions. Commerce, croyances et objets de piété à l’époque moderne (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2016), 69–90. Laghezza, A., and V. Juhel, ‘Saint-Michel-du-Mont-Gargan de Rouen, origines et développement d’un sanctuaire michaelique’, in Bernard Bodinier, ed., Pèlerinages et lieux de pèlerinage en Normandie, Actes du 44e congrès organisé par la

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Fédération des Sociétés historiques et archéologiques de Normandie (Fécamp 22–4 oct 2009) (Louviers: Fédération des Sociétés historiques et archéologiques de Normandie, 2010), 27–34. Langlois, François, Méditations de l’hermite Valerian / traduites du bon Normand en vieux Gaulois par un pelerin du Mont S. Michel en faveur de tous bons François (1621). Le Charpentier, Pierre, Instructions pour la confrérie des pellerins du Mont St Michel érigée en la paroisse de St Niçaise en Rouen (Rouen: Jacques Herault, 1668) Lemaitre, Nicole, Le Rouergue flamboyant. Le clergé et les fidèles du diocèse de Rodez 1417–1563 (Paris: Cerf, 1988) Lombard-Jourdain, Anne, ‘La confrérie parisienne des pèlerins de St Michel du Mont avec un tableau inédit du XVIIe siècle’, Bulletin de la société d’histoire de Paris et l’Ile de France 113–14 (1988), 105–78. Loyola, Ignatius, Personal Writings, trans. Joseph A. Munitiz and Philip Endean (London: Penguin, 1996). Maës, Bruno, Les livrets de pèlerinage. Imprimerie et culture dans la France moderne (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2016). Maës, Bruno, Notre-Dame de Liesse. Huit siècles de libération et de joie (Paris: ŒIL, 1991). Martin, Philippe, ‘Des Confréries face au livre (1750–1850)’, in B. Dompnier and P. Vismara, eds, Confréries et dévotions dans la catholicité moderne (mi-XVe–début XIXe siècle) (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2008), 39–59. Mayeur, Jean-Marie, Charles Pietri, André Vauchez and Marc Venard, Histoire du Christianisme des origines à nos jours. Vol. VIII Le temps des confessions 1530–1620/30 (Paris: Desclée/Fayard 1992). Monumenta ignatiana: Epistolae et instructions, 12 vols (Madrid, 1903–11). Nalle, Sara T., God in La Mancha. Religious Reform and the People of Cuenca, 1500–1650 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). Péricard-Méa, Denise, Compostelle et cultes de Saint Jacques au Moyen Age (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2000). Restif, Bruno, La Révolution des paroisses: culture paroissiale et Réforme catholique en Haute-Bretagne aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2006). Richeome, Louis, Le Pélerin de Lorète, voeu à la glorieuse vierge Marie, mère de Dieu, pour Monseigneur le Dauphin (Bordeaux: S. Millange, 1604). Sainct-Amour, F.-A., L’Hermite pelerin et de sa peregrination, perils, dangers et divers accidents tant mer que par terre (Lyons: P. Rigaud, 1616). Simiz, Stefano, Confréries urbaines et dévotion en Champagne (1450–1830) (Villeneuved’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2002).

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Soergel, Philip M., Wondrous in His Saints. Counter-Reformation and Propaganda in Bavaria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). Swanson, Robert N., Indulgences in Late Medieval England. Passports to Paradise (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Terpstra, Nicholas, Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Tingle, Elizabeth, Indulgences after Luther: Pardons in Counter-Reformation France (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2015). Vincent, Catherine, ‘Les confréries et le culte de St Michel à la fin du moyen âge dans le royaume de France’, in Pierre Bouet, Giorgio Otranto and André Vauchez, eds, Culte et pèlerinages à Saint Michel en Occident. Les trois monts dédié s à l’archange (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 2003), 179–200.

Part II

Life Writing and Spiritual Travel

Philip Booth

6 Seeing the Saviour in the Mind’s Eye: Burchard of Mount Sion’s Physical and Spiritual Travels to the Holy Land, c. 1274–1284

Abstract The essay provides a study of early pilgrimage accounts which were used for spiritual effect. The ability of accounts relating to the Holy Land to provoke soul or imagined travel has been clearly documented, but what has been less clearly discussed is the way in which the pilgrim embarked on similar imagined travels into the biblical past when actually viewing the sites of the Holy Land themselves. Just as reading a pilgrimage text allowed the armchair pilgrim to embark on an imagined pilgrimage, so too seeing the sites of the Holy Land allowed a place-pilgrim to become an imagined pilgrim. Accordingly, the relationship between the imagined experiences of ‘stationary’ or ‘armchair’ pilgrims and the imagined experiences of those Holy Land pilgrims who wrote accounts of their travels are examined. Focusing primarily on the writings of Burchard of Mount Sion, it can be seen that mystical connections with the biblical past were as much a part of place-pilgrimage as imagined pilgrimage in the later Middle Ages; both place and text served as witnesses of salvation history for these pilgrims. The things which are in the Holy Places, the very places in which our Saviour revealed His corporeal presence […] we have taken pains to reveal in every detail […] in order that in reading it or having it read [the reader] may learn to have Christ always in mind. Having Him in mind he must be eager to love. Loving Him, who suffered for him, he must suffer with Him. Suffering with Him he must be filled with desires. Being filled with desires he must be absolved from sins. Absolved from sins he must follow His grace. And following His grace he must reach the Kingdom of Heaven.1 1

‘Theoderic’, trans. John Wilkinson, in John Wilkinson, Joyce Hill and William F. Ryan, eds, Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 1099–1185 (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1998), 274. There are several issues with the translations which appear in some of Wilkinson’s volumes. Nevertheless, the decision has been to reuse them here in the absence of a new translation. The Latin of Theoderic’s text can be found here: Theoderic, ‘Peregrinatio’, in Robert C. Huygens, ed., Peregrinationes Tres (Turnhout: Brepols, 1994), 143.

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Taken from the prologue of Theoderic’s Peregrinatio, which serves as the account of Theoderic’s travels around the Holy Land in around 1169, this statement reveals the oft-recognised relationship between pilgrimage literature and what has been variously called armchair, virtual or imagined pilgrimage. Here, Theoderic clearly maps out the process by which pilgrimage texts were able to facilitate soul travel of this kind. A pilgrim goes to the Holy Land and sees physically the sites associated with Christ’s life and ministry. That pilgrim’s experiences are then recorded in some form of account. Other individuals read that account (or have it read to them) and by so doing are able to see, with spiritual eyes, or hold in their minds Christ’s Passion and suffering. This improved mental and/or physical connection leads to a better emotional connection with these events, moving the reader from love to suffering to desire to absolution with the eventual result being that the armchair pilgrim moves closer to the ultimate goal of God’s heavenly Jerusalem through grace. In essence, reading about the physical Jerusalem allowed the reader to engage in soul travel to the spiritual Jerusalem. Spiritual travel is a process which those who deal with Holy Land pilgrimage are familiar with. The most complete discussion of the phenomenon of virtual pilgrimage, for the later medieval period at least, is Kathryn Rudy’s Virtual Pilgrimage in the Convent.2 However, similar ideas about armchair, ersatz, imagined, mental, substitute or virtual pilgrimage can be found replicated in many other scholarly publications.3 What these publications are chiefly interested in, however, is the way in which books, physical repositories of information about the Holy Land, could assist the 2 3

Kathryn M. Rudy, Virtual Pilgrimage in the Covent: Imagining Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011). Kathryn Beebe, ‘Reading Mental Pilgrimage in Context: The Imaginary Pilgrims and Real Travels of Felix Fabri’s “Die Sionpilger”’, Essays in Medieval Studies 25 (2008), 39–70; Georgia Frank, The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000); Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014). In particular, the work of Susanne Lehmann-Brauns should be mentioned, whose study relates to many of the texts discussed in this chapter: LehmannBruan, Jerusalem Sehen: Reiseberichte des 12. bis 15. Jahrhunderts als empirische Anleitung zur gesteigen Pilgerfahrt (Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach, 2010).

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stationary pilgrim’s soul travel. What this chapter intends to explore instead is the way in which physical travel to the Holy Land could facilitate a spiritual journey for the pilgrim themselves. To link this back to Theoderic’s statement, the question to be explored here is that when he describes this process, is he speaking from his own experience of having his soul moved closer to God by personally engaging with the physical markers of Christ’s earthly ministry while on pilgrimage himself, or should these discussions be seen as didactic instructions for future readers instead? To answer this, focus will be on pilgrimage accounts of the twelfth to thirteenth centuries and more precisely on a different and extraordinarily influential thirteenthcentury description of the holy places written by the Dominican friar Burchard of Mount Sion who travelled to the Holy Land between c. 1274 and 1284. It will show how what Dee Dyas has called place-pilgrimage, that is, physical or spatial travel, could also be a vehicle for imagined pilgrimage and ultimately aid in the movement of the soul closer to God.4 During this discussion the term ‘imagined’ pilgrimage will be preferred for the most part as it appears to best describe the phenomenon articulated by pilgrims such as Burchard. Moreover, it will demonstrate how the writings of these pilgrims fed into ideas of imagined pilgrimage within Europe and how the experiences of pilgrims such as Burchard were expressly formulated to promote imagined pilgrimage experiences far from the sacred spaces of the Holy Land.

Writing for Imagined Pilgrimage Throughout the Middle Ages, but particularly with the onset of the twelfth century, pilgrim authors give the clear sense that their writings were specifically designed to aid and promote a better understanding of the events of Scripture and thereby assist in the conduct of some form of imagined 4

Dee Dyas, Pilgrimage in Medieval English Literature, 700–1500 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2001), 3–6.

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pilgrimage.5 We have already seen how this desire was articulated in the prologue of Theoderic’s Peregrinatio. However, before turning to look at the imagined pilgrimage experiences of these place-pilgrims, it is worth sketching the ways that these pilgrim authors judged their works’ ability to assist others in their pilgrimage efforts. Theoderic’s near contemporary, John of Würzburg, who travelled to the Holy Land in around 1160, expressed similar sentiments to Theoderic when he wrote: I believe that this description will be valuable to you if, by the Divine Will, you come to everything which I have described and see them physically […] But if you happen not to go there and you are not going physically to see them, you will still have a greater love of them [i.e. the holy places] and their holiness by reading this book and thinking about them.6

As with many other pilgrims, John saw his account primarily as being a guide for anyone undertaking a physical pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Failing that, he knew that his work was capable of enhancing his readers’ understanding of the Holy Land. The earliest pilgrim to express such sentiments was Egeria, who travelled to the Holy Land between 381 and 384. It is clear from her writing that her account was supposed to be of great benefit to the intended recipients of her letter. Yet what is also clear is that Egeria intended her text to be not only an aid to understanding but an aid to imagining the Holy Land. ‘But it may help you, loving sisters’, she wrote, ‘the better to picture (omnia diligentius pervidet) what happened in these places when you read the holy books of Moses’.7 Likewise, John Phocas, a

5 6 7

Shayne Aaron Legassie, The Medieval Invention of Travel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 95–165. ‘John of Würzburg’, trans. John Wilkinson, in Wilkinson et al., eds, Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 244; John of Würzburg, ‘Peregrinatio’, in Huygens, ed., Peregrinationes Tres, 79. Egeria’s Travels to the Holy Land, trans. John Wilkinson (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1981), 98. Egeria, ‘Itinerarium Partes Prima et Secunda’, in Wilhelm Heraeus, ed., Silviae vel potius Aetheriae: peregrinatio ad loca sancta (Heidelburg: Carl Winter’s Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1908), available online at The Latin Library, (accessed 4 February 2019).

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Greek Orthodox pilgrim who travelled to the Holy Land in 1185, expressed similar sentiments when he wrote: We must attempt, therefore, as best we can, to paint a picture using words on our canvas, and to those who love God to give a full written account of what we saw directly with our own eyes […] I think it will more clearly teach those who have not shared in these excellent place with their eyes, or those who from time to time have heard about the places from the words of those who have not examined them.8

The idea that John desired to paint a picture of the Holy Land for his readers speaks to a desire to provide more than just information and understanding, but rather to enhance his readers’ ability to see for themselves the sites of the Holy Land in their own minds. However, failing this, John’s account had another purpose, as an aid to his own memory and imagination. At the end of his work he writes: If anyone who happens to read this work judges it to be useful, that will be my reward for the work I have done, and I shall regard it as a precious prize. But if otherwise, let my offspring return to me, its begetter. With its stammers may it remind me of these holy places, so that I can recreate their memory in my mind. For that too will be a sweet delight.9

Again, this is more than just information recall. The usefulness of John’s account, as he sees it, comes in its ability to allow him to recreate mentally the Holy Land using his text as an aid to memory. That these accounts could also serve as a personal reminder of holy places is further attested by the thirteenth-century pilgrimage Thietmar who wrote: I considered it not un-useful to commit to writing what I saw and accurately learnt from truthful witnesses, lest suddenly by the smoke of oblivion I should not preserve artificially, by the little aide-mémoire of something written down, that which I was not able to remember naturally.10

‘John Phocas’, trans. John Wilkinson, in Wilkinson et al., eds, Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 315–16. 9 Ibid., 336. 10 Thietmar, ‘Pilgrimage (1217–18)’, trans. Denys Pringle, in Denys Pringle, ed., Pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, 1187–1291 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 95. 8

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Burchard of Mount Sion was no different in demonstrating this desire to create an account that could serve as an aid to imagined pilgrimage. In the prologue of his Descriptio Terrae Sanctae, Burchard clearly outlines the ways in which he expected his pilgrimage account to help others picture or imagine what the Holy Land looked like without themselves having to visit. He wrote: Seeing, however, that some people are affected by a desire to picture (imaginari) for themselves in some degree at least those things that they are unable to look upon face to face and wanting to satisfy their wish as far as I can, I have inspected, diligently recorded and studiously described in so far as I have been able that land through which I have frequently passed on foot.11

Burchard goes on to say, in explaining his decision to structure his work in the way he does, that his chief consideration was to do so in a way that meant that the holy places ‘might be easily understood by readers in their imagination (imaginatione facili comprehendi)’.12 What this demonstrates is the ways in which writing about pilgrimage was increasingly about facilitating an imagined journey. Many have commented on this being the case for later pilgrim authors writing in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with Felix Fabri’s Sionpilger being perhaps the best example.13 However, what

11

12 13

Again, while Pringle’s translations suffer from fewer issues than Wilkinson’s, in this particular instance the rendering of the Latin is at best a little odd. The Latin can therefore be found here: Thietmarus, ‘Peregrinatio’, in Johannes M. C. Laurent, Mag. Thietmari Peregrinatio (Hamburg: Notle and Köhler, 1857), 95. Burchard of Mount Sion, ‘Description of the Holy Land (1274–85)’, trans. Denys Pringle, in Pringle, ed., Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, 242. The Latin can he found here: Burchardi de Monte Sion, ‘Descriptio Terrae Sanctae’, in Johannes M. C. Laurent, ed., Peregrinatores Medii Aevi Quatuor (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1873), 20–1. Burchard of Mount Sion, ‘Description’, 242; Burchardi de Monte Sion, ‘Descriptio’, 21. Beebe, ‘Reading Mental Pilgrimage’, 39–70. See also Kathryn Beebe, Pilgrim and Preacher: The Audiences and Observant Spirituality of Friar Felix Fabri (1437/8–1502) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) and Kathryn Beebe, ‘The Jerusalem of the Mind’s Eye: Imagined Pilgrimage in the Late Fifteenth Century’, in Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 409–20.

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we are concerned with here is whether these pilgrim authors, individuals such as Burchard of Mount Sion, were attempting to encourage imagined pilgrimage because of their own experiences of imagined pilgrimage stimulated by the sites of the Holy Land themselves.

Seeing the Saviour in the Mind’s Eye Burchard of Mount Sion was a Dominican friar who wrote a description of the Holy Land some time between 1274 and 1285 based on his own experiences travelling through the region. We know only a little about Burchard outside of his writings, but the identification as a Dominican is reasonably certain and indicated to us by various rubrics and colophons added to recensions of his text. As for the agnomen ‘of Mount Sion’, there is no evidence to support the various ideas that he stayed or lived, or even composed his work, on Mount Sion and the best guess is that it was taken or applied to him as part of his involvement with the Dominican order.14 His text, entitled the Descriptio Terrae Sanctae, has come down to us in three recensions, two longer and a one shorter version. It survives in over 100 manuscripts, with a further twenty printed editions being produced between 1475 and 1746, making it one of the most popular and influential pilgrimage accounts of the Middle Ages and beyond.15 One of the reasons for its popularity was the comprehensive and almost encyclopaedic nature of the Descriptio. While Burchard’s schema is perhaps difficult to follow without a map outlining his intentions, dividing the Holy Land into four sections which are then subdivided into three further sections (twelve in total), the amount of information he provides about sites linked with both the Old and New Testament is staggering and nothing from the thirteenth 14 15

Pringle, ed., Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, 46–51. Pringle, ed., Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, 46–51; Jonathan Rubin, ‘Burchard of Mount Sion’s Descriptio Terrae Sanctae: a Newly Discovered Extended Version’, Crusades 13 (2014), 173–90.

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century comes close to the Descriptio in terms of detail. Overall, as we have seen, Burchard’s intention was to give as full an account of the Holy Land as possible for the benefit of those who had not been in person, and thereby to inspire further physical and spiritual travel to the sacred places of the Levant. The detail which Burchard provides within his account certainly furnishes his readers with a sure foundation upon which to build a concrete image of the Holy Land. Yet while we have already discussed the statements in Burchard’s prologue outlining the intent and purposes for the work, it must be noted that these elements are preceded by a lengthy discourse on the way in which place-pilgrimage could also serve as a stimulus to imagined pilgrimage in the same way that the reading of a text could. And it is with these sections of Burchard’s prologue that we must be concerned. Before looking at the specifics of what Burchard has to say in his prologue, it is worth briefly outlining its contents. Burchard begins with what is essentially a justification of place-pilgrimage based on the ideas of Jerome. If learned men in the ancient past such as Plato, he argues, were justified in wandering the Mediterranean to see places associated with the things that they had read about in ancient history then, as Burchard exclaims, ‘what wonder is it if Christians should desire to see and visit that land of which all of Christ’s churches speak out?’16 If Jews venerated the holy of holies, the Temple, and other Mosaic ‘relics’ then ‘is not the tomb of Christ more worthy of our respect?’17 He uses this foundation to elucidate further the benefits of place-pilgrimage and then to delve into the ability of the sites of the Holy Land to facilitate a spiritual experience, to allow the pilgrim to actually see and hear the events of the gospel narrative. He takes his readers on a tour of the Holy Land, starting at the Holy Sepulchre, before moving on to Bethlehem and from there to the Temple, the Mount of Olives, Mount Sion, finally following Christ to Calvary. He stresses the popularity of these places and their ability to elicit a profound emotional and devotional response, before continuing his justification of the merits of place-pilgrimage. Burchard goes on to provide a list of scriptural 16

Burchard of Mount Sion, ‘Description’, 241; Burchardi de Monte Sion, ‘Descriptio’, 19. 17 Ibid.

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individuals – Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Ezekiel and the Virgin Mary – depicting their Jerusalem-bound travels as a place-pilgrimage to the city before bemoaning the lack of western enthusiasm for these holy places which, he believes, has led to their being removed from Christian hands by the Saracens. He then concludes his prologue with the above-quoted comments regarding the intentions and purposes of his work before moving on to his description of the Holy Land proper. One thing that Burchard stresses throughout this discourse is the Holy Land’s ability to allow a pilgrim actually to see the events of which they stand witness. To demonstrate this, here are a few examples. When speaking about the Holy Sepulchre he explains: Is not the tomb of Christ more worthy of our respect, which whenever one enters one sees in the mind’s eye (mentis oculis uidet) the Saviour wrapped in a linen cloth? And when one has proceeded a little further one sees (uidet) the rolled-back stone, the angel sitting on it and showing to the woman the handkerchief with the linen clothes.18

What is clear here is that physical places associated with the gospel narrative allowed a pilgrim literally to see the events of the gospel itself. Indeed, the way in which Burchard’s discussion seamlessly moves from seeing the rolled-back stone (a physical object which can be seen in situ) to seeing the angel shows that he saw no distinction between seeing the material objects of the Holy Land and the past events associated with those objects. Burchard’s gaze moves without comment from physical reality to an imagined past. This is a clear attempt by Burchard to show that by visiting the holy places, a pilgrim could simultaneously see the physical present and the biblical past in one place. Such sentiments can be observed again in Burchard’s subsequent discussion of Bethlehem. He continues: What Christian having seen these things (hiis uisis) would not hasten (festinet) to come to Bethlehem and contemplate (contemplans) the Child crying in the manger, Mary giving birth in the lodging place beneath the hollow rock which is to be seen to this day (que usque hodie cernitur), the angels singing over and over again … the presence of the shepherds, and (what is even more amazing (mirandum)) the way in which the Three Magi in noble majesty fall down before the manger?19 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid.

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Again, seeing the sites is crucial to gaining a better understanding of the past. In this case, it relates to the rock beneath which the Virgin gave birth. And again, it is the physical space which commemorates sacred events which enables the pilgrim better to contemplate the events of the gospel narrative. Moreover, what is fascinating in this is the way in which sight and contemplation, seeing gospel narrative unfolded again in the place where it had originally occurred, inspired movement from one sacred space to another. It is the sight of Jerusalem which moves the pilgrim to Bethlehem and then from one scene to another almost as if turning a page. Seeing provokes imagination or indeed deeper seeing, which in turn provokes further pilgrimage, deeper sight, contemplation and fresh religious experience. This phenomenon can be seen repeated as Burchard takes the reader back with him to Jerusalem, where we are told the pilgrim can now: return to Jerusalem and see and hear (uideat et audiat) Jesus preaching in the Temple, teaching the disciples on the Mount of Olives, dining on Mount Sion, washing the disciples’ feet, giving up His body and blood, praying in Gethsemane, perspiring with bloody sweat, kissing the traitor, being led away a prisoner, scoffed at, spat upon, judged, carrying the cross, stumbling under the weight of the cross in the city gate that may be seen today (sicut hodie cernitur), being relieved by Simon of Cyrene and celebrating the mysteries of the Passion for us on Calvary.20

This extensive list of New Testament events demonstrates what Burchard believes a pilgrim should be able (literally) to see and hear in Jerusalem. Significantly, these sights (and now sounds as well) are divorced from any physical context outside of the city itself. Here, the pilgrim does not see an object or monument and find themselves transported back to a biblical past, but it is almost as if the experiences of the Holy Sepulchre and Bethlehem have propelled the pilgrim into an extended imagined pilgrimage experience where the real world has been subsumed into the events of

20 Ibid.; Burchardi de Monte Sion, ‘Descriptio’, 19–20.

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biblical past. The pilgrim moves through time and space around the city of Jerusalem following the events of the Passion back to Calvary, with pilgrims rapidly moving their vision, and presumably their bodies, from event to event. Moreover, the repetition of the phrase hodie cernitur demonstrates again the elision of past and present in such visions and leaves in question what can be seen today: the events or the gate? The rock or the events of the Nativity? Alongside Burchard’s exposition of a pilgrim’s experience at Bethlehem is the emotional responses elicited by seeing these objects and the events connected with them. At Bethlehem, it appears as a sense of wonder (mirandum) at seeing the Magi worshipping the Christ child. However, emotional responses to these sites are further stressed later on in Burchard’s prologue. After listing sixteen different national groupings of Christians who are wont to visit Jerusalem, Burchard goes on to describe the devotional practices of these pilgrims. He depicts them as: Kissing with eager spirit and venerating the places on which they have heard that sweet Jesus sat, stood or performed some work […] Now beating their breasts, now emitting tears, groans and sighs in a gesture of the body and of the devotion that they show outwardly and doubtless also possess inwardly (quam foris ostendunt et absque dubio intus habent), they move many, even Saracens, to tears.21

First and foremost, it is worth drawing out the so-called ‘outward’ devotional practices. The beating of breasts, crying, groans, sighs and the making of various gestures represent the ‘standard’ performative and expressive piety of pilgrims coming into contact with the divine. We do not have the time here to discuss the significance of the majority of these acts of performative piety. Kissing, however, is significant in the way in which it draws together ideas of the sense of touch and sight into more focused unison. As Georgia Frank has shown, the act of seeing for pilgrims was about more than just visualisation. Seeing, perceived as the most reliable of the senses, was about verification, bringing things into reality and engendering change in the viewer. And although touch was perceived as the least reliable of the senses for a number of reasons, its importance had gathered force during the 21 Ibid.

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medieval period and its own ability to verify and test the reality of an object created certain synergies with the sense of sight.22 Kissing a sacred object, in this context, could therefore be viewed as an action which brings sight and touch into closer proximity with one another due to the positioning of the lips and eyes, compounding the powers of verification attributed to both of these senses. Sight, touch and the combination of the two in kissing increased the pilgrim’s ability to see more clearly, more concretely, the real events of which the sites of the Holy Land stood witness. Furthermore, by coupling these outward devotional practices with an assumed ‘inward’ devotion, what Burchard is trying to show his readers is that moving physically between these places and spaces, by seeing these sites, and interacting with them, a place-pilgrim could engage in soul travel. They could move their souls closer to God by moving their bodies closer to those places with which God had come into contact with. Moreover, by seeing the physical monuments of the Holy Land, an individual could be transported back through time and see the events of the gospel narrative in all their original glory. Place-pilgrimage and imagined pilgrimage should therefore not be seen as two alternative forms of sacred journey, one conducted at home and one in a place such as the Holy Land. Placepilgrimage and imagined pilgrimage clearly went hand in hand.

