Pilgrimage Studies

Cette these articule geographie et fait religieux, ce dernier n’etant pas seulement etudie en creux mais constituant au contraire l’objet central de l’etude. Les recherches menees partent d’un paradoxe contemporain particulierement observable dans les societes dites occidentales. Leur secularisation de plus en plus forte, impliquant un effacement progressif de toute reference religieuse dans l’espace public, s’accompagne pourtant, depuis une vingtaine d’annees, d’un regain de frequentation des lieux de pelerinage, qui touche, certes, les sanctuaires les plus connus, a forte valeur historique et culturelle (le Mont-Saint-Michel, Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle, par exemple), mais egalement les plus recents et confidentiels (L’Ile-Bouchard, entre autres). Les pratiques des visiteurs oscillent, au cours d’une meme visite, entre pelerinage et tourisme, remettant en cause les categories, jusqu’ici restees relativement etanches dans la litterature scientifique francophone, de « pelerin » et ...

§ Rana P.B. Singh (born: 15 December 1950) is researching in the fields of heritage planning, especially sacredscapes/religious places and heritagescapes, pilgrimages and settlement systems in Varanasi region since over last four decades as writer, promoter, collaborator and organiser, and also did field studies in Japan, Sweden, Italy, and Korea. On these themes, he delivered special lectures and seminars at various institutions in countries like Australia, Austria, Belgium, China PR, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Indonesia (Bali), Italy, Japan, Rep. Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, USA (& Hawaii), USSR (Russia). His contributions include - Spatio-temporal Dimensional theory of Diffusion, Space Articulation theory in Indian villages, Literary images & Spirit of Place, Ritual Mandala & Sacrality of Space and Time, Pilgrimage Mandala, Ritual Mandala, Sacred Geography & Cosmic Order of Holy Places, Geomancy & Cultural symbolism in Hinduism, Concepts of Sacredscapes and Faithscapes, Pilgrimage systems and Self Organised Criticality theory, Cultural astronomy and Ordering of Sacredscapes and holy cities,  Architectural symbolism and Heritage planning, framing the Heritage/ Sacred Ecology, 'faithscapes and sacredscapes'. His publications include over 306 papers and 41 books on these subjects, including Banaras, Making of India’s Heritage City (2009), Sacred Geography of Goddesses in South Asia (2010), and Hindu Tradition of Pilgrimage: Sacred Space and System (2013).
[Res./ Home]:  Usha Apartment, # N 9/ 87 - D 41 (1st -Flr 101-102), Lane No. 5, Janaki Nagar Colony (near Hanuman Mandir) , DLW Flyover -- Patia Rd, PO: Bajardiha, Varanasi, UP 221106. INDIA
Tel.: [+091]-0-542-2316752. Mobile: [+091]- 98381 19474.
Email: ranapbs@gmail.com
web: https://banaras.academia.edu/RanaPBSINGH/Papers/
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Prof_Rana_Singh/publications
http://www.svabhinava.org/HinduCivilization/RanaPBSingh/
https://www.facebook.com/rana.singh.507027
ORCID- https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6031-9086
rana.singh.507027@facebook.com
UPDATED: 15 December 2019 (69th birthday)

Pilgrimage studies as a distinct field of interest started to emerge only recently in Oceania, which encompasses Australia, and the islands and nations of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. Most of the work has been undertaken by Anglophone scholars working in history, religious studies, and tourism studies. French scholars working in New Caledonia and French Polynesia have shown little interest in pilgrimage studies, and dissemination between Anglophone and Francophone scholarship is, also in this part of the world, limited. Characteristic is the stark divide that exists between mainly historical, religious and tourism studies scholars working on Australian, or ‘western’ travel and pilgrimage, and anthropologists working in indigenous communities in Oceania. While the former predominantly focus on nationhood and self within the contexts of war-, and tourism pilgrimages, the latter often focus on indigenous relational religious and spiritual ontologies, and related notions of alterity.

