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

"This volume is an edited collection of original essays on spiritual travel in medieval and early modern Europe. Pilgrimage was a central feature of medieval and early modern Christianity. But holy travel was not only a physical act, it was also an interior disposition and a spiritual process. From at least the late Antique period, the life of a Christian was understood allegorically as a journey towards heaven. Also, many people could not travel: enclosed orders of monks and nuns, men and women with responsibilities tying them to localities, the sick and frail. Virtual travel was instead their recourse to the sacred sites. Thus spiritual pilgrimage, instead of or alongside physical pilgrimage, became prominent in medieval Europe and survived the Reformation in both Protestant and Catholic traditions. These essays show that this experience took many forms: a lively imagining of a journey with holy people or to holy places; an 'out-of-body' experience such as the revelations of St Bridget of Sweden; guided journeys; meditations upon holy places such as Jerusalem; and travel in reconstructed landscapes, from the Monti Sacri reconstitutions to convent churches. The volume includes an historiographical introduction by the editors and nine case studies of spiritual journeys, drawn from across the late medieval and early modern periods and from different regions of Europe"-- Provided by publisher This volume is an edited collection of original essays on spiritual travel in medieval and early modern Europe. Pilgrimage was a central feature of medieval and early modern Christianity. But holy travel was not only a physical act, it was also an interior disposition and a spiritual process. From at least the late Antique period, the life of a Christian was understood allegorically as a journey towards heaven. Also, many people could not travel: enclosed orders of monks and nuns, men and women with responsibilities tying them to localities, the sick and frail. Virtual travel was instead their recourse to the sacred sites. Thus spiritual pilgrimage, instead of or alongside physical pilgrimage, became prominent in medieval Europe and survived the Reformation in both Protestant and Catholic traditions.00These essays show that this experience took many forms: a lively imagining of a journey with holy people or to holy places; an ±out-of-body? experience such as the revelations of St Bridget of Sweden; guided journeys; meditations upon holy places such as Jerusalem; and travel in reconstructed landscapes, from the Monti Sacri reconstitutions to convent churches. The volume includes an historiographical introduction by the editors and nine case studies of spiritual journeys, drawn from across the late medieval and early modern periods and from different regions of Europe Dedication 6 Contents 8 List of Figures 10 Acknowledgements 12 Introduction: Soul Travel: Spiritual Journeys in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe • Jennifer Hillman and Elizabeth Tingle 14 Part I: Modes of Spiritual Journeying 58 1 Reading as a Spiritual Journey: St Bridget of Sweden • Mark Edwin Peterson 60 2 Performing Pilgrimage in Late Medieval Wales • Kathryn Hurlock 94 3 Participatory Passions: Spiritual Landscapes of Fifteenth-Century Ferrara • Claudia Wardle 118 4 The Camino de Santiago and the Via dell’Angelo: Historical and Anthropological Contexts of their Routes • Antonella Palumbo 138 5 Pilgrimage Confraternities and Spiritual Travel in Catholic Reformation France • Elizabeth Tingle 164 Part II: Life Writing and Spiritual Travel 192 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 194 7 Spiritual Experiences in Portuguese Hagiographies and Sacred Biographies in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries • Paula Almeida Mendes 220 8 The ‘Contagiousness of the Sacred’: Writing Spiritual Biographies in Seventeenth-Century Le Puy-en-Vélay • Jennifer Hillman 248 Postscript: Spiritual Travel in the Twenty-First Century: Pilgrims or Tourists? • Tom Wilson 280 Notes on Contributors 294 Index 296