Late Medieval Pilgrimage

Pilgrimage to the tombs of holy persons, known as ziyāra (lit. a visit, visiting) was a fundamental aspect of devotional life throughout the medieval Near East. Medieval Muslims composed pilgrimage guides reflecting their pilgrimage experiences and those of others. Such guides, known collectively as "kutub al-ziyārāt" (pilgrimage guides), meant to be employed at tombs and shrines, mention places efficacious for prayer, obtaining baraka (blessings), achieving cures, and fulfilling supplication for worldly and spiritual needs. This study looks at the first known Syrian pilgrimage guide which was composed during the sixteenth-century Ibn al-Hawrānī's-Ishārāt ilā Amākin al-Ziyārāt (Guide to Pilgrimage Places). It also explores the genesis of the ziyāra genre in Syria and offers a number of suggestions as to its late emergence there. This is followed by an annotated translation of the guide.

This article uses a variety of theoretical approaches on literary criticism, biblical scholarship, orientalist studies and gender studies to explore a chapter in the story of Jabal Mūsā, a desert site traditionally associated with the biblical Mount Sinai. In 1822 Burckhardt’s Travels in Syria and the Holy Land was published. It was the first book to question the biblical identification on the basis of archaeology and topography. Hundreds of essays followed, arguing for or against contestants for the ‘Mount of the Law.’ The controvercy largely conformed to the religious, cultural and gender diversity of the body of authors. Accounts by Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian visitors as well as by female travellers, irrespective of religious persuasion, did not share the critical tone of male Protestants. The latter’s attitude was founded on their certainty of the literal truth of the Bible, their rejection of ecclesiastical tradition and their anti-monastic feelings. During the period in question, Jabal Mūsā was measured, described, sketched and photographed but also questioned and dismissed, a tradition followed by scholars seeking alternative ‘Mount Sinais’ in the peninsula, Negev or Arabia to this day.

U članku se objavljuju prva povijesna i književnopovijesna analiza te transliteracija kasnosrednjovjekovnoga teksta ot er(u)s(o)l(i)ma i groba b(o)žiê čt(enie) koji je zapisan u Vinodolskom zborniku (Zagreb: Arhiv HAZU, sign. III a 15). Posrijedi je jedini zasad poznati hrvatski srednjovjekovni itinerar po Svetoj zemlji, koji je vjerojatno bio sastavljen na temelju nepoznata latinskoga ili romanskoga teksta. Obrazlaže se hipoteza prema kojoj hrvatskoglagoljski itinerar nije bio zamišljen kao praktičan hodočasnički vodič, nego kao poučan tekst namijenjen učvršćivanju »kolektivnoga pamćenja« o Svetoj zemlji kao prostoru na koji kršćani imaju isključivo pravo. Osim toga, iznosi se hipoteza da je hrvatskoglagoljski itinerar mogao biti namijenjen razmatranju povijesti Spasenja u obliku virtualnoga hodočašća.

[The article presents the first edition and literary and historical analysis of a text »ot er(u)s(o)l(i)ma i groba b(o)žiê čt(enie)« [The Reading on Jerusalem and God's Sepulchre] which is preserved in a late medieval Glagolitic codex known as the Vinodol miscellany (Zagreb: Archives of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, sign. III a 15). The text is identified as a member of the genre of medieval itineraria and it is the only known medieval itinerary around the Holy Land written in the Croatian language. While the direct source of the Croatian texts has not been found, a few idiosyncratic toponyms point to the conclusion that the Croatian writer was using a Latin or a Romance source. The itinerary scripts the pilgrimage from the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem to Hebron, where the creation of Adam was to be commemorated, and I argue that the pilgrims' progression through the sites could have been envisaged as the commemoration of the history of salvation in reverse order. Given that the text barely mentions the existing Muslim presence in the Holy Land, it can be concluded that it was unlikely to be used as a practical guide for a real pilgrimage. A further support for this conclusion comes from the introduction of the itinerary in a codex between various texts which were written for the purpose of religious instruction. I argue that the Croatian itinerary could have been written as an instructive text which was meant to promote the Western construct of the Holy Land as a sacred area to which the Christians have the exclusive right. Furthermore, I suggest that the itinerary could have been primarily used as a script for a meditative religious devotion in the form of a virtual pilgrimage.]

Cette étude traite de la représentation de Mahomet dans le récit en moyen-néerlandais du pèlerinage au Proche-Orient du noble flamand Josse de Ghistelles, rédigé par Ambrosius Zeebout (ca 1491), un texte qui compte parmi les plus importantes relations de voyage européennes médiévales. La source de cette représentation et le traitement que Ghistelles lui applique ont récemment attiré l’attention des chercheurs. En 1998, Renaat Gaspar avançait que la source principale de l’exposé sur Mahomet, dans le premier livre de l’œuvre de Josse, était le fameux récit de voyage de Bernhard von Breydenbach. Ce texte, écrit par le dominicain et professeur de théologie Martin Rath, est le premier récit de voyage à avoir été imprimé, en 1486, immédiatement après sa rédaction. Rath n’apparaît pas dans le texte – il n’a pas participé au pèlerinage, mais compose le récit à la première personne et au nom de Breydenbach.
Selon une hypothèse récente, Zeebout aurait adopté un ton plus neutre que sa source, le récit du voyage Breydenbach. En même temps, il a été remarqué que Zeebout aurait utilisé un langage dégradant. Il convient alors de se demander si le récit de Zeebout reste aussi neutre lorsqu’il décrit la vie de Mahomet, principal antagoniste de l’Occident chrétien. Le but de cette contribution est de vérifier le contenu et l’origine des modifications que Zeebout a pu apporter au discours de Rath. Tout d’abord, afin d’éclairer la neutralité supposée de l’exposé de Zeebout, j’analyserai son usage de langage dégradante, et de son plus neutre. Quand use-t-il ce dernier, et quand emploie-t-il le registre de l’injure?
Je considère en outre la spécificité de la description de la vie de Mahomet chez Zeebout: en quoi sa caractérisation du prophète diffère-t-il de celle de Rath?

