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Religious Pilgrimages
in the Mediterranean World
Edited by
Antón M. Pazos
First published 2023
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Antón M. Pazos; individual chapters,
the contributors
The right of Antón M. Pazos to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
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Dedicated to His Excellency the Most Reverend
Mgr. Julian Barrio, Archbishop of Santiago
de Compostela, on the occasion of his 75th birthday.
Contents
List of Figures ix
List of Contributorsx
Index 173
Figures
The title of this book establishes certain boundaries, which, like all bounda-
ries, may be overstepped but are nonetheless a perfectly clear reference to
delimit a territory. As far as possible, what we are attempting to analyze
here is, firstly, pilgrimage, that is, a more or less lengthy journey to a place
distinguished by a special attraction, which travellers hope may contribute
something to the enrichment of their lives, quite apart from other incidental
factors that may be added, as occurs in any human objective, which is never
devoid of supplementary connections. Secondly, the book will be concerned
with religious pilgrimages, which in earlier times were defined as journeys
deuotionis et peregrinationis causa, without excluding other motivations
more or less related to the matter of religion. Finally, we have tried to limit
ourselves to pilgrimages that could be described, without forcing the term
too far, as the Mediterranean.
DOI: 10.4324/b23008-1
2 Antón M. Pazos
As in the physical world, every term, every field of study, has certain
limits of elasticity; they may be greater or lesser, but they exist. If it is
stretched beyond its limits, it breaks. If someone today says – as has been
said – that they made the pilgrimage to Santiago by walking around their
own property until they had completed the distance that separates it from
the shrine in Compostela, or if we say that all the roads that enable you to
reach the city of the son of Zebedee are the Camino de Santiago, we have
exceeded the elasticity of the term and have broken it. If all are knights, all
are serfs (or, as W. S. Gilbert put it, when everyone is somebody, then no
one’s anybody). If all paths are ways of St James, there is no longer a Way
of St James because there are no features that allow us to distinguish what
is the Camino – with its historical basis, verifiable in archives, its stages, its
hostels and its hospitals built centuries ago – from what is not: a dirt track
opened just the year before would do. 2
Do all roads lead to Santiago? Yes, if you go in the right direction. Are
all roads the “Camino de Santiago”, the Way of St James? No, the great
majority are ways towards Santiago. Pilgrims certainly made detours to
visit the shrines that were near the path they were following. Did they con-
sider those shrines part of the “Camino de Santiago”? No. At most, they
would have seen them as shrines close to the Way of St James, which were
optional visits. If those sanctuaries had not been mere detours from the
route to fulfil a devotional visit, they would have to be included in the con-
cept of the “Camino de Santiago”.
These considerations, which are elementary, sometimes seem to be dis-
regarded, and so it seems nowadays that “pilgrimage” covers everything
included in travel: museums, historical sites, places of memory, disaster
tourism (so-called “negative” or “dark” pilgrimages), natural areas, or
routes invented ad hoc by promotion companies for purely commercial
purposes, but that manage to convince their customers that they are going
on a pilgrimage. The very difficulty of defining what religious tourism is
seems to be even greater in relation to the term we are discussing. What no
one would include in “religious tourism” can perfectly well fall within the
ambit of pilgrimage.
I think that once it has reached its zenith, the concept will naturally start
to decline and will once again be precisely delimited, or will at least rid
itself of many accretions that should never have been accepted.
In the case of this book, we have tried not to stray too far from the core
concepts of what a pilgrimage is. I would even say that we have endeavoured
to consider it in its most traditional sense of pilgrimage for religious
motives, although nowadays, it can be – and indeed often is – called reli-
gious tourism. In any case, religious tourism or tourism linked to religious
pilgrimage, even placing emphasis on the current concept of “tourism”, has
always been present in every pilgrimage. It is not a contemporary novelty
or a sign of secularization, it seems to me. Medieval pilgrims, as well as
Introduction 3
being pious, were curious. Otherwise, they would have stayed at home, as
they were urged to do, especially female pilgrims, in so many sermons, and
contented themselves with pious exercises and devotions that they could
perform at home or at their parish church. Luther himself draws attention
to this curiosity, which he definitely did not consider at all as something to
be recommended.3 Certainly, the curious pilgrims of the nineteenth cen-
tury were more like tourists in the present-day sense. That is, they were
attracted by objectives that would never have been part of a medieval pil-
grim’s plan. It is unthinkable that a medieval pilgrim would have made a
detour from her already difficult – and hazardous – journey just to see a
landscape or gaze at a castle. In the nineteenth century, it was no longer so.
Non-religious visits could account for a significant part of the pilgrimage.
They were not the main object, to be sure, but many of those visits had
nothing to do with pilgrimage or with devotion. A single example will suf-
fice, that of a Spanish woman writer, well known for her advanced ideas
and habits, which she never considered incompatible with her Catholicism
or her pontifical title of nobility: Countess Emilia Pardo Bazán. In her jour-
nalistic account of a great pilgrimage to Rome – videre Petrum – made
from Spain, which she published in book form with the title Mi romería
[My Pilgrimage],4 she described her return journey – once she had fulfilled
her initial goal of visiting Pope Leo XIII – via Florence, Padua, Loreto and
Venice. There was a religious element in some of those stops, such as Loreto
and Padua, but others were purely for artistic purposes, such as Florence,
or artistic and political, in the case of Venice, where she interviewed the
Carlist pretender to the Spanish throne, Carlos de Borbón Austria-Este,
who lived there.5
Religious pilgrimages
By religious pilgrimages, therefore, we mean those in which the personal
motive or final objective is of a religious nature. They may be strictly reli-
gious, as is the case with those of a clearly sacred character for a particular
religion, such as Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Land, following in the
footsteps of Christ, or Muslim pilgrimages to Mecca. But they can also be
less well defined, such as the current pilgrimages of devout Jews to Israel,
the climax of which is to pray at the “Wailing Wall”, Catholic pilgrimages
to Rome, or mixed or interfaith pilgrimages, which, as one would expect,
have a different character in each of the religions that converge there.6 The
pilgrims from one of those religions will probably have a more spiritual
perception than those from the others that are there at the same time, but
they are all pursuing an objective of a sacred nature. Sometimes, religious
pilgrimages acquire an even more strongly marked character, as happens
upon proclamation of a Holy Year, which has well-defined religious con-
notations that the pilgrim must comply with: a weak religious pilgrimage
4 Antón M. Pazos
thereby becomes a stronger one. In any event, it is not always so. In the case
of the Way of St James, the number of pilgrims who walk it undoubtedly
increases in Holy Years, but there is no substantial increase in the propor-
tion of those who make the journey for religious reasons. On the other
hand, there is a big increase in the number of strictly religious pilgrims who
do not walk to Santiago de Compostela, that is, those who get there in indi-
vidual or collective means of transport. In any case, religious motivation is
difficult to assess, although it could be said that the lower the social status
of pilgrims and the more unsophisticated they are, the more likely it is that
the underlying religious basis will be strongly preserved.
