ML200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Shetland, Viking Ships, Mummers Play
Medieval Pilgrims: The Original Tourists?
• Pilgrimage: travel done to honour a saint/saints, but with various motivations
• The lure of spatial mobility
o Could’t reall leae our hoe uless goig o a pilgriage
• Local vs. long-distance pilgrimage
o Canterbury to the shrine of St. Thomas Beckett
• Pilgri’s guides ad soueirs
o Safest places to stay
o Pilgri’s guide to “atiago – warns you about dangers along the way
o Pilgrims often return with souvenirs (conch shells somewhere) or badges with
connectios to the sites to idiate the’e goe
▪ Some people would wear the badges on their hats
▪ Badges to keep people from stealing or damaging the sites
• Pilgrims were often boisterous
• Economic benefits of pilgrimage:
o Pilgrims bring offerings for the church = income
▪ Descriptions depict food and resources the churches could use
o Crusaders would steal relics
• Went into a decline in the early-modern period
o Because of repression of the saints and religious activity
▪ Dissolution of the monasteries
o Provoked a change in pilgrimage, moving them underground
• Functional similarities to tourists
Walking the Camino de Santiago Today
• Caio de “atiago “ait Jaes’ Wa to “atiago de Copostela
o Disciple tried to spread the word of god to the peninsula but sucked as a preacher and
was beheaded
▪ His followers steal his body and put it in a boat which miraculously makes its
way back to Span where he is then re-buried and disappears
• The great conquista “pai, Jaes’ grae is redisoered a herit hol a at “atiago,
making him a symbol
• Peaks in 11th & 12th centuries but survives in a minimal form
• Depicted as a Spanish nationalist
• Connections to the Reconquista
• 1960s revival – reanimated pilgrimage track
o Reaching for something else besides what is there
• 1993- 100,000 walked all 500 miles for this journey to Santiago
o There are several routes, the most popular in the S of France
• “eular pilgris ofte drie the iterest i the joure than the destination
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Document Summary
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