Pilgrimage History

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.

Quando il culto dell’apostolo di Galizia conobbe la massima fioritura, nell’Occidente europeo stava iniziando il recupero dei territori sottratti alla cristianità. Gli strumenti della reconquista, lungi dell’essere semplicemente militari, si poterono così sostanziare di una componente propagandistica che prese una forma del tutto specifica nel culto iacobeo. Promuovere Compostela voleva dire alimentare uno dei più forti bastioni della cristianità in un territorio appena sfuggito al controllo del califfato.

Les misericórdias, des institutions d’assistance qui ont vu le jour au Portugal en 1498 et se sont vite répandues partout, étaient toutes autonomes. Cependant, pour aider les voyageurs et les pèlerins pauvres jugés dignes de secours elles ont mis en place un service réseau, simple et efficace: l'octroi de cartas de guia (lettres de guidance) qui étaient des documents qui identifiaient le voyageur, le lieu d’où il partait et le lieu de sa destination. Avec la lettre, les pauvres recevaient une subvention – ou même, quand ils étaient malades, du transport à cheval ou en chariot – ce que leur permettaient d’arriver jusqu'à la misericórdia suivante. Et donc, d’institution en institution, ils achevaient leurs voyages.
Les carnets de ces services sont, ainsi, de bonnes sources pour l'étude de la mobilité des pauvres. On examinera ici ceux de Coimbra entre 1751 et 1844. Plus de 1000 personnes par an étaient aidées au XVIIIe siècle, mais beaucoup moins au siècle suivant. Toutefois, la documentation du XIXe siècle dépasse en qualité d’information la précédente.

Mount Sinai: A History of Travellers and Pilgrims examines the history of Hagia Koryphē (in Greek) or Jabal Mūsā (in Arabic), a mountain peak above the Monastery of St Catherine at South Sinai in Egypt, known for centuries as the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments from God, as described in Exodus. The book explores the ways in which the landscape of the summit was experienced and transformed using textual criticism, historical analysis, art history, and, for the first time, archaeological interpretation. Beginning in the third century, when the identification with the biblical ‘Mount Sinai’ was established, the narrative extends through to the early twentieth century. Covering the natural environment, the Bedouin and early Christians, the importance of Mount Sinai in Muslim tradition, the cult of St Catherine, pilgrimage, as well as the scholarly, artistic and tourist phenomenon of the nineteenth century, Mount Sinai: A History of Travellers and Pilgrims is a comprehensive and complete history of this remarkable place.

https://www.hauspublishing.com/product/mount-sinai/

‘Lucid and original; a veritable feast of interesting stories about Mount Sinai’s extraordinary past.’ - Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads

‘As a traveller and pilgrim to Sinai on numerous occasions and now a Trustee of the St Catherine's Foundation, I greatly enjoyed George Manginis's Mount Sinai and learnt much from it…The book is a learned and delightful companion to God-trodden Sinai.’ - Richard Chartres, Bishop of London

‘This book is an absolute mine of riches, reflection, and information… would strongly encourage anyone to pay a visit to this remarkable place of history, holiness and tradition. I recommend this book highly.’ - Vincent Nichols, Cardinal of Westminster

‘This book gives an invaluable insight into the evolution over two millennia of Mount Sinai as a sacred site and a place of spiritual quest.’ - H.R.H. Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan

‘George Manginis has trawled archives and published accounts to create the biography of the mountain, telling the story of the devout, the scholars and the tourists who have helped shape its history. His book is likely to stand as the last word on one of the world's most enduring places, unless an angel appears to tell the divine side of the story.’ - Anthony Sattin, author of Young Lawrence

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

This monograph studies the dispersed English Catholic community. Moving beyond the idea of expatriate Catholics as  solely 'exiles', it proposes a new analytical framework: confessional mobility. This change in perspective invites a broader interpretation of expatriates, putting grand tour travellers, pilgrims, students, scholars alongside the more traditional exiles. See pdf for more explanation and visit the OUP webpage for all info: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/confessional-mobility-and-english-catholics-in-counter-reformation-europe-9780198812432?lang=en&cc=gb

My book won the 2019 RefoRC book award: https://www.reforc.com/liesbeth-corens-wins-reforc-book-award-2019/