We will see several examples in the various contributions to this volume.
One of the chapters has a markedly personal character, as it arises from the
experience of the author himself, Jackie Feldman, who not only cultivates
his academic field of study but also works in a practical capacity as a guide.
That direct experience makes it possible to get to know the various groups
one works for in much greater depth, continuity and detail than in a purely
anthropological study or a survey. In a way – albeit with qualifications – it
is like becoming a member of the group and knowing its level of commit-
ment, its sensibility and its interests from the inside.
Naturally, this refers to the chapters more related to the social sciences in
which fieldwork can be done. But the high degree of religious tension one
seems to detect in those contemporary pilgrimages is certainly interesting.
The religious factor is therefore present and marks the journey, although in
almost all the chapters it is made clear that this does not imply giving up visits
or experiences regarded as tourism, which occur on any journey: visiting
historic civil buildings, enjoying outstanding landscapes – although some-
times, as in Evangelicals and Protestants, they are of a religious nature – or
sampling the local cuisine.
Even unique experiences, such as bathing in the Dead Sea, to which visits
are usually linked to purchases related to the special local cosmetics, do not
exclude religious fervour, before and after visiting a spa.
Mecca lie within this area means that a large number of pilgrimages that
could hardly be called “Mediterranean” because they come from Eastern
or Northern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa or the Far East can be accom-
modated here. If they find a place in one or other of the various chapters,
it is precisely because of their “genetic” relationship with the old Mare
Nostrum.
There are obviously some issues in the book that cannot be limited to the
Mediterranean world since the authors – such as Nimrod Luz or Hillary
Kaell – aim to provide an overall view of conceptual problems. Religions
more distant from the Mediterranean cultural sphere are therefore men-
tioned, as they offer data that can be considered common to every pilgrimage,
include the Mediterranean ones, naturally.
places where Islam has become established and has adapted to local cus-
toms and influences, as was bound to happen. The current ease of travel and
“the omipresence of capitalist forces” have encouraged pilgrimages to such
a point that in order to be able to study them, as already indicated in other
chapters for their respective fields, we have to delimit the scope: “To begin
to fathom these changes, let us first explore the connections between Islam
and pilgrimage and try to postulate what can be categorized as Muslim
pilgrimage. Once these questions are answered, even tentatively, we will be
able to better define and delineate the field and scope of Muslim pilgrimage
studies”. In this regard, the chapter offers a perspective – difficult to find in
other books – on current Muslim pilgrimages and the changes taking place
in them, and in studies of them, in the Islamic world.
We then move on to the field of Christian pilgrimages, with two general
chapters that present a historical approach.
The first, by José Andrés-Gallego, gives us a historical overview of
Christian pilgrimage, in this case, Catholic, also starting, like Mentzer’s
chapter on Protestants, from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and
extending up to the present. Drawing on classic pilgrimage authors such
as Nolan and Nolan8 and Julia,9 the author offers a very well-structured
synthesis of the development of pilgrimages in the last few centuries from
various angles. His chapter enables us to see, at a glance, the stages of
an always living but ever-changing phenomenon, and at the same time, it
offers interesting leads for confronting the current issues, that is, constructing
that new agenda which, as we have seen, several authors have proposed is
needed in order to correct the course of the mass of somewhat incoherent
or misguided works that are appearing, in ever-increasing numbers, in the
twenty-first century.
The chapter is structured in four main parts: the reorientation of Catholic
pilgrimages between 1454 and 1531, the rhythms, the new critical cur-
rents of modernity and liberalism, and the centuries of Marian apparitions.
There are sections that are worth highlighting, such as those devoted to
the change from terrestrial to maritime pilgrimage in the sixteenth cen-
tury, pilgrimage as a spiritual path in the Jesuits, the transplantation of
Mediterranean pilgrimage models to Hispanic America, the development
between pilgrimage and penance, the influence of the nineteenth-century
ecclesiastical disentailments on pilgrimage routes, and the dialectic between
short and long pilgrimages. As we can see, there are many sections that can
offer clues – from a strictly historical point of view – for contemporary
works in other academic specialities, from geography to anthropology.
Raymond A. Mentzer’s text on Protestant pilgrimages focuses on the
studies produced in three quite precise areas:
Notes
1 By way of example, see the excellent synthesis by Manent, Histoire
intellectuelle.
2 The need to specify what can be considered the Camino de Santiago is pre-
cisely the research project I am working on at present, through an agree-
ment with the autonomous government of Galicia, the political community
of which Santiago de Compostela is the historical and administrative capital.
3 See, for example, the first part of Raymond Mentzer’s chapter in this book.
4 Pardo, Mi romería.
5 On the impact of this visit, see Paz, “Una nota”.
6 They include Christian-Muslim mixed pilgrimages in North Africa or
Islamic-H indu ones in India. See Teissier, “Christian Pilgrimages”; Singh,
“Muslim Shrines”.
7 He had already studied pilgrimage bubbles much more markedly in pilgrimages
of Israeli students to the concentration camps established in Poland: Feldman,
“Israeli Youth Voyages”.