Physical Markers of the Sacred At this point, it is important to emphasise the crucial role played by the physical markers of the Holy Land. By physical markers, what is meant is the rocks, churches, pillars and various spaces of the Holy Land with which the pilgrims interacted. As well as providing place-pilgrims with something to engage with, these markers served as signposts for inward and outward devotion because they stood as witnesses of salvation history.

22 Frank, Memory of the Eyes, 102–32.

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As Burchard tells us, ‘the memory of each and every one of these places is still as complete and clear as it was on the day when things were done in their presence (Horum omnium locorum et singulorum adhuc ita plena et manifesta existat memoria, sicut in illo die exstitit, quando presencaliter erant facta)’.23 According to Burchard, the stones themselves were not passively involved in this pilgrimage process. It is not just the case that a pilgrim sees stones, memorials, objects and is reminded of their experiences reading the Bible or hearing it being read which recalls to their memory a biblical event, although this is on some level true. Instead the stones themselves have a memory, they hold on to the events of Christian salvation performed in their presence, and with these events engrained upon them, complete and clear, they transmit that memory to the pilgrims who come and see them. What this articulates is that place-pilgrims took part in a distinct if intertwined process of witnessing, as armchair pilgrims did when reading a pilgrimage account at home. After all, the performance of an imagined, virtual or armchair pilgrimage relied on the memories of the Holy Land being preserved in text of some kind which had been written by or derived from the experiences of a place-pilgrim. This text was then read by someone who then used this textual memory to imagine themselves on pilgrimage, to imagine more profoundly the events of the Passion or to perform some virtual act which replicated or recreated either physically or spiritually the act of pilgrimage. This in turn served to advance the armchair pilgrim along the path towards the greater Christian goal of pilgrimage back to God or soul travel. For place-pilgrims a similar process began with the events of the gospel, the memory of which was engrained upon the stones of the Holy Land itself. This memory is then preserved in these stones, like a book, until a placepilgrim arrives. Viewing these stones brings to life the memory, almost as if the pilgrim was able to draw the memory of the Gospel narrative out of the stones themselves. As a result, the pilgrim is then able to see with their own eyes the events of the gospel as if they themselves were there. This movement through time, made possible by a spatial journey to the 23

Burchard of Mount Sion, ‘Description’, 241–2; Burchardi de Monte Sion, ‘Descriptio’, 20.

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Holy Land, ultimately resulted in a devotional and emotional response, which, Burchard assumes, allowed the pilgrim’s soul to move closer to God. This goes some way to explaining why it so often seems appropriate to speak of a pilgrim’s experience with the Holy Land as mapping, or of the Holy Land as something to be read. What Burchard appears to be suggesting is that the Holy Land is not only able to be read like a book, but that it could serve the same function. There has, of course, been much written about the connections between Holy Land pilgrimage, mnemonics and memory in the Middle Ages.24 However, what is noteworthy is the way that pilgrims could tap into this memory. Alongside the reality of the imagined experiences produced by seeing and touching the sacred sites of the Holy Land, the memory of the stones themselves passed on to the pilgrims, which meant that Holy Land pilgrims were not just able to see biblical events, but themselves became eyewitnesses of the events of the Passion and the New Testament.25 The complete and clear way that the stones of the Holy Land could convey the memories of the Passion and the reality of the visions enhanced not only a pilgrim’s ability to understand and experience the events of the gospel, but themselves to stand as witness to the veracity of the events they had seen. This has significant implications for the importance of their testimonies as preserved in their accounts and meant that their accounts were able to inform readers about the reality of biblical events as well as the nature of the sacred spaces of the Holy Land. Before discussing these implications, it should be said that we would be wrong to assume that all of these experiences and this transmission of memory were inspired by what has been recently described as the ‘nude and unappealing’ or ‘bleak and empty’ stones of the Holy Land.26 Burchard’s Bethlehem description, for example, was clearly informed not just by the grotto in which Christ’s birth occurred, and the church which surrounded

24 See, for example, Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 40–4. 25 Frank, Memory of the Eyes, 106. 26 Michele Bacci, ‘Locative Memory and the Pilgrim’s Experience of Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages’, in Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 67–75.

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it, but also by the decorations within the church. The Church of the Nativity had been adorned with mosaics well before the Crusader period. However, from 1161–5/9 the mosaics were restored with the patronage of King Amalric I (1136–74) and the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Comnenus (1118–80), and while these mosaics do not survive for the most part, there is no doubt that the results were impressive.27 Indeed, the presence of such decorative stimuli and their ability to evoke imagined experiences was noted by other pilgrims before him. Theoderic’s description of Mount Calvary makes explicit mention of a painted plate which could be seen there which aided his imagination in bringing to life an image of Christ, who ‘stands in godly dress, as if he had just risen from the dead (quasi iam a morte resurgens consistit)’.28 The tense of this makes the timing unclear, but it is possible to see the iam as indicating that the image pictures the moment immediately after the resurrection, or that the scene of the resurrection appears to be happening now, right before Theoderic’s eyes. Even more significant in this regard is John Phocas’s description of the same paintings at Bethlehem which, based on Burchard’s later lauding of them in his description of the Church of the Nativity, inspired Burchard’s own imagined journey to biblical Bethlehem.29 Of the decorations John states: At the picture of it I delight, and with my whole awareness I am in that Holy Cave, and I see all the circumstances of the Lord’s birth. I see the repose in the manger of the one who has been born, and the awesome love of the Saviour towards me […] Indeed I see that Cave as a palace, and the King sitting on the Virgin’s lap as if on a throne. And I see choirs of angel surrounding the Cave, and the Magi bringing their gifts to the King. I am this filled with complete gladness and I rejoice as I understand the deep grace which is bestowed upon me.30

What is so wonderful about Phocas’s description of his reactions to the paintings at Bethlehem is that he describes precisely the process which

Denys Pringle, The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Corpus, vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 140–7. 28 ‘Theoderic’, 287; ‘Peregrinatio’, 143–97. 29 Burchard of Mount Sion, ‘Description’, 303. 30 ‘John Phocas’, 333. 27

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Theoderic articulates in the quote at the beginning of this chapter. John’s seeing of the painting enables him to see the biblical events themselves. This seeing enabled him to more keenly feel of the love of Christ with the end result being a better understanding and connection with His grace. What is more, as well as recalling the arrangement of stereotypical Hodegetria paintings of the Virgin and Child, John’s vision of the historical past also seems to coalesce into an anagogical vision of Christ the King seated in a palace on a heavenly throne. Viewing the sacred spaces of the Holy Land enabled pilgrims to move backwards through time to biblical events, to the future conclusion of Christian salvation history as well as enhancing the pilgrim’s own spiritual standing. Past, present and future elide into a single moment of seeing. There are, of course, some issues with comparative work between the experiences of Greek and Latin pilgrims. Nevertheless, the sentiments of Phocas appear so closely aligned to his Latin contemporaries that the comparison is appropriate. Over and above this, it is not just the case that ‘blank’ stones and decorated churches were able to encourage such a response, but there were markers in the Holy Land which exactly preserved the physical presence of Christ there. Throughout the Holy Land there were stones which bore some imprint of Christ on their surface, the most famous perhaps the footprint in the church of the Ascension which is still shown to pilgrims to this day. Again, Burchard makes mention of these in his account, once at Galilee, but of note is his description of stones at Gethsemane which bear the imprint of Christ.31 The first commemorates a place where Christ supposedly was taken by crowd following his betrayal by Judas. Burchard remarks: The impression of His skull is to be seen above in the hanging rock and the marks of the crown on his head and of His hair. It is said He made this impression when holding onto the rock when He was being taken by the crowds […] There is also a similar stone, having similar impression of His knees and hands.32

While Burchard does not mention that these sites prompted anything in the way of imagined pilgrimage, the ability to see stones which bore such 31 32

Burchard of Mount Sion, ‘Description’, 259. Ibid., 292–3.

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impressions served the function of allowing the pilgrim to see, as it were, Christ’s face, and improve their ability to stand as witnesses to the gospel narrative and the incarnate Christ. The physical markers of the Holy Land, therefore, whether they were simple rocks, imprinted stones or the more complex, decorated architectural spaces which enclosed the sacred all played an important part in turning physical travel into soul travel. The ability of these markers to preserve and transmit memory meant that they, like a book, could be read and bring to life the reality of the gospel narrative. It is therefore vital to recognise the ability of these stimuli to allow place-pilgrims to see the events of the Passion and gospel, which made such pilgrims eyewitnesses of these events, as were the very spaces and places of the Holy Land themselves.

Legacies from the Past So far we have worked on the assumption that the experiences that Burchard and others expected pilgrims to have were representative of these authors’ own experiences of encountering the sacred and divine within the spaces of the Holy Land. However, it must be acknowledged that Burchard and others were writing in a tradition inspired by much earlier writers, in particular Jerome. The influence of Jerome on Burchard is evident from the outset and his writings are referenced frequently throughout Burchard’s Descriptio. Importantly, for our present discussion, Jerome also demonstrated how pilgrimage to the holy places could serve as a devotional aid to imagined pilgrimage. In his letter to Eustochium eulogising Paula after her death, Jerome described Paula’s experience visiting the resting place of the True Cross and how ‘she fell down and worshipped before the cross as if she could see the Lord hanging on it (Prostrataque ante Crucem, quasi pendentem Dominum cerneret, aborabat)’.33 And just as with Burchard 33

Jerome, ‘Letter 108 to Eustochium’, trans. John Wilkinson, in Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1977), 49; Jerome, ‘Epistolae 108.10’, in Jacques P. Migne, ed., Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Latina, 22 (1845).

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and Phocas, Jerome describes how the sites of Bethlehem could evoke a particularly profound imagined journey: Then she solemnly declared in my own ears that, with the eye of faith (oculis fidei), she saw a child wrapped in swaddling clothes, weeping in the Lord’s manger, the Magi worshipping, the star shining above, the Virgin Mother, the attentive foster father, and the shepherds coming by night to see this word which had come to pass.34

Furthermore, in the apparent letter of Paula to Marcella we see repeated the idea that the physical markers of the Holy Land could stimulate a vision of biblical events. She reported that ‘As often as we enter [the Lord’s Sepulchre] we see (cernimus) the Saviour in His grave clothes, and if we linger we see (videmus) again the angel sitting at His feet, and the napkin folded at his head’.35 Once more, we see how movement to or within sacred space could facilitate movement from present to past, and again episodic movement from one biblical event to another. However, what is conspicuous here is not that Paula/Jerome and Burchard experienced the same things at the holy places, but that in these letters Jerome is clearly establishing a precedent upon which Burchard heavily relies. Indeed, the parallels between Burchard’s prologue and Jerome’s two letters are striking. Both display a tendency to use forms of cernere rather than the more popular alternative videre. There is also the similarity in the list of biblical events that are elided together at Bethlehem. However, most obvious is Burchard’s almost direct quoting of Letter 46 in his prologue. Burchard writes: ‘The ancients venerated the holy of holies because within it was the Ark of the Covenant, the Cherubim with the mercy-seat, the manna and the rod of Aaron that put forth leaves, all of which were a shadow of things to come. Is not the tomb of Christ more worthy of our respect’.36 Comparing the Latin the reliance become clear: Burchard:  Venerabantur antiqui Sancta sanctorum, quia ibi erat archa testimenti et Cherubin cum propiciatorio et manna et virga Aaron,

34 Jerome, ‘Letter 108’, 49; Jerome, Ep. 108.10, PL 22. 35 Jerome, ‘Letter 46’, trans. Georgia Frank, in Memory of the Eyes, 107; Jerome, Ep. 46.5, PL 22. 36 Burchard of Mount Sion, ‘Description’, 241.

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que fronduerat, que omnia erant umbra future; nonne apud nos uenerabilis est sepulcrum Ihesu Christi.37 Jerome Letter 46: Venerabantur quondam Judaei Sancta sanctorum, qui ibi erant Cherubim, et propitiatorium et Arca testamenti, manna, et virga Aaron, et altare aureum. Nonne tibi venerabilius videtur sepulcrum Domini?38

Burchard was therefore not just using Jerome as a point of inspiration but copying him directly. It becomes clear then that Jerome’s attempt to highlight the spiritual benefits of place-pilgrimage, a practice that he himself criticised at various points in his extensive letter-writing career, also created a model for the ways in which one should experience the Holy Land, a model which Burchard had clearly embraced.39 Indeed, not only did Burchard embrace the model, but was attempting to disseminate it. What both authors are doing, therefore, is creating or building upon models of how pilgrims should experience the Holy Land. What is interesting about these models is that they could be taken up not only by prospective place-pilgrims, but also armchair pilgrims, demonstrating the ways in which both place-pilgrimage and armchair pilgrimage were shaped by the same devotional training. However, the didactic nature of the ideas expressed by Burchard and Jerome problematises, to some extent, the idea that what they are describing is representative of the actual lived experiences of Holy Land pilgrims. And as can be seen elsewhere, other authors demonstrate the ways in which these experiences could become more literary constructs than lived experience.

Performance and Narratives An example of when these imagined experiences are clearly representative of more than just lived experiences, but part of a greater narrative plan, can be found in the Liber Peregrinationis of Riccoldo of Monte Croce. 37 Burchardi de Monte Sion, ‘Descriptio’, 19. 38 Jerome, Ep. 46.5, PL 22. 39 Giles Constable, ‘Opposition to Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages’, Studia Gratiana 19.1 (1976), 125–46.

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Riccoldo, also a Dominican friar, travelled to the East between 1288 and around 1300, during which time he undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, as well as spending several years living in Baghdad where he established a church and spent his time preaching. His Liber Peregrinationis recounts his experiences while travelling and contains extensive ethnographic information akin to what one sees in most Latin travel accounts to the East during this period. However, these are preceded by a rich account of Riccoldo’s experiences in the Holy Land. But it should be recognised that the Liber Peregrinationis is carefully crafted text and, like many other pilgrimage accounts of the twelfth century onwards, represents part recreation of gospel narrative, part actual itinerary. Throughout the Liber Peregrinationis, as Riccoldo retraces the gospel narrative, he engages in various acts that help him to relive or bring that same narrative to life. At Bethlehem, for example, Riccoldo and his fellow pilgrims used the baby of a local Christian woman to re-enact the adoration of the Magi.40 At the Holy Sepulchre, on the other hand, we see Riccoldo engaged in liturgical processions which recreate an active search for the body of Christ. He begins his description of this search by stating: This is a place of such devotion that if one did not weep out of compassion for the Son crying out and dying on the cross, one would be disposed to weep out of compassion for the mother weeping at the feet of the Christ while he dies (morientis) for us.41

The use of the present participle morientis again blurs the distinction between past and present, with Christ seemingly dying in front of Riccoldo at the moment he is there. However, his search continues towards Calvary as Riccoldo discusses the effect that seeing Calvary had, or should have had, upon him: If I really had been as devout as I thought, I would have been able to die of sorrow or joy from the contemplation (completione) of so great a desire. Moreover, looking

40 Riccoldo of Monte Croce, ‘Pilgrimage (1288–89)’, trans. Denys Pringle, in Denys Pringle, ed., Pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, 1187–1291 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 370. 41 Riccoldo, ‘Pilgrimage’, 373; Riccold de Monte Croce, Pérégrination en Terre Sainte et au Proche Orient, ed. and trans. René Chappler (Paris: Champion, 1997), 68.

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around anxiously to see if I should truly see (uiderem) with the eyes of my body (oculis corporis) my Lord hanging on the cross, I saw only with the eyes of faith (oculus fidei). With the eyes of my body, however, I saw (oculis autem corporis uidi) the place of the crucifixion …42

In his use of oculis corporis and oculis fidei Riccoldo is the first of the authors considered here to make a clear distinction between what he could see physically and what he could see in his mind or imagination. Of course, Burchard does use the phrase oculis mentis initially to demonstrate that the visionary experience he is having was an imagined one. However, there is no mention in Burchard of an oculis corporis, and indeed the seen and the imagined very quickly blur into one in Burchard’s writings. One interpretation of this is that Riccoldo is trying to show that what one can see with the eyes of faith and what one can see with the eyes of the body are different. However, there does seem to be in Riccoldo the suggestion, by the use of si, that the things he sees with the oculus fidei could have been seen physically under different circumstances (si uere uiderem Dominum meum oculis corporis). Thus, Riccoldo does not rule the possibility of being able to see the Saviour hanging on the cross with physical eyes. In fact, for Riccoldo this appears almost as the expectation. Irrespective of his intentions, Riccoldo uses this desire to physically see or find Christ to drive his narrative forward from one space to another, or rather from one event to the next. Following the above-quoted statement we see him continue: ‘From there, wanting to go to the Sepulchre and look (querere) for the Lord whom we had not found on Mount Calvary, for they had already taken him down…’43 All of a sudden, Riccoldo’s inability to see physically has nothing to do with a distinction between what the oculis fidei and the oculis corporis can see. Rather it is because he has arrived late on the scene and the crucifixion had already occurred. Riccoldo’s narrative places him not in the midst of the action but following along behind. Notwithstanding Riccoldo’s place in the narrative, in a continuing effort to find Christ his descriptions see him enter the Sepulchre itself, ‘anxiously searching (querentes sollicite)’.44 42 Riccoldo, ‘Pilgrimage’, 373, Riccold, Pérégrination, 68. 43 Riccoldo, ‘Pilgrimage’, 373, Riccold, Pérégrination, 70. 44 Ibid.

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In the end, however, ‘we came out without finding the Lord’, not because He was not there, or because seeing Him was impossible, but rather, as one of Riccoldo’s fellow pilgrims exclaimed, because ‘The Lord, my Hope, had risen’.45 At this point, Riccoldo’s narrative purpose becomes clear. His ability (or inability) to see Christ physically at Calvary or at the Holy Sepulchre was not because it was not possible to do so, but because, as the angel of the gospels had intoned, ‘He is not here: for He is risen’.46 To unpack this, the chronology of Riccoldo’s narrative is not one that runs alongside the Passion, but immediately follows it, a post-resurrection narrative. This makes complete sense in the context of Martin Bauer’s recent discussion of the Liber Peregrinationis, which suggests that the description of Riccoldo’s missionary efforts, as found immediately following the description of the Holy Land, should be seen as part of Riccoldo’s narrative structure. If Riccoldo’s pilgrimage account is formulated as a recreation of the gospel narrative, the account of his missionary travels acts as its conclusion in the same way that the gospel of Matthew ends with the exhortation to ‘Go ye therefore and teach all nations’. He saw his travels as part of a post-gospel apostolic mission.47 As a result, Riccoldo could not see Christ with the eyes of his body because his narrative focused not on a suffering, dying Christ, but on a living, resurrected one in a post-resurrection, apostolic world. We do not have the space to consider the wider implications of this here. However, it should be noted that while Riccoldo could not see physically the events of the gospel, this was not because it was impossible but because seeing in the way Burchard describes did not fit into Riccoldo’s narrative. Clearly, authors such as Riccoldo, Burchard and Jerome were able to manipulate such ideas to suit the narrative purposes of their accounts. Nevertheless, the frequency of statements such as these is evidence that Riccoldo assumed that imagined pilgrimage could and perhaps should be inspired by place-pilgrimage. These authors were clearly, therefore, manipulating experiences which they believed were perfectly plausible for a place-pilgrim to have. 45 Ibid. 46 Matthew 28:6. 47 Matthew 28:19. Martin Bauer, ‘Ricoldus de Monte Crucis: Epistole ad Ecclesiam triumphantem. Einleitung, Text und Kommentar’, PhD thesis, University of Innsbruck, 2018, 16–25.

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Conclusion There existed in the writings of pilgrim authors such as Burchard the expectation and understanding that place-pilgrimage could result in imagined pilgrimage. Moreover, because seeing the holy places could also lead to seeing the events which occurred there, the Holy Land possessed the ability to blur the distinction between the past and present and what the eyes of the body and the eyes of faith could see. In all this, the physical markers of the Holy Land were key. Whether they were rough stones, imprints on rocks or highly decorated architectural structures, these spaces inspired awe, emotions and visions of the past, but they also possessed a memory of biblical events which could be transmitted to the pilgrim, like a reader reading a book. Consequently, the reality of these experiences meant that pilgrims themselves could become eyewitnesses of the biblical past and able to better help others to connect with that past. Authors therefore shaped and moulded these experiences so as to assist in others’ ability to experience the same things when on pilgrimage or when reading the experience of one. And this final point is the crucial one, and takes us back to the beginning, because these models appeared in texts which were perceived as useful for both the armchair and place-pilgrim. Therefore, both the armchair and place-pilgrim were expected to benefit from these models and be better able to engage in imagined pilgrimage in the same way. Understanding this means we need to be careful of creating false dichotomies between the experiences of place-pilgrims and armchair pilgrims. They were interconnected processes and the development of one, which began with the writings of Jerome, clearly impacted another. With this in mind, it seems appropriate to finish with Theoderic’s own concluding remarks. We have set out all this information about the holy places, in which our Lord Jesus Christ, who took on the form of a servant for our sake, displayed the presence of his bodily substance […] We therefore hope to awaken the minds of our readers and hearers to a new love of him, by the things which we have described here.48

48 ‘Theoderic’, 314.

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Bibliography Bacci, Michele, ‘Locative Memory and the Pilgrim’s Experience of Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages’, in Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 67–75. Bauer, Martin, ‘Ricoldus de Monte Crucis: Epistole ad Ecclesiam triumphantem. Einleitung, Text und Kommentar’, PhD thesis, University of Innsbruck, 2018. Beebe, Kathryn, ‘The Jerusalem of the Mind’s Eye: Imagined Pilgrimage in the Late Fifteenth Century’, in Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 409–20. Beebe, Kathryn, Pilgrim and Preacher: the Audiences and Observant Spirituality of Friar Felix Fabri (1437/8–1502) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). Beebe, Kathryn, ‘Reading Mental Pilgrimage in Context: The Imaginary Pilgrims and Real Travels of Felix Fabri’s “Die Sionpilger”’, Essays in Medieval Studies 25 (2008), 39–70. Burchard of Mount Sion, ‘Description of the Holy Land (1274–85)’, trans. Denys Pringle, in Denys Pringle, ed., Pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, 1187– 1291 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), ch. 13. Burchardi de Monte Sion, ‘Descriptio Terrae Sanctae’, in Johannes M. C. Laurent, ed., Peregrinatores Medii Aevi Quatuor (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1873), 1–100. Carruthers, Mary, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Constable, Giles, ‘Opposition to Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages’, Studia Gratiana 19.1 (1976), 125–46. Dyas, Dee, Pilgrimage in Medieval English Literature, 700–1500 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2001). Egeria, ‘Itinerarium Partes Prima et Secunda’, in Wilhelm Heraeus, ed., Silviae vel potius Aetheriae: peregrinatio ad loca sancta (Heidelburg: Carl Winter’s Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1908); available online at The Latin Library, (accessed 4 February 2019). Egeria’s Travels to the Holy Land, trans. John Wilkinson (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1981). Frank, Georgia, The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000). Jerome, ‘Epistolae 108.10’, in Jacques P. Migne, ed., Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Latina 22 (1845). Jerome, ‘Letter 108 to Eustochium’, trans. John Wilkinson, in Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1977), 47–52.

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John of Würzburg, ‘Peregrinatio’, in Robert C. Huygens, ed., Peregrinationes Tres (Turnhout: Brepols, 1994). ‘John of Würzburg’, trans. John Wilkinson, in John Wilkinson, Joyce Hill and William F. Ryan, eds, Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 1099–1185 (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1998). ‘John Phocas’, trans. John Wilkinson, in John Wilkinson, Joyce Hill and William F. Ryan, eds, Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 1099–1185 (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1998). Kühnel, Bianca, Galit Noga-Banai and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014). Legassie, Shayne Aaron, The Medieval Invention of Travel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017). Lehmann-Bruan, Susanne, Jerusalem Sehen: Reiseberichte des 12. bis 15. Jahrhunderts als empirische Anleitung zur gesteigen Pilgerfahrt (Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach, 2010). Pringle, Denys, The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Corpus, vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Riccold de Monte Croce, Pérégrination en Terre Sainte et au Proche Orient, ed. and trans. René Chappler (Paris: Champion, 1997). Riccoldo of Monte Croce, ‘Pilgrimage (1288–89)’, trans. Denys Pringle, in Denys Pringle, ed., Pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, 1187–1291 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), ch. 15. Rubin, Jonathan, ‘Burchard of Mount Sion’s Descriptio Terrae Sanctae: a Newly Discovered Extended Version’, Crusades 13 (2014), 173–90. Rudy, Kathryn M., Virtual Pilgrimage in the Covent: Imagining Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011). Theoderic, ‘Peregrinatio’, in Robert C. Huygens, ed., Peregrinationes Tres (Turnhout: Brepols, 1994). ‘Theoderic’, trans. John Wilkinson, in John Wilkinson, Joyce Hill and William F. Ryan, eds, Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 1099–1185 (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1998). Thietmar, ‘Pilgrimage (1217–18)’, trans. Denys Pringle, in Denys Pringle, ed., Pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, 1187–1291 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), ch. 2. Thietmarus, ‘Peregrinatio’, in Johannes M. C. Laurent, Mag. Thietmari Peregrinatio (Hamburg: Notle and Köhler, 1857).

