Pilgrimage
Introduction
This is coursework is about Pilgrimage. The coursework is divided into
three parts. I am going to talk about what happens at pilgrimage, why
people go and reasons why/why not are these places becoming too
commercialised. But what is a pilgrimage? A Christian Pilgrimage is a
journey undertaken, by believers to a place, which is, for some
reason, considered to be holy. No one has the obligation to go but
religious pilgrims have been particularly important in the Catholic
Church for centuries. Many Christians have seen them as an essential
part of their own spiritual journey as it not only takes them to
places where God, or one of his saints, have revealed themselves in
the past, but it also gives them an opportunity to meet people
involved in similar journeys. There are many places of pilgrimage
like: Lourdes in France, Rome in Italy, Taize in France, Holy Land in
Israel, Knock in Ireland, Santiago de Compostella in Spain, and many
more.
AO1
Lourdes is a town in the South of France. It is in the Pyrenees
mountains. In 1858, a teenage girl named Marie (who later changed her
name to Bernadette) believed she had several visions of Mary, the
mother of Jesus. Bernadette's parents were poor farmers, and she was
uneducated. During one of the visions, the Lady told Bernadette to dig
nearby and to drink the water she would discover. Bernadette dug, and
uncovered a spring, whose waters were found to have healing powers. It
was not long before people came to Lourdes, to see for themselves what
was happening. Some were simply curious. Others were hoping for a
miracle. Some visitors had disabilities, such as lameness that doctors
could not cure. They drank from Bernadette's stream and some were
cured. Lourdes quickly became a famous pilgrimage centre for
Christians. Nowadays, millions of pilgrims visit Lourdes every year.
The town is full of hotels and souvenir shops. Pilgrims visit the
grotto where Bernadette had her visions. There is a statue of Mary in
Throughout all texts discussed, there is a pervasive and unmistakable sense of journey in its unmeasurable and intangible form. The journeys undertaken, are not physically transformative ones but are journeys which usher in an emotional and spiritual alteration. They are all life changing anomaly’s that alter the course and outlook each individual has on their life. Indeed, through the exploitation of knowledge in both a positive and negative context, the canvassed texts accommodate the notion that journeys bear the greatest magnitude when they change your life in some fashion.
Rituals are held as a very important part of any society, including ours. They go back to ancient times or can be as simple as maintaining one’s hygiene. Non-western societies have rituals that may seem very foreign to us, but they have been engrained in their communities and are essential to their social structure. This interpretation will focus on the Great Pilgrimage, a ritual performed by Quechuan communities. We will be looking specifically at a community in the area of Sonqo.
During the Romanesque era, pilgrims were the most noticeable characteristic of public religious devotion, proclaiming their faith in the power of saints (Gardner 335). Pilgrims traveled all over Europe to reach the major shrines located in Jerusalem. The large quantity of pilgrims whom wished to visit the saints effected the Romanesque churches architecturally (Gardner 335). Changes in design and structure we being made in order to accommodate the growing crowds of pilgrims. Changes such as longer and wider naves and aisles, transepts and ambulatories with additional chapels and even second-story galleries (Gardner 335). The increase of the pilgrimage routes which allowed more pilgrims to travel in order to visit their saints, established many changes in architectural styles as well as the dissemination of the faith in saints.
What is a Crusade? How did a Crusader crusade? What caused him to seek “holy war?” Is a Crusade a Holy War or a Pilgrimage? Did a crusader only leave to find his own economic benefits? What caused the success of the first crusaders? These are some of the many questions that laid before me when I started my research. The crusading movements are such widely debated among the modern historian that they leave many readers confused about what actually caused the crusades, and what a crusade actually entails. In the coming pages I hope to give my reader something to ponder, understand, and acknowledge about it’s origins, and eventually lead my reader into the first crusading movement. Thus, the argument I intend to make examines the events in previous centuries, and the culmination of political and moral changes, as well as economic ones that occurred before Urban’s call for crusade. We will explore Feudalism, it’s war-centric society and how this caused Urban (as well as some Popes and religious figures before him) to seek a peaceable solution that would ensure safety for the clergy, the peasant, and the non-violent. Furthermore, Pope Urban sought to continue Pope Gregory's (and Cluniac) reform to solidify Papal authority over Christendom, and respond to years of Muslim raids along the Mediterranean and upper Italian Coastlines that threatened Italian unity. In effect, the first crusading movement represented and embodied the European culture, society, and ideologies of the time.