8 Nolan and Nolan, Christian Pilgrimage.
9 Julia, Le voyage aux saints.
10 Such as the edition of the travel diary, not intended for publication, written by
the young Alfonso de Borbón Austria-Este on his journey to the Holy Land
in 1868, a journal exhumed from the Archivo Histórico Nacional [National
Historical Archive] (Madrid, Spain): Borbón, Viaje.
10 Antón M. Pazos
References
Borbón Austria-Este, A. de. Viaje al Cercano Oriente en 1868 (Constantinopla,
Egipto, Suez, Palestina). Translated and edited by C. de la Puente y J. R. Urquijo
Goitia. Zaragoza: Universidad de Zaragoza, 2022.
Feldman, J. “Israeli Youth Voyages to Holocaust Poland: Through the Prism of
Pilgrimage”. In Redefining Pilgrimage: New Perspectives on Historical and
Contemporary Pilgrimages, edited by A. M. Pazos, 87–101. Farnham: Ashgate,
2014.
Julia, D. Le voyage aux saints: les pèlerinages dans l’Occident moderne (XVe–XVIIIe
siècle). Paris: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Éditions Gallimard,
and Éditions du Seuil, 2016.
Manent, P. Histoire intellectuelle du libéralisme. París: Pluriel, 2012.
Nolan, M. L., and S. Nolan. Christian Pilgrimage in Modern Western Europe. Chapel
Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
Pardo Bazán, E. Mi romería. Madrid: Imprenta y Fundición de M. Tello, 1888.
Paz Gago, J. M. “Una nota sobre la ideología de Pardo Bazán: Doña Emilia, entre el
carlismo integrista y el carlismo moderado”. La Tribuna 5, no. 5 (2007): 349–362.
Singh, R. P. B. “Muslim Shrines and Multi-Religious Visitations in Hindus’ City
of Banaras, India: Co-Existential Scenario”. In Pilgrims and Pilgrimages as
Peacemakers in Christianity, Judaism and Islam, edited by A. M. Pazos, 127–159.
Abingdon: Routledge, 2016.
Teissier, H. “Christian Pilgrimages in Muslim Lands: The Case of Algeria”. In
Pilgrims and Pilgrimages as Peacemakers in Christianity, Judaism and Islam,
edited by A. M. Pazos, 119–126. Abingdon: Routledge, 2016.
Chapter 1
DOI: 10.4324/b23008-2
12 José Andrés-Gallego
The first thing to take into account was the fall of Constantinople (1453),
which made it, if not impossible, then certainly more difficult to undertake
pilgrimages to the Holy Land, as people had been doing for over a millen-
nium. European Catholics were obliged to opt for travelling by sea to reach
the Eastern Mediterranean and attain their objective from there. Perhaps
the best and most pertinent example (because I have to refer to bibliogra-
phy related to him, given his importance) is St Ignatius of Loyola; wounded
in 1521 in the defence of Pamplona against the French armies supporting
the monarchs of the Gascon dynasty of Albret (or Labrit), who had been
expelled from the throne of Navarre in 1512, he read a flos sanctorum
while convalescing, which led him to start a new life and become a pilgrim
bound for the Holy Places.5
His pilgrimage was narrated by Ignatius himself – in the third person – to
the Jesuit Luís Gonçalves da Câmara between 1553 and 1555, and it has
been republished innumerable times, especially since 1943, often under the
title Autobiography.6 And it is a book of great substance if it is read from
the perspective of getting to know problems and attitudes that must have
been common to those intending to do the same: reach the Holy Land.
That – the sea route – was the prevailing solution among Catholics;
among the Orthodox Christians of Eastern Europe and Islamized Asia
Minor and the Egyptian Copts, the break was apparently more abrupt,
and it has even been said that only pilgrimages to nearby shrines sur-
vived. But the case of Egypt was different; here, external relations with
Portugal and Castile, whose monarchs were rivals of each other, had a
great influence. The Castilian diplomacy of the Catholic Monarchs, just
around 1500, ensured that that milestone on the journey to the Holy
Land remained intact among their subjects; for centuries, many pilgrims
had not forgotten that Egypt was part of the space inhabited by Christ
in His earthly lifetime.7 On the other hand, bad Portuguese-Turkish rela-
tions meant that Ethiopian Christians stopped going to the Holy Land
around 1500.8 The continuity of Iberian pilgrimages to the Holy Land in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is clear from the set of contri-
butions collected by the same author, Víctor de Lama de la Cruz, in the
catalogue of the exhibition Urbs Beata Hierusalem: los viajes a Tierra
Santa en los siglos XVI y XVII, presented in its day at the Biblioteca
Nacional de España, whose richness in every sense – including its iconography –
may be regarded as proverbial.9
From the point of view of receiving pilgrims, the Turkish conquest
of Constantinople (1453) did not interrupt the “Custody of the Holy
Land” that Clement VI had formally entrusted to the Franciscans in the
mid-fourteenth century,10 but it did oblige the “custodians” to adapt to
the new situation. It was a creative adaptation in some respects; one of
these, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, was fixing the “Stations”
that Christ had passed through from the Garden of Gethsemane to
14 José Andrés-Gallego
Calvary, in what was already called the “Via Crucis” and constituted
one of the most important devotions of those who made the pilgrimage
to Jerusalem.11
began since they were often confused with craft or professional guilds, and
this forces us to connect them with the associations recognized in Roman
law. But they had begun to multiply in the twelfth century, and from the
sixteenth they sprang up everywhere.
Quite often, they arose with the intention of organizing worship spe-
cifically at pilgrimage shrines. Session XXV of the Council of Trent (3–4
December 1543) established regulations on the invocation, veneration and
relics of saints and on sacred images and confirmed that it was good to
invoke them, to honour their relics as “living members of Christ and tem-
ples of the Holy Spirit” and to respect images for what they represented.27
So not only did pilgrimages to places where there were relics continue but
there was a proliferation throughout Christendom of construction of local
“ways of the cross”, usually ending at a “calvary” located outside the town,
on a hill, crowned by three crosses. Although it is not possible to establish
a chronology of the development of this practice, there are records showing
that this type of route existed in some European cities in the seventh cen-
tury and that the 14 “stations” were fully established in the fifteenth.