Paula Almeida Mendes

7 Spiritual Experiences in Portuguese Hagiographies and Sacred Biographies in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries*

Abstract The spiritual journey was often an important narrative device in the vitae (or ‘Lives’) of the devout. In this essay, it is shown how Portuguese ‘Lives’ of saints, sacred biographies and autobiographies, narrated spiritual journeys which were intimately associated with ‘travel’ to the ‘Beyond’ – whether Paradise, Purgatory or Hell. While contemporary authors rarely used the semantics of the ‘journey’ directly in their texts, the spiritual experiences they described went beyond simple, or static ‘visions’. Pious biographees did ‘travel’ in these visions and biographers clearly envisaged the geography of the afterlife. Concentrated periods of imagined spiritual travel were thus situated within a broader spiritual journey constructed by biographers and hagiographers.

The search for a more affective relationship with God and of more ‘effective’ communication channels to the Divine over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries assumed a great variety of representations and modes in Portugal. Each of these representations attempted to explore the myriad ways that Christians could connect with God and they marked the everyday lives and spiritual experiences in the aforementioned period.1

*

Funding for this research was provided by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) [Portuguese – Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER)] through the COMPETE 2020 – Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI) and by domestic funds granted by the FCT, included in the project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007460.

1

José Sebastião da Silva Dias, Correntes de sentimento religioso em Portugal (séculos XVI a XVIII), vol. I (Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra; Huerga: Álvaro Huerga, 1960); José Sebastião da Silva Dias, ‘La vida cristiana a los siglos XV–XVI’, in Alvaro Huerga

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The renewed paths of spirituality of the Tridentine period were gradually given shape by the legacy of the European movement of spiritual reformation that came to be known as Devotio Moderna. Devotio Moderna emerged in the latter half of the fourteenth century, brought about by the actions of Gerard Groot and Florent Radewijnd, whose first achievements were the Brethren of the Common Life and the Congregation of Windsheim, congregations which had as their objectives the dissemination of an ideal of poverty, prayer and sharing, thereby promoting a return to primitive Christianity. This represented a critical step in the affirmation of an affective and practical spirituality – one that emphasised the importance of an inner experience of the religious phenomenon and encouraged the search for new (or renewed) forms and modes of prayer.2 Among these was mental prayer, a form of intercession that came to assume a pivotal role in the affirmation of a more personally engaged spirituality, one with more sensory and affective undertones, underlining the importance of the religious experience. This was strengthened by a proliferation of spiritual literature – the production and dissemination of which was augmented by Johannes Gutenberg’s moveable-type printing press – and which inclued ‘Lives’ of saints, catechisms, ‘mirrors’ of Christian perfection, confession manuals, martyrologies, menologia, etc.3 This phenomenon should also be

2

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et al., eds, Historia de la Espiritualidad. Vol. II: Espiritualidades del Renacimiento, barroca e ilustrada, romântica y contemporânea (Barcelona: Juan Flors, 1969), 15–139; Francis Rapp, L’église et la vie religieuse en Occident à la fins du Moyen Âge (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971); Jean Delumeau and Monique Cottret, Le Catholicisme entre Luther et Voltaire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996); Maria de Lurdes Correia Fernandes, ‘Da reforma da Igreja à reforma dos cristãos: reformas, pastoral e espiritualidade’, in Carlos Moreira de Azevedo, ed., História Religiosa de Portugal, vol. II (Lisbon: Círculo de Leitores, 2000), 15–38. Maria de Lourdes Belchior and José Adriano de Carvalho, ‘Portugal (16e–18e siècles)’, in Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique, Fascicules LXXX–LXXXI– LXXXII (Paris: Beauchesne, 1985), cols 1958–73; Maria de Lourdes Belchior and José Adriano de Carvalho, ‘Génese e linhas de rumo da espiritualidade portuguesa’, in Maria de Lourdes Belchior et al., eds, Antologia de espirituais portugueses (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 1994), 11–23. Maria de Lurdes Correia Fernandes, ‘Espiritualidade (Época Moderna)’, in Carlos Moreira de Azevedo ed., Dicionário de História Religiosa de Portugal, vol. II (Lisbon:

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understood in the context of the progress of the Catholic reform movement, which began with the restructuring of the cult of saints in the sixteenth century. Among this large literary output – and one that found much appreciation and support within the Iberian Peninsula – was St Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. Both immensely well received and disseminated in the sixteenth century within the Iberian Peninsula, the Exercises were viewed as the model guide for meditation. Through a concise and disciplined language, they exhort the penitent to the undertaking of a spiritual itinerary that, in principle, was suited to the three stages – purgative, illuminative and unitive – defended by mystical theology on the path towards God. Other noteworthy works were those that made use of the importance and the capabilities of images, such as Francisco de Monzón’s Norte de Ydiotas [Guide for the Uneducated] (Lisbon, 1563)4 or Isabel de Villena’s (1430–90) Vita Christi – the illustrations of which aimed to provide guidance in and to consolidate religious meditations.5 This chapter will examine their influence in early modern Portugal.

4 5

Círculo de Leitores, 2000), 187–93; Zulmira C. Santos, ‘Literatura religiosa (Época Moderna)’, in ibid., vol. III, 125–30. See also Marina Caffiero, ‘Tra modelli di disciplinamento e autonomia soggestiva’, in Giulia Barone, Marina Caffiero and Francesco Scorza Barcellona, eds, Modelli di santità e modelli di comportamento. Contrasti, intersezioni, complementarità (Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1994), 265–78; Dilwyn Knox, ‘“Disciplina”: le origini monastiche e clerical del buon comportamento nell’Europa cattolica del Cinquecento e del primo Seicento’, in Paolo Prodi, ed., Disciplina dell’anima, disciplina del corpo e disciplina della società tra Medioevo ed Età Moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994), 69–99; Louis Châtellier, ‘Rinnovamento della pastorale e società dopo il Concilio di Trento’, in Paolo Prodi and Wolfgang Reinhard, eds, Il Concilio di Trento e il Moderno (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1996), 137–58; Gabriella Zarri, ed., Donna, disciplina, creanza cristiana dal XV al XVII secolo. Studi e testi a stampa (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1996). Pierre Civil, Image et dévotion dans l’Espagne du XVIe siècle: le traite Norte de Ydiotas de Francisco de Monzón (1563) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne/Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1996). Sor Isabel de Villena, Speculum Animae. Manuscrit Espagnol 544 de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, ed. Albert G. Hauf i Valls and Daniel Benito Goerlich (Madrid: Editorial Internacional de Libros Antiguos, 1992).

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On this subject, it seems pertinent to note that Franciscan spirituality, deeply entrenched in devotion to the humanity of Christ and to the Passion in particular, sparked an outburst of mimeses, in the form of accounts of individual Christians’ personal spiritual experiences, seen in various autobiographies, hagiographies and biographies of devout individuals published in Portugal over the course of the early modern period.6 This contributed immensely to the crystallisation of a model of mystical sainthood, which was subsequently amplified with the ‘Lives’ of Saint Theresa of Jesus and other mystics such as St Maria Magdalena de’ Pazzi or Veronica Giuliani.7 This model was further influenced by the rediscovery of medieval mystics, for example St Gertrude the Great, whose opus, Legatus, was translated into Spanish and published by Br. Leandro de Granada in 1603, whose dissemination stimulated the writing of various ‘Lives’ of this saint.8 St Gertrude’s work was greatly favoured by early modern readers, and helped to re-establish and strengthen certain devotions, such as that of the Humanity of Christ, especially the episode of the Passion. Her ‘Lives’ also seem to have contributed to the dissemination of models of nuns.9 But while it is true that devotion to the Passion of Christ was a pivotal aspect of spirituality in the Tridentine period, special attention given to the devotion to Peter Dinzelbacher and Dieter R. Bauer, eds, Movimento religioso e mística femminile nel Medioevo (Milan: Edizioni Paoline, 1993); Isabelle Poutrin, Le Voile et la plume. Autobiographie et sainteté feminine dans l’Espagne moderne (Madrid: Casa de Velásquez, 1995); Victoria Cirlot and Blanca Garí, La mirada interior. Escritoras místicas y visionarias en la Edad Media (Madrid: Siruela, 2008). 7 Jodi Bilinkoff, ‘Woman with a Mission: Teresa of Avila and the Apostolic Model’, in Giulia Barone, Marina Caffiero and Francesco Scorza Barcellona, eds, Modelli di santità e modelli di comportamento. Contrasti, intersezioni, complementarità (Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1994), 295–305; Paula Almeida Mendes, ‘Espelhos de Santa Teresa de Jesus. A escrita, a tradução e a leitura das “Vidas” teresianas em Portugal (séculos XVII–XVIII)’, in Atas do Congresso Internacional ‘A Reforma Teresiana em Portugal (2015)’ (Marco de Canaveses: Edições Carmelo, 2017), 71–9. 8 José Adriano de Freitas Carvalho, Gertrudes de Helfta e Espanha. Contribuição para o estudo da história da espiritualidade peninsular nos séculos XVI e XVII (Porto: INIC/ Centro de Literatura da Universidade do Porto, 1981). 9 Carvalho, Gertrudes de Helfta e Espanha; José Luis Sánchez Lora, Mujeres, conventos y formas de la religiosidad barroca (Madrid: F.U.E., 1988). 6

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the souls of Purgatory in Portugal – not confined to monastic and conventual spaces but in the secular sphere as well – must not be disregarded, particularly after the publication of the ‘Life’ of St Catherine of Genoa in 1564.10 The success and the widespread reach that these devotions had on Lusitanian soil are only fully comprehensible if we first understand and stress the central role which mystical phenomena intrinsically related to those devotions assumed. This chapter is based on a close reading of a number of ‘Lives’ of saints composed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. To examine the concept of the ‘wondrous’, the spiritual phenomena of extraordinary nature that figure in many accounts – which frequently comprised ‘spiritual voyages’, even if the authors never use the term ‘journey’, ‘travel’ or ‘trip’ in their texts – we must first turn to the universe that is the hagiography and biography of a devout individual in the early modern period, highlighting their context and their publishing rhythm, and show how they shaped the spiritual, religious and cultural experiences of the postTridentine period, especially in monastic and conventual environments. Portuguese ‘Lives’ of saints, sacred biographies and autobiographies disseminated spiritual experiences based on prayer, penitence and mortification, and were often associated with what we can call travel experiences or visions of the Beyond – Paradise, Purgatory and Hell, which occur in all descriptions including sacred ‘Lives’. The person in question is taken, at least in spirit, by God or by Christ to spaces as a rule connected with the Christian Beyond. These ‘journeys’ were a step and a prize in the progress of the protagonist’s soul along the path of Christian perfection. Selected ‘Lives’ show examples of spiritual journeys significant in the history of spirituality and religious culture of the early modern period, although it should be remembered that these texts were constructed to sustain the fama sanctitatis of Christians considered exceptional by their contemporaries, framed by a certain baroque spectacle characteristic of the Counter Reformation. 10

Helias de Lemos, Liuro da vida admiravel da bẽauenturada Catherina de Genoa & de sctã doctrina. Traduzido de italiano em romãce portugues por o doctor Helias de Lemos (Lisbon: Ioão de Barreira, 1564).

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Vitae/Lives of Saints From the turn of the sixteenth century onwards, as some authors have previously shown, there was, in Portugal, as in other Catholic regions such as Italy and Spain, an increase in the production of ‘Lives’, not only of saints but also of devout individuals.11 Despite fluctuations in the publishing of these works, the immediate goals of publication and dissemination were the glorification of the individual in question, spiritual edification of the reader and the promotion of the cult. Often, these ‘Lives’ were also used later, as assets in processes of beatification or canonisation. This tendency became more pronounced in the seventeenth century, a period in which there was a relatively high and, in some periods, a very sharp increase in the number of works produced, an increase that was steadily maintained, albeit with some fluctuations, up until the first half of the eighteenth century.12 This phenomenon may be explained by the momentum of the Counter Reformation in the field of hagiography, following the Tridentine position with regard to the cult of saints, and also by a certain taste for Catholic martyrs and heroes or heroines among readers. The revalorisation of the ‘heroic dimension of existence’, to use Carlota Miranda Urbano’s words, led to the hallowing of ‘heroic virtues’.13 This came to constitute one of the mandatory prerequisites for the opening of a process of beatification or canonisation for candidates who had died in ‘odour of sanctity’, following Pope Urban VIII’s decrees promulgated on 13 March 1625 and 5 July 1634.14 From the mid-eighteenth century, the publishing of hagiographies José Adriano de Freitas Carvalho, ed., Bibliografia Cronológica da Literatura de Espiritualidade. 1501–1700 (Porto: Instituto de Cultura Portuguesa, 1988); Correia Fernandes, ‘Espiritualidade (Época Moderna)’, 187–93; Santos, ‘Literatura religiosa (Época Moderna)’, 125–30; Paula Almeida Mendes, Paradigmas de Papel: a edição de ‘Vidas’ de santos e de ‘Vidas’ devotas em Portugal (séculos XVI–XVIII) (Porto: CITCEM, 2017). 12 Mendes, Paradigmas de Papel. 13 Carlota Miranda Urbano, ‘Heroísmo, santidade e martírio no tempo das reformas’, Península. Revista de Estudos Ibéricos 1 (2004), 269–76. 14 Urban VIII, Decreta in seruanda … Accedunt Instructiones & declarationes quas Em. Et Ver. S. R. E. Cardinales Praesulesque Romanae Curiae ad id muneris congregati 11

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and biographies of devout individuals suffered a sharp decrease in numbers, something which may be explained by the fact that the Jesuits, the great cultivators and disseminators of these model texts, were expelled from the Portuguese kingdom in 1759, and also by the emergence of a rationalism imbued with the spirit of the Age of Enlightenment within a process of secularisation of society, that the Catholic Church attempted to counter with other, different strategies.15 From the beginning of the sixteenth century, this genre had several pulses of renewal and modernisation. This was prompted by some Humanist thinkers, such as Erasmus, who pointed to the philological, archaeological and historiographical dimensions, channelled towards a rigorous research of the sources.16 Contributions were also made by Protestant scholars and the activities of the Bollandists and the Benedictines of Saint-Maur, without overlooking the contributions of Georg Witzel, Luigi Lippomano, Lourenço Surio and Heribert Rosweyde. Inflamed critiques were levelled at the unchecked valorisation of the wondrous (particularly miracles) in the narratives of the lives of certain saints, as well as the veracity of some of those accounts, especially those that made up the Legenda Aurea. The narrative features that highlighted the exceptional nature of the subjects of these biographies – and for that reason, actions that could scarcely be imitated by common readers – as opposed to virtues or devotional practices, constituted a fundamental and distinctive element of these ‘Lives’. This ensured their success and their wide circulation, creating a framework that had spiritual, religious, social and in some instances, political consequences.

ex eiusdem Summi Pontificis mandato condiderunt (Rome, 1642); see also Romeo De Maio, ‘L’ideale eroico nei processi di canonizzacione della controriforma’, in Riforme e miti nella chiesa del Cinquecento (Naples: Guida Editori, 1992), 253–74; Peter Burke, ‘How to be a Counter-Reformation Saint’, in Kaspar von Greyerz, ed., Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe 1500–1800 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984), 45–55. 15 Carvalho, ed., Bibliografia Cronológica; Paula Almeida Mendes, ‘“Porque aqui se vem retratados os passos por onde se caminha para o Ceo”: a escrita e a edição de “Vidas” de santos e de “Vidas” devotas em Portugal (séculos XVI–XVIII)’, 2 vols, PhD dissertation, University of Porto, 2012. 16 Stefano Cavallotto, Santi nella Riforma. Da Erasmo a Lutero (Rome: Viella, 2009), 12.

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However, the devotional practices that had a lasting impact on Portuguese spirituality and pastoral endeavours in the Tridentine period were, progressively, the targets of strict inquisitorial control, in an attempt to maintain Catholic orthodoxy and to prevent social disorder, such as those that occurred with the Alumbrados and within certain circles of pious individuals, in an environment marked by suspicions of ‘false sainthood’.17 One of the features of this model of saintly actions concerns what we could define as ‘spiritual voyages’ to the Great Beyond, to Paradise, Purgatory and Hell, descriptions of which were often permeated by a ‘wondrous’ aura. These supernatural spaces, full of symbolism and allegory, gave birth to various visions during the Middle Ages which were disseminated in the literature of revelations and then rediscovered in the seventeenth century, where they influenced texts such as Br. Leandro de Granada’s Luz de las Maravillas que Dios ha obrado desde el principio del mundo en las almas […]. Tratase de las apariciones de Dios, Christo, Ángeles, santos gloriosos, animas del Purgatorio hechas a los vivos. Y resuelve lo mas dificultoso de la Theologia [Light of the Wonders that God has performed since the beginning of the world upon souls […]. It concerns the apparitions of God, Christ, Angels, glorious saints, souls of Purgatory, to the living. And it solves the most difficult [part] of Theology] of 1607.18 Thus medieval imaginings continued to have an impact, diffused widely by iconography.19 The voyages 17

18

19

Pedro Vilas Boas Tavares, ‘Caminhos e invenções de santidade feminina em Portugal nos séculos XVII e XVIII. (Alguns dados, problemas e sugestões)’, Via Spiritus 3 (1996), 163–215; Pedro Vilas Boas Tavares, Beatas, inquisidores e teólogos. Reacção portuguesa a Miguel de Molinos (Porto: CIUHE, 2005); Elena Brambilla, Corpi invasi e viaggi dell’anima. Santità, possesseione, exorcismo dalla teologia barocca alla medicina iluminista (Rome: Viella, 2010). Leandro de Granada, Luz de las Maravillas que Dios ha obrado desde el principio del mundo en las almas (…). Tratase de las apariciones de Dios, Christo, Ángeles, santos gloriosos, animas del Purgatorio hechas a los vivos. Y resuelve lo mas dificultoso de la Theologia (Valladolid, 1607). See also Isabelle Poutrin, ‘¿Para qué servían los libros de revelaciones de mujeres? Deleites místicos, movilizacion católica y entretenimiento devoto en la España barroca’, in Nieves Baranda Leturio and María Carmen Marín Pina, eds, Letras en la celda. Cultura escrita de los conventos femininos en la España moderna (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2014), 147–58.

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to the Beyond, the accounts of which began to flourish between the high Middle Ages and the thirteenth century, resumed a tradition with roots in Classical Antiquity: for instance, Odysseus in the Odyssey and Aeneas in the Aeneid, who returned to the ‘world of the living’ to tell of what they saw in the Beyond, or Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii [Treatise on Saint Patrick’s Purgatory], written by Henri de Saltrey between 1208 and 1215.20 St Augustine had already established a tripartite division of visions in the fifth century (corporeal visions, spiritual visions and intellectual visions), one that was rediscovered and adopted in the sixteenth century by St Theresa of Ávila, who probably became acquainted with it through reading the texts and through the guiding directives of her confessors or spiritual guides.21 On the other hand, several authors had already pointed to the intrinsic relationship that, in many cases, exists between the devotional contemplation of an image and visions of a supernatural nature, in an osmosis between the physical eyes and the eyes of the spirit.22 Nevertheless, in the cases selected and analysed here, the arguments deployed by the authors seem to show that we are considering something that cannot be categorised – in the strictest of senses – as mere visions or, at the very least, that seems to be a sui generis type of visions, that is, spiritual visions. Even though the authors never used the term ‘voyage’ or ‘pilgrimage’ in their accounts, in the majority of the writings analysed, including hagiographical and biographical sources, the character in question is taken, at least in spirit, by God or by Christ to spaces generally implied to be the Christian afterlife, which enables us, to a certain extent, to chart the

20 Pierre Adnès, ‘Visions’, in Paul Duclos, ed., Dictionnaire de Spiritualité Ascétique et Mystique, vol. XVI (Paris: Beauchesne, 1994), cols 949–1001; Peter Dinzelbacher, Révélationes (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991). 21 Saint Theresa of Jesus distinguishes between the visions that can be viewed with the physical eyes, the visions that may be viewed by the eyes of the soul, which she calls ‘imaginary visions’, and the visions that are not seen, for they do not have any images, which she designates as ‘intellectual visions’. See Adnès, ‘Visions’. 22 Ottavia Niccoli, Vedere com gli occhi del cuore. Alle origini del potere delle imagine (Rome: Laterza, 2011); Guillaume Cassegrain, Représenter la vision. Figurations des apparitions miraculeuses dans la peinture italienne de la Renaissance (Arles: Actes Sud, 2017).

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(possible) geography of these spaces. These voyages or displacements of the spirit usually occur when the individuals are immersed in mental prayer: they are ‘voyages of the soul’ which, during ecstasy, leaves the body. The morphosyntactic structures used by the authors attest this – ‘I was taken’, ‘I saw myself ’ – something to be addressed in more depth below. These displacements, which can only be understood within the framework of phenomena of a spiritual nature, were almost always interpreted by hagiographers or biographers as a type of divine reward or boon, and these benefits are perceived as being a kind of repayment for the exceptional manner in which the individuals concerned demonstrated their love of God in penance and especially in mental prayer. Over the course of the early modern period there emerged another type of vision or voyage of a spiritual nature, although less frequent than the above-mentioned, as shown in the Mistica Ciudad de Dios [God’s Mystical City] by Sister María d’Agreda of 1681, in which the author narrates the voyages of her spirit in spatial and chronological travel, back to the time of Christ and the Virgin Mary.23 In the group of ‘Lives’ here analysed, the number of accounts of spiritual voyages to otherworldly realms is not numerous. Is this perhaps a consequence of the fear instilled in believers by the shadow of inquisitorial surveillance and control, which nurtured and encouraged a widespread sense of fear and distrust towards certain types of mystical phenomena, such as arrests, visions and ecstasies? Considering that, in many cases, these ‘Lives’ are based on original documents, such as letters or other texts, written by the ‘saints’ – especially women – addressed to their confessors or spiritual guides, did these ‘saints’ feel any misgivings in revealing in written form their (or some of their) mystical experiences, for fear of being targeted by the Inquisition, or were the motives those of sheer humility? Despite these mystical journeys back in time, for most authors it seems that earthly voyages, typically pilgrimages, were the prime focus, 23

Soror María de Jesús de Agreda, Mística ciudad de Dios, milagro de su omnipotencia, y abismo de la gracia. Historia divina, y vida de la Virgen Madre de Dios, Reina y señora nuestra María Santíssima, … por Soror Maria de Jesús, abadesa de el convento de la Inmaculada Concepción de la Villa de Ágreda (Lisbon: Antonio Craesbeeck de Mello, 1681).

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as works such as Itenerário da Santa Terra [Itinerary of the Holy Land] of 1593, by Br. Pantaleão de Aveiro, demonstrate: this work was reprinted various times.24

Spiritual Journeys to the Afterlife Now let us turn to some examples which demonstrate the central role of those spiritual experiences, in which the spirit ‘deserts’ the body and is transported to places in the Christian afterlife. Let us begin with the case of the boy Augusto, born in Mérida (in modern Spain), who lived during the eighth century and whom Jorge Cardoso included in the first volume of Agiologio Lusitano, a monumental catalogue of Portuguese saints, blessed individuals, venerable persons and men and women illustrious because of their virtue. It is a work that is part of the construction of a ‘territorial sainthood’ of the kingdom of Portugal, to enable it to rival European countries claiming to have more saints than other regions, thus demonstrating the contemporary importance of sainthood and its role as a source of prestige at an international level.25 It is uncommon to find examples of ‘sainthood’ in children. This seems to be due in large part to the nature attributed to the child by writers in Antiquity and, later on, by St Augustine, mainly characterised by negative 24 Pantaleão de Aveiro, Itinerario da Terra Santa (Lisbon: Simão Lopes, 1593; Lisbon: António Álvares, 1596; Lisbon: António Álvares, 1600; Lisbon: João Galram, 1685; Lisbon: António Pedrozo Galram, 1732; Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 1927). 25 Henri Fros, ‘Culte des saints et sentiment national. Quelques aspects du problème’, Analecta Bollandiana 100 (1982), 729–35; Maria de Lurdes Correia Fernandes, ‘História, santidade e identidade. O Agiologio Lusitano de Jorge Cardoso e o seu contexto’, Via Spiritus 3 (1996), 25–68; Maria de Lurdes Correia Fernandes, ‘O Agiologio Lusitano de Jorge Cardoso (†1669): hagiografia, memória, história e devoção na Época Moderna em Portugal’, in Sofia Boesch Gajano and Raimondo Michetti, eds, Europa Sacra. Raccolte agiografiche e identità politiche in Europa tra Medioevo ed Età Moderna (Rome: Carocci Editore, 2002), 227–40.

