Pilgrims to Jerusalem in the Middle Ages

by Nicole Chareyron, Donald Wilson

Overview

"Every man who undertakes the journey to the Our Lord's Sepulcher needs three sacks: a sack of patience, a sack of silver, and a sack of faith."—Symon Semeonis, an Irish medieval pilgrim

As medieval pilgrims made their way to the places where Jesus Christ lived and suffered, they experienced, among other things: holy sites, the majesty of the Egyptian pyramids (often referred to as the "Pharaoh's granaries"), dips in the Dead Sea, unfamiliar desert landscapes, the perils of traveling along the Nile, the customs of their Muslim hosts, Barbary pirates, lice, inconsiderate traveling companions, and a variety of difficulties, both great and small. In this richly detailed study, Nicole Chareyron draws on more than one hundred firsthand accounts to consider the journeys and worldviews of medieval pilgrims. Her work brings the reader into vivid, intimate contact with the pilgrims' thoughts and emotions as they made the frequently difficult pilgrimage to the Holy Land and back home again.

Unlike the knights, princes, and soldiers of the Crusades, who traveled to the Holy Land for the purpose of reclaiming it for Christendom, these subsequent pilgrims of various nationalities, professions, and social classes were motivated by both religious piety and personal curiosity. The travelers not only wrote journals and memoirs for themselves but also to convey to others the majesty and strangeness of distant lands. In their accounts, the pilgrims relate their sense of astonishment, pity, admiration, and disappointment with humor and a touching sincerity and honesty.

These writings also reveal the complex interactions between Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Holy Land. Throughout their journey, pilgrims confronted occasionally hostile Muslim administrators (who controlled access to many holy sites), Bedouin tribes, Jews, and Turks. Chareyron considers the pilgrims' conflicted, frequently simplistic, views of their Muslim hosts and their social and religious practices.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231132305
Publisher:	Perseus (for Columbia University Press)
Publication date:	02/23/2005
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	308
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.81(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Nicole Chareyron is professor of medieval languages and literature at Paul Valéry University in Montpellier, France. She is the author of Globe Trotters au Moyen Age and Jean le Bel, le maitre de Froissart and the editor of Les Errances de Frere Felix Fabri, pelerin de Terre sainte.W. Donald Wilson is professor emeritus of French Studies at the University of Waterloo.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Preface
Chronology and Maps
1. Evagari et Discurrere per Mundum
2. All Roads Lead to Venice
3. Venice in Splendid Dress
4. Five Weeks in a Galley
5. The Holy Lond of Promyssion
6. Jerusalem and the Holy Places
7. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher: The Christian World in Miniature
8. Pilgrimages and Excursions Round and About Jerusalem
9. Saracens in the Towns, Arabs in the Desert, and Jews Here and There
10. Desert Time, Desert Space
11. Sinai and Its Speaking Stones
12. Cairo, City of Lights
13. Diamonds of the Sands, or Pharaoh's Granaries
14. The Virginís Garden, the Hermitsí Desert, and Egyptian Dreams
15. Alexandria, Sentry of the East
16. Happy He Who, Like Ulysses
17. By Way of an Ending: The Smell of Thyme and the Taste of Honey

What People are Saying About This

John Tolan

Nicole Charyeron has produced a well-written and engaging study of a corpus of fascinating and under-studied travel accounts of pilgrims from all over Catholic Europe from the fourteenth to the early sixteenth century. She does a wonderful job of bringing these texts to life and weaving them together into a coherent narrative while respecting their individual voices.

Catherine Randall

This work is of major importance in several fields, among them literature, medieval studies, religious studies, cultural studies, ethnography, studies of travel narratives, philosophical issues of alterity, and many others. Chareyron's book should find a broad readership both among academics and the general public: it is well-written, interesting, crammed withanecdote and detail as well as scholarly analysis. The book is especially timely given its investigation of the interactionsbetween Islam and Christianity, the antecedents of present-day tensions, concerns and, perhaps, as resolutions.

Editorial Reviews

Wishful thinking shapes pilgrims' accounts gathered by Ms. Chareyron in her lively new book.

Chronicle of Higher Education - Nina Ayoub

Her book brings the reader into vivid, intimate contact with the pilgrims' thoughts and emotions.

Scripture Bulletin - Martin O'Kane

Wishful thinking shapes pilgrims' accounts gathered by Ms. Chareyron in her lively new book.

— Nina Ayoub

Chronicle of Higher Education

Her book brings the reader into vivid, intimate contact with the pilgrims' thoughts and emotions.

— Martin O'Kane

Scripture Bulletin