In part, the creation of this type of “sacred way” was given impetus by
the fall of Constantinople (1453) and the consequent difficulty of walking
to the Holy Land. But the local studies we know suggest that their construc-
tion was pursued particularly in the seventeenth century and that in that
century it also began to be customary to create them inside churches.
Between these two practices – the stations of the cross inside the church
and the local pilgrimage or “calvary” – the representation of the Passion
of Christ in organized processions in Holy Week culminated in the forma-
tion of a dense network of penitential journeys over widely varying dis-
tances which still further accentuated the contrast between Protestant and
Catholic religiosity.
Apart from this, studies on these practices constitute, once again, an inex-
haustible bibliography, but one in which localism (parochialism) predominates,
and this makes it very difficult to introduce specific milestones of a general
nature, or at least that play a prominent role. There are very few attempts to
offer an overview.28 Praiseworthy though they are, they can scarcely go beyond
what I am saying unless they resort to local examples whose representativeness
on a Mediterranean scale is almost impossible to establish.
The priority of Rome and the Marian shrines and the greater
presence of women
The urban redevelopments of Rome undertaken by Julius II and his suc-
cessors from 1505, over the following century and a half, have also been
endlessly studied and were at once the result of the increase in the flow of
pilgrims and the driving force behind that increase. Tingle has examined
in particular detail the regeneration of the penitential journey to Rome of
18 José Andrés-Gallego
Upward fluctuations
Let us now combine the influence of these factors, the diversity present in
each of them and the legacy of shrines and journeys from previous centuries
that remained unchanged by these new forces (even if modifications were
introduced in the way pilgrimages were made to them). I have referred to
events that constituted very clear historical landmarks (1453, 1475, 1492,
1505, 1512, 1521 and 1543). But it is one thing that those landmarks led
to a reduction or increase in the flow of people and the ways in which they
travelled as pilgrims and another that they did so at very different paces
and gave rise to equally diverse kinds of organizational development. To
mention an important example, pilgrimages to the Holy Land had to be
conducted largely by sea, but initiatives arose from shipowners themselves
helping to make that traffic more fluid.
However, that fluidity was achieved at the expense of the dominant policy
in the ports under Islamic control in which the ships had to dock. It was
therefore a process not without its ups and downs. Moreover, it should be
remembered that Barbary pirates lasted until the nineteenth century and
that this was a factor that the Muslim authorities themselves could not
systematically control.
20 José Andrés-Gallego
Nevertheless, sea transport not only established itself as the solution to the
problem of reaching the Holy Land but also highlighted the fact that it was a
solution capable of combining the three great pilgrimages in one. We cannot
be sure that there were no precedents, but we know at least that between
1511 and 1519 an Antwerp shipowner offered a sea tour, which was to start,
according to the programme for 1514, by docking in La Coruña, making it
possible for travellers to reach Santiago de Compostela in two days. Having
re-embarked, they would continue towards Lisbon and Cádiz and cross the
Mediterranean from West to East – in stages, of course – until they disem-
barked in Jaffa, travelling overland from there to Jerusalem. Finally, the ship
was to return to Civitavecchia, from where they could reach Rome. The fact
that the shipowner published the advertisement in Nuremberg means that he
was not content to settle for carrying Dutch passengers but was hoping for
Germans, and this just a few years before the people of Nuremberg itself,
then an independent principality within the Empire embraced Luther’s doc-
trines. This reference is reported by Julia and highlights not only the effects
of the fall of Constantinople but also the fact that, in spite of it, the recovery
of maritime traffic since the so-called late Middle Ages had reached this sig-
nificant degree of fluidity when it came to making pilgrimages.38
history between the village called Roncesvalles and the hospital and church
situated half an hour away by road, which could serve as an example for
subsequent studies.42 The research was based on an entirely local history
addressed from what aimed to be a universal perspective. Similar histories,
on a greater or lesser scale, are documented everywhere, for example, in
South-Eastern Spain, and also through the interplay that arises between
local romerías (pilgrim processions) and district-level peregrinaciones
(pilgrimages) to Our Lady of Cortes, in the town of Alcaraz (Albacete).43
In this case, the researcher is concerned with the anthropological issues
revealed in pilgrims; but others raise the variety of consequences that pil-
grimages had for the development of the associated trades. One of the most
remarkable and eloquent examples is that of the pajareros (bird fanciers)
of what had begun to be New Spain in the sixteenth century. Among the
natives, there was a fondness for birds, and before the Spanish arrived and
called them pajareros there were already quasi-nomadic families engaged in
hunting birds, training them to sing and selling them or exchanging them
for whatever they might need. And these – birds – were among the first gifts
that the natives began to take to the Virgin of Guadalupe. They gave a very
clear reason, which was that the first thing Juan Diego heard, before finding
himself face to face with the Virgin Mary, was birdsong, which surprised
him because birds were not usually found on the Hill of Tepeyac. And he
approached the place where they could be heard. From then on, the pilgrims
who climbed the hill used to take songbirds. And the same thing was done
when the toing and froing began at other shrines that were created (and it
continues to this day). Bird fanciers became semi-nomadic for this purpose;
they travelled with a pile of cages, some 10 or 11. The number of birds they
carried depended on the species and therefore varied between just 1 and 13
on each level. With their wives and children or alone, they – the bird fan-
ciers – used to go on “pilgrimages” themselves from one shrine to another,
according to the festival calendar, well into the third millennium.44
All this would call for the highly desirable comprehensive approach and
would require expanding the perspective of pilgrimage researchers with
these and other issues. Because every pilgrimage in every period required
all this to be done and to occur in one way or another.
referred to the objections of Erasmus and other leading figures in the six-
teenth century. In the seventeenth century, however, the dissemination of
the work of Bishop Jansen and of the rigorist movement to which it gave
rise – “Jansenism” – represented a decisive advance in criticism of what
came to be considered excesses in penitential practices. At the risk of sim-
plifying this important phenomenon, the influence of Jansenism operated
through two main channels: that of doctrine and that of spirituality. There
were Catholic countries, such as France, where Jansenist doctrine and
spirituality were remarkably strong and created problems of both kinds:
in strictly theological terms and in respect of forging a rigorist and, ulti-
mately, puritanical spirituality.