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attributes, despite the valorisation and diffusion that the cult of the Holy Innocents had in early Christianity.26 Only one 18-year-old was canonised before 1917, Stanislas Kostka (1550–68), a Polish Jesuit, beatified in 1605 and canonised in 1726 by Benedict XIII, along with the young Jesuit Luís Gonzaga (1568–91). However, it is pertinent to mention some earlier cases that, in their own ways, contributed to the conversion of the figure of the child as an object of hagiography: Simon of Trent, St Werner of Oberwesel and Saints Justus and Pastor, who were martyred in 304 in Alcalá de Henares during the Diocletian persecution of Christians.27 The morphosyntactic structure that opens the account made by the boy Augusto, in direct discourse – ‘I was taken’ – seems to show that we are witnessing a voyage and not a ‘mere’ vision: I was taken to a most agreeable and delectable place, replete with many a sweet-scented flower and crown of gold with an array of precious enamelled gems, where a light Zephyr breathed, pure and gentle. In it I saw chairs, of which the middle one stood out, for its majesty and greatness elevated it above the rest, and a myriad of ministers richly attired, who served the tables packed with diverse sumptuous fares, whiter than snow itself. These ministers then turned to me and said: ‘Blessed is the Lord, who brought you to this place’. Hereupon a large number of individuals decked in a glorious manner with resplendent diadems atop their heads appeared, amongst them was a man of venerable aspect, his body enveloped in light, his countenance surpassing

26 Santo Agostinho, Confissões, trans. Arnaldo Espírito Santo, João Beato and Maria Cristina de Castro-Maia de Sousa Pimentel (Lisbon: IN-CM, 2nd edn 2004), 12–13; Francesco Scorza Barcellona, ‘Infanzia e martirio: la testimonianza della più antica letteratura cristiana’, in Anna Benvenuti Papi and Elena Giannarelli, eds, Bambini Santi. Rappresentazioni dell’infanzia e modelli agiografici (Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1991), 59–83; E. Berthon, ‘À l’origine de la spiritualité médiévale de l’enfance: les Saints Innocents’, in Robert Fossier, ed., La petite enfance dans l’Europe médiévale et moderne. Actes des XVIes journées internationales d’Histoire de l’Abbaye de Flaran (Septembre 1994) (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 1997), 31–8. 27 Anna Esposito, ‘La morte di un bambino e la nascita di un mártire: Simonino da Trento’, in Anna Benvenuti Papi and Elena Giannarelli, eds, Bambini santi. Rappresentazioni dell’infanzia e modelli agiografici (Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1991), 99–118; André Vauchez, ‘Antisémitisme et colonisation populaire: saint Werner ou Vernier (†1287), enfant martyr et patron des vignerons’, in André Vauchez, ed., Les laïcs au Moyen Âge. Pratiques et expériences religieuses (Paris: Cerf, 1987), 157–68.

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the sun itself; each individual took their respective seat and that man, more eminent than all others presided over them, they thrice revered him, then, after they began their divine feast, the man asked: ‘Is there a rustic person amidst our company?’ The ministers answered by pointing at me. ‘Lord, there is one here’, and I, taken aback by that presence, stood there fearful, and he said unto me: ‘Child, fear not, for I shall provide you with all and ensure you that you will want for nothing for evermore’. And he then commanded that the very same delicacies and liquors they dined on to be given to me, which were exquisite to the palate and completely sated my needs, so much so that I will need not to partake of food nor of drink for as long as I live. At that moment certain men who were groaning were brought to his presence, the righteous judge heard their pleas patiently and said that they were to be thrown out, for they were corrupt servants, unworthy of gazing upon his face; this was done post haste, before the wretches could so much as acclimate their eyes to the light that emanated from the visages of those supping at the table, let alone discern their identities, they were already out of sight. The celestial banquet then drew to a close, and the Lord took me by the hand and lead me to a most pleasant garden, upon which a brook of crystalline waters ran, bringing life to the various wildflowers that populated his flowerbeds.28

When the voyage comes to a close, Augusto finds himself in his bed. This vision of Glory described by Augusto seems to share similarities with the image of Paradise as it is described in Genesis, that is, the image of Paradise as a garden, located on earth, ‘agreeable and delectable’, bucolic and idealised, filled with flowers and precious gemstones, where ‘white delicacies’ were served, portraying a revisiting of sorts of not only the Golden Age, but also of the conception of a Paradise located in Heaven, inhabited by ‘individuals garbed in glory with diadems’, the ultimate destiny for the righteous, who at last see clearly the face of God. In the Desposorios do Espirito celebrados entre o Divino Amante, e sua Amada Esposa a Vem. Madre Soror Mariana do Rosário [Marriages of the Spirit celebrated between the Divine Lover and His Beloved Wife the Venerable Sister Mariana do Rosário], by Fr António de Almada, we find yet other accounts of Paradise.29 Sister Mariana do Rosário († 1649), a nun 28 29

Jorge Cardoso, Agiologio Lusitano dos Santos, & Varoens ilustres em virtude do Reyno de Portugal, & suas conquistas, vol. I (Lisbon: Craesbeeckiana, 1652), 65–6. António de Almada, Despozorios do Espirito celebrados entre o Divino Amante, e sua Amada Esposa a Ven. Madre Soror Mariana do Rozario Religiosa de veo branco no Convento do Salvador da Cidade de Evora (Lisbon: por Manoel Lopes Ferreira, 1694).

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of the order of St Clare from the convent of the Saviour of the World in Évora, was in many ways a ‘model’ nun. Her devotions were premised on the (almost obsessive) practices of mental prayer, penance and mortifications, which were frequently painful and even bloody, and on ‘heroic virtues’.30 This is the biography of a devout individual in which we find a large collection of accounts that seem to fall into the category of spiritual voyages, for they are discursive representations of experiences of a spiritual nature within the context of the daily experiences of these ‘exceptional’ Christians. According to Br. António de Almada, biographer, these voyages are a reward for the high degree of perfection achieved by Sister Mariana do Rosário in the field of mystical theology, centred particularly on the practice of mental prayer, amplified by the celebration of the ‘mystical marriage’.31 The subject of ‘mystical marriage’ had a particular prominence in the life of nuns, as the frequent epithet ‘bride of Christ’ attests. As is demonstrated by previous writers, in the wake of the Tridentine decrees, a new attitude – one almost paradoxical in nature – emerged, with an attempt to redirect behavioural standards back to the institution of marriage.32 This perspective came to influence the religious life, which justified the proliferation of literary and iconographical representations of the mystical marriage of St Catherine which, by then, was known throughout Europe.33

30 31 32

33

I used the following edition: António de Almada, Despozorios do Espirito celebrados entre o Divino Amante, e sua Amada Esposa a Ven. Madre Soror Mariana do Rozario Religiosa de veo branco no Convento do Salvador da Cidade de Evora (Lisbon: Miguel Manescal da Costa, 1766). Mario Rosa, ‘A religiosa’, in Rosario Villari, ed., O Homem Barroco (Lisbon: Editorial Presença, 1994), 173–206. See also Anna Scattigno, Sposa di Cristo. Mistica e communità nei ‘Ratti’ di Caterina Ricci (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2011). Egidio Ferasin, Matrimonio e celibato al Concilio di Trento (Rome: Lateranum, 1970); Réginald Grégoire, ‘Il matrimonio mistico’, in Il matrimonio nella società altomedievale (Spoleto, 22–8 aprile 1976) (Spoleto: Centro italiano di Studi sull’alto medioveo, 1977), 700–817; Gabriella Zarri, ‘Il matrimonio tridentino’, in Paolo Prodi and Wolfgang Reinhard, eds, Il Concilio di Trento e il moderno (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1996), 437–83; Gabriella Zarri, Recinti. Donne, clausura e matrimonio nella prima età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2000). Grégoire, ‘Il matrimonio mistico’, 700–817; Zarri, ‘Il matrimonio tridentino’, 437–83.

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Yet again, the morphosyntactic structures used by authors to construct their texts seem to point in the direction of the materialisation of a myriad of ‘voyages of the spirit’, such as the one which is narrated in the following excerpt, taken from the subchapter titled ‘The Divine Lover takes his Spouse to a field, which was akin to the Earthly Paradise’, ‘coloured’ throughout with an abundance of adjectives and details, largely in line with the tastes of the Baroque period.34 On a certain occasion, Sister Mariana do Rosário, feeling a ‘surmounting desire to partake in communion’: [s]aw herself change suddenly, as night into day, as death into life, as sorrow into glory; [then] she found herself in spirit upon a field most beautiful, perhaps the Earthly Paradise itself, for there the sight was enchanted by myriad hues fashioned together by Spring herself, and a gracious variety of wildflowers, gentle blossoms, which would surely win the jealousy of the most superb of gardens. The trees, alluring sight, their branches all in equal height, were decked in lovely leaves: some offered cool retreats to inhabitants beneath their shadows, others tantalised the senses with fruits; many a man would only have to reach out again and again to have his choice of viands if he were not to live in abstinence, as did Sister Mariana. At the centre of this pleasant grove, a fountain surfaced, the copious endeavour of the sea’s depths, which, divided into four abundant streams, race through multitudes of paths to the four parts of the world to supply it with water. No marble nor alabaster carved and moulded by Man’s hand can compete with that water’s alluring effect on the senses; because there, amidst the gold tint of the sands and the pebbles’ painted hues, a rivulet far clearer than crystal sprang forth, serenely divided itself into those four rivers, without disrupting the pellucid quality of the waters, and went on, the movements of their courses presenting transparent looking-glasses to the same trees and flowers they nourished. The forest-dwelling birds broke the silence with their melodies, music that, if failing to stop the rivers in their courses, at least soften the bellicose dispositions of brutish creatures, for the Lion went without ferocity, the Tiger stood stripped of its bloodthirsty inclinations; it seemed that all animals lived there in peaceful concord: only Man was banished from that garden, due to his pride and his disobedience. And how right is the soul feel moved when gazing upon these marvels and bewail, in regretful tones: ‘O, Adam, how dearly it costed you and how dearly you costed us!’35

34 Almada, Despozorios do Espirito, 301–3. 35 Ibid., 301–2.

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Thus we see the representation of Paradise as a garden, similar to the initial idea of Eden described in Genesis. On another occasion, while Sister Mariana do Rosário was entranced in prayer, Christ took her to see ‘the whole world and all of what was being done in it’; the sister: [f ]elt herself being taken away in spirit towards a high mount, foremost among the highest chains of mountains, that whilst barren in solitude, in greatness showed dominance over all the Earth’s circuit. From there, as if it were the watch-tower to all the world, the servant of God saw all kingdoms and all human nations. She saw Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Greece, and all other provinces and estates of Europe; she saw Asia, she saw Africa, she saw America, the settlements, and the deserts, the seas, and the islands, she saw the various states and laws of creatures, some barbarous, some political, some Catholic, some heathens, some religious and others secular. The Lord then showed her what each of them were busying themselves with at that hour […] She saw at last amongst the innumerable varieties of heathens, blossoming as a rose amidst thorns, the true Christian people, the mystical body, whose Head is the Lord Himself, whom left on earth his Vicar, the Supreme Roman Pontif.36

On a certain All Saints’ Day, Sister Mariana: [s]aw herself being taken in spirit to a high place full of lights and resplendence, which, due to the glory and beatitude enclosed in it, was surely the Kingdom of Heaven. There she gazed upon innumerable scores of blessed spirits and saw herself amongst those celestial inhabitants as a pilgrim, utterly amazed to find herself in such company, and pondering to herself on the vastness of the multitude of sweetness of the Lord. She then heard a voice asking her if she wished to partake in communion; however, owing to her scruples, she did not find herself in the adequate state to do so. At this time, she saw Christ, the High Priest, in a majestic throne […] Confessed in spirit, she was granted absolution by the Lord, after which, she was presented with the Host and the handbasin by two angels, for her to spiritually partake in communion too.37

As we can see, this excerpt, in addition to highlighting the exceptionality of Sister Mariana do Rosário, demonstrates the revalorisation of the 36 37

Ibid., 303–4. Ibid., 306–7.

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sacramentality of the communion, following the guidelines put forth by the Council of Trent. As scholars have shown, the Catholic Church reaffirmed the eucharist not only as the nourishment of faith, inasmuch as it maintained and developed the presence of God within souls, but also as a panacea for souls.38 This was in spite of the fact that the Iberian Peninsula did not have the disruptions caused by Protestantism, as in some other European countries, and the fact that heterodox movements of contested doctrines did not, by and large, occur in Portugal. In Vida Portentosa de Soror Thomazia de Jesus [Portentous Life of Sister Tomásia de Jesus],39 her biographer, Br. João Franco, relates that, on a certain occasion, God asked the sister: ‘Do you wish to see something good?’, to which she replied: ‘Yes, I do, Lord’. In that same instant, she found herself in a paradise of delights, where she stood admiring the Holy Tree of the Cross, shining with an effulgence brighter than a thousand Suns, and the here she was told the following: ‘This is the Tree of Redemption, and blessed are those who Its shadow covers’. The servant of God sighed in yearning to remain there, but she soon found herself back on earth. On another occasion, the Lord took her in spirit to the Glory, and there she prostrated herself before the Divine Immensity. On one side stood the Angels, on the other stood the Holy Virgins, and Our Lady chief among them. As the servant of God was between them, the Angels said unto her: ‘Come to us’; the Holy Virgins spoke the same words: ‘Come to us’; and the servant of God did not turn to one party or another, for she was beside herself, all immersed in the Divine Immensity. Because the disputes between the blessed and the Angels grew, the Divine Kindness interceded and quelled the matter by stating: Let her stand amongst both parties.40

Joseph Duhr, ‘Communion fréquente’, in Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascètique et mystique, vol. II (part 1) and vol. II (part 2) (Paris: Beauchesne, 1953), cols 1234–92; Danièle Alexandre-Bidon, ed., Le Pressoir mystique (actes du Colloque de Recloses) (Paris: Cerf, 1990). 39 João Franco, Vida portentosa da serva de Deus D. Thomasia de Jesus, Terceira professa na Ordem de S. Domingos, que morreu no convento do Salvador de Lisboa, em 26 de Maio de 1755 (Lisbon: por Miguel Manescal da Costa, 1757). 40 Ibid., 51–2. 38

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The biographer also narrates that, on the eve of St Michael the Archangel’s feast day, she adorned the image of the angel and placed it in the choir; that night she remained with the image, praying to the saint and: [s]uddenly she found herself in the Glory, where she beheld Saint Michael, transcendental in beauty, near the Patriarch Saint Joseph, and she admired the reverence shown by the Archangel to Saint Joseph, and there she understood that in the hierarchy of Saints; Saint Joseph was the Prince, as Saint Michael was in the hierarchy of Angels […] and, wishing to tarry in that place, she found herself back amongst the hardships of this world.41

This is one example that clearly demonstrates how various mimeses figure in the ‘Lives’ and in the models of sainthood described in them: indeed, St Michael was also frequently venerated by St Gertrude of Helfta, which may lead us to surmise that this saint acted as an example, a model of ‘perfect religious woman’, to be imitated by other clergywomen and, latu sensu, by readers of hagiographies. The ‘voyages of the spirit’ to Purgatory are not as abundant as the visitations of the spirit to Paradise, even if the belief in Purgatory began to gain momentum, especially from the thirteenth century onwards. This was because of the increasing popularity of appeals of the living in favour of the dead, by means of suffrages, as Jacques Le Goff has demonstrated.42 This was further stimulated after the Council of Trent, shown in representations of the souls of Purgatory in churches, chapels, oratories and by various religious brotherhoods of laymen, engaged in intercessions for the dead. It also produced a large literary output, for example Silva de Sufragios (1635) by Fr António da Natividade.43 Influential on this development was the legacy of St Catherine of Genoa, who wrote extensively about Purgatory. In her writings, St Catherine emphasises time and again the joy of the souls, in a process of progressive purification, occurring by stages. Her ‘Life’, along with the Treatise on Purgatory, was translated into Portuguese by Elias dos Lemos. However, in 1575, the tribunal of the Inquisition of Madrid prohibited the 41 Ibid., 52. 42 Jacques Le Goff, O nascimento do Purgatório (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1995). 43 António da Natividade, Silva de Sufragios (Braga: Manoel Cardoso, 1635).

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circulation of the Portuguese translation of St Catherine of Genoa’s book, ‘the year in which the Alumbrados of Llerena revived old fears and ghosts that were thought to be long at rest’.44 At any rate, the importance of St Catherine of Genoa to the spiritual domain was augmented by the publishing of another ‘Life’ of her, entitled Prodigios raros de altissima perfection en la vida maravillosa de […] Catalina Adorno [Strange Prodigies of the highest perfection in the wondrous life of […] Caterina Adorno’] in 1646 and 1647, translated by Tomás de Freitas Africano, configuring a model that would prove symbolic, if we consider the weight of the hagiography and the importance of the diffusion of the model of religious sainthood.45 In the Desposorios do Espirito, Br. António de Almada relates that Christ showed to Sister Mariana do Rosário: [i]n the depths of the earth a place entirely filled by a great fire, where innumerable souls suffered and groaned so pitifully that even if one were to have a heart of stone, they would be moved to tears, bewail and to take pity on them. There the blessed souls said amidst sighs: O, Lord, until when must we endure this? When will you, O merciful God, free us from this excessive torment, and send for us to rest beneath your gaze? Other times she heard them say: O, dwellers of Earth, how have you, so absorbed in your mundane pastimes, neglected our plight!46

In the Memorias da vida e virtudes da serva de Deus Soror Maria Joana, religiose do Convento do Santíssimo Sacramento do Louriçal [Memoirs of the life and virtues of the servant of God Sister Maria Joana, nun in the convent of the Most Blessed Sacrament of Louriçal’], Br. José Caetano de Sousa relates that Sister Maria Joana swore to her confessor that she went ‘in spirit to Purgatory’, or ‘this [Purgatory] appeared to her spirit (to use both sentences in this controversial topic of the Mystics). In this Purgatory [her spirit] suffered great pains, perhaps to merit the relief of some other souls’ own. She saw one in particularly prodigious torment: this was the soul of a person for whom the servant of God prayed for to the Lord when

44 Carvalho, Gertrudes de Helfta e Espanha, 165. 45 Tomás de Freitas Africano, trans., Prodigios raros de altissima perfection en la vida maravillosa de […] Catalina Adorno (Lisbon, 1646). 46 Almada, Despozorios do Espirito, 308.

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said soul was still attached to its earthly frame’.47 This person asked Sister Maria Joana for suffrages and, for this reason, the sister committed herself to undergo great acts of penance and to walk and meditate at the various stations of the Via Crucis several times.48 In turn, Br. João Freire narrates in his Vida Portentosa de Soror Thomazia de Jesus [Portentous Life of Sister Tomásia de Jesus] that Christ asked the Dominican sister if she wished to see Purgatory, where another clergywoman, Sister Maria Cecília, was; the latter had appeared multiple times to Sister Tomásia in her cell. Sister Tomásia de Jesus was immediately guided to Purgatory, where she beheld the nun that had previously visited her, always silent, and here the servant of God addressed the Lord in this fashion: ‘O, dear Jesus, if I am to be on earth at risk of losing you, let me remain here to be free of those cares and risks of the world’. And the Lord said: ‘You are under my care’. When she found herself back on this world, she cried many a tear, for she desired to be in Purgatory.49

In the works analysed here, we can also find cases of spiritual voyages to Hell, forming a landscape that seemed to fit the mould of the Church’s official discourse, one which was common and frequent over the course of the seventeenth century. The Holy See insisted that Hell was a place of punishment for sinners and emphasised the image of God as judge. This framework was referred to by Jean Delumeau as a ‘pastoral of fear’, disseminated by much literature – in which sermon books attained a pivotal role – which, with diverse nuances, sought to discipline and restrain behaviour and attitudes.50 It is pertinent to ask whether iconography had an important role in influencing, on a par with literature, the crystallisation and configuration of images related to Hell. Given that, over the course of the early modern 47 José Caetano de Sousa, Memorias da vida e virtudes da serva de Deus Soror Maria Joana, religiosa do Convento do Santissimo Sacramento do Louriçal (Lisbon: Miguel Rodrigues, 1762), 279. 48 Ibid., 238. 49 Franco, Vida portentosa da serva de Deus D. Thomasia de Jesus, 47. 50 Jean Delumeau, Le péché et la peur. La culpabilisation en Occident (XIII–XVIII siècles) (Paris: Fayard, 1983).

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period, images incited profoundly sensorial tastes and practices, it seems pertinent to question if the descriptions that we find in hagiographies and biographies of devout individuals were ‘contaminated’ by artistic representations.51 In the Desposorios do Espirito, Br. António de Almada confirms that Sister Mariana do Rosário was taken to a place due to its rigours of fire, but dissimilar in the horrendous clamours, and dissonant confusion, little had she to wonder to know that this was Hell: the blasphemies, the ire, the desperation, clearly shown it to be the place of the damned. Fear gripped the soul at the sight of the demons who, possessed by unquenchable hatred, tormented those poor wretches.

The tortured souls were uncountable: There stood all heathens, and of those who believed, there was a great number of them; there were perjurers, those who committed sacrilege, the adulterers, the lewd, the sinners who left this life without true penance castigated, and upon contemplating this sight, the Lord said unto His servant: ‘My daughter, for these souls I gladly suffered on the cross, yet they did not want my friendship’.52

In the Fragmentos da prodigiosa vida da muito favorecida e amada esposa de Jesu Christo a veneravel Madre Mariana da Purificação, religiosa carmelita [Fragments of the prodigious life of the much-favoured and muchloved bride of Jesus Christ, the venerable Mother Mariana da Purificação, Carmelite nun] (1747), authored by Br. Caetano do Vencimento, we find another description of Hell, one marked by a profusion of features that contribute to its portrayal as a horrible and fear-inducing place.53 In this ‘Life’, Mariana da Purificação was described as having seen ‘Religious women of all religions in a dark cavern and within it devils tormented them and burned their bare flesh with red-hot iron rods; others singed the women’s hairs with kindling; others dragged them about by their headdresses’.54 51 Niccoli, Vedere com gli occhi del cuore; Cassegrain, Représenter la vision. 52 Almada, Despozorios do Espirito, 308–9. 53 Caetano do Vencimento, Fragmentos da prodigiosa vida da muito favorecida e amada esposa de Jesu Christo a veneravel Madre Mariana da Purificação, religiosa carmelita (Lisbon: por António da Silva, 1747). 54 Vencimento, Fragmentos da prodigiosa vida, 289.

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Conclusion This essay has highlighted the importance of the theme of ‘voyages’, of diverse natures, in the literature of Counter-Reformation Portugal. Further, an important aspect of this trope, ‘spiritual voyages’ – or ‘voyages of the spirit’ – appear in the ‘Lives’ analysed, to be characterised by the ‘wondrous’, and to reflect various mimeses, in a strategy that aimed at enticing and fascinating readers, which in turn contributed to enhance, affirm and maintain the spiritual exceptionality and, consequently, the fama sanctitatis of the subjects of the ‘Lives’. The cases studied here contain spiritual experiences that, to use Ottavia Niccoli’s words, if they were not visible to the physical eyes, were visible to the eyes of the soul, creating a type of intermediate world, which, naturally, can only be understood within the historical, social and spiritual framework to which hagiographies and biographies of devout individuals belong.55 The descriptions of spiritual voyages found in these sources effectively seem to be paying tribute to those of other saints – for instance, St Brendan’s or St Patrick’s voyages, linked by hagiographical genre but also by much of the literature of the time – of moral, catechetical or ascetic nature, which pushed the idea of a Paradise only accessible to the righteous, the conception of a Hell polarised around the image of a place full of sinners, subjected to horrible punishments, and of a Purgatory, which emerged as a place for penance: this was, indeed, a strategy put into place by the Church and the ecclesiastical authorities to attract believers into the fold. The use of a fear-instilling discourse was a tactic that was highly effective and which had eternal salvation as its leitmotif. In some instances, these voyages are interpreted by biographers as a type of reward or gift granted to the individuals, because of the exceptional manner in which they showed their love for God, in penance, in prayer or in contemplation, reflecting, in this manner, their intimate relationships with God. These accounts appear as a variant of the macro-phenomenon framed by the spiritual experiences which, in the cases analysed here, are

55 Niccoli, Vedere com gli occhi del cuore.

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never perceived as illusions. These ‘voyages’ are a stage and a reward in the progress of the protagonists’ souls on their path to Christian perfection. In the case of religious women, the narrative of their ‘Lives’ pays tribute to and re-modernises models of mystical sainthood, largely based on the aspiration to divine favour and in the highest degrees of contemplation and union with God, which would culminate in mystical marriages, largely disseminated through iconography. The literary examples discussed in this essay are quite typical of hagiographic texts, not only in Portugal but also in Spain, of the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth century. Indeed, they seem to reflect the taste that the Iberian Baroque period had for this genre, so often linked to the spectacular, and which had, for a long time, fascinated readers and elicited reactions and emotions, ensuring the restructuring of an earthly itinerary, guided by perfection, one that had Heaven and eternal salvation as its ultimate goals. This framework is, naturally, indicative of the tastes of a large portion of its Portuguese target audience; the audience was certainly seduced by these ‘wondrous’ elements that were already in use in the genre of fiction, which itself had been restricted by authorities that placed such works on the ‘indexes’ of forbidden books. As is known, literature of devotion and concerning spirituality, the ‘Lives’ of saints in particular, were promoted as an alternative to and, not infrequently, as a replacement for fiction. Nevertheless, one must keep in mind that, in order to sell well, these texts had to incorporate mechanisms that sustained them and that ensured widespread interest among their readers. To that end, almost all works of this nature systematically resort to the incorporation of these aspects that, during those centuries, were guided by a certain ‘baroque spectacle’, and which continued to reverberate over the course of the eighteenth century, when some winds ‘of the Enlightenment’ came to be felt in Portugal. Although analysis here has illuminated some of the paths, we are still very much in the dark with regard to the immense universe that is this field; perhaps we will be able to shed further light on these matters as other sources are published – namely inquisitorial processes, letters and other writings, especially those authored by religious women, their confessors or spiritual guides, documentation that would allow for further extensive data comparison of spiritual travel.