Culture is central to human beings to the extent that the history of their evolution is incomplete without the consideration of cultural attainments across time and space. However, in the domain of geography as a discipline, its conceptualisation and place do not appear clear. The sub-discipline of cultural geography having its roots in late 19th century both in the German and the French traditions, grew and got recognition through the works undertaken by the American geographers, particularly the tradition established by Carl Sauer and his students. No matter whether culture and cultural issues were at margins or centre stage, all through the journey they remained contested. Today, it is a well recognised discipline and rich through scholarly contributions from different perspectives benefitted by the development taken place in the allied disciplines. Indian geography presents a good example wherein cultural geography could not acquire substantive status despite having tremendous scope given the cultural richness of this land. It remains a marginal sub-discipline in Indian geography even in the 21s century; of course, the works of some practicing Indian geographers have acclaimed international repute, but their number is miniscule. The present chapter is an attempt in short to trace cultural geography’s journey vis-à-vis the Indian scenario and to introduce the contents of the volume.
Keywords: Culture, cultural geography, cultural turn, new cultural geography, landscape, heritage, religion, pilgrimage, tourism.

Muslim women experience the pilgrimage to Mecca differently from their fellow males. This is not surprising when one considers the many feminist and gender-sensitive studies that have been dealing with social, political, historical, cultural, and economic issues from women's and gendered perspectives. The surprising fact is the silence on the gendered experiences of Muslim pilgrimage-of hajj and umrah. This article examines fundamental differences in the experiences of female and male pilgrims related to their social relations, embodied experiences of the rituals, and socio-political positioning. The goal is to narrow the research gap regarding the Muslim pilgrimage-gender nexus on a descriptive level and to investigate contradictions between the normative approach of equality before God during pilgrimage and the lived, often oppressive, experiences of Muslim women on their pilgrimage journeys on a theoretical level.

À travers une étude de l’exemple de Lourdes, tirée d’une recherche doctorale portant sur les espaces et pratiques spatiales des grands et petits lieux de pèlerinage, l’enjeu est d’éclairer les spécificités des effets spatiaux du pèlerinage. Le cas de Lourdes permettra de voir comment le pèlerinage modifie localement l’organisation de l’espace, à la fois en suscitant un développement urbain particulier et en inscrivant une ville auparavant en marge du territoire français dans des réseaux mondialisés de pèlerinage, bien sûr, mais aussi de tourisme.

This article traces the social life of Our Lady of Ipswich, a statue taken to be destroyed during the English Reformation, and the possibility of pilgrimage in the context of dramatic urban change and loss of place memory. Arguing that iconoclasm is not an end‐point, we see that the life of the image is not extinguished on the pyre, but is set into motion by conflict surrounding its significance, efficacy, and survival. Indeed, it is not simply the act of iconoclasm that animates the statue; rather, such agonistic animation is an ongoing process which involves both those who reject and those who are devoted to the image. My argument is that the potency of contemporary images of Our Lady of Ipswich relies on an active cultivation of dissonance: the consciousness of religious schism; the disjuncture between Ipswich’s historical importance and the perceived failures of twentieth‐century development; and the juxtaposition between devotional pilgrimage destination and disenchanted shopping space.

The idea of manifesting the environment as sacred space goes back to the ancient tales of the Vedas, which continued as a tradition of pilgrimage. Many of the spots considered possessing special intensity of sacrament, that's how they became places of pilgrimages. This whole system becomes part of sacred geography. Unique features of landscapes, e.g., mountains and hills, rivers and their banks, natural springs, lakes, forest, grovesthose having some distinctive features conceived as sacred spaces and get linked to pilgrimages. Among the rivers the Gaṅgā (Ganges), among the mountains, the Himalaya are venerated most in ancient mythologies and prominently represented in pilgrimages. Among the festivities, Kuṁbha Melā is described as highly meritorious and attract a huge mass of pilgrims. The distribution of 51 Śakti Pīthas over the map of India, frames to imagine India as a whole part of larger sacred territory; similarly, there also appears series of groups of sacred places. Recently in view of environmental discourses and SDGs the cultural and spiritual values of sacred places have been given due consideration, especially promoting Greening Hindu pilgrimage.
Keywords: the Gaṅgā, pilgrimage, sacred places, spirituality, Śakti Pīthas, sacred forests.