What Provost observed in the Jacobean pilgrimages from Catholic
Francophone Europe in the seventeenth century was probably not unre-
lated to this, namely that the enormous fluctuations imposed by periods of
war, congestion on the roads and legislation by the authorities suppressing
long-distance pilgrimages of this kind finally succeeded, in the late
eighteenth century, in making people stop going to Santiago.45 We know
that Francophone pilgrims continued to arrive throughout the nineteenth
century. But there were fewer and fewer of them.
At the other extreme, in Italy and Spain, doctrinal Jansenism scarcely
appeared and Jansenist spirituality was less influential and in a later period.
But it did eventually have an influence during the eighteenth century and did
not exclude pilgrimages. In both countries, local pilgrimages, in particular,
had (and still have) a festive aspect, especially with eating and dancing,
which became the object of the strongest moralist criticism and of contempt
among more cultured people. Even the penitential character displayed, in
spite of everything, by pilgrimages and processions was rejected; the presence
of flagellants and hooded figures dragging chains still survived, and there
were rulers in these and other countries who did all they could to prohibit
and effectively wipe out this type of practice, so repellent was the sight of
the blood on the backs of flagellants, to mention a particularly graphic
example, in the second half of the eighteenth century.
In the same volume that contains Provost’s contribution, Sandro Landi46
examines the far-reaching reform of the hospitality system enacted in
the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in 1751–1752, which made pilgrimages a
strictly regulated practice, particularly with the intention of distinguishing
between true pilgrims and “poveri in cammino”. De facto, it contributed to
the decline of this religious practice itself.
Of course, in Catholic pilgrimages of those centuries as a whole – not just
those to Santiago, Rome and Palestine – the process was not so clear-cut;
quite a lot of people maintained and supported attitudes that opponents
considered seriously lax. Ultimately, moral laxity was precisely one of the
main reasons for hostility to the Jesuits, which culminated in the suppres-
sion of the Society of Jesus by Clement XIV in 1774.47
24 José Andrés-Gallego
This date (1774) gives us an idea of how slowly the change we are dis-
cussing took place, especially in the religious sensibility that predominated
in one human community or another. In Spain, the eighteenth century saw
an unconscious but bitter conflict between moral legalism and “laxism”.
The former eventually triumphed, but the painter Francisco de Goya was
still recording processions of flagellants in the nineteenth century.
Conversely – and one can say straight afterwards (although there was no
causal relationship) – the European imperialist expansion into Asia Minor
in the mid-nineteenth century forced open free access to the Holy Land,
which in this new era was no longer merely a place to which people were
led by devotion or penance, but by curiosity and strictly cultural activity.
It was the start of the golden age of Western orientalism, in which we still
find ourselves, though by now it is much debilitated.
In turn, international consideration of the “Roman question” in the
mid-nineteenth century did not halt but did filter pilgrimages to Rome in
the way we shall see.
As regards Santiago de Compostela, Pellistrandi, using the same source
as Provost (the records of the “Hospital Real” of Santiago de Compostela),48
shows that the presence of pilgrims resumed around 1846 and studies it up
to 1900.49 But he establishes that the radius of attraction of pilgrims to
Santiago was gradually reduced to the Iberian Peninsula, while at the same
time – however – the proportion of women was growing. In other words,
this was another case that highlighted the new wave of feminization of
Christianity that was characteristic of the nineteenth century.
The apparitions
It must be added that this whole period was the one that witnessed the
third flowering of Marian apparitions, which were to re-emerge again and
again up to the present day: there had already been some, but the series was
enriched to a remarkable degree from 1830.
I have inserted here a mere incomplete list, grouped into what could be
considered phases of clear intensification. I include only those that are actu-
ally “living” apparitions nowadays and have the acquiescence of ecclesiasti-
cal authority (including those involving an Orthodox or Protestant church).
(Continued)
26 José Andrés-Gallego
Laus (1664–1718)
The Miraculous Medal, Paris (1830)
La Salette, France (1846)
Our Lady of Good Help (1859)
Lourdes, France (1858)
Pontmain (1871)
Gietrzwald (1877)
Knock (1879)
Fátima (1917)
Our Lady of Tears (1932)
Beauraing (1932–1933)
Banneux (1933)
Our Lady of Prayer (1947)
Zeitoun (1968)
Akita (1973)
Cuapa (1980)
Kibeho (1981)
Rosario de San Nicolás (1983)
Betania (1984)
Yankalilla, Australia (1994)
Assiut (2000)
Warraq (2009)
There are other apparitions that have not been approved but whose charac-
teristics prevent the matter from being regarded as closed: for example, those
of Garabandal in Spain (1961–1965) and those of Medjugorje in Herzegovina
from 1981 to the present (2022). The first opened a new phase in Marian
apparitions because of the enormous number of visions: four years in which
four girls in an inaccessible Cantabrian village experienced between 2000 and
3000 ecstasies in front of a crowd which gradually grew to the point of fre-
quently bringing together several thousand people, and comfortably exceeded
a million pilgrims over the whole four-year period. In the case of Medjugorje,
both the duration and the influx of people have been much greater still.
From the doctoral thesis that José Luis Saavedra devoted to Garabandal, 50
we can deduce that the official silence on the events is the result of a decision
maintained by all the bishops of the diocese (Santander) over the following
60 years. In the case of Medjugorje, the same opposition is maintained,
with the special circumstance that it is another episode of a lack of “attune-
ment” between the bishop and the Franciscans who work in the diocese. In
both cases, Rome’s silence seems to reflect a desire to respect the initiative
which belongs, canonically, to the diocesan authority.51
The abundance of documentation on these and other Marian appari-
tions makes it possible to explore all aspects in much more depth, including
Catholic Pilgrimages between c. 1500 and c. 2000 27
those concerning pilgrimages and pilgrims. That and the very quantity of
apparitions in different places, which have become focuses of attraction for
pilgrims, suggest that we are witnessing an important historical change,
which is not easy to sum up.