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Bibliography Adnès, Pierre, ‘Visions’, in Paul Duclos, ed., Dictionnaire de Spiritualité Ascétique et Mystique, vol. XVI (Paris: Beauchesne, 1994), cols 949–1001. Africano, Tomás de Freitas, trans., Prodigios raros de altissima perfection en la vida maravillosa de […] Catalina Adorno (Lisbon, 1646). Agreda, Soror María de Jesús de, Mística ciudad de Dios, milagro de su omnipotencia, y abismo de la gracia. Historia divina, y vida de la Virgen Madre de Dios, Reina y señora nuestra María Santíssima, … por Soror Maria de Jesús, abadesa de el convento de la Inmaculada Concepción de la Villa de Ágreda (Lisbon: Antonio Craesbeeck de Mello, 1681). Alexandre-Bidon, Danièle, ed., Le Pressoir mystique (actes du Colloque de Recloses) (Paris: Cerf, 1990). Almada, António de, Despozorios do Espirito celebrados entre o Divino Amante, e sua Amada Esposa a Ven. Madre Soror Mariana do Rozario Religiosa de veo branco no Convento do Salvador da Cidade de Evora (Lisbon: por Manoel Lopes Ferreira, 1694). Almada, António de, Despozorios do Espirito celebrados entre o Divino Amante, e sua Amada Esposa a Ven. Madre Soror Mariana do Rozario Religiosa de veo branco no Convento do Salvador da Cidade de Evora (Lisbon: Miguel Manescal da Costa, 1766). Aveiro, Pantaleão de, Itinerario da Terra Santa (Lisbon: Simão Lopes, 1593; Lisboa: António Álvares, 1596; Lisboa: António Álvares, 1600; Lisboa: João Galram, 1685; Lisboa: António Pedrozo Galram, 1732; Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 1927). Barcellona, Francesco Scorza, ‘Infanzia e martirio: la testimonianza della più antica letteratura cristiana’, in Anna Benvenuti Papi and Elena Giannarelli, eds, Bambini Santi. Rappresentazioni dell’infanzia e modelli agiografici (Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1991), 59–83. Belchior, Maria de Lourdes, and José Adriano de Carvalho, ‘Génese e linhas de rumo da espiritualidade portuguesa’, in Maria de Lourdes Belchior et al., eds, Antologia de espirituais portugueses (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 1994), 11–23. Belchior, Maria de Lourdes, and José Adriano de Carvalho, ‘Portugal (16e–18e siècles)’, in Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique, Fascicules LXXX–LXXXI– LXXXII (Paris: Beauchesne, 1985), cols 1958–73. Berthon, E., ‘À l’origine de la spiritualité médiévale de l’enfance: les Saints Innocents’, in Robert Fossier, ed., La petite enfance dans l’Europe médiévale et moderne. Actes

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des XVIes journées internationales d’Histoire de l’Abbaye de Flaran (Septembre 1994 (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 1997), 31–8. Bilinkoff, Jodi, ‘Woman with a Mission: Teresa of Avila and the Apostolic Model’, in Giulia Barone, Marina Caffiero and Francesco Scorza Barcellona, eds, Modelli di santità e modelli di comportamento. Contrasti, intersezioni, complementarità (Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1994), 295–305. Brambilla, Elena, Corpi invasi e viaggi dell’anima. Santità, possesseione, exorcismo dalla teologia barocca alla medicina iluminista (Rome: Viella, 2010). Burke, Peter, ‘How to be a Counter-Reformation Saint’, in Kaspar von Greyerz, ed., Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe 1500–1800 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984), 45–55. Caffiero, Marina, ‘Tra modelli di disciplinamento e autonomia soggestiva’, in Giulia Barone, Marina Caffiero and Francesco Scorza Barcellona, eds, Modelli di santità e modelli di comportamento. Contrasti, intersezioni, complementarità (Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1994), 265–78. Cardoso, Jorge, Agiologio Lusitano dos Santos, & Varoens ilustres em virtude do Reyno de Portugal, & suas conquistas, vol. I (Lisbon: Craesbeeckiana, 1652). Carvalho, José Adriano de Freitas, Gertrudes de Helfta e Espanha. Contribuição para o estudo da história da espiritualidade peninsular nos séculos XVI e XVII (Porto: INIC/Centro de Literatura da Universidade do Porto, 1981). Carvalho, José Adriano de Freitas, ed., Bibliografia Cronológica da Literatura de Espiritualidade. 1501–1700 (Porto: Instituto de Cultura Portuguesa, 1988). Cassegrain, Guillaume, Représenter la vision. Figurations des apparitions miraculeuses dans la peinture italienne de la Renaissance (Arles: Actes Sud, 2017). Cavallotto, Stefano, Santi nella Riforma. Da Erasmo a Lutero (Rome: Viella, 2009). Châtellier, Louis, ‘Rinnovamento della pastorale e società dopo il Concilio di Trento’, in Paolo Prodi and Wolfgang Reinhard, eds, Il Concilio di Trento e il Moderno (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1996), 137–58. Civil, Pierre, Image et dévotion dans l’Espagne du XVIe siècle: le traite Norte de Ydiotas de Francisco de Monzón (1563) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne/Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1996). Cirlot, Victoria, and Blanca Garí, La mirada interior. Escritoras místicas y visionarias en la Edad Media (Madrid: Siruela, 2008). De Maio, Romeo, ‘L’ideale eroico nei processi di canonizzacione della controriforma’, in Riforme e miti nella chiesa del Cinquecento (Naples: Guida Editori, 1992), 253–74. Delumeau, Jean, Le péché et la peur. La culpabilisation en Occident (XIII–XVIII siècles) (Paris: Fayard, 1983). Delumeau, Jean, and Monique Cottret, Le Catholicisme entre Luther et Voltaire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996).

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Dias, José Sebastião da Silva, Correntes de sentimento religioso em Portugal (séculos XVI a XVIII), vol. I (Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra; Huerga: Álvaro Huerga, 1960). Dias, José Sebastião da Silva, ‘La vida cristiana a los siglos XV–XVI’, in Alvaro Huerga et al., eds, Historia de la Espiritualidad. Vol. II: Espiritualidades del Renacimiento, barroca e ilustrada, romântica y contemporânea (Barcelona: Juan Flors, 1969), 15–139. Dinzelbacher, Peter, Révélationes (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991). Dinzelbacher, Peter, and Dieter R. Bauer, eds, Movimento religioso e mística femminile nel Medioevo (Milan: Edizioni Paoline, 1993). Duhr, Joseph, ‘Communion fréquente’, in Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascètique et mystique, vol. II (part 1) and vol. II (part 2) (Paris: Beauchesne, 1953), cols 1234–92. Esposito, Anna, ‘La morte di un bambino e la nascita di un mártire: Simonino da Trento’, in Anna Benvenuti Papi and Elena Giannarelli, eds, Bambini santi. Rappresentazioni dell’infanzia e modelli agiografici (Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1991), 99–118. Ferasin, Egidio, Matrimonio e celibato al Concilio di Trento (Rome: Lateranum, 1970). Fernandes, Maria de Lurdes Correia, ‘Da reforma da Igreja à reforma dos cristãos: reformas, pastoral e espiritualidade’, in Carlos Moreira de Azevedo, ed., História Religiosa de Portugal, vol. II (Lisbon: Círculo de Leitores, 2000), 15–38. Fernandes, Maria de Lurdes Correia, ‘Espiritualidade (Época Moderna)’, in Carlos Moreira de Azevedo, ed., Dicionário de História Religiosa de Portugal, vol. II (Lisbon: Círculo de Leitores, 2000), 187–93. Fernandes, Maria de Lurdes Correia, ‘História, santidade e identidade. O Agiologio Lusitano de Jorge Cardoso e o seu contexto’, Via Spiritus 3 (1996), 25–68. Fernandes, Maria de Lurdes Correia, ‘O Agiologio Lusitano de Jorge Cardoso (†1669): hagiografia, memória, história e devoção na Época Moderna em Portugal’, in Sofia Boesch Gajano and Raimondo Michetti, eds, Europa Sacra. Raccolte agiografiche e identità politiche in Europa tra Medioevo ed Età Moderna (Rome: Carocci Editore, 2002), 227–40. Franco, João, Vida portentosa da serva de Deus D. Thomasia de Jesus, Terceira professa na Ordem de S. Domingos, que morreu no convento do Salvador de Lisboa, em 26 de Maio de 1755 (Lisbon: por Miguel Manescal da Costa, 1757). Fros, Henri, ‘Culte des saints et sentiment national. Quelques aspects du problème’, Analecta Bollandiana 100 (1982), 729–35. Granada, Leandro de, Luz de las Maravillas que Dios ha obrado desde el principio del mundo en las almas (…). Tratase de las apariciones de Dios, Christo, Ángeles, santos gloriosos, animas del Purgatorio hechas a los vivos. Y resuelve lo mas dificultoso de la Theologia (Valladolid, 1607).

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Grégoire, Réginald, ‘Il matrimonio mistico’, in Il matrimonio nella società altomedievale (Spoleto, 22–8 aprile 1976) (Spoleto: Centro italiano di Studi sull’alto medioveo, 1977), 700–817. Knox, Dilwyn, ‘“Disciplina”: le origini monastiche e clerical del buon comportamento nell’Europa cattolica del Cinquecento e del primo Seicento’, in Paolo Prodi, ed., Disciplina dell’anima, disciplina del corpo e disciplina della società tra Medioevo ed Età Moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994), 69–99. Le Goff, Jacques, O nascimento do Purgatório (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1995). Lemos, Helias de, Liuro da vida admiravel da bẽauenturada Catherina de Genoa & de sctã doctrina. Traduzido de italiano em romãce portugues por o doctor Helias de Lemos (Lisbon: Ioão de Barreira, 1564). Lora, José Luis Sánchez, Mujeres, conventos y formas de la religiosidad barroca (Madrid: F.U.E., 1988). Mendes, Paula Almeida, ‘Espelhos de Santa Teresa de Jesus. A escrita, a tradução e a leitura das “Vidas” teresianas em Portugal (séculos XVII–XVIII)’, in Atas do Congresso Internacional ‘A Reforma Teresiana em Portugal (2015)’ (Marco de Canaveses: Edições Carmelo, 2017), 71–9. Mendes, Paula Almeida, Paradigmas de Papel: a edição de ‘Vidas’ de santos e de ‘Vidas’ devotas em Portugal (séculos XVI–XVIII) (Porto: CITCEM, 2017). Mendes, Paula Almeida, ‘“Porque aqui se vem retratados os passos por onde se caminha para o Ceo”: a escrita e a edição de “Vidas” de santos e de “Vidas” devotas em Portugal (séculos XVI–XVIII)’, 2 vols, PhD dissertation, University of Porto, 2012. Natividade, António da, Silva de Sufragios (Braga: Manoel Cardoso, 1635). Niccoli, Ottavia, Vedere com gli occhi del cuore. Alle origini del potere delle imagine (Rome: Laterza, 2011). Poutrin, Isabelle, ‘¿Para qué servían los libros de revelaciones de mujeres? Deleites místicos, movilizacion católica y entretenimiento devoto en la España barroca’, in Nieves Baranda Leturio and María Carmen Marín Pina, eds, Letras en la celda. Cultura escrita de los conventos femininos en la España moderna (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2014), 147–58. Poutrin, Isabelle, Le voile et la plume. Autobiographie et sainteté feminine dans l’Espagne moderne (Madrid: Casa de Velásquez, 1995). Rapp, Francis, L’église et la vie religieuse en Occident à la fins du Moyen Âge (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971). Rosa, Mario, ‘A religiosa’, in Rosario Villari, ed., O Homem Barroco (Lisbon: Editorial Presença, 1994), 173–206. Santo Agostinho, Confissões, trans. Arnaldo Espírito Santo, João Beato and Maria Cristina de Castro-Maia de Sousa Pimentel (Lisbon: IN-CM, 2nd edn, 2004).

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Santos, Zulmira C., ‘Literatura religiosa (Época Moderna)’, in Carlos Moreira de Azevedo, ed., Dicionário de História Religiosa de Portugal, vol. III (Lisbon: Círculo de Leitores, 2000), 125–30. Scattigno, Anna, Sposa di Cristo. Mistica e communità nei ‘Ratti’ di Caterina Ricci (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2011). Sousa, José Caetano de, Memorias da vida e virtudes da serva de Deus Soror Maria Joana, religiosa do Convento do Santissimo Sacramento do Louriçal (Lisbon: Miguel Rodrigues, 1762). Tavares, Pedro Vilas Boas, Beatas, inquisidores e teólogos. Reacção portuguesa a Miguel de Molinos (Porto: CIUHE, 2005). Tavares, Pedro Vilas Boas, ‘Caminhos e invenções de santidade feminina em Portugal nos séculos XVII e XVIII. (Alguns dados, problemas e sugestões)’, Via Spiritus 3 (1996), 163–215. Urban VIII, Decreta in seruanda … Accedunt Instructiones & declarationes quas Em. Et Ver. S. R. E. Cardinales Praesulesque Romanae Curiae ad id muneris congregati ex eiusdem Summi Pontificis mandato condiderunt (Rome, 1642). Urbano, Carlota Miranda, ‘Heroísmo, santidade e martírio no tempo das reformas’, Península. Revista de Estudos Ibéricos 1 (2004), 269–76. Vauchez, André, ‘Antisémitisme et colonisation populaire: saint Werner ou Vernier (†1287), enfant martyr et patron des vignerons’, in André Vauchez, ed., Les laïcs au Moyen Âge. Pratiques et expériences religieuses (Paris: Cerf, 1987), 157–68. Vencimento, Caetano do, Fragmentos da prodigiosa vida da muito favorecida e amada esposa de Jesu Christo a veneravel Madre Mariana da Purificação, religiosa carmelita (Lisboa: por António da Silva, 1747). Villena, Sor Isabel de, Speculum Animae. Manuscrit Espagnol 544 de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, ed. Albert G. Hauf i Valls and Daniel Benito Goerlich (Madrid: Editorial Internacional de Libros Antiguos, 1992). Zarri, Gabriella, ‘Il matrimonio tridentino’, in Paolo Prodi and Wolfgang Reinhard, eds, Il Concilio di Trento e il moderno (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1996), 437–83. Zarri, Gabriella, Recinti. Donne, clausura e matrimonio nella prima età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2000). Zarri, Gabriella, ed., Donna, disciplina, creanza cristiana dal XV al XVII secolo. Studi e testi a stampa (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1996).

Jennifer Hillman

8 The ‘Contagiousness of the Sacred’: Writing Spiritual Biographies in Seventeenth-Century Le Puy-en-Vélay

Abstract In the medieval and early modern periods, pilgrims flocked to Le Puy from all over Europe to seek the intercession of the Black Madonna of Le Puy: one of the most significant Marian shrines of the era. Studies have already revealed much about how the episcopal reforms brought rituals, processions and devotions into line with Tridentine reforms, as well as the activism of Jesuit scholars in the documentation and authentication of miracles occurring at the shrine. Building upon this, the present essay uncovers the contributions that local, spiritual biographers were making to the Catholic revival in Le Puy by exploring an corpus of intersecting vitae or ‘Lives’ produced in the mid-to-later seventeenth century. The essay concentrates on the healing miracles that spiritual biographers exhorted their readers to consider as ‘proof ’ of the sanctity of local pious individuals – miracles which, it is argued, were strongly inflected by the traditions surrounding the shrine of the Black Virgin.

In April 1694, the recently deceased body of the Sulpician priest CharlesLouis de Lantages (1616–94) was placed in the chapel of the Virgin in the seminary church of Saint-Georges in Le Puy-en-Vélay in south-central France. Lantages’s recently deceased body was overlooked by the nearby Cathedral of Notre-Dame du Puy and its Marian shrine, the Vierge Noire, visited by thousands of early modern soul travellers every year. The Black Virgin of Le Puy was known for her abilities to intercede on behalf of pilgrims and induce bodily healing and spiritual recovery.1 It was in this 1

The meanings of colour in ‘Black Madonna’ cults have been explored by Monique Scheer in ‘From Majesty to Mystery: Change in the Meanings of Black Madonnas from the Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries’, American Historical Review 107.5 (2002), 1412–40. This demonstrated the exceptional status of the Le Puy virgin around whom there seems to have been an awareness of her colour. A contemporary

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spiritual landscape that Lantages had passed away in the small hours of Thursday, 1 April 1694. As news of his death spread, people immediately came to venerate the body of a man they considered among the ranks of the saints. In the days after his interment, observers noted his skin regain colour and sweet smells emanate from his corpse. Over the next couple of years, his tomb became the site for a number of miraculous healings predominantly among lay and religious women – the first of which was the curing of Marguerite Treveys, who belonged to the congregation of the Dominican Third Order in Le Puy. Other recoveries quickly followed and a veritable cult was established surrounding the Sulpician priest from Paris.2 During his lifetime, Lantages had been connected to a community of pious individuals in Le Puy who were all similarly notable for their ‘holy deaths’ and ability to heal those afflicted by ill health or unwanted demonic infiltrations. This essay recovers the history of this spiritual community and traces its connections to the pilgrimage shrine at Le Puy. The focus here will be to uncover the impact that the pilgrimage shrine in Le Puy had on local conceptions and configurations of holiness in the long Counter Reformation and, furthermore, how spiritual biographers contributed to local sacred histories using the ‘Lives’ or vitae of pious individuals. Underpinning this will be a set of spiritual biographies pertaining to three key individuals, a female religious, a laywoman and a spiritual director respectively: Agnès Galand (1602–34), Anne-Marie Martel (1644–73) and Charles-Louis de Lantages. Agnès Galand was a Dominican nun from the nearby convent of Sainte-Catherine at Langeac. Her ‘Life’ was published in 1665 by Charles-Louis de Lantages, but was

2

history of the shrine at Le Puy by the Jesuit Odo de Gissey also included an image depicting her skin as black. Odo de Gissey, Discours Historiques de la tres ancienne devotion a N Dame du Puy (Lyon: 1620). I have consulted the 1644 edition for the purposes of this chapter. The main sources we have for the life of Charles-Louis de Lantages are E. M. Faillon, Vie de M. de Lantages, premier supérieur du séminaire de Notre-Dame du Puy, 2 vols (Paris : D’Adrien Le Clere, 1830) and the seventeenth-century manuscript biographies by Madeleine de Gauchet, Paris, Archives de la Compagnie de Saint-Sulpice, MS. 598 and MS. 250.

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substantially based on two earlier manuscript biographies.3 Lantages’s own spiritual biography was written by Sister Madeleine-Gabrielle Gauchet from the nearby convent of the Visitation, where Lantages had served as confessor. This ‘Life’ was never published contemporaneously and remains extant in manuscript at the Sulpician archives. It was also partly reproduced and quoted from in a nineteenth-century biography of Lantages written by Étienne Michel Faillon (d. 1870) in 1830.4 Anne-Marie Martel was also the subject of a biography by Lantages just over a decade later, in the late 1670s, which again remains unpublished. Here, too, Lantages was drawing upon earlier manuscript accounts, from which he borrowed and embellished.5 It will be argued here that this collection of spiritual biographies was inflected by the traditions which had grown up around the shrine of the Black Virgin and given new prominence in the early French Counter Reformation – particularly its stories of healing miracles, bodily cures and spiritual recoveries. Spiritual biographers were, of course, writing within the broader context of hagiographic literature and saint-making in the post-Tridentine era, but they were also contributing to a specifically localised devotional culture which centred upon Le Puy as the climactic point in the spiritual journey of its inhabitants and its pilgrims.6 Before 3

4 5

6

‘L’admirable vie de soeur Agnès de Jesus par un religieux de l’ordre de saint Benoit’, Archives de la Compagnie de Saint-Sulpice, Paris, MS. 253 & MS. 254; Esprit Panassière, Mémoires sur la vie d’Agnès de Langeac (Paris: Cerf, 2006); Arnaud Boyre, Grand Mémoire sur Agnès de Langeac (Arfuyen: Orbey, 2004); Charles de Lantages, Vie de la bienheureuse Agnès de Langeac, La première biographie (Paris: Cerf, 2011). Madeleine de Gauchet, ‘Petit Recueil ou mémoire de ce que jay scu de la vie et vertus et de ste mort de feu Charles de Lantages’, Archives de la Compagnie de Saint-Sulpice, Paris, MS. 250; Faillon, Vie de M. de Lantages. Antoine Tronson, ‘Vie de Mademoiselle de Martel Fondatrice de l’Instruction’, Congrégation des Sœurs de l’Enfant Jesus, Paris; Charles-Louis de Lantages, ‘Histoire de la vie et des vertus de deffunte damoiselle Anne-Marie Martel de la ville du Puy en Velay’, Congrégation des Sœurs de l’Enfant Jesus, Paris, MS.1 & MS.2. Historians such as Simon Ditchfield, Katie Harris and Howard Louthan have shown how local histories helped to strengthen the ‘autonomy’ of local religious practices in response to official attempts to regularise devotions with the revised Roman Breviary in 1568 and the creation of the Sacred Congregation of Rites in 1588.

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going on to establish the processes which were at work in the writing of spiritual biographies in seventeenth-century Le Puy, and setting out the textual genealogies of those compositions, the first part of this chapter will consider the environment in which Lantages and his fellow biographers were writing.

‘Miracles Make a Shrine:’ Pilgrimage and Healing in Le Puy-en-Vélay Le Puy-en-Vélay is a town which, even now, is dominated by its place as an international pilgrimage centre. Le Puy was one of the sites in southern France on the ‘Way of Saint James’ or the route to the shrine of Saint James at Santiago de Compostela in Spain. It also had its own jubilee years when the Feast of the Annunciation (25 March) coincided with Good Friday. As Bernard Dompnier, Virginia Reinberg, Elizabeth Tingle and Esther Cohen have already shown, the town had a thriving devotional culture centred upon the shrine which saw regular forty-hour rituals and confraternity processions, as well as the production of pilgrim badges, jewellery and other

Ditchfield’s study of Pietro Maria Campi shows expertly how local counterparts to Cesare Baronio’s Annales Ecclesiastici sought to ‘vindicate’ local devotional traditions: Simon Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity and History in Tridentine Italy: Pietro Maria Campi and the Preservation of the Particular (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Howard Louthan, Converting Bohemia: Force and Persuasion in the Catholic Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2009); A. Katie Harris, From Muslim to Christian Granada: Inventing a City’s Past in Early Modern Spain (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007); Simon Ditchfield, ‘What was Sacred History? (Mostly Roman) Catholic Uses of the Christian Past After Trent’, in Katherine Van Liere, Simon Ditchfield and Howard Louthan, eds, Sacred History: Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 72–97.

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tokens.7 Le Puy became one of the most popular Marian shrines in early modern France. In 1622, for instance, it was visited by 300,000 pilgrims.8 Le Puy was, then, by the late seventeenth century, well established as a holy destination for pilgrims in search of indulgences, as well as bodily and spiritual cures. In the early modern period, Le Puy also became a significant site for the spiritual renewal brought about by the French Counter Reformation. This found expression in the migration of new secular congregations such as the Congregation of Saint Sulpice to Le Puy, as well as the establishment there of charitable congregations. In the early modern period, Le Puy was also the regional capital of the lace-making industry and most of its inhabitants were involved in the trade in lace – whether as merchants or manufacturers – until well into the nineteenth century.9 This was a traditional industry, led by skilled female labourers, later known as beatés. The beatés were women who belonged to a lay female uncloistered order the Filles de l’Instruction de l’Enfant Jesus – founded by the second of our three biographees, Anne-Marie Martel. The beatés ran communal lace-making houses in Le Puy and were involved in the religious and moral education of young girls. Lace-making was thus inextricably linked to devotional life in Le Puy during the seventeenth century.

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Bernard Dompnier, ‘Les processions au Puy-en-Vélay au XVIIIe siècle’, in Anne Marie Cocula and Josettee Pontet, eds, Aux contact des lumieres (Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux), 41–59; Virginia Reinburg, ‘Les pelèrins de Notre-Dame du Puy’, Revue de l’histoire de l’Eglise de France 75.195 (1989), 297–313; Virginia Reinburg, ‘Archives, Eyewitnesses and Rumours: Writing about Shrines in Early Modern France’, Past and Present 230 (2016), 174–5; Virginia Reinburg, French Books of Hours: Making an Archive of Prayer, c. 1400–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Elizabeth C. Tingle, Indulgences after Luther: Pardons in Counter-Reformation France, 1520–1720 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2015), 108; Esther Cohen, ‘In Haec Signa: Pilgrim-Badge Trade in Southern France’, Journal of Medieval History 2.3 (1976), 193–214. Victor Turner and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 200. Daryl M. Hafter, European Women and Pre-Industrial Craft (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 67–70.

