We have had the opportunity to talk about travel in the Middle Ages

We have had the opportunity to talk about travel in the Middle Ages

We have had the opportunity to talk about travel in the Middle Ages, both secular and religious. Secular medieval travelers were often in search of the exotic. Religious travelers, or pilgrims, on the other hand, were after spiritual treasure in the form of relics – such as bodies of saints – or holy places where important figures, such as Christ and the Virgin Mary, lived their lives on earth. One of the most important sites for the latter type of encounter was the Holy Land, whose cities of Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem held the memory of sacred individuals and where great churches and shrines arose to accommodate pilgrims’ visits. Rome also became a focus of pilgrimage, because of the large number of saints, including the founder of the Roman church, St. Peter himself, that the city housed in its numerous chapels and churches. In the later Middle Ages, Santiago de Compostela – the monastery in northwestern Spain that housed the body of St. James – became a major goal of pious veneration on the part of pilgrims. The accounts of pilgrims, beginning with Etheria (Egeria) in the fourth century, record the great impression that these buildings and the objects that they contained, made on the visitor. Guidebooks, such as the Guide to Santiago or the various guides to the city of Rome, provided travelers with important information about the must-see objects and sites.

What I would like you to do in this paper is to imagine yourself as a medieval traveler ranging widely across the medieval world — not, however, with the purpose of personal edification but with the purpose of explaining and illustrating the Middle Ages to an individual or an audience who knows nothing about the period.

What you are going to have to do is to select the medieval monuments and objects that present the Middle Ages in the fullest, most interesting and best ways, and explain how they do so. You should make your selection from the range of buildings, sculptures, mosaics, paintings, manuscripts, and so on, that we have examined in the course of the quarter, but also feel free to consult materials elsewhere for other ideas and inspirations. I would like you to discuss at least one building and one object, but the number of works that you decide to include thereafter is entirely up to you.

You should also bear in mind that the Middle Ages was a complex period, which included different cultural traditions, such as Byzantium and the Medieval West. Here are some questions to spur your thinking: How does a Gothic Cathedral address the visitor? Why do the Byzantines like the dome? How were the bodies of saints treated? Why is the Cross important? What is an icon? These questions are intended to inspire you not to limit you; in other words, you do not have to answer them as such, but you can take any of them up if you want to.