For the moment, they cannot be said to have eclipsed the pilgrimages
of the past, but they are an additional factor which has become a priority
and which, moreover, arose historically at the same time as the liberal revolu-
tion was being consolidated, and with it, the recognition of all kinds of free-
doms. To a large extent, perhaps without anyone having intended it, they are
a warning on exercising freedom in such a way that the exercise of penance
is forgotten. They are apparitions that have almost always entailed one or
more “messages from the Virgin”, generally related to the need to strengthen
the practice of penance as something due to God, no doubt because of the
penitential fact of the crucifixion of her son.
Non-specialist readers will be surprised on going through the list I
have made because, strictly speaking, there are really just a handful of
internationally famous focuses of Marian devotion after 1830. Lourdes
and Fátima undoubtedly monopolize our attention, but for different rea-
sons. The Lourdes apparitions occurred under the Empire of Napoleon III
and when the development of railways was in full sway. They very soon
reached that hitherto forgotten spot, which was thereby turned from a vil-
lage into a real city. It is difficult to isolate the importance of Lourdes from
France’s cultural predominance in the Catholic and international world
of the nineteenth century. It is not surprising that the cinema has dwelt
particularly on what happened there, in films such as Lourdes by Thierry
Demaizière and Alban Teurlai, which I mention because it is, above all, a
documentary, and therefore a historical source, if not historiographical in
the strict sense. 52
Indeed, discreetly in the background in the hierarchy of attraction they
exert is the apparition that gave rise to the Marian devotion of the so-called
“Miraculous Medal” and that of La Salette, which initiated the insistence
on the need for penitential acts related to the moral and religious degra-
dation of French life. It was 1846 and the Virgin announced a disastrous
sequence of harvests which was indeed to have a severe impact on the grapes
gathered that same year, affected by powdery mildew, a fungus which was
to be followed by others, in such a way that all these germs remained, so to
speak, to this very day. And this too had been forecast; the predictions of
La Salette extended beyond the year 2000.
On the other hand, France’s initial leading role in nineteenth-century
apparitions may or may not have been connected with the political course
much of the country took from 1789, but it cannot be reduced to a primarily
political phenomenon, nor can the involvement of politics be ignored. In
the middle of the century, Paris had begun to be permeated by the move-
ments that can be called “countercultural” or in favour of an “alternative”
28 José Andrés-Gallego
became famous throughout Europe for the heroism of the residents and of
the people who came from all over Aragon and also from the neighbouring
provinces. The imperial soldiers had to be prevented from occupying
the last bastion of the patriots, which guarded the French border, facing
the Pyrenees. The protection of Our Lady of the Pillar became prover-
bial. It is referred to in the words of a jota – the quintessential Aragonese
song and dance – which still echoes in the memory of many Spaniards:
“The Virgin of the Pillar says/that she doesn’t want to be French;/that
she wants to be captain/of the Aragonese troops”. And the fact is that she
did indeed become a national symbol which was maintained throughout
the nineteenth century and linked up with the Civil War of 1936–1939.
Many of the soldiers who fought in it and their relatives made a vow to go
on a pilgrimage to the Pilar when the war was over if they survived. And
the leaders of the Regime soon understood that it could be turned into a
mass movement if it was properly organized from above. 56 The national
pilgrimages, however, did not supplant those organized in many dioceses
and in many municipalities.
What I have just said about the politicization of the main pilgrimages
must be considered in the light of a Spanish proverb which refers to not
passing judgment until you have listened to the various parties involved
in the case being judged: not only the bell must be heard, but also the
bellringer. On piecing together the life of a nineteenth-century Catalan
Jesuit, Francisco Butiñá (1836–1899), I was surprised by the abundance of
information I found in the periodical press of the province of Tarragona in
relation to the diocesan pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgin of Remei in
1889. It was to commemorate the conversion of Reccared, the Visigothic
king of Hispania, from Arianism to Roman Catholicism, which the monarch
announced publicly at the Council of Toledo in 589. In spite of this, it
was a religious-political pilgrimage: it was organized by clergy who were
integrists, or at least unconnected with Carlism, and carried out according
to a plan very similar to that of other similar gatherings: the crowd was led
by distinguished members of the Church and it lasted a whole day, which
involved organizing transport to the nearest railway station and the return
journey from there to the place of origin; it included an early mass for those
who wanted to take communion; the pilgrimage proper from that church
to the Remei shrine; the high mass there, followed by the return, which had
to be shortened because the proceedings were falling increasingly behind
schedule. It was a success. The detailed accounts in the press make it possi-
ble to reconstruct not only that, however, but also what the pilgrims were
doing, on the one hand, to protect themselves from the stifling heat and,
on the other, to enjoy the day. Wine and food circulated, and at some point,
the singing revealed that it was not exactly a political demonstration of
religious radicals (the “integrists”) but of Catholics ready to have a good
time.57
30 José Andrés-Gallego
Notes
1 Boutry and Julia, Pèlerins et pèlerinages.
2 Julia, “Pour une géographie”.
3 Julia, Le voyage aux saints.
4 Nolan and Nolan, Christian Pilgrimage.
5 It should be remembered that flos sanctorum denotes a hagiographic sub-
genre developed in the immediately preceding centuries and that at least two
printed compilations of this subgenre were circulating in the Crown of Cas-
tile in 1512: Flos sanctorum con sus ethimologías [Flower of the Saints with
its Etymologies] and the Leyenda de los santos que vulgarmente flos sanc-
torum llaman [Legend of the Saints Popularly Called Flower of the Saints].
Albisson, “El flos sanctorum castellano”.