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It was within this milieu that Lantages, a priest from Saint-Sulpice in Paris, was himself transferred to Le Puy in 1653 after the Sulpician seminary had been founded there by Jean-Jacques Olier (1608–57). The Sulpician seminary was one of the ‘new’ secular congregations of the Counter Reformation. The congregation had initially moved into the Parisian parish of Saint-Sulpice in 1642 when Olier became the parish curé. Three seminaries were later founded in the provinces at Clermont, Viviers and Le Puy. During Lantages’s tenure as rector of the Sulpician congregation in Le Puy he devoted much of his time to the female religious at the convent of the Visitation, and also seems to have had a following of lay women whose devotional lives he directed. As is argued in this chapter, it was during his tenure as rector of the Sulpician congregation there that Lantages formed spiritual relationships with a number of female religious, as well as the devout female laity who comprised the Sisters of the Infant Jesus. Le Puy is a town built on volcanic rock in the mountains of the Auvergne region. Pagans erected a shrine to a female deity on one of the volcanic rocks which had been a sacred site for many centuries before it was destroyed by Christian missionaries. In the fifth century ce (c. 400), a local woman reported the appearance of the Virgin Mary on the rocks, which cured her of an illness.10 This led to the erection of the first chapel, in 431 ce, on the site of the apparition. Pilgrims began to travel to Le Puy seeking the intercession of the Virgin and by the thirteenth century there was a small, 29-inch statue of the seated Virgin and child (or a ‘throne of wisdom’) on the main altar of the cathedral.11 Historians usually agree that King Louis IX brought back this ebony statue of the Virgin as a gift to the shrine from the Holy Land during the Seventh Crusade (1248–54). The image was destroyed during the French Revolution when the Virgin was carried off to the town square and burned on 8 June 1794.12 In 1802, a new one was erected and the pilgrimage culture revived with a late eighteenthcentury replica of the original statue. After the Council of Trent, pilgrimage was promoted by the Church at least in part as an expression of Catholic identity in a Europe which 10 Reinburg, French Books of Hours, 298. 11 Ibid., 227. 12 Scheer, ‘Black Madonnas’, 1434.

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was fragmented by competing confessions.13 Le Puy-en-Vélay was an early Christian pilgrimage site as we have seen, but in the post-Tridentine period there was a renewed interest in the shrine as a holy destination for pilgrims. The pilgrimage culture of Le Puy has been expertly recovered by historian Virginia Reinburg. She discovered that the post-Tridentine bishops of Le Puy, Henri de Maupas du Tour (1641–61) and his successor Armand de Béthune (1635–1703), took considerable interest in the cult, as a way to bring the regulations of the Council of Trent to the region. Reinburg found that their reforms introduced Eucharistic devotions into the jubilee processions in honour of the Black Virgin, bringing venerations into line with the agenda of the post-Tridentine Church.14 As well as the Counter-Reformation bishops, the Jesuits played an important part in the promotion of the Marian cult in Le Puy. As Reinburg puts it, with its renowned ‘ancient’ image of the Virgin Mary (a dark coloured or ‘Black Madonna’), its robust Catholic identity, and steady influx of pilgrims, Notre-Dame du Puy, as did other major Marian shrines, provided a tempting opportunity for religious orders intent on expanding their influence in the last decades of the religious wars.15

Recently, Reinburg has discovered the impact that the Jesuits potentially had on devotional culture in Le Puy – specifically on the culture and traditions surrounding the shrine of the Black Virgin – through the documenting and circulation of chronicles and histories. Reinburg’s work has highlighted the intellectual pursuits of Jesuit scholars such as Odo de Gissey (1567–1643), who wrote shrine books reporting miracles and relaying the sacred histories of shrines. In Le Puy, Gissey’s work was published in 1620, but it went through several other editions, in 1627, 1644 and 1646.16 Gissey and his collaborators based the shrine book on other collections of evidence, including an unpublished manuscript by a local

This has been argued by Marc Forster in Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque: Religious Identity in South West Germany 1550–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 84. 14 Reinburg, ‘Les pelèrins de Notre Dame du Puy’, 309. 15 Reinburg, ‘Archives, Eyewitnesses and Rumours’, 174–5. 16 Gissey, Discours Historiques. 13

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merchant, Estienne Médicis (1475–1565). Both Gissey and his predecessor used written records alongside iconographic evidence in the cathedral to demonstrate the authenticity and veracity of the miracles they reported. Gissey, in particular, took a great deal of care to emphasise the reliability of his visual and written sources. By the mid-seventeenth century there was, then, a tradition in Le Puy for recording miracles at the shrine of the Black Virgin, which was imagined as painstaking, intellectualised work. This evidence for the deeper Jesuit interest in documenting and publishing records pertaining to the Black Virgin helps us to contextualise the writing of spiritual biographies in Le Puy at this time. It reveals a broader, local culture of collecting testimonies and memories – specifically about shrine miracles – and using them to celebrate sites of Catholic worship. Not only did each of our biographers share important direct personal and spiritual connections to the Jesuits in Le Puy, they were also surely familiar with the miracle stories that Jesuit scholars such as Gissey had brought to light by the 1640s. At one level, the circulation of miracle stories surrounding the shrine of the Black Virgin of Le Puy is quite typical for an early modern European pilgrimage site. Miracle or ‘shrine books’ had a long tradition in such places and were often added to, functioning like registers, when new occurrences had been recorded. At local shrines in sixteenth-century Spain, for example, new miracles had to be approved by the bishop in response to the Tridentine regulations. The regulations required witness testimonies and signed statements from witnesses, before they could be approved.17 This is precisely what Gissey and other Jesuit scholars were trying to achieve in their recording of miracles in Le Puy. As William Christian stated, ‘Careful documentation sought to avoid some of these false miracles and restore public confidence in the shrine’s power … the documentation and proclamation of miracles at a shrine was a source of local pride’.18 In many places across Catholic Europe, then, miracles made the shrine. Yet they were now to be miracles which were entrenched in documentary, community histories. They featured names, occupations, addresses, witnesses, members of the local medical profession and were coloured by other relevant local details. 17 William Christian, Local Religion in Sixteenth Century Spain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), 103. 18 Christian, Local Religion in Sixteenth Century Spain, 105.

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Across early modern Europe, certain pilgrimage sites and shrines became known for their power to cure certain ailments and conditions. The thaumaturgical powers of saints often extended to fevers, blindness and even paralysis. Like other contemporary Marian shrines, in Le Puy the Black Virgin was associated in particular with the healing of pregnant and infertile women.19 For that reason, the cult of the Black Virgin extended well beyond Le Puy and even found expression in Parisian female prayer books.20 This was also reflected in the predominance of historic pregnancy, labour and child-related miraculous healings at her shrine, as recorded in the documentary histories by Gissey. He describes, for example, a miracle which took place in June 1433, saving the life of a child belonging to one Jacques Clerc.21 Another similar healing occurred in 1494, when the wife of Sieur de Rives was safely delivered of a child after four days in labour, after her husband promised to visit the shrine with half a quintal of wax.22 Other healings were less joyful – including the miracle of Jean Croterot’s child on 14 July 1453, who was saved from the uterus of her dead mother, just long enough to be baptised and buried in the same coffin. This was in return for Croterot’s promise of a wax ex-voto of the child.23 This is also discernible in other local histories of Le Puy. François Bochart de Saron de Champigny (1633–1715), bishop of Clermont, wrote a history of Notre Dame du Puy in 1693 which listed some of the more remarkable healings surrounding the pilgrimage shrine. According to his account, in 1494 one Demoiselle de Rives was delivered of a daughter after four days in labour; in 1555 Marie Pauvier had a healthy child after seven stillbirths; in 1616 demoiselle Louise Gerri delivered a child after never having been able to deliver a baby alive; and in 1618 a young child aged ten, Anne de Piberes, was cured of hydropsy or oedema.24 Scholars have shown that pregnant and labouring women were increasingly visible in miracula (or miracle narratives) from the twelfth

19 Reinburg, French Books of Hours, 228. 20 Reinburg discusses prayers found in two prayer books owned by women, ibid., 226. 21 Gissey, Discours Historiques, 484. 22 Ibid., 495. 23 Ibid., 488. 24 François-Theodore Bochart de Sauron, Histoire de l’Eglise Angélique de Notre-Dame du Puy (Au Puy, 1693), 439–46.

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century onwards. Hilary Powell has found that while pregnancy and childbirth were in the early Middle Ages on the ‘hagiographic margins’, in the later period this began to change as lay female testimony began to be incorporated.25 Iona McCleery found miracles featuring women who had been menstruating for years in medieval Portuguese hagiography, for example.26 The dangers of childbirth and accidents or illnesses involving children were also a common feature of medieval miracula – as studied by Michael E. Goodich and Ronald Finucane.27 The miracles which were being reported in Le Puy were thus part of a broader culture of healing at Marian shrines across medieval and early modern Europe. What it is important to note about the appearance of this tradition in Le Puy is that it was something which was being reasserted by Gissey and other harbingers of the Counter Reformation in the early seventeenth century. The Black Virgin’s role as protector of infants and female fertility was also being evoked in locally composed spiritual biographies, as we shall see in the next part of this chapter.

Spiritual Biography and the ‘Contagiousness of the Sacred’28 Spiritual biographies, ‘Lives’ or vitae were essentially accounts of personal spiritual journeys – a devotional life. Published ‘Lives’ were increasingly devoured by pious readers in seventeenth-century Europe and biographies were also circulated in manuscript form within smaller familial and 25

Hilary Powell, ‘The “Miracle of Childbirth”: The Portrayal of Parturient Women in Medieval Miracle Narratives’, Social History of Medicine 25.4 (2012), 795. 26 Iona McCleery, ‘Multos ex medicinae arte curaverat, multos verbo et oration: Curing in Medieval Portuguese Saints’ Lives’, Studies in Church History 41 (2005), 194. 27 Michael E. Goodich, Miracles and Wonders: The Development of the Concept of the Miracle 1150–1350 (London: Routledge, 2017), 94; Ronald C. Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in Medieval England (London: Macmillan, 1995). 28 The contagiousness of the sacred is taken from Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. Carol Cosman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 238–9.

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pious networks.29 As historians such as Jodi Bilinkoff have discovered, spiritual biographies were often composed by confessor-spiritual directors and focused on the personal spiritual lives of their directees.30 Jacques Le Brun has also unveiled the important and substantial contribution made by female religious biographers within female religious communities.31 Less is known about the scope of female-authored biographies outside of the convent – probably because ‘Lives’ written by women tended to remain unpublished and ‘unofficial’. Many have also been lost, or their contributions obscured by subsequent male editors preparing manuscripts for publication.32 The extent to which spiritual biographies really do reflect 29 Jodi Bilinkoff, ‘Confessors, Penitents and the Construction of Identities in Early Modern Avila’, in Barbara Diefendorf and Carla Hesse, eds, Culture and Identity in Early Modern Europe 1500–1800: Essays in Honour of Natalie Zemon Davis (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 83, 94. On the circulation of manuscript biographies within a familial network, see Jennifer Hillman, ‘Writing a Spiritual Biography in Early Modern France: The “Many Lives” of Madeleine de Lamoignon’, French Historical Studies (forthcoming, 2019). 30 The key example here is Jodi Bilinkoff, Related Lives: Confessors and their Female Penitents 1450–1750 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005). There is some interesting recent use of biographies in Clare Copeland, Maria Maddelena De’ Pazzi: The Making of a Counter-Reformation Saint (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 31 Jacques Le Brun, Soeur et amante: les biographies spirituelles féminines du XVIIe siècle (Geneva: Droz, 2013). For Le Brun’s work on biographies, see also ‘Cancer serpit: recherches sur la représentation du cancer dans les biographies spirituelles féminines du XVIIe siècle’, Sciences sociales et santé 2.2 (1984), 9–31; ‘À corps perdu. Les biographies féminines du XVIIe siècle’, in Corps des dieux. Le Temps de la réflexion (Paris : Gallimard, 1986); ‘Conversion et continuité intérieures dans les biographies spirituelles françaises du XVIIe siècle’, in La Conversion au XVIIe siècle (Marseilles: C.M.R, 1982), 317–35. 32 Nicholas Paige, ‘Enlightened (Il)literates: Problems of Gender and Authority in Early Modern Devotional Writing’, in David Lee Rubin and Julia V. Douthwaite, eds, Rethinking Cultural Studies 2: Exemplary Essays (Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood Press, 2001), 129. Compare, for example, the manuscript life of Marie de Bonneau, Madame de Miramion written by her daughter with the published version; a later manuscript copy survives at Bibliothèque Mazarine, MS. 2489 and the earliest published version is François-Timoléon de Choisy, Vie de Madame de Miramion (Paris: A. Dezallier, 1706). On this, see Jennifer Hillman, ‘Lay Female Devotional Lives in the Counter Reformation’, Church History and Religious Culture 97.3–4 (2017), 369–80.

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the idiosyncrasies of an individual spiritual journey has been contested. In her study of the printed biographies of Italian laywomen, Anne Jacobsen Schutte argued that these were texts organised via narrative tropes borrowed from hagiographic models, or saints’ lives.33 Biographies were hagiographic texts which, on occasion, were evoked during canonisation proceedings when the saintliness of the biographee gained official, papal recognition.34 The story of Charles-Louis de Lantages’s passing close to the pilgrimage site in Le Puy certainly conformed to the hagiographic model of the ‘holy death’, as we have already seen. In that sense, biographies have the potential to tell us as much about the biographer and their motivations and agendas as they do about the devotional lives of their biographees. The spiritual biography which Sister Gauchet composed about the Sulpician spiritual director Lantages was the last to be penned in a collection of interconnected vitae in seventeenth-century Le Puy. These surviving, intersecting spiritual biographies are a unique cluster of sources which offer us the opportunity to discover more about the impact of an international pilgrimage centre on the devotional culture of a pious network of religious and lay women, and the male clerics who acted as their confessors and spiritual directors. Émile Durkheim’s model of sacred contagion is a useful tool for thinking more closely about these connections. For Durkheim, sacred spaces and objects potentially spread beyond their original bounds through contact and association; equally, they are protected and guarded by rituals. The pilgrim’s contact with the sacred imbues them with a degree of sacred power and protection. Ritualised venerations, such as prayers and processions, and official ‘saint making’ processes limit the sacred to the spaces at and surrounding the shrine and help to further delineate the sacred and profane. Miraculous healing at shrines in the early modern period worked in a similar way. Contact with the sacred could sometimes

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Anne Jacobson Schutte, ‘Ecco la santa! Printed Italian Biographies of Devout Laywomen, Seventeenth-Eighteenth Centuries’, in Alison Weber, ed., Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World (London: Routledge, 2016). 34 Eric Suire, La Saintété française de la réforme catholique (XVI–XVIII siècles) d’après les textes hagiographiques et les procès de canonisation (Pessac: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2001).

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produce miraculous results for pilgrims, but the post-Tridentine Church closely regulated saintly miracles to prevent them spreading too far.35 In Le Puy, the miracles performed by the Black Virgin seemed to inflect the spiritual ‘Lives’ composed in the shadow of her shrine by our biographers Charles-Louis de Lantages and Sister Madeleine Gauchet. Miraculous healings were not unknown in vitae such as these, especially where biographers felt there was a potential future case for formal recognition of piety through beatification or canonisation. It was arguably the ‘extraordinary contagiousness’ of the sacred which was at work in seventeenth-century Le Puy, as the miracle stories of the Black Virgin spilled out of the shrine books and into the broader culture of pious biography in the town. Agnès Galand and the Black Virgin of Le Puy As the spiritual biographer of Agnès Galand, Charles-Louis de Lantages set out to write the life of a woman who he had never actually met. Agnès de Jésus was a Dominican nun and mystic from the monastery of SainteCatherine at Langeac, around 40 kilometres west of Le Puy-en-Vélay. She had been born in Le Puy in 1602 into a relatively humble artisan family. She joined the Dominican Third Order in 1621. In 1625, she took vows at the monastery of Sainte-Catherine at Langeac where she was initially a lay sister, before progressing to choir nun. Agnès and the Dominican house at Langeac had close ties to the Sulpician seminary in Le Puy because JeanJacques Olier was said to have founded the seminary in part due to her spiritual influence.36 During her lifetime, Agnès’s spiritual experiences gained the attention of a number of influential clergy at Langeac and in nearby Le Puy. Esprit Panassière, the sous-prieur of Saint-Laurent du Puy,

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This is an approach that has also been adopted by William B. Taylor, ‘Trouble with Miracles: An Episode in the Culture and Politics of Wonder in Colonial Mexico’, in Christopher Ocker, Michael Printy, Peter Starenko and Peter Wallace, eds, Politics and Reformations: Essays in Honour of Thomas A Brady Jr (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 443. Kathryn A. Edwards, Everyday Magic in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 2016), 84.

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was her confessor from 1622 and later became confessor of the Dominican convent. Her authenticity was also verified by her spiritual director Arnaud Boyre, the rector of the Jesuit college at Le Puy. Both Panassière and Boyre wrote accounts of Agnès’s spiritual life, which survive in manuscript form. There is also a third surviving manuscript biography of Agnès which seems to have been commissioned by Olier, although its precise provenance and authorship is unclear.37 In 1652, Jacques Branche had also published several passages about Agnès in a hagiographic work about saintly figures from the region.38 Agnès died in 1634 at the age of thirty-two, almost twenty years before Charles-Louis de Lantages had even arrived in Le Puy. Yet her legacy with the Sulpicians was clearly strengthening and Lantages went on a yearly pilgrimage to the monastery at Sainte-Catherine to venerate the woman who had inspired his predecessor, Olier. Lantages was also becoming part of the spiritual network of male clerics surrounding Agnès during his sojourns in Langeac. His own biography betrays his access to both Boyre’s and Panassière’s accounts, which he borrowed from heavily as he began to write the life of Agnès in around 1661. Each of the biographical accounts were composed with the post-Tridentine stringency in mind. Panassière’s account was signed and dated 6 September 1661, and counter-signed by male clerical witnesses, including Lantages and other Sulpicians. Boyre’s mémoires refer regularly to Panassière, and Lantages cites these earlier biographies directly. It seems important to note that when Lantages set out to write Agnès’s spiritual biography, then, he was engaging in a longer-term, collective endeavour which brought him into contact with other local, influential clerics. Across all of the biographies composed about Agnès, we discover that her spiritual authority manifested itself in a number of ways – most significantly, perhaps, through her ability to discern spirits and expose false sanctity. Episodes involving Agnès’s mystical death and ‘self-exorcism’ are also related by each of her biographers. Importantly, her first spiritual 37 38

‘L’admirable vie de soeur Agnès de Jésus par un religieux de l’ordre de saint Benoit’, Archives de la Compagnie de Saint-Sulpice, Paris, MS. 253 & MS. 254. Jacques Branche, La vie des saints et des saintes d’Auvergne et de Velay (Au Puy, 1652).

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experience and vision occurred in a chapel in Le Puy long before she entered the convent at Langeac. The anonymous biographer also reported an occasion in the chapel of the Holy Crucifix inside Notre-Dame du Puy, where the sound of Agnès singing an Ave Maria moved the soul of a pilgrim and made them lose consciousness.39 From an early age, Agnès also displayed thaumaturgic powers. In Panassière’s account, for instance, she healed a farmer with a head injury after praying for the intercession of the Virgin and placing her hands on him.40 By the 1620s, she also seemingly had a reputation for her healing miracles and was solicited for help by André Barthélemy for a leg injury.41 There was also a miracle involving Agnès saving a child at the Hôtel de Polignac in Le Puy, which was reported by both Panassière and the anonymous biographer.42 Boyre appears to have been more cautious in his recording of the miraculous, with a simple disclaimer that there have been ‘healings’ and ‘other effects of sanctity’ after Agnès’s death, which the ‘sage Seigneur’ the bishop ‘will record’.43 Boyre was prudent in his deference to the bishop. In post-Tridentine Europe, spiritual biographers had to be careful in their assertions. Making claims about the healing powers of saintly bodies was something which the Catholic Church wanted to subject to closer regulation in this period, ‘with one ear cocked for the sound of Protestant derision’ as Laura Ackerman Smoller neatly put it.44 Spiritual biographers and hagiographers had to navigate a very rigid set of prescriptions on ‘saint making’ which meant they could not make unsubstantiated claims about ‘miracles’ or ‘revelations’. In March 1625, Rome issued a decree which banned people from venerating body parts of the deceased as holy without papal approval. In 39 ‘L’admirable vie de soeur Agnès de Jésus’, folios 140–1. 40 Panassière, Mémoires sur la vie d’Agnès de Langeac, 74. This is also reported in ‘L’admirable vie de soeur Agnès de Jésus’, folio 179. 41 Panassière, Mémoires sur la vie d’Agnès de Langeac, 226. 42 Panassière, Mémoires sur la vie d’Agnès de Langeac; ‘L’admirable vie de soeur Agnès de Jésus’, folio 182. 43 Boyre, Grand Mémoire sur Agnès de Langeac, 132. 44 Laura Ackerman Smoller, The Saint and the Chopped-Up Baby: The Cult of Vincent Ferrer in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), 230.

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October, it issued a second decree which modified this slightly and allowed for the private collection of accounts of miracles in order that evidence for holiness would not be lost. Biographers were also required to make explicit their status as writers of ‘human history’, rather than testifiers to saintliness. In reality, however, spiritual biographers did relate stories of miraculous healings. As French scholar Antoinette Gimaret has expertly shown, the body was an important site for the construction of saintliness in spiritual biographies. With such attentiveness to the details and veracity of the miraculous, as well as anxieties surrounding false sanctity, many spiritual biographies from early modern France avoided the more explicit semantics of the ‘saintly’ and the ‘miraculous’. Lantages was a shrewd biographer and certainly shared Boyre’s cautiousness about making such claims in his biography of Agnès. In the preface to his biography, he made the kinds of declarations which came to typify spiritual biographies in the post-Tridentine climate. Lantages wrote that he would ‘refrain’ from referring to Agnès as ‘blessed’ or ‘sainte’. His ‘protestation’ was that he was simply giving an ‘account’ (récit) of her virtues, graces and miracles based on those who had witnessed them.45 Lantages was writing for publication and he knew that Agnès had not yet received any formal recognition of sanctity by Rome (something which would not be achieved until 1994 when she was beatified by Pope John Paul II). Yet he was intent on verifying the veracity of the miracles that had occurred in Agnès lifetime, and especially those occurring after her death. Interestingly, it was Agnès’s final biographer Lantages who sought to underscore her role as a saintly protector of women in both physical and spiritual terms. In his version of her life, Agnès’s powers of discernment, and even exorcism, were paralleled by her ability to heal the sick. Like the Black Virgin whose shrine dominated Le Puy, Agnès seemed to have a special gift for healing pregnant and labouring women. In fact, Lantages actually devoted a chapter of his biography to healings that had occurred specifically in the sphere of pregnancy and childbirth. The first involved the wife of one Monsieur Gay who had been in childbirth for four days without delivery. She was given a

45 Lantages, Vie de la bienheureuse Agnès de Langeac, 29.

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contact relic – a chain which Agnès had worn for several years around her waist – and the child was delivered.46 The second case concerned the wife of a man known as Corlu from Langeac. She was pregnant with her fifth child, after four previous births had ended in death before baptism, and asked the nuns of Sainte-Catherine to invoke the protection of Mother Agnès. The prioress promised the prayers of her community and sent the poor woman some ‘broth in the little bowl which had served the mere Agnès throughout her life’. She told her to make a vow to come to her tomb and that she should name the child Dominic if it was a boy, or Agnès if it was a girl.47 Needless to say, the woman delivered the baby safely. A third case was the wife of Vidal Reboul who was in extreme pain in labour, without delivery. Her husband took a letter of St Agnès and put it on her body, whereupon she gave birth to a healthy child.48 Of course, Lantages had the advantages of hindsight; he was writing later, after the memoirs of Boyre and Panassière had been handed down to him. He also had the time to observe the growth of the cult around Agnès after her death, whereas Panassière had seemingly stopped writing in 1661. Lantages was, however, a spiritual director who was in regular contact with the female religious and lay women of Le Puy and Langeac. His decision to collate those miracle stories connected to the healing of pregnant women seems significant, especially as they existed alongside a more generic collection of healing narratives. Lantages was responding to written and oral traditions about miracles in the Jesuit and Sulpician circles to which he was connected, when he presented Agnès’s sanctity in a way which complemented and strengthened the devotional culture of a pilgrimage centre with a Marian shrine. Lantages went further than simply using the Black Virgin as a Marian hagiographic model; the references to the shrine were sometimes explicit and direct. Even during Agnès’s final illness, the local lay women who had been inspired by her holiness made a vow to undertake a pilgrimage to the Black Virgin if she could intercede

46 Ibid., 441–2. 47 Ibid., 442. 48 Ibid., 442.

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on Agnès’s behalf.49 The presence of the Black Virgin and the innumerable, authenticated miracles that she had induced seemed to lend credence to the cult of Agnès Galand. In return, the pious acts performed by Agnès were at once reminiscent of, and sometimes directly invoked, the powers of the Black Virgin of Le Puy. Interestingly, as the cult of Agnès grew, so did her association with the shrine at Le Puy. This is clear from later nineteenthcentury editions of Lantages’s biography, in which male clerical authors continued to stress her connections to the Black Virgin.50 Lantages had succeeded in creating a legacy linking the life of a Dominican nun and mystic from Langeac to the spiritual heritage and traditions of the shrine at Le Puy. The Black Madonna was not only spiritually significant to the soul travellers who came, in their droves, to venerate her in person. She also exerted a lasting influence on the spiritual journeys of local, pious individuals whose ‘Lives’ (in both senses of the word) became entwined with hers. Writing the Life of a Spiritual Biographer Lantages’s dedication to recording the miraculous healings of those who prayed to Agnès Galand for intercession was surpassed only by the attentiveness of his own spiritual biographer, the Visitandine Sister Gauchet. It was, perhaps, Lantages’s reputation as an extraordinary director of souls which motivated one of his penitents Marie-Madeleine-Gabrielle Gauchet, to write his ‘life’ shortly after his death. She corresponded with a Parisian woman, Mademoiselle Madeleine Leschassier, who was a patron of the Sulpicians, and her brother François, who was later superior, about writing the biography shortly after the miracles surrounding Lantages’s tomb

49 Ibid., 279. 50 In a later edition of her life by the Abbé Lucot, for example, Agnès’s miracles occasionally intersected with miracles performed at Notre-Dame-du-Puy. On one occasion in 1698, she exhorted the parents of an ailing child to undertake a pilgrimage there and the child was saved, Vie de la Venerable Mere Agnès de Jésus (Paris, 1863), 437.