The act of pilgrimage is scared to the devoted followers of any faith as it requires a commitment to religious obligations and the utmost sacrifice to an unseen deity. As one takes part in a religious journey, he or she renounces worldly obligations in efforts to fulfill the greatest form of piety.
In the “Canterbury Tales”, Chaucer depicts each character of the pilgrimage using allegorical descriptions. The pilgrimage in itself can be seen as an allegory since it represents more than a physical journey but a journey of one’s true self. The flaws exposed in the characters are also seen as a reflection of their surroundings. Therefore, each character is used to exemplify the faults of medieval society. For example, the description of the Physician is a direct example of irony. Chaucer begins by describing the Physician in a flattering light.
The Basilica of St. Denis contributed to the rise of the Catholic Church, for it provided a physical representation of the “Holy Jerusalem”, for many people to see. By viewing this representation of heaven, many people reestablished their faith into the church and longed for salvation, so that they can be accepted into the “spiritual heaven” after their death. This desperate attempt to gain salvation caused individuals to devote themselves to the church, which brought the Catholic Church leverage, power, and wealth.
If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friend, and never see them again… then you are ready for a walk. -Henry David Thoreau (Haberman 12)
A major reason why the First Crusade could be viewed as a pilgrimage is because of the number and type of people taking part. While it is true that the first crusade contained an extraordinarily large military contingent of between 50,000 and 60,000 people the first crusade also contained huge numbers of women, children and the elderly, who all fall under the category of non-combatant. So, the first crusade was clearly not just a military undertaking as
When Catherine was six she saw a bridal chamber up in the heavens with Jesus Christ who bestowed upon her the sign of the cross and his eternal bene...
Historically journeys were seen as the physical movement of a group of people migrating from one place to another. Additionally, journeys were usually only found throughout the history of civilization and religion. Despite this, journeys come in all aspects and are found in a variety of mediums. Specifically, two journeys that are found in the literary works of The Epic of Gilgamesh and Monkey: A Journey to the West are physical and intellectual. These two stories exemplify what a journey consists of by construction the plots around each protagonist participating in both journeys.
Passus VIII of William Langland's Piers Plowman presents a search--which becomes a journey within the journey of the entire text. Here the narrator, Will, describes an inner pilgrimage--one that takes its shape in a religious context, but plays itself out through everyday life and the notion of self. The medieval traditional notion of pilgrimage involves the physical journey to a religious shrine as a means of obtaining, through journey and arrival, a revelation of religious and sacred integrity. The connotations of pilgrimage, however, stretch far beyond the actual physical act--a pilgrimage is "the physical symbol of [an] eternal goal" (Davidson and Dunn-Wood 13). The expanse of pilgrimage in medieval terms also envelops the understanding that "within or alongside this spiritual journey...was an intellectual journey as well, a quest against error and folly for truth and wisdom, which ultimately amounted to the knowledge of God" (Bowman 5). But pilgrimage goes even beyond that, in that it requires an absolute journey into the self with the goal of discovering that which gives the individual a context in which to exist.
In some religions pilgrimage is not an important commitment for all believers, but in Islam it is essential. The word pilgrimage means to set out with a purpose or journey to a sacred world. The world is a world. For Muslims this sacred place is Mecca and the purpose is to follow in the footsteps and actions of the prophet Muhammad as he entered Mecca and to show complete submission to Allah. Unlike the minor pilgrimage to Mecca (Umrah), which can be performed.
Geoffrey Chaucer, in The Canterbury Tales, uses both a frame narrative and satire to describe the pilgrimage of thirty pilgrims. The purpose of Chaucer’s use of the frame narrative is to display to the reader the stories within. These pilgrims, as described in the outer frame of the work, embark on a great journey to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket in Canterbury, England. Chaucer created a character from most of the classes to ensure that his work has the characteristics of verisimilitude, yet excluded from the motley crew pilgrims of the highest and the lowest of the social ranks, royalty and serfs, respectively. The twenty-nine pilgrims, including Chaucer the Pilgrim, enter the journey, with Harry Bailly, their Host at the Tabard
In Geoffrey Chaucer’s writing, “The Canterbury Tales”, he writes of a pilgrimage and describes every character that is involved, some more in depth than others. Keep in mind that this writing is dated back in the 1300’s, so there is going to be some distinction between those he described on the pilgrimage compared to how one would describe people of today. If Chaucer did write about people today, three people he would most likely choose would be a teacher or professor, a professional athlete, and a song artist.