6 Câmara, Acta Patris Ignatii.
7 Lama, Relatos de viajes.
8 Lama, “La interrupción”.
9 Lama, Urbs Beata Hierusalem; García, Viajes a Tierra Santa.
10 Singul, “Franciscanos en Tierra Santa”.
Catholic Pilgrimages between c. 1500 and c. 2000 33
References
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legendarios postridentinos: evolución de un subgénero hagiográfico entre con-
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Andrés-Gallego, J. “1767: Por qué los jesuitas?”. In Los jesuitas españoles expulsos:
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siglo XVIII, edited by M. Tietz, 77–102. Madrid: Iberoamericana; Frankfurt am
Main: Vervuert, 2001.
Andrés-Gallego, J. “Con Manuel Revuelta González en Roma y Alcover (1889–2019)”.
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M. Pazos, 119–150. Farnham: Ashgate, 2012.
Arnoulx, F. Le Pélerin du Paradis. Lyon: Pierre Rigaud, 1623.
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Madrid: Editorial Y, 2018.
Barlar, S. H. “Romeras, Rameras, and Royals: Female Pilgrims on the Camino de
Santiago in Medieval and Early Modern Spain”. In Women and Pilgrimage, edited
by E. Moore Quinn, and A. T. Smith, 15–24. Wallingford: CAB International, 2022.
Boutry, P., and D. Julia, eds. Pèlerins et pèlerinages dans l’Europe moderne. Rome:
École française de Rome, 2000.
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Zapico, C. de Dalmases, and P. Leturia. Vol. 66 of Monumenta historica Societatis
Iesu. Roma: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1943.
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ciones permanentes: diversificación turística en el sureste español”. CULTUR 8,
no. 2 (2014): 3–30.
Demaizière, T., and Teurlai, A. Lourdes. París: Falabracks, and Mars Films, 2019.
Dor, J., and M.-É. Henneau, eds. Femmes et Pèlerinages/Women and Pilgrimages.
Santiago de Compostela: Compostela Group of Universities, 2007.
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Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Then Dode, his mother and sister began most unconcernedly to
speculate as to what if anything was next to be done with the old
farmer, the while the latter rolled a vacant eye over a scene he was
no longer able to interpret.
X
MARRIAGE—FOR ONE
H EARING the maid tap lightly on her door for the third or fourth
time, Ulrica uttered a semiconscious “Come.” It was her usual
rising hour but to-day she was more depressed than usual, although
the condition was common enough at all times. The heavy drag of a
troubled mental state was upon her. Was it never to end? Was she
never to be happy again? After several weeks of a decidedly
acceptable loneliness, during which Harry had been in the west
looking after his interminable interests, he was about to return. The
weariness of that, to begin with! And while she could not say that she
really hated or even disliked him deeply (he was too kind and
considerate for that), still his existence, his able and different
personality, constantly forced or persuaded upon her, had come to
be a bore. The trouble was that she did not truly love him and never
could. He might be, as he was, rich, resourceful and generous to a
fault in her case, a man whom the world of commerce respected, but
how did that avail her? He was not her kind of man. Vivian before
him had proved that. And other men had been and would be as glad
to do as much if not more.
Vivian had given all of himself in a different way. Only Harry’s
seeking, begging eyes pleading with her (after Vivian’s death and
when she was so depressed) had preyed upon and finally moved her
to sympathy. Life had not mattered then, (only her mother and
sister), and she had become too weary to pursue any career, even
for them. So Harry with his wealth and anxiety to do for her—
(The maid entered softly, drew back the curtains and
raised the blinds, letting in a flood of sunshine, then
proceeded to arrange the bath.)
It had been, of course, because of the magic of her beauty—how
well she knew the magic of that!—plus an understanding and
sympathy she had for the miseries Harry had endured in his youth,
that had caused him to pursue her with all the pathetic vehemence of
a man of fifty. He was not at all like Vivian, who had been shy and
retiring. Life had seemed to frighten poor Vivian and drive him in
upon himself in an uncomplaining and dignified way. In Harry’s case
it had acted contrariwise. Some men were so, especially the old and
rich, those from whom life was slipping away and for whom youth,
their lost youth, seemed to remain a colored and enthralling
spectacle however wholly gone. The gifts he had lavished upon her,
the cars, the jewels, this apartment, stocks and bonds, even that
house in Seadale for her sister and mother! And all because of a
beauty that meant so little to her now that Vivian was gone, and in
the face of an indifference so marked that it might well have wearied
any man.
How could she go on? (She paused in her thoughts to survey and
follow her maid, who was calling for the second time.) Though he
hung upon her least word or wish and was content to see her at her
pleasure, to run her errands and be ever deferential and worshipful,
still she could not like him, could barely tolerate him. Before her
always now was Vivian with his brooding eyes and elusive, sensitive
smile; Vivian, who had never a penny to bless himself with. She
could see him now striding to and fro in his bare studio, a brush in
one hand, or sitting in his crippled chair meditating before a picture
or talking to her of ways and means which might be employed to
better their state. The pathos!
“I cannot endure that perfume, Olga!”
In part she could understand her acceptance of Harry after Vivian
(only it did not seem understandable always, even to her), for in her
extreme youth her parents had been so very poor. Perhaps because
of her longings and childish fears in those days she had been
marked in some strange way that had eventually led her to the
conviction that wealth was so essential. For her parents were
certainly harassed from her sixth to her thirteenth years, when they
recovered themselves in part. Some bank or concern had failed and
they had been thrown on inadequate resources and made to shift
along in strange ways. She could remember an old brick house with
a funereal air and a weedy garden into which they had moved and
where for a long time they were almost without food. Her mother had
cried more than once as she sat by the open window looking
desolately out, while Ulrica, not quite comprehending what it was all
about, had stared at her from an adjacent corner.
“Will madame have the iris or the Japanese lilac in the
water?”
She recalled going downtown once on an errand and slipping
along shyly because her clothes were not good. And when she saw
some schoolgirls approaching, hid behind a tree so they should not
see her. Another time, passing the Pilkington at dinner-time, the
windows being open and the diners visible, she had wondered what
great persons they must be to be able to bask in so great a world. It
was then perhaps that she had developed the obsession for wealth
which had led to this. If only she could have seen herself as she now
was she would not have longed so. (She paused, looking gloomily
back into the past.) And then had come the recovery of her father in
some way or other. He had managed to get an interest in a small
stove factory and they were no longer so poor—but that was after
her youth had been spoiled, her mind marked in this way.