Ovaj rad tematizira hrvatska hodočašća pomorskim putem tražeći im izvore u prapovijesnom mediteranskom kontekstu. Od prvih potraga za 'svetim', 'drukčijim' i 'drugim', od prapovijesnih hierofanija i čovjekovog pokušaja objašnjenja tajni kozmosa do nastojanja davanja odgovora nepoznatom te reda kaosu – nailazimo na čovjeka koji putuje i traži odgovore. Čovjek, kao dio zajednice kojoj pripada, putem kozmogonija i potom teofanija objašnjava stvaranje svijeta i pokušava dati smisao stvarnosti koja ga okružuje. Taj modus putovanja i hodočašćenja k 'svetom' i 'božanskom' se nastavlja i u povijesnom periodu u trima velikim monoteističkim vjerama koje se rađaju i šire na Mediteranu: židovstvu, kršćanstvu i islamu. Mediteran je prostor putovanja i putnika, križanja misli, filozofija i vjera. Od kasne antike preko srednjega vijeka do modernog doba Sredozemlje je sjecište hodočasnika sa svih smjerova Mediterana. Ovaj rad prikazuje hodočašća i hodočasnike koji su s hrvatske obale putovali u Loreto i Asiz u 18. stoljeću. Na temelju 16.000 dokumenata "Hrvatskih pomorskih regesta 18. stoljeća" I-III sv. pronađeno je 303 hodočašća prema Loretu i Asizu koji svjedoče o 2.513 hodočasnika koji su, ponajviše u velikim i organiziranim grupama do čak 80 ljudi, putovali s istočne obale Jadrana – sa sjevera iz Umaga pa sve do juga iz Boke kotorske – prema tim starim i hrvatskim vjernicima dobro poznatim svetištima. Hrvatska pomorska hodočašća pokazuju dakle neosporne Mediteranske korijene i nevjerojatan kontinuitet od više desetaka tisuća godina.


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This paper thematizes the Croatian
maritime pilgrimages by searching for their
sources in the prehistoric Mediterranean context.
From the first search for the 'sacred',
'different' and the 'Other', from the prehistoric
hierophanies and man’s attempts to explain the
mysterious Cosmos through his endeavor to respond
to the unknown and give an order to the Chaos - we
encounter the man who travels searching for
answers. The man, as a part of the community to
which he belongs, through cosmogonies, and then
theophanies explains the creation of the world and
tries to give the meaning of the reality
surrounding him. This modus of travel and
pilgrimage to the 'sacred' and 'divine' continues
through historical period in three great
monotheistic religions that are born and spread in
Mediterranean: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
The Mediterranean is a space of travels and
travelers, intersections of thoughts, philosophies
and religions. From the Late Antiquity through the
Middle Ages to the Modern Ages the Mediterranean
is the intersection of pilgrims from all
directions. This paper describes pilgrimages and
pilgrims who traveled from the Croatian coast to
Loreto and Assisi in the 18th century. Based on
16, 000 documents of the "Croatian Maritime
Regesta of the 18th century" vol. I-III. 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. The Croatian maritime pilgrimages,
therefore, have undeniable Mediterranean roots and
an incredible continuity of tens of thousands of
years.