Izlaganje je posvećeno kraćemu tekstu koji je zapisan u Vinodolskome zborniku pod naslovom »ot er(u)s(o)l(i)ma i groba b(o)žiê čt(enie)«. Analizom sadržaja, retoričkih obrazaca i usporedbom toga teksta sa značajnim ranokršćanskim i srednjovjekovnim vodičima i putopisima pokazat ću da je riječ o srednjovjekovnome hodočasničkome vodiču. Taj je pronalazak značajan stoga što je posrijedi jedina potvrda toga žanra u hrvatskoj srednjovjekovnoj književnosti. Iznesena je hipoteza da je taj tekst nastao prevođenjem nekoga latinskoga ili romanskoga izvora. Ta se hipoteza temelji na abduktivnome traženju objašnjenja nekoliko zbunjujućih toponima na glagoljskome popisu hodočasničkih lokaliteta koji se mogu plauzibilno objasniti pretpostavljajući prevođenje s latinskoga ili romanskoga originala.

This dissertation describes pilgrimages and pilgrims who traveled from the Croatian coast to Loreto and Assisi in the 18th century. The origin of passengers, their number and organization into groups, the time they spent on the pilgrimage, as well as the seasons and vessels they traveled on have been analyzed based on 16,000 documents of the Croatian Maritime Regesta of the 18th century / Regesti marittimi croati del Settecento vol. I-III. Particular attention will also be given to small entrepreneurs, captains and shipowners, Croats and Italians, who have made these pilgrimages possible. The first two volumes of the maritime regesta were published in Padua (1985 and 1993), while the third one, that the author of this work had edited for print, was issued last year as an edition of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Split (2017). The documents pertaining to pilgrimages have been singled out and processed using a computer program that provides for faster analytics and facilitates further work.
The dissertation describes the pilgrims' preparation for such an important journey, which transforms from a personal decision into a choral act of a broader community that travels and prays. 
In addition to the classical historiographic approach and consideration given to the achievements of social, demographic and maritime history, the analysis of sources and coverage of the topic are also approached from the point of view of anthropology of the sacred, which indicates the sources and essence of the quest for the sacred and the divine since prehistoric times. A religious experience happens in a certain cultural and historical environment: one cannot reduce it solely to the historical, social or psychological dimension, or rule out in advance any transcendental perspective. A historian must not withdraw before those experiences but rather define clearly the role of man woven into the very source of the religious phenomenon.
The documents are not mere records of the arrivals and departures of vessels from ports, of the transport of goods, paid taxes and people’s journeys. They testify to the primordial human need for the supernatural, which does not settle merely for prayer in the community in which one lives and works, but is rather manifested in the readiness and boldness to embark on a long journey, often uncomfortable and unsafe, in order not only to realize in the walk towards the Unknown one's own faith, but also to share in meeting people from the other coast the cultural, social, religious and, naturally, economic koinè of Mare Nostrum.
A total of 303 pilgrimages to Loreto and Assisi have been found, attesting to 2,513 pilgrims travelling, mostly in large and organized groups of up to 80 people, from the east coast of the Adriatic - from Umag in the north to Boka Kotorska in the south - to these old and to Croatian believers well-known sanctuaries. At the forefront were the residents of Lošinj, who had demonstrated their loyalty to the Mother of God in 75 recorded journeys with 1,132 pilgrims setting off from that great Kvarner island.
The novelties presented in this dissertation are three-fold:
- Analysis of 16,000 Croatian maritime sources of which 4,000 have just been published. These are as of yet unprocessed documents in the Croatian historiography, providing us with a huge database and enabling us to gain completely new insights not just into the history of the Croatian 18th century in the Adriatic, but specifically into pilgrimages as a constitutive element of general Croatian history;

- Hermeneutics of the anthropology of the sacred in the historical analysis of pilgrimages;

- Use of computer software that reads digitalized documents like words (OCR) and enables saving them as Excel documents in which results can be systematized and synoptically analyzed – which in the case of such a large number of documents is also a valid methodological solution for similar and further extensive research.

Key words
Pilgrimages, pilgrims, captains, shipowners, maritime affairs, Croats, Loreto, Assisi, 18th century, Croatian Maritime Regesta, religious anthropology, sacred, sacral, prehistory, Mare Nostrum, Adriatic, Nikola Čolak