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Full-Text Articles in History

Bartered Bodies: Medieval Pilgrims And The Tissue Of Faith, George D. Greenia Mar 2019

Bartered Bodies: Medieval Pilgrims And The Tissue Of Faith, George D. Greenia

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

In ‘The Bartered Body,’ George Greenia disentangles the complex desires and experiences of religious travellers of the High Middle Ages who knew the spiritual usefulness of their vulnerable flesh. The bodily remains of the saints housed in pilgrim shrines were not just remnants of a redeemed past, but open portals for spiritual exchange with the living body of the visiting pilgrim.


Concerning The Spectacular Austerities, Brian Bouldrey Jun 2018

Concerning The Spectacular Austerities, Brian Bouldrey

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

Modern pilgrims are the updated versions of hermit athletae Dei, athletes of God, as the Desert Fathers are called by Dorotheus the Theban. Are the more ascetic of religious pilgrims going too far with their spectacular austerities?


The Sacred Economy: Devotional Objects As Sacred Presence For German Catholics In Aachen And Trier, 1832-1937, Skye Doney Feb 2014

The Sacred Economy: Devotional Objects As Sacred Presence For German Catholics In Aachen And Trier, 1832-1937, Skye Doney

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

There is a long-standing tradition within western Germany of religious journey, and more pertinent to this paper, of pilgrims requesting Andenken (remembrances) when they could not physically attend pilgrimages. In the following essay, I analyze pilgrim correspondence sent to the Catholic Pilgrimage Committees, groups of clerics who facilitated pilgrimage to Aachen and Trier, Germany. I argue that Catholic pilgrims participated in an ‘economy of the sacred’ through their requests for and use of various pilgrimage objects; including, commemorative cards, medals, and rosaries. Within this economy wealth, worth, and merit were determined by an item’s physical proximity to the relics of …