And to crown it all, at seventeen had come Byram the inefficient.
And because he was “cute” and had a suggestion of a lisp; was of
good family and really insane over her, as nearly every youth was
once she had turned fourteen, she had married him, against her
parents’ wishes, running away with him and lying about her age, as
did he about his. And then had come trying times. Byram was no
money-maker, as she might have known. He was inexperienced, and
being in disfavor with his parents for ignoring them in his hasty
choice of a wife, he was left to his own devices. For two whole years
what had she not endured—petty wants which she had concealed
from her mother, furniture bought on time and dunned for, collectors
with whom she had to plead not to take the stove or the lamp or the
parlor table, and grocery stores and laundries and meat-markets
which had to be avoided because of unpaid bills. There had even
been an ejectment for non-payment of rent, and job after job lost for
one reason and another, until the whole experiment had been
discolored and made impossible even after comfort had been
restored.
“I cannot endure the cries of the children, Olga. You will
have to close that window.”
No; Byram was no money-maker, not even after his parents in far-
distant St. Paul had begun to help him to do better. And anyhow by
then, because she had had time to sense how weak he was, what a
child, she was weary of him, although he was not entirely to blame. It
was life. And besides, during all that time there had been the most
urgent pursuit of her by other men, men of the world and of means,
who had tried to influence her with the thought of how easily her life
could be made more agreeable. Why remain faithful to so young and
poor a man when so much could be done for her. But she had
refused. Despite Byram’s lacks she had small interest in them,
although their money and skill had succeeded in debasing Byram in
her young and untrained imagination, making him seem even
weaker and more ridiculous than he was. But that was all so long
ago now and Vivian had proved so much more important in her life.
While even now she was sorry for Harry and for Byram she could
only think of Vivian, who was irretrievably gone. Byram was
successful now and out of her life, but maybe if life had not been so
unkind and they so foolish——
“You may have Henry serve breakfast and call the car!”
And then after Byram had come Newton, big, successful,
important, a quondam employer of Byram, who had met her on the
street one day when she was looking for work, just when she had
begun to sense how inefficient Byram really was, and he had proved
kind without becoming obnoxious or demanding. While declaring,
and actually proving, that he wished nothing more of her than her
good-will, he had aided her with work, an opportunity to make her
own way. All men were not selfish. He had been the vice-president of
the Dickerson Company and had made a place for her in his office,
saying that what she did not know he would teach her since he
needed a little sunshine there. And all the while her interest in Byram
was waning, so much so that she had persuaded him to seek work
elsewhere so that she might be rid of him, and then she had gone
home to live with her mother. And Newton would have married her if
she had cared, but so grieved was she by the outcome of her first
love and marriage that she would not.
“The sedan, yes. And I will take my furs.”
And then, living with her mother and making her own way, she had
been sought by others. But there had been taking root and growing
in her an ideal which somehow in the course of time had completely
mastered her and would not even let her think of anything else, save
in moments of loneliness and the natural human yearning for life.
This somehow concerned some one man, not any one she knew, not
any one she was sure she would ever meet, but one so wonderful
and ideal that for her there could be no other like him. He was not to
be as young or unsophisticated as Byram, nor as old and practical
as Newton, though possibly as able (though somehow this did not
matter), but wise and delicate, a spirit-mate, some such wondrous
thing as a great musician or artist might be, yet to whom in spite of
his greatness she was to be all in all. She could not have told herself
then how she was to have appealed to him, unless somehow surely,
because of her great desire for him, her beauty and his
understanding of her need. He was to have a fineness of mind and
body, a breadth, a grasp, a tenderness of soul such as she had not
seen except in pictures and dreams. And such as would need her.
“To Thorne and Company’s first, Fred.”
Somewhere she had seen pictures of Lord Byron, of Shelley, Liszt
and Keats, and her soul had yearned over each, the beauty of their
faces, the record of their dreams and seekings, their something
above the common seeking and clayiness (she understood that
now). They were of a world so far above hers. But before Vivian
appeared, how long a journey! Life had never been in any hurry for
her. She had gone on working and seeking and dreaming, the while
other men had come and gone. There had been, for instance, Joyce
with whom, had she been able to tolerate him, she might have found
a life of comfort in so far as material things went. He was, however,
too thin or limited spiritually to interest a stirring mind such as hers, a
material man, and yet he had along with his financial capacity more
humanity than most, a kind of spiritual tenderness and generosity at
times towards some temperaments. But no art, no true romance. He
was a plunger in real estate, a developer of tracts. And he lacked
that stability and worth of temperament which even then she was
beginning to sense as needful to her, whether art was present or not.
He was handsomer than Byram, a gallant of sorts, active and
ebullient, and always he seemed to sense, as might a homing
pigeon, the direction in which lay his own best financial opportunities
and to be able to wing in that direction. But beyond that, what? He
was not brilliant mentally, merely a clever “mixer” and maker of
money, and she was a little weary of men who could think only in
terms of money. How thin some clever men really were!
“I rather like that. I’ll try it on.”
And so it had been with him as it had been with Byram and
Newton, although he sought her eagerly enough! and so it was
afterward with Edward and Young. They were all worthy men in their
way. No doubt some women would be or already had been drawn to
them and now thought them wonderful. Even if she could have
married any one of them it would only have been to have endured a
variation of what she had endured with Byram; with them it would
have been of the mind instead of the purse, which would have been
worse. For poor Byram, inefficient and inexperienced as he was, had
had some little imagination and longings above the commonplace.
But these, as contrasted with her new ideal——
“Yes, the lines of this side are not bad.”
Yes, in those days there had come to her this nameless unrest,
this seeking for something better than anything she had yet known
and which later, without rhyme or reason, had caused her to be so
violently drawn to Vivian. Why had Vivian always grieved so over her
earlier affairs? They were nothing, and she regretted them once she
knew him.
“Yes, you may send me this one, and the little one with
the jade pins.”