Travel, Pilgrimage and Social Interaction from Antiquity to the Middle Ages

Jenni Kuuliala, Jussi Rantala, Jenni Kuuliala, Jussi Rantala

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367137564
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429647703
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Mobility and travel have always been key characteristics of human societies, having various cultural, social and religious aims and purposes. Travels shaped religions and societies and were a way for people to understand themselves, this world and the transcendent. This book analyses travelling in its social context in ancient and medieval societies. Why did people travel, how did they travel and what kind of communal networks and negotiations were inherent in their travels? Travel was not only the privilege of the wealthy or the male, but people from all social groups, genders and physical abilities travelled. Their reasons to travel varied from profane to sacred, but often these two were intermingled in the reasons for travelling. The chapters cover a long chronology from Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages, offering the reader insights into the developments and continuities of travel and pilgrimage as a phenomenon of vital importance.

1 Introduction

Travelling, religion, and society from Antiquity to the Middle Ages

Jenni Kuuliala and Jussi Rantala

Travel has always been inherent in all human societies, shaping and changing the lives of individuals and communities. The motives for travel could be economic, religious, political, personal, or all of these, yet they always had communal undertones. This volume focuses on social and cultural approaches to travelling, mobility, and pilgrimages from Classical Antiquity to early Christian centuries and the Late Middle Ages in Western Europe.¹ Although the interaction between society and space has been a key interest of scholars after the ‘Spatial Turn’, greater comparisons between eras and cultures are for the most part missing; this is the gap we seek to fill.²

The chapters in this volume concentrate on cultural and social interaction before, during, and after periods of travel. What motivations were there for ancient and medieval people to get on the road, and what negotiations and networks were intrinsic to travelling? How were these later reported and what cultural meanings were given to travels? As this volume has a longue durée perspective, the same topics are addressed within chapters focusing on different time periods and cultures. Encounters with the sacred and the role of religion in travel are analysed from both non-Christian and Christian perspectives. Similarly, attention is given to the different means and experiences of travel in varying contexts. The chapters therefore discuss the diversity of people travelling and the diversity in their experiences of travel. Pilgrimage and, generally, religious journeys in various forms is the central theme in most of the chapters. However, sacred travels are not addressed only as a medieval, Christian concept; their non-Christian roots and development are analysed as well. In order to trace continuity as well as change throughout this long time span, the chapters proceed chronologically, from mid-Republican Rome all the way to the Late Middle Ages.

Travel shaped the cultural and social landscape not just as an activity occurring at a moment in time, but also as the theme of stories later retold. The act of travelling, as well as narrations about travel, also shaped religious and cultural practices. The earliest records of travel during Antiquity were travel poems, the most famous and culturally influential one being Homer's Odyssey, which came to serve as the embodiment of the restlessness of travel.³ This tradition continued into the Roman period, where we can find texts from poets such as Lucilius, Virgil, Ausonius, and Rutilius, to mention a few, describing travels of different sorts.⁴ During medieval times, the travels of Abraham, Adam, or Moses were central to the ideals of travel, as was Christ’s journey to Emmaus and the apostles’ travels that followed Christ’s instructions.⁵ Religious travel and the retelling of such travels were a way to engage in religious practice and create new ways of doing so, even as a means to shape one’s sense of self; writing about religious travel cannot be entirely separated from its completion.⁶ At the same time, the realities of travel – the practical challenges of setting out for a journey, as well as the dangers of the road – were not dependent on the incentive but rather on distance and geography, the traveller’s social status and functional ability, and the political climate.⁷ A premodern traveller had to negotiate these factors in varying ways, some of which were intertwined with the religious practices of travel while other approaches were much more practical. All of these aspects shaped personal experiences and the later retelling of travel events.

While the descriptions of religious travel are not abundant in chronicles of the pre-Christian world compared to later Christian narratives, we do have many traces of sacred travels recorded in Antiquity. Considering the Greek world, even if we lack individual testimonies, epigraphy and literature give us enough glimpses into the past to realize that the Greeks travelled to their sacred places for over a thousand years, at least from the sixth century BCE to the fourth century CE, and that sacred travellers were a common sight on Greek roads and landscapes in general. The most famous destinations of these journeys were various Panhellenic games, such as Olympian, or the most important oracles, particularly the one at Delphi, yet the significance of religious travel went well beyond these.⁸ However, when dealing with sacred travel in the ancient world, pilgrimage journeys in the pre-Christian Roman Empire – particularly during the Roman Republican period – have proven to be a somewhat problematic subject. While Italian communities of the Republican era did possess a rich variety of sacred sites among them, we lack evidence of sacred travel similar to that of the Greek world or, later, the Christian Roman Empire. This has led many to the conclusion that pilgrimages did not matter in Roman religion as much as they did in Hellenistic Greece or the Christian Roman Empire.⁹ Focusing on archaeological evidence from three sacred sites in Latium that were active during the Roman mid-Republic, Emma-Jayne Graham challenges this idea. As she argues in Chapter 2, instead of just seeking evidence analogous to the aforementioned two, better known periods of sacred travel, we should acknowledge the nature of pilgrimages in early Roman Italy as a set of behaviours closely related to ‘ordinary’ Roman religious practice; this would explain the apparent lack of direct evidence of pilgrimages during the period in question. Thus, as she mentions, the absence of evidence for the forms of pilgrimage with which we are familiar from other contexts need not indicate that pilgrimages did not exist, were infrequent, or were unimportant; they just did not need to be identified as a somewhat ‘special’ type of behaviour.¹⁰

