Pilgrims and Pilgrimage

This easy-to-use, highly visual, interactive resource explores the theme of Pilgrimage through Literature, History, Art and Architecture, Maps, Social Anthropology, Classical Religion, Major World Religions, the Bible and Christian Tradition, Tourism, and accounts of pilgrims past and present.

Following an introduction to the idea of pilgrimage and its place in cultures and faiths worldwide, including Greek and Roman pilgrimage, the resource is arranged chronologically from the origins of the idea of pilgrimage explored in the Bible and the early Church, through the development of it in Christianity and its enduring role today. The emphasis is on the English experience and expression of pilgrimage in the medieval period, but the resource contains material on major Continental sites as well as Jerusalem and Rome.

Richly illustrated with images from manuscripts, museum collections, religious sites and digital modelling, the resource explores physical pilgrimage to individual sites in England and abroad, with spotlights on particular saints, as well as interior pilgrimage and the concept of inner journeying expounded by anchorites, mystics and the monastic orders. The impact of the Reformation on pilgrimage and its associated material and literary culture in England leads into the emerging role of pilgrimage and tourism and the importance of pilgrimage today.

Alongside the comprehensive article-based content is an interactive 'Resource Centre', which provides access to the resource's encyclopedia of hundreds of terms, nearly 400 images, and an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary texts - all of which are fully searchable via keyword. Also available within the Resource Centre are zoomable images of Breydenbach’s maps of Venice and Jerusalem, the Mappa Mundi and Matthew Paris’ maps of pilgrimage routes. A digital reconstruction of Thirsk parish church allows you to explore a simplified medieval parish interior with anchorite’s cell.