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had begun.51 Gauchet herself was from Paris and had taken vows at the Visitation house on 22 July 1655. She later became superior at the Visitation convent in Le Puy. Gauchet claimed to have been Lantages’s spiritual daughter for some forty-four years at his death in 1694. Spiritual biographies were often written in this period by ‘confessorturned-hagiographers’, and the female religious also often wrote the Lives of their foundresses, but it was more unusual for female penitents to write the biographies of their confessors.52 What is more extraordinary about this female-authored biography is the lengths that Gauchet went to to narrate the healing miracles effected by Lantages both in life and death.53 Importantly, these miracles had much in common with those which the Sulpician priest had himself recounted in the life of the Dominican nun Agnès Galand published some thirty-three years earlier. Of the beneficiaries of healing miracles after Lantages’s death, most were women and there were only three men – one of whom was saved from drowning, another from a boat, and a third was relieved of a condition causing leg pain. Other female recipients of miracle healings included the 12-yearold daughter of one Madame de Cheminades who was suffering from pleurisy and cured after prayers were said to the Sulpician. Demoiselle Jeanne Gerentès, who was 47 years old and had been paralysed for five years, addressed the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ through the intercession of Lantages. She then commenced a novena and heard Mass in the Visitation convent, before the nuns sang a Te Deum. Gauchet added her own note on the miracle that Gerentes was able to walk and kneel for 51

52 53

Madeleine Leschassier was the sister of François and Robert Leschassier. François became superior in 1704 and died in 1725. Robert had three wives and died on 28 June 1723. Madeleine founded the Maison des Filles de l’Instruction Chrétienne. For her correspondence, see Jean-Jacques Olier, Lettres Spirituelles de M. Olier (Paris, 1672), vol. 2, 57, n. 1. Elizabeth Teresa Howe, Autobiographical Writing by Early Modern Hispanic Women (London: Routledge, 2016), especially Chapter 1. Gauchet, ‘Petit Recueil ou mémoire’, MS. 250, folio 261. As we observed at the beginning of this chapter, the first reported healing at Lantages’s tomb after his death came on 14 September 1698 with the 22-year-old Marguerite Treveys, who belonged to the Third Order of the Dominicans.

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many years after the miracle. Similarly, a female religious of Notre-Dame du Puy suffering from hydropsy or oedema was healed after prayer to Lantages. One ‘virtuous daughter’ from Le Puy known as Mademoiselle Valery was suffering from violent headaches but miraculously cured after wearing Lantages’s ‘hat’ (probably the priest’s biretta). The hat was also associated with a number of other miracle cures, largely of the female religious in Le Puy. The miracles associated with the hat generated a desire in Le Puy for other contact relics or brandia associated with Lantages. One Mademoiselle Girin procured a ‘scourge’ which Lantages had used in his own self-flagellation. When one of the young girls in her household later became ill with a fever, Girin gave her a broth into which she had immersed the scourge. She was immediately cured and had not since suffered with fevers.54 Not all of Lantages’s miracle working occurred after his death. A lady of Le Puy, Madame Richon, wife of the avocat of Le Puy and of an eminent piety, was extremely weakened in body and spirit for one year. She experienced violent head pains which were so long-lasting that she could not sleep, nor take any rest day or night. Furthermore, she had a distaste for food which reduced her to a shockingly thin state. These bodily pains were accompanied by spiritual pains which were no less fierce, continual anxieties and a chagrin which consumed her from day to day. The account goes on to say that her doctors had tried for one year to pull her out of this state, but failed, and reached the conclusion that she would soon die. Lantages visited her and as he uttered words of consolation and placed his hands on her head, she was cured. In Gauchet’s gloss, she goes on to say that she recorded this account by taking these ‘words from her mouth’.55 During his life, Lantages’s healing hands seem to have been particularly efficacious in the sphere of fertility, pregnancy and labour. Gauchet’s account described how a lady of Le Puy, Madame Acarion, ‘having been two 54 The healing miracles in Gauchet’s biography are at ‘Petit Recueil ou mémoire’, MS. 250, folios 254–64. 55 MS. 250, folio 249.

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days in labour with strange pains but without being able to deliver, believed that she would succeed if she procured something which belonged to this man of God’. She was given a piece of an old rabat (like a collar) which had served Lantages and it was placed on her. At that instant, she delivered.56 We learn that Madame Acarion’s sister then took the relic to use in her own childbirth. Another pregnancy-related healing came shortly afterwards. This time Madame Pont was suffering ‘like the mother of Samuel’, though not for her sterility, but rather, a fecundity that produced only stillbirths – eight in total. Her tears were said to ‘touch’ Lantages and after he told her to go in peace, she safely delivered her child.57 Lantages was, it seems, a healer of bodies as well as souls. Miracles affecting female fertility and childbirth at pilgrimage sites such as Le Puy served an important sociocultural purpose. In her work on female pilgrimage in medieval Europe, Leigh Ann Craig has recently demonstrated how often miracles portrayed female pilgrims receiving help with illnesses that were ‘situated well within both social and physiological norms’.58 In other words, miracle narratives record women being cured of gynaecological and obstetric problems which impaired their ability to produce and deliver healthy babies – two things that were integral to their socially constructed femininity. Craig has argued persuasively that female pilgrimage was often legitimated on the grounds that it could be a ‘natural and necessary extension to their caregiving duties’.59 Gauchet’s healing stories do seem to conform to gendered patterns: women tend to be cured of fertility-related problems and chronic illnesses such as paralysis which prevent them feeding themselves (and by implication, their families), whereas men are saved from dangerous accidents in water or fire.60 As well as reflecting the ‘sacred contagion’ of the Marian shrine 56 57 58

MS. 250, folio 254. MS. 250, folio 254. Leigh Ann Craig, Wandering Women and Holy Matrons: Women as Pilgrims in the Later Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 95. 59 Ibid., 5. 60 Anne-Marie Korte, ‘Women and Miracle Stories’, in Anne-Marie Korte, ed., Women and Miracle Stories: A Multidisciplinary Exploration (Leiden: Brill, 2004).

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and the textual links with Lantages’s biography of Agnès Galand, the miracles recorded in Gauchet’s life of Lantages were also a testament to a thriving female devotional culture in Le Puy. In telling stories about Lantages and his healing powers, his biographer Gauchet – and all the other women who contributed to the construction of his life through their testimonies – were also witnesses to the pious female communities in Le Puy. In this chapter so far we have seen the prominence of gendered miracle accounts in the spiritual biographies of Agnès Galand and Charles-Louis de Lantages. I have suggested that these might be read not only as a reflection and extension of the local traditions surrounding the Marian shrine, but also as a celebration by spiritual biographers of the place of lay and religious women in the local religious landscape of Le Puy. Lantages was clearly writing to promote the cult of Agnès de Jésus – the mystic who had inspired Olier to bring the Sulpicians to Le Puy – by appealing to a well-established, local cult surrounding miracles and the fertile female body. In a similar way, Lantages’s female biographer Gauchet emphasised the healings that the spiritual director had accomplished with his female penitents in a way which was reminiscent of the healing powers of the Black Madonna of Le Puy. These sources allow us to chart new connections between pilgrimage and vitae-writing which go beyond the sacred journey as a narrative device. What begins to emerge from the sources is a spiritual environment in Le Puy which offered biographers a plethora of ways to give meaning to the lives of their biographees – shaping, perhaps, the stories they selected to tell and how they imagined their readers would interpret them. Importantly, local residents conducted their entire spiritual journeys, from birth to death (and beyond), under the gaze of the shrine. Pilgrimage shrines and their sacred histories were thus important cultural tools for the pilgrims who stayed put, as well as those travelling from afar. The next and final part of this essay will analyse another ‘Life’ which will allow us to add to this picture of spiritual ‘Lives’ in Le Puy: the spiritual biography of Anne-Marie Martel, written in 1676 by Charles-Louis de Lantages.

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Constructing a Holy City: Le Puy in the Spiritual Biographies of Anne Marie-Martel The spiritual relationships which Lantages was forming with women in Le Puy and Langeac continued long after his life of Agnès Galand was published, as did his reputation as a spiritual director. Lantages’s connections with pious female communities were also at the heart of a second biography he penned before his death, this time of Anne-Marie Martel (1644–73). Martel was born on 11 August 1644 in the parish of SaintGeorges in Le Puy, to Claude and Marie Martel. Her father was a lawyer of the steward’s court and public prosecutor for the bishop.61 The year of Martel’s birth was a jubilee year in Le Puy, observed with the processions and venerations reformed by Bishop Henri de Maupas. Sulpician priests from Lantages’s congregation served the parish of Sainte-Georges from 1653 – the same year as Claude Martel’s death – and Lantages was named as the superior. After Martel’s mother died in 1659, she entered the convent of Sainte-Catherine in Le Puy as a boarder, before returning to the family home in 1660. It was at this time that Martel took the Sulpician Antoine Tronson, priest of Saint-Georges, as her confessor-spiritual director. Under his direction, Martel continued to live a pious life in the world as a lay woman who remained devoted to charity and with a special devotion to the Black Virgin of Le Puy. Her charitable works focused on sick women and pilgrims in Le Puy in the city hospital of Aiguilhe. Martel was also known for her role in catechising pilgrims and beggars outside Notre-Dame du Puy, before establishing in 1668 a small congregation of women, living with a ‘rule’ but as lay women. Her semi-religious congregation of women who carried out charitable work and teaching became known as the Sisters of the Infant Jesus, as we have already noted. Martel became ill in 1672 and died in 1673, leaving a substantial legacy behind her 61

Joachim Bouflet, Anne-Marie Martel: A Pioneer of the New Evangelization, trans. Kate Larson (Edmonton: Chronicler, 2011), 30.

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in the female communities she had established. Incidentally, Anne-Marie Martel is yet to have her sanctity formally recognised by the Church, but an open cause for beatification is under consideration in Rome and based substantially on the accounts in her biographies. As with his work on Agnès Galand, Lantages used his editorial skills in writing the life of Martel and leaned heavily on a set of manuscript notes by her confessor from the parish of Saint-Georges, Antoine Tronson. In this instance, neither the biography by Lantages nor the memoirs by Tronson have been published and survive in manuscript form only in the archives of the congregation in Paris. Lantages was relatively faithful to the writings of Martel, as they appeared in Tronson’s notes, and his adaptations were largely editorial, rendering her words into the first person.62 In many ways, the biographies of Anne-Marie Martel present her life as extraordinary in its simplicity. Both of her Sulpician biographers presented her as a woman devoted to charity in her local parish and committed to supporting the faith of others, particularly other local women and girls in Le Puy and in the surrounding areas. Yet both Tronson and Lantages wrote of the miraculous in their biographies, with a particular focus on the healing miracles which took place after Martel’s death around her tomb. Tronson’s biography begins with the healing of a 17-year-old girl who completed a novena in honour of Martel, but Lantages’s attentiveness to miracles around Martel’s tomb was more comprehensive, albeit with the same cautiousness as he displayed in his first ‘Life’. Their accounts of her death follow the ‘holy death’ narrative: her personal possessions and her body emitted a sweet smell for years afterwards.63 As with Agnès Galand, Anne-Marie Martel’s powers of healing sometimes came from contact relics, objects she had worn or possessed in life. For example, one of the first reported healings

62 A fuller comparison of the two lives by Lantages and Tronson would help to reveal some of the important differences and the strategies adopted by Lantages as an experienced spiritual biographer. 63 I am indebted to Sister Annemarie and the Congrégation des Sœurs de l’Enfant Jésus for granting access to selected manuscripts in their collection in Paris. Tronson, ‘Vie de Mademoiselle de Martel’, folio 71; Lantages, ‘Histoire de la vie et des vertus de deffunte damoiselle Anne-Marie Martel’, MS.1, folio 229.

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at her tomb was of a local man, Monsieur de Glavenas, who was tormented by an unremitting headache, and chest pains which prevented him from breathing properly. Amid the agonies of his illness, and what seemed like imminent death, he asked to be brought to him the chemise or shirt that Anne-Marie Martel had been wearing on her own death bed, which had been kept by her tomb at the nearby convent of Sainte-Catherine. Needless to say, Monsieur de Glavenas was promptly cured. The shirt, which had clearly been in contact with Martel’s corpse, was then described by the biographer as emitting a perfumed scent, as well as remaining stain free ‘which one does not expect of a shirt in which someone has died of illness’.64 What distinguishes Lantages’s biography of Martel from his biography of Agnès Galand is that the healings did not focus on the sphere of pregnancy and childbirth. Instead, Martel’s tomb seems to have been frequented by young girls and older (widowed?) women who were probably connected to Martel in life: a 9-year-old girl with a fever was cured with a piece of cloth which had belonged to Martel; 22-year-old Marie Ranquet was cured of a headache; 29-year-old Gabrille Gautier was relieved of a fever; a demoiselle de Colin was cured of a headache; and the widow Antoinette Mouliade was relieved of her knee pain, among others. Despite the fact that the healing miracles were not inflected by the same kinds of stories occurring at the shrine of the Black Virgin of Le Puy, the narratives seem to be performing a similar function. Lantages (and Tronson to a lesser extent) underscored the significance that Martel had for female pious communities in Le Puy, most of them lay women, and Martel’s role in creating a spiritual haven in the town. This is reinforced in Lantages’s biography, which contains within it a shorter series of abridged ‘Lives’ of women and girls raised by the Filles de l’Instruction.65 Spiritual biographies naturally aimed to emphasise the spiritual legacy left by the deceased in their local communities, but in Martel’s biography her contributions are situated as part of a much broader spiritual battle. We learn from Lantages that in March 1679, during the mass exorcism of a 64 Lantages, ‘Histoire de la vie et des vertus de deffunte damoiselle Anne-Marie Martel’, folio 224. 65 Ibid., folio 196.

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number of residents of Le Puy, the demons themselves attested to the sanctity of Anne-Marie Martel, speaking through the mouths of the demoniacs, or possessed. The exorcist, a priest De La Chetardie from Saint-Cosme de Tours, attested to the fact that the demoniacs did not know of Anne-Marie Martel or her reputation, making their cries all the more miraculous. The ‘demon, by their mouths, spoke’. The demons cried that ‘she [Martel] was opposed to them’, that ‘God had raised her high in heaven’, that she would no longer be unknown to the world and ‘miracles would be performed at her tomb’ and that she [Martel] would ‘burn them’ [the demons] and ‘make them angry’ and that ‘this little girl’ [Martel] was ‘destroying their empire’.66 The demons even spoke of God’s intention that the ‘works of instruction that she had established’ would continue. Demonic possession was imagined here as something victims had to ‘recover’ from, just like illness.67 In the biography, however, Lantages does not even relate how the exorcism went, simply the details which contributed to his vision of Le Puy as a holy city. In this case, the virtuousness of Martel and the female communities she had led were cast as the antithesis to the demon and evil more generally. Le Puy was the city where ‘miracles’ would occur and the site for the destruction of a demonic ‘empire’. Testimonies from demoniacs appear elsewhere in Lantages’s life of Martel. On another occasion, during the exorcism of a possessed young girl at the tomb of Anne-Marie Martel, the demon spoke through her about Martel as their tormentor, but also exposed the parish curé as a sorcerer and a fraud. He quickly confessed and the parish community were re-baptised. Lantages noted in his gloss that the spiritual life of the diocese was enhanced by the exorcism.68 Soul travellers who came to Le Puy in the late seventeenth century would, almost certainly, be entirely unfamiliar with Anne-Marie Martel, Lantages and their pious associates. What this spiritual community had helped to sustain, however, was a thriving devotional culture with strong connections to the Vierge Noire. 66 Ibid., folio 229. 67 David Gentilcore noted the similarities between demonic possession and illness in healing narratives in Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 182. 68 Lantages, ‘Histoire de la vie et des vertus de deffunte damoiselle Anne-Marie Martel’, folio 194–5.

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Conclusion In the seventeenth century, Le Puy was emerging as one of the most important pilgrimage sites in France and among the most frequented Marian shrines in Catholic Europe. In this chapter, we have seen how the effort to further authenticate and strengthen the cult of the Black Virgin in the early decades of the Counter Reformation in France was led by scholars. As with many other Jesuit historians across Europe in this period, Gissey’s published works served as a repository of historical evidence for the veracity of miracles in Le Puy and the sanctity of the city. This chapter has argued that the set of intersecting spiritual biographies produced in Le Puy in the seventeenth century must be situated within this broader religious and intellectual context. Just like the historical shrine books of Le Puy, the authors of spiritual biographies were not simply telling the stories of their biographees, they were contributing to a much broader picture of devotional life in a Catholic city and bastion of the Counter Reformation. Lantages and his fellow spiritual biographers of seventeenth-century Le Puy were writing ‘Lives’ in the shadow of the shrine of the Black Madonna. However, it is worth noting that the spiritual biographies we have considered in this chapter were not simply reflecting or imitating the miracles and piety surrounding the Marian shrine. The spiritual biographies of, and by, lay and religious women were arguably helping to shape devotional culture in a city with an iconic and historic patroness. Lantages’s life of Agnès Galand reached a wider readership in print than the Lives of Anne-Marie Martel and Lantages, which were never published. However, they probably enjoyed circulation in manuscript form among the Sulpicians and their associated pious networks. The fact that Le Puy was the site for the composition of this corpus of biography itself hints at a certain appetite for these texts. It also suggests that biographers sensed the spiritual significance of Le Puy and some of its most pious inhabitants. The presence of healing miracles across all of the accounts composed in the city further underscores the uniqueness of this set of sources. As we have noted, while accounts of miraculous healings were reasonably common in hagiographical texts, in Le Puy they were central to the vitae. In an era when claims of false sanctity had been expressly prohibited by the Church, the traditions surrounding the shrine of the Black Virgin perhaps lent

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credence to the miracles reported by Lantages, Boyre, Panassiere, Tronson, Gauchet and other biographers. Biographers such as Lantages and Gauchet went to great lengths to recover and record testimonies about miraculous healings, and the authorial process was a collaborative one. Even when the healing miracles they reported seemed to conform to familiar tropes, they were also anchored in local traditions. When Lantages wrote the life of a Parisian Dominican Françoise de Saliné, for example, miracle healings were not on his radar – presumably because they were not as relevant to the local spiritual landscape. It is worth restating that the implications of this case study for the history of pilgrimage, and of ‘soul travel’, are twofold. Firstly, it reminds us that accounts of personal spiritual journeys in vitae are products of the circumstances of their composition, as much as accounts of a devotional life. Secondly, it points to an interesting dynamic between large pilgrimage shrines and the devotional culture of the local community. Ancient pilgrimage shrines such as the Black Madonna offered a history and heritage which could be reappropriated by male and female spiritual biographers seeking to tell new stories during the French Catholic revival. Furthermore, the individuals who filled the registers, shrine books and the appendices of spiritual biographies presumably also interpreted their own illnesses and recoveries using the stories and cultural traditions which were available to them.

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Tom Wilson

Postscript Spiritual Travel in the Twenty-First Century: Pilgrims or Tourists?

In August 2016 I co-led a two-day course for a group of forty adults training part-time to become Church of England vicars. We were helping them encounter lived religious faith in the diversity of Leicester. Taking forty would-be leaders anywhere was bound to be something of an exercise in herding cats, and so it proved to be. Getting everyone to take their shoes off, cover their heads, put their cameras away, stop talking to each other and actually listen to the guide, then ask relevant and concise questions before moving on to the next place of worship in accordance with a very tight schedule was something of a challenge. Beside the logistics, and the personal learning I did about how to organise such a programme, there was a more fundamental question underlying our activities. When such a group visits a mandir [Hindu temple] during arti or a mosque in time for dhuhr [midday] prayers or a gurdwara [Sikh place of worship] as offerings are made before the Guru Granth Sahib, in what capacity are the Christians present? Are they students there to observe? Religious pilgrims on a spiritual journey? Tourists enjoying a break from the lecture hall? The central question this short postscript discusses is the interface between religious tourism and spiritual pilgrimage. The organisation that I work for, the St Philip’s Centre in Leicester, specialises in what I would term ‘lived religious encounter’. That is to say, we do not teach about the doctrines of any particular religious faith, not that there is anything wrong with teaching doctrine, just that it is not our focus. Rather we enable learners to encounter and understand the lived religious practice of those who live as Jains, Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, Hindus, Christians, Pagans, Secularists or Bahai in twenty-first century Leicester. As an organisation working in an increasingly divided and fractured world, we believe that

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we can live well together, and we work to enable people to learn how to do just that. The Centre’s work covers eight broad areas: church-facing; corporate training; work with schools and colleges; community engagement; research; hosting international visits; administering the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government funded Near Neighbours programme; and the Leicester delivery of the Prevent strategy, which is part of the British government’s counter-terrorism strategy.1 In this postscript my focus is on the interface between religious tourism and spiritual pilgrimage in modern Britain, primarily through interrogation of the experiences and reflections of Christians who have engaged with people of other faith communities. The question is divided into three parts. In the first section, there is a discussion of the St Philip’s Centre’s work with small groups of Christians, and how we enable them to encounter and understand lived religion. Links are made between the discussions of ‘vicarious’ and ‘spiritual’ pilgrimage in the chapters of this volume on the one hand and a tendency among modern Christians to out-source interfaith engagement to professionals on the other. This habit of modern Christians means face-to-face encounters become more challenging, which leads on to a discussion of management of the self upon entry into sacred space, which relates to questions of interiority during soul travel, a recurrent theme in the essays this volume. Reference is also made to the reflections of Gaston, an Anglican priest, on his experience of fasting during Ramadan, as an example of self-management and self-reflection by a committed interfaith practitioner. Second, the importance of a guide for soul travel is discussed. Utilising the author’s own experience as a practising Christian entering the sacred space of other religions, the spiritual discipline of becoming a pilgrim in such a context is explained. Links are made with a number of essays in this volume, including those of Hurlock, Peterson and Booth. Third, the complexity of public vigils in response to tragedies is utilised to illustrate the different areas of negotiation integral to modern

1

Tom Wilson and Ravat Riaz, Learning to Live Well Together: Case Studies in Interfaith Diversity (London: Jessica Kingsley, 2017).

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soul travel. The need to create and copy rituals is explained using three examples: the shrine to David Bowie in Brixton; vigils following the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida; and vigils and the concert after the Manchester Arena bombing. Connections are made with the concepts of collapsing time and place in soul travel. Finally, returning to the theme of interiority, it is argued here that personal status as a tourist or a pilgrim is primarily a matter of individual disposition and intent rather than being determined by the circumstances of the encounter.

Christians Encountering Other Faith Communities The introduction above noted the eight areas of work of the St Philip’s Centre. What is not immediately clear from the list is that the Centre is formally an ecumenical Christian organisation, although in percentage terms this is a relatively small proportion of our work, for enabling Christians to understand the faith of others is central to our purpose. One example of the work we do is one-to-one bespoke training for senior Christian leaders, primarily to enable them to encounter and understand the perspective of those of other faiths. Such leaders may, from time to time, find themselves having to engage in public with those of other faiths, and an induction where they can ask questions informally and discover different worldviews is a valuable foundation to more successful and productive public engagements. The opportunity for a dispassionate discussion of issues such as the long history of Christian anti-Semitism or Hindu accusations of Christian neo-colonial fascism are helpful preparation before having to engage with such complexities in public before a mixed audience. There may also be visits to places of worship as part of this training, but the expectation would be that the Christian leader goes to learn, not to worship. In this instance they are more of a tourist than a pilgrim, although this is, of course, a false binary as the leader is perhaps best understood as engaging in a civic and community visit to friends and colleagues.