After the dismantling of Becket’s shrine during the Protestant Reformation, the holiness associated with the saint has been diffused in and through material and aural culture. Drawing on the vernacular devotional use of Becket’s relics from the Middle Ages onwards, including ‘Canterbury water’, I argue that songs associated with the saint have been similarly  perceived to have healing, protective and apotropaic capacities. The primary
case study is the interreligious, musical and ritual practices engaged today along the ‘Old Way’ pilgrimage to Canterbury and at the cathedral itself, as imagined, mapped and facilitated by the British Pilgrimage Trust, founded in 2014 by Guy Hayward and Will Parsons. An interdisciplinary art historical and ethnographic approach using participant observation is employed to highlight the integral role of music and object-based ritual praxis in translating perceived pilgrimages of the past into the present. Music, I
argue, can be understood as ‘Canterbury water’ for the 21st century.

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.]

Many countries, in particular European countries, entered what philosopher Charles Taylor calls the «secular age» . Secularization can be defined as the process which guarantees the separation of Church and State and which gradually eliminates religious references from public space. Then, religion only belongs to the private sphere. This way, the originally shared Christian cultural background is less and less mastered, as many Rectors notice. In this context of general fading of religion, shrines are all the more exceptional places, becoming the only places where religious faith can be publicly expressed. How does the secularization alter catholic shrines and particularly Fatima? Being emblematic places of the catholic faith and opened to everyone, shrines arouse the attention of believers but also the curiosity of the non-believers. So, there are not only pilgrims visiting the shrines, but also tourists. How does the frequenting of the shrine of Fatima develop itself under the influence of secularization and what are the effects on its space? The purpose here will be to show that Fatima, still being one of the symbolic centres of the Catholic Church, has also become one of its thresholds: a front door for people in search for a discovery of catholic faith.
This study is based on fieldwork (surveys, observations and interviews) conducted in fifteen catholic shrines (in Europe and Mexico) within the scope of a doctoral research in geography, about tourism and pilgrimage. It is based on previous papers about Fatima (such as works of G. Rinschede ) and inspired by the works of Michel Chadefaud , a French geographer interested in the representations of space constructed by the inhabitants of the city of Lourdes. The purpose here is to study the links between secularization, pilgrimage and tourism from a geographical point of view.
A choice was made to use qualitative methods based on observations and surveys conducted in the shrines to collect the representations of Fatima constructed by the visitors. Comparing those highlights the differences between well-informed visitors (which often define themselves as pilgrims) and inexperienced ones (defining themselves as tourists). Here will be analysed the answers to the 51 questionnaires filled during the survey conducted in Fatima in august 2015. These answers are part of a panel of 656 questionnaires filled in fourteen shrines.
This survey shows that, under the action of the secularization, the shrine of Fatima became a place of evangelization of growing importance. There is also, from now on, in the shrine, a new duality of space, which can be interpreted from two different points of view. The meaning of the place is quite distinct between a well-informed pilgrim and an inexperienced visitor. The places they visit in the shrine and the ones they grant more importance are also quite distinct. Identifying these two meanings and these two types of spatial practices should allow to the improvement of the experience of the different categories of visitors accommodated in the shrine.

This chapter describes the reanimation of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage as a "postsecular sanctuary"—a place where religious and axiological pluralism is practiced in everyday life. As such, the Camino pilgrimage is playing an important role in reshaping European civil society and the West’s changing identity as postsecular. In writing the term “postsecular” rather than “post-secular” without a hyphen, as many do, I am following the rationale of Kristina Stoeckl (2011) and example of Massimo Rosati (2015) who use the term not to imply a return to religion or an attack on secularism or modernity, but rather as a way to acknowledge that modernity is changing form and to suggest that religion and modernity might, after all, be compatible. I put ritual and the sacred at the center of my analysis in the effort to show how the contemporary Camino is a modern experience of the sacred and is a situation where people discover compatibility between the religious and secular.