As sacred spaces were numerous in the Roman Republic and later on in the Imperial era as well, it is obvious that people travelling by land encountered a large number of different kinds of sanctuaries, temples, herms, roadside shrines, and so on during their journeys.¹¹ Moreover, travellers often carried portable shrines with them for their personal religious purposes – whether for purification of the space after they arrived, for protection during their travel, or for something similar. As expressed by Steven Muir (2011), ancient travellers felt the presence of gods while on the road, and linked both home- and civic-based religion with it; this interaction with the divinities, both those celebrated in local shrines throughout the empire and those ‘home gods’ who travelled with them, maintained the identity of the travellers during the journey.¹² Thus, we may claim that the significance of roads went well beyond simple mobility and transportation. This becomes evident in Chapter 3 by Ray Laurence, who points out how roads also served as a ‘tool’ for the Roman state by bringing individuals into contact with its agency. As Laurence mentions, already in the Republican period, the roads had considerably shaped the settlement pattern of the Italian peninsula, and by the time of Augustus, their significance was widely recognized. With the passage of time, road building became something that characterized the Roman state, with the roads themselves even becoming a symbol of it. The restoration of roads represented imperial power over landscape, and roads not only connected various parts of the empire together, but also represented a connection between the Roman power and the public.

While very tangible constructions such as roads thus had immense value for Republican and Imperial Rome and the self-understanding of its people, more mythical journeys, featured in various narratives, were likewise an important part of Roman culture and identity. The most famous example is probably the Aeneid by Virgil, describing the travels of Aeneas from the burning city of Troy to the shores of Latium, fulfilling his destiny as the first true Roman hero.¹³ As Virgil’s epic poem indicates, the key to the success for a traveller such as Aeneas was to observe and obey the will of the gods; only by acting according to their instructions could he bring ‘order to the chaos’, that is, end his life as a refugee and find a permanent homeland which would provide a secure future for him and his descendants. Another example of a mythical journey is provided by Katariina Mustakallio in Chapter 4, where she relates the story of Valesius, a powerful Sabine man from the famous gens of Valerian, whose travel was motivated by an attempt to find a cure for his sick children. As Mustakallio demonstrates, the story, which describes various events and experiences during a journey, takes place in a mythical past and reveals the Roman religious mentality, emphasizing especially certain liminality, ambiguity, or disorientation. On the other hand, it is a reminder of how essential it was for Romans to take good care of their relations with gods by performing religious rituals, ceremonies, and sacrifices properly, and to take notice of the orders and advice given from the supernatural sphere. Only then would pax deorum, the peace of the gods, prevail.

While religious agency during journeys – whether real or mythical – had a significant place in Roman culture, it is, in particular, the de...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of maps
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: travelling, religion, and society from Antiquity to the Middle Ages
• 2 Pilgrimage, mobile behaviours and the creation of religious place in early Roman Latium
• 3 The meaning of roads: a reinterpretation of the Roman Empire
• 4 The sacred travel of Valesius’ family: children and the liminal stage
• 5 When kings and gods meet: agency and experience in sacred travel from Alexander the Great to Caracalla
• 6 Roman Imperial family on the road: power and interaction in the Roman East during the Antonine Era
• 7 Pilgrimage in Pausanias
• 8 Pilgrim’s devotion? Christian graffiti from Antiquity to the Middle Ages
• 9 The rise of St. James’ cult and the concept of pilgrimage
• 10 Pedes habent et non ambulabunt: mobility impairment in Merovingian Gaul
• 11 Sacralizing the journey: liturgies of travel and pilgrimage before the Crusades
• 12 ‘Not all those who wander are lost’: saintly travellers and their companions in medieval Scandinavia
• 13 ‘The wagon rests in winter, the sleigh in summer, the horse never’: practices of interurban travelling on horseback from Antiquity to the Middle Ages
• 14 Entertaining and educating the audience at home: eye-witnessing in late medieval pilgrimage reports
• 15 An indigenous lord in the Spanish royal court: the transatlantic voyage of Don Pedro de Henao, Cacique of Ipiales
• Index