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A more complex case occurs when we take groups of Christians, perhaps trainee ministers or youth workers, to observe arti at a Hindu mandir. If their training session has begun with Morning Prayer, I would normally read them an extract from 1 Corinthians 8, Romans 14 or a similar text where the Apostle Paul cautions against eating food that has been offered to idols. The text is worth quoting to illustrate the point: Now concerning food sacrificed to idols: we know that ‘all of us possess knowledge’. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; but anyone who loves God is known by him. Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that ‘no idol in the world really exists’, and that ‘there is no God but one’. Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth – as in fact there are many gods and many lords – yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. It is not everyone, however, who has this knowledge. Since some have become so accustomed to idols until now, they still think of the food they eat as food offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. (1 Corinthians 8:1–7, NRSV)

For some Christians, this text is an instruction of direct relevance to the encounter they are about to have. Most evangelical Christians would describe the murtis found in a Hindu mandir as ‘idols’, and indeed many Hindus, when attempting to explain their faith, use the same word, often unaware of its negative connotations. A direct line of equivalence is therefore drawn, in the mind of the Christian course participant, between the instructions the Apostle Paul gave to the Corinthian Christians and the situation she is about to face in a Hindu mandir. That is to say, Protestant Christians in particular fear interfaith engagement to be soul travel away from Christ, a point made about pilgrimage generally in the Introduction. At the end of arti, participants are invariably given a small token of prasad [food that has been offered to the deity and is then consumed by the worshipper], perhaps an apple or a banana, to eat. This presents a dilemma. Is it food offered to idols that should be shunned? Is it a gift from a generous host, which must be eaten to avoid causing offence? By eating, have Christian visitors become Hindu idol worshippers? The questions are

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brought into sharper focus by the Christian text they have just heard read to them in the context of Christian worship. How does this impact on personal experience of a pilgrimage (or tourist visit) to the sacred space of another faith? After one such visit to a mandir, I observed a thoughtful young curate looking quizzically at the apple he had been given. With the provocativeness of a teacher, I asked him, ‘Are you going to eat that?’ He responded, ‘I don’t know. I am still thinking about it’. One of my colleagues enjoys telling the story of taking a dozen trainee youth workers to a Hindu mandir and driving away with a boot full of the coconuts they had all been given as prasad. They were too polite to refuse the gift, but also too uncertain to eat them, so they were all passed on to the professional to deal with as she saw fit. For many Christians, entering the place of worship of another faith community is a profoundly challenging spiritual experience, one which, if they were honest, they would rather not have. Interfaith spaces can become liminal spaces. Just as pilgrims pass through different liminal states as they journey towards a particular shrine, so too do interfaith visitors (whether pilgrim or tourist). As a consequence of this reluctance, aside from ignoring those of other faiths altogether, two inter-related strategies are deployed. The first is for Christians to ask other Christians to teach them about other faiths, rather than have a direct encounter themselves. Thus, for example, as a Christian who has a reasonable amount of experience of engaging with Muslims and knowledge of Islam, I am sometimes asked by church groups to run a course for them on Christian understanding of Islam. There are echoes here of Hurlock’s discussion of the Welsh poets’ oral performance of a pilgrimage which is experienced by the listening group, and of Tingle’s treatment of confraternities as places of group reflection on the experience of an individual, although the difference is that often in my case the listening audience are grateful they do not have first-hand experience of what they are hearing about. Second, Christians may outsource their engagement with other faith communities, leaving interfaith encounter to interfaith professionals, much as work with teenagers is left to professional youth workers and so forth. The rich have, in the past, paid pilgrims to undergo the arduous journey for them, and as Tingle and Hillman note in the introduction, Holy Land

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pilgrimage sites were recreated across Europe to save the risk of travel to the site itself. Vicarious experience has long been a part of soul travel. But as Palumbo notes, sometimes pilgrims do travel themselves. For those who are prepared to undertake the journey to the place of worship of another faith community, they have to reflect on how they will manage themselves upon entering sacred space. In my current role it has been a not uncommon experience for me to find myself the only Christian present among a dozen or even hundreds of Jews, Hindus, Muslims or Sikhs engaged in worship. What attitude ought I to hold in such circumstances? At the most superficial, I could remain simply an observer, a tourist perhaps or else an ethnographer or anthropologist, amateur or professional, simply observing what is taking place. But all of these positions are subjective stances; the myth of the neutral, objective student has been debunked several generations ago.2 However much I claim to be detached, I cannot help but observe as myself, and my emotions will be impacted by what I see, whether it is boredom at repetitive, monotonous chanting in a language I do not understand or excitement at the pageantry and devotion on display, or many other possible emotions. I personally have a fund of stories of how my Christian faith has been challenged by observing worship carried out by people of other faiths, whether it is the unity expressed by Leicester’s Jains, the devoted prayer of Hindus, the dialogical relationship with God enjoyed by Jews, the commitment to fasting of Muslims or the service to the community rendered by Sikh langar. In my travels around the world I have sat in enough Christian services in a language I do not understand to also be at ease doing so in a Hindu, Sikh or Muslim gathering. There is a spiritual discipline in using the time for personal prayer and meditation; for listening for the still small voice of God in the midst of all that is going on around you. Thus whether one is pilgrim or tourist is primarily a matter of disposition and intent rather than circumstances. I may not be worshipping as those around me are, but 2

Russell McCutcheon, ed., The Insider-Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion: A Reader (London: Continuum, 1999); George D. Chryssides and Stephen E. Gregg, The Insider/Outsider Debate: New Perspectives in the Study of Religion (Sheffield: Equinox, forthcoming, 2019).

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I may be engaged in worship none the less. As an aside, Irvine reflected that his ethnographic fieldwork in an English Benedictine monastery was conducted ‘as a guest, who learns and leaves’ since he was not a monk, nor even a novice but a temporary outsider, welcomed in, but never truly one of the community.3 Gaston, by contrast, describes his experience of developing what he terms ‘compassionate experiencing’ as he, an Anglican priest, fasted during Ramadan. He explains how he would sit at the back of a local mosque during jummah [Friday midday] prayers, ‘reciting the Lord’s Prayer internally or increasingly silent in my heart and allowing the prayers of others to fill my soul’, but that this was increasingly dissatisfying as he felt the pull of ‘waves of surrender’ which led him to eventually join the line of those praying. When he moved on to a different context, he no longer felt the call to participate, and has not done so since.4

The Importance of a Guide for Soul Travel In an essay in this volume, Peterson explains how St Bridget of Sweden devoted the later years of her life to producing a book which explained her visions to others. In this instance, the guide was in the form of a physical text. Similarly, Hillman elucidates how Marie de Valence’s spiritual autobiography provided an opportunity for soul travel in seventeenth-century France. By contrast, Hurlock’s chapter explores how the oral performance of poetry functioned as a guide for group spiritual journeys in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Wales. Modern soul travel also requires a guide. Some Christians might be content to read the books of, say, Klaus Klostermaier 3 4

Richard Irvine, ‘The Experience of Ethnographic Fieldwork in an English Benedictine Monastery: Or, Not Playing at Being a Monk’, Fieldwork in Religion 5 (2010), 224. Ray Gaston, Faith, Hope and Love: Interfaith Engagement as Practical Theology (London: SCM Press, 2017).

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as a precursor to their own encounters with the Hindu tradition.5 Others might watch films on the internet or undertake training courses.6 But most people look for a guide. So, what strategies should be in place to enable groups to participate as both tourists and pilgrims? The majority of groups we engage with at the St Philip’s Centre have come with an educational outcome in mind; we therefore have a contractual obligation to ensure that learning takes place. This requires certain dispositions: willingness to encounter difference; a desire to learn from such encounters, to understand perspectives different from one’s own; and the capacity to develop trust with those who look and think very differently. At one gathering, those present suggested that the following were prerequisites for inter-religious encounter: being open minded, respectful of difference, honest, compassionate, welcoming, secure in personal (and corporate) identity, welcoming and accepting of others and a good sense of humour. This must all be modelled by the facilitator of the group as well as suggested in preparation for encounter. Honest appraisal of feelings, using techniques such as a ‘human rainbow’ or ‘sociogram’, are helpful preparation. A ‘human rainbow’ allows participants to express their views on a particular question. One that I regularly use is where everyone lines up indicating their position in a continuum of opinions from ‘I am really looking forward to this encounter’ to ‘I am really dreading this encounter’. This can be done silently, to simply acknowledge the range of feelings in the room, or if time allows and it is appropriate, people from across the spectrum of opinions can be invited to share their thoughts. These must be received without judgement; there are no right or wrong feelings before encounter takes place. What is important is to acknowledge what is, to recognise the reality of people’s feelings and enable them to decide how they are going to deal with them. It is also helpful for course leaders to explain the nature of the programme and in particular to distinguish between appropriate respect 5 6

Klaus Klostermaier, Hindu and Christian in Vrindaban (London: SCM Press, 1969) and Hinduism: A Short History (Oxford: Oneworld, 2001). Of which Friendship First, (accessed 4 February 2019), is a good example in terms of engagement with the Muslim community.

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(removing shoes and covering your head when entering a gurdwara for example) and participating in worship. For some learners participation is important and so receiving prasad from a gurdwara or mandir helps them fully engage with the lived religious experience of those whom they are visiting. For others, as noted above, this is an uncomfortable experience, which they would rather avoid. Explaining that participation is optional and that individuals can make their own choices is crucial for establishing and maintaining trust. Ultimately trust rests on the honesty, integrity and transparency of those running the programme and the hosts in the places of worship visited. It is therefore crucial to work hard at keeping lines of communication open and active, especially when establishing ongoing working relationships with particular faith communities. Participating in encounter is always a learning experience, even if that learning is uncomfortable. Christian women who have gone with male colleagues to observe prayers at a mosque may experience exclusion and discomfort as the male Muslim worshippers enthusiastically greet and shake hands with their male counterparts while studiously ignoring the proffered hands of any female Christian observers. For the men, the spiritual journey is a comfortable one of encountering other followers of an Abrahamic faith. But for the women it can be (yet another) experience of exclusion in their journey following the God of Abraham. Spiritual journeys vary greatly for all sorts of reasons and a good guide must be prepared to guide travellers around obstacles along the way.

Public Vigils One theme that is found in several of the essays in this volume is that of the importance of the imagination in soul travel. Booth contrasts the imaginative experiences of armchair pilgrims with those of pilgrims who actually travelled to the sites. Mendes examines the role of imagination in Portuguese hagiographies. Wardle’s essay demonstrates how allegorical pilgrimages were represented in fifteenth-century paintings. Her essay also

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brings out issues of the collapsing of time and space within soul travel, a theme also relevant to Palumbo’s discussion of St James the Greater from Santiago de Compostela in Spain and St Michael the Archangel from Monte Sant’Angelo in Italy. The use of imagination and symbolic action, together with the collapsing of time and space, such that those gathered believe their actions have a relevance and impact across the globe are concepts of direct relevance to public vigils in response to tragedies. This will be demonstrated through a discussion of vigils responding to three different events: the Pulse nightclub shooting, the death of David Bowie and the Manchester Arena bombing. Different communities organise public expressions of grief in very different ways. Following the shooting of over 100 people by Omar Mateen at Pulse, a gay night club in Orlando, Florida on 12 June 2016, Leicester’s LGBT community organised a public vigil in the town hall square. They were not united by a particular religious tradition, but by sexuality and gender identity. They chose to mark their grief with thirty minutes of silence; a very long time to be so quiet in public. The TV crews there to record the event for the news media kept themselves busy for the whole time, filming different shots and so forth, definitely tourists in this chapter’s somewhat false binary. Those who had come as pilgrims had to choose how to engage in silent worship and contemplation, perhaps not all having the discipline to pray silently for a full half hour. I personally found this more of a challenge than I thought I would; in a church context I can pray in silence for thirty minutes or more; but standing in the drizzle in a silent circle with no understanding of the plan for the vigil I was regularly distracted by questions of ‘what next?’ and by trying to keep dry and warm. Vigils require agreement, the negotiation of how the event is to be marked and the significance and meaning vested into any symbolic actions. Although this vigil collapsed time and space such that we were, in some way, symbolically mourning together with those grieving in Orlando, the lack of shared agreement about the symbolic action detracted from the ability of the gathered souls to travel together. Figure PS.1 is a photograph of the mural to David Bowie that was painted on a wall outside Brixton underground station not long after his death on 10 January 2016. Bowie was born in Brixton on 8 January 1947

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Figure PS.1.  The mural to David Bowie opposite Brixton tube station. Source: author’s photograph.

and hence it was a suitable place to mark his death. Initially the wall was not covered, and hundreds and hundreds of bunches of flowers were placed beneath it and hundreds of messages written on the wall around the picture. In the immediate aftermath of Bowie’s death, the local council were busy tidying up the impromptu vigil site, primarily by removing bunches of dead flowers. A few months later, a plastic screen was installed to preserve the artwork and prevent the wall being drawn on any further. Some of the messages were cleaned up and the wall repainted. But no attempt has been

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made to stop people making a pilgrimage to this site or even leaving flowers there, although there were none on the ground when the photo was taken on 14 May 2018. I am not aware of any formal process of negotiation of the purpose and nature of this shrine to Bowie, but it seems clear that some form of negotiation has taken place between pilgrims and the council, even if it was never actually face-to-face. First, the artwork has been preserved while flowers were removed. Second, a small plaque, visible in the centre left of the photo, asks those wishing to add a message to do so without damaging what is already there. Thus, acceptable boundaries have been demarcated by the council, and on the whole respected by the pilgrims. The ritual of setting up a large picture to mark a shrine where people can leave flowers and messages of condolence, even for those who we do not know personally, has, since the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, become an established part of British grieving. The shrine to David Bowie is one such example, and the various responses to the suicide bombing in Manchester Arena during a concert by the American singer Ariana Grande on 22 May 2017 constitute another. The vigil I helped to coordinate in Leicester involved writing messages of condolence in chalk on the floor in front of Leicester’s town hall; other vigils I am aware of included balloon releases, symbolic laying of flowers, moments of silence and words of both condemnation of the terrorist and condolence for the families of the victims. These are all accessible symbolic actions that enable a group gathered in mourning to express their sadness and anger without needing to travel to the place where the incident took place. Similarly, the Manchester One Love concert, held on 4 June 2017, began with a minute’s silence, and included poems, video and spoken messages of support as well as a starstudded list of performers. In England, public vigils or services in a religious context tend to take place in Anglican churches and cathedrals, and so it is normally those who are not Christian who have to decide how to manage themselves in this context. My conversations with colleagues who regularly find themselves in this context set out variations on a common strategy of looking for points of agreement and of respectful silence when disagreeing. So, for example, a Muslim might stand with everyone when the Creed is recited, but not actually say anything. A Hindu might feel comfortable singing some hymns

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but not others, and so forth. Some might be happy to read a Christian text in public but others would refuse to do so. Care must be taken in selecting appropriate texts and hymns for the service that avoid unnecessary offence, but at the same time, if the worship is Christian, then it must remain recognisably authentic to that faith. Lowest common denominator religion robs everyone of the possibility of worship.7 For a journey to be truly spiritual it must have a clear, distinct spiritual goal or else it will be little more than stumbling through metaphorical fog. Those of other faiths who choose to attend services in a Christian context do not have a problem with the worship being clearly Christian. They simply choose the extent to which they can be fellow travellers and walk accordingly, much as Christians will do in a mosque, mandir or other place of worship. Pilgrims travel their own spiritual journeys, finding fellow travellers where they can, but at other times making the journey alone.

Conclusion The essays in this volume examine three types of journey: the imagined, a journey to a sacred destination carried out in the mind; the spiritual journey in a physical, but facsimile landscape, either reconstructed or allegorical; and the spiritualisation of devotional activity of pilgrims on their spiritual journeys. Modern pilgrims still undertake all these types of journeys and still wrestle with whether they do so purely as pilgrims or as tourists as well. The central argument developed in this essay is that, as far as inter-religious encounter is concerned, this choice is a matter of personal disposition, a heart attitude rather than one dictated by the circumstances of the encounter. Circumstances do have their part to play:

7

Further discussion of this issue from an Anglican Christian perspective can be found at and (accessed 4 February 2019).

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active dismissal of the visitor makes pilgrimage all but impossible. But even the most lavish of welcomes cannot turn a tourist into a pilgrim. Worship is a personal choice, and unless the choice is made to become a pilgrim we remain tourists or spectators.

Bibliography Chryssides, George D., and Stephen E. Gregg, The Insider/Outsider Debate: New Perspectives in the Study of Religion (Sheffield: Equinox, 2019). Irvine, Richard, ‘The Experience of Ethnographic Fieldwork in an English Benedictine Monastery: Or, Not Playing at Being a Monk’, Fieldwork in Religion 5 (2010), 221–35. Gaston, Ray, Faith, Hope and Love: Interfaith Engagement as Practical Theology (London: SCM Press, 2017). Klostermaier, Klaus, Hindu and Christian in Vrindaban (London: SCM Press, 1969). Klostermaier, Klaus, Hinduism: A Short History (Oxford: Oneworld, 2001). McCutcheon, Russell, ed., The Insider-Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion: A Reader (London: Continuum, 1999). Wilson, Tom, and Riaz Ravat, Learning to Live Well Together: Case Studies in Interfaith Diversity (London: Jessica Kingsley, 2017).

Notes on Contributors

Philip Booth was awarded his PhD from Lancaster University in 2017 for his thesis on Latin Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the early thirteenth century. He teaches medieval history at Nottingham Trent University, UK, and works as the administrative secretary for Social History. His principal research interests lie in the areas of travel and religious cultures in the high Middle Ages (1000–1300). Jennifer Hillman is a Visiting Research Fellow and Tutor in History in the Department of History and Archaeology at the University of Chester, UK. She is an historian of early modern Europe, with particular interests in the religious and cultural history of seventeenth-century France. Kathryn Hurlock is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. She is an historian of medieval Britain, with particular reference to the role of the Crusades in British life. She also works on pilgrimage in medieval Wales from the twelfth to the early sixteenth centuries. Paula Almeida Mendes is a post-doctoral researcher at CITCEM (Centre for Transdisciplinary Research) at Porto University, Portugal. She works on the history and literature of spirituality, hagiography and women’s history of the early modern period. Antonella Palumbo is a post-doctoral researcher at G. D’Annunzio Chieti Pescara University, Italy. She works on the art history and anthropology of medieval pilgrimage. MARK EDWIN PETERSON is the librarian at the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library in Staunton, Virginia, USA. He works on the spirituality and writings of St Bridget of Sweden.

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Elizabeth Tingle is Professor of History at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, where she is also Head of the School of Humanities. She is an historian of the French Wars of Religion and the Catholic Reformation in Europe. Claudia Wardle is a PhD candidate at the University of York, UK. Her research explores notions of spiritual landscape and representations of the natural world in fifteenth-century Ferrarese sacred painting, underpinned by scriptural, hagiographic and patristic sources. Tom Wilson is Director of the St Philip’s Centre, Leicester, UK, and an Anglican priest. He is a specialist in interfaith relations and his doctoral studies examined Christian leadership in a church school set within a multi-faith area. He writes popular Bible study notes, scholarly articles and books on Christian theology, lived religion and interfaith relations.

Index

Adomnán, abbot of Iona  10 Alfonso of Jaen  49, 67 Almada, Antonio de  218, 220, 225, 227 alumbrados  214, 225 anchorites 2 Anglesey  91, 94–5 Aquinas, Thomas, St  35, 114 Aristotle  94, 96–7 arti 270–1 Augustine, St  59, 215, 217 beguines 56 Beirdd yr Uchelwyr  16, 85–6 Bethlehem  188–91, 194–5, 198, 200 Black Virgin of Puy  20–1, 235–7, 240, 242–4, 247, 251–2, 256–7, 259, 260–1 Bonaventure, St  72, 120–1 Breydenbach, Bernard von  11 Bridget of Sweden, St  16, 47ff. Bridgettines order  50, 65–6, 69, 70, 72 Bowie, David  276–8 Burchard of Mount Sion  7, 181, 183, 185ff. Calvary  114–15, 188, 190, 195, 200–2 Calvin, Jean  32 Camino de Santiago  20, 27, 36, 126ff., 238 Canterbury  14, 36 Castela, Henri de  13 Catherine of Genoa, St  211, 224–5 Catherine of Siena, St  70–1 Chrysostom, John, St  27, 105 communion  4, 18, 30, 153, 156, 166, 173, 223

confession  18, 30, 33, 56–7, 153, 156, 166–8, 171–3 confraternities  26, 30–1, 152ff., 157–8, 160–1, 164–5, 166–7, 169, 171–2 Cothi, Lewis Glyn  16, 88–9, 90, 99 Council of Trent  155, 223–4, 240–1 Counter Reformation  17–18, 26, 28, 152, 154ff., 161, 211–12, 228, 236–7, 239–41, 244, 261 Devotio moderna  3, 153, 205, 208 Dominican  9, 114, 118, 183, 187, 200, 226, 236, 247–8, 252–3, 262 Early Church  2, 6, 27, 62, 240 Eckhart, Meister  61–2 Egeria  6, 81, 184 Eleonora d’Aragon, duchess of Ferrara 116–18 Erasmus, Desiderius  3, 213 Eucharist  3, 56, 72, 113, 223, 241 Évora 219 exorcism  250, 259–60 Fabri, Felix  9, 74, 186 facsimile landscapes see sacri monti Ferrara  26, 105ff. Filles de l’Instruction de l’Enfant Jésus  239–40, 257 Five Wounds of Christ  34–5, 121 Franciscans  3, 8–9, 24, 28, 118, 120, 153, 163, 210 Galand, Agnès  235–6, 247–53, 256–9, 260

284 Index Gauchet, Madeleine–Gabrielle  237, 246ff., 252–6, 262 Geiler von Kaiserberg, Johan  25 Gissey, Odo de, SJ  236, 241–4, 261 Granada, Leandro de  210, 214 Granada, Luis de  13, 18 Gregory I the Great, Pope  62 Gregory XIII, Pope  17 Gregory XV, Pope  28 guidebooks for travellers  6, 7, 9, 28, 73, 171 Heaven see Paradise Hell  21, 54, 211, 214, 226–8 Holy Land  6–9, 10–14, 32, 73, 81, 89, 181ff. Holy Rood of Brecon  83, 95 Holy Sacrament  154, 162, 167 Holy Sepulchre  23, 188–90, 198, 200–2 imitatio Christi  34, 117, 121–2 indulgences  9, 17, 27–9, 31–2, 92–3, 100, 163, 168–73 Inquisition  216, 224 James the Great, St  27, 125ff. Jerome, St  117, 119–20, 188, 197–9 Jerusalem  1, 6, 8ff., 22, 24, 26, 28, 32, 52–3, 60, 73, 87, 90–1, 135–6, 170, 182, 190–1 Jesuits see Society of Jesus Jesus, Tomásia de  223, 226 Joana, Maria  225–6 Jubilees  7, 28–9, 91, 93, 238, 241, 257 Kempe, Margery  8, 15–6, 47, 53, 71–3 Langeac  236–7, 247, 251 Lantages, Charles-Louis de, 235–8, 240–5, 246ff. Le Puy-en-Vélay  20, 169, 235ff., 240 Leuze, Nicolas de  12 Liber Sancti Jacobi  129, 137, 129

liminality  5, 98–9 Llwyd, Huw cae  16, 91–3, 95, 100 Llwyd, Ieuan ap Huw cae  91, 95 Loarte, Gaspard SJ  17 Loreto, Holy House shrine  18–19, 26, 163, 170 Loyola, Ignatius, St  1, 13, 152, 174, 209 Luther, Martin  31–2 Maria Magdalena de’ Pazzi, St  210 Martel, Anne-Marie  236–7, 239, 257–60 Martin, Gregory  17 Mass see communion Medingen convent  9, 74 Medlingen convent  9, 74 Michael (Archangel), St  27, 125ff., 224 miracle plays  164–5 miracles  14–15, 20–1, 26, 129, 213, 235, 237–8, 241–4, 247, 249–56, 258, 260–2 Monte Sant’Angelo, Gargano  27, 126ff., 144, 157 Morus, Sieffrai Cyffin ap  89–90 Notre Dame de Liesse, shrine  162, 170 Notre Dame de Verdelais, shrine  163, 170 Nuremberg 24 Nyssa, Gregory of  27, 105, 112 Olier, Jean-Jacques  240, 247 Osimo, Nicolas of  8 Paeschen, Jan van  13 Paris, Matthew  11 Paradise  21, 211, 214, 219, 221-3, 228 Pasca, Jean  12 Passion of Jesus Christ  7, 4, 8, 9, 24, 34, 50, 56, 60, 73, 74, 190–4, 197, 210 penance  51, 55  57, 75, 153, 220 Penrhys, St Mary shrine and well  83, 94, 98

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Index Phocas, John  184–5, 195–6 Pietà  109, 111, 113 Protestant pilgrimage  31–5 Provins, France  156, 165 proxy pilgrimage  15, 31, 81, 87, 91–2, 100, 151, 163–4 Purgatory  2, 21, 50, 52, 54, 62, 211, 214, 224–6, 228

Society of Jesus  13, 17, 20–1, 29, 213, 218, 235, 241–2, 248, 251, 261 spiritual biography  20, 235–8, 244, 253–62 Stations of the Cross  24, 26 Stradling family of St Donat’s  82, 92 Sulpicians see Saint-Sulpice Suso 61–2 Teresa of Ávila, St 210, 215 Theoderic  181–4, 195, 203 Theresa of Jesus, St see Teresa of Ávila, St Thietmar 185 Torsellini, Orazio SJ  18–19 tratturi  139ff. Tridentine reforms  17, 20  31, 208, 212, 214, 220, 235

relics  28, 32, 35, 90–1, 93, 95, 125, 251, 254, 258 religious tourism  36, 268, 271–2, 274, 278 Riccoldo of Monte Croce  199–200, 201–2 Richeome, Louis SJ  18–19 Roberti, Ercole d’ 111, 113, 116, 119 Rome  14, 16–17, 28–9, 52–3, 57, 62, 67, 72, 82–3, 88, 90ff., 100, 249 Rosário, Mariana do  219–22, 225, 227 Rosary  26, 154

Urban VI, Pope  49 Urban VIII, Pope  28, 213

sacri monti  4, 22, 24, 163 sacred space  3, 37–8, 190, 196, 198, 246, 268, 271–2 St Patrick’s Purgatory, Lough Derg  19, 215 Saint-Sulpice  235–7, 239, 240, 246–8, 251–3, 256–7, 261 Santiago de Compostela  3, 16, 20, 27, 31, 36, 52–3, 56, 64, 82, 99, 126, 157, 172, 238 Siôn, Dafydd ap  88, 90, 100

Varallo  24, 26 Vegri, Caterina St  106, 107ff., 118 Vernicle, relic  90–2 Via Sacra Langobardorum  138ff. vigils  38, 275–8 Virgin Mary  4, 8, 18–19, 30, 52, 54–5, 64, 68, 70, 73, 75, 109, 111, 113, 117, 189–90, 216, 235, 240 vita, vitae  21, 207, 212ff., 235, 244–7, 256, 261–2,