Despite the wealth of material and textual evidence attesting to the practice of Christian pilgrimage throughout history, comprehending an individual's understanding of pilgrimage in relation to his or her own identity has always proved challenging. Pilgrimage studies scholars have tended to look to travel accounts, chronicles, and collected pilgrim souvenirs to discern how pilgrims were affected by and responded to their experiences. One form of source material that has gone largely underexamined in this regard is the genre of portraiture. This article explores how and why the concept of pilgrimage could be incorporated into the self-fashioned images of patrons in medieval and early modern Europe. Building on foundational but geographically and temporally specific studies of Jerusalem confraternity portraits, it aims to consider both overt and subtle iconographic references to pilgrimage to broaden our understanding of what constitutes a pilgrim portrait. By engaging with the flexibility of pilgrimage iconography and the multifaceted motivations behind invoking it in a permanent likeness, this paper argues for the dual faculties of memory and imagination present in portraits that manifest allusions to an individual's pilgrim identity. Furthermore, it paves the way for future studies of pilgrimage iconography generally, and specifically of pilgrim portraits in a more abstract, allegorical sense.

In this episode, Helena Guzik (DPhil Student, History of Art) analyses Indian pilgrim stamps to show how objects have the power to transform us, engaging the senses to alter the body. Originally delivered as the first half of a public gallery talk in partnership with Dr Hugo Shakeshaft (Postdoctoral Researcher, Classics). Listen to Episode 7 for the first half of the talk.

Cette thèse articule géographie et fait religieux, ce dernier n’étant pas seulement étudié en creux mais constituant au contraire l’objet central de l’étude. Les recherches menées partent d’un paradoxe contemporain particulièrement observable dans les sociétés dites occidentales. Leur sécularisation de plus en plus forte, impliquant un effacement progressif de toute référence religieuse dans l’espace public, s’accompagne pourtant, depuis une vingtaine d’années, d’un regain de fréquentation des lieux de pèlerinage, qui touche, certes, les sanctuaires les plus connus, à forte valeur historique et culturelle (le Mont-Saint-Michel, Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle, par exemple), mais également les plus récents et confidentiels (L’Ile-Bouchard, entre autres). Les pratiques des visiteurs oscillent, au cours d’une même visite, entre pèlerinage et tourisme, remettant en cause les catégories, jusqu’ici restées relativement étanches dans la littérature scientifique francophone, de « pèlerin » et « touriste ». Cette hybridation des pratiques et des publics invite à envisager, comme effet de la sécularisation, une remonétisation de la valeur sacrée et des espaces considérés comme investis de cette valeur. Il s’agit ici, à partir d’une étude comparative des pratiques spatiales dans plusieurs lieux de pèlerinage catholiques en France, en Bosnie-Herzégovine, en Espagne, en Irlande, en Italie, au Mexique et au Portugal, de questionner à nouveaux frais la catégorisation des pratiques pèlerines et touristiques et d’entrer dans l’étude de la valeur spatiale. Les pratiques permettent en effet d’accéder aux représentations de l’espace construites par les visiteurs, qui elles-mêmes trahissent les valeurs dont ces mêmes visiteurs investissent les lieux. Ici est en jeu, dans un contexte de sécularisation, l’évolution, qui oscille entre résistance et résilience, de l’inscription de la valeur sacrée dans l’espace.

This paper analyzes the World Youth Day (WYD) – a cyclical Catholic global youth gathering – by focusing on the 2016 WYD in Kraków, Poland. The WYD is described as a multilayered event that generates and mirrors conflicting and conflating discourses operating at the global, national, and local levels of Catholicism and various perceptions of these discourses. The paper discusses the massive and festive character of the WYD, its branding potential as a typical mega-event as well as its religious dimension as a modern pilgrimage. Even though the WYD is organized cyclically and follows a general, established schedule, references to local and national contexts shape and influence its form in the specific environment of a host state and city. This paper shows that in European locations the concept of “Christian heritage” is actively used by the Church framing the event in religious terms. This framing relates to the “New Evangelization” policy which seeks to revive Christianity in an “old continent”, as well as emphasizes the religious and spiritual potential of historic Christian sites, objects and practices in the context of an international youth gathering. Additionally, the Kraków case study demonstrates the role of local and national political processes and the branding strategies of the Polish Church and the Polish government.