Pilgrimage Now and Then
By The Rev. Thomas N. Buchan, Ph.D., III, Associate Professor of Church History at Nashotah House
The year 2020 had been designated by the Association of English Cathedrals as a “Time to Discover Cathedrals, Discover Pilgrimage.” Several cathedrals anticipated the celebration of significant anniversaries. Others planned reinvigorated welcome centers and hospitality programming to encourage visitors. A Pilgrim Passport was launched, a small booklet containing a checklist of every English cathedral, listed by region, as well as “inspirational quotes, prayers, . . . and blank pages” which could be used by visitors to document and record their experiences. Prospective visitors were “invited to use this passport for your own adventure of discovery, following in the footsteps of many thousands of pilgrims who have come to these places over the centuries to learn, to think about their lives, and ask for God’s help and guidance.”
Then came Covid-19. Only three months into the year of discovering cathedrals and pilgrimage, in the end of March, 2020, “all Church of England churches were closed with immediate effect.” The Very Reverend Adrian Dorber, chair of the Association of English Cathedrals, was quoted as saying, “It is with a heavy heart that we close our cathedrals during this crisis as a necessary contribution to keeping all of us healthy and safe. This move goes against our established pattern of being open and available for everyone …” On March 24, a letter from the archbishops and bishops stated “it is imperative … the Church of England strictly observes the new guidelines on staying at home and only making journeys that are absolutely necessary.” Not only would-be pilgrims to England’s cathedrals, but all church-goers, found themselves without destinations or permission to travel to them.
In response, pilgrimage quickly went virtual as several attempts were made to take the experience online. In time, as some restrictions were eased, the Association of English Cathedrals and the British Pilgrimage Trust began to promote a number of circular routes in several of England’s cathedral cities. These walks of varying lengths (some as short as 2-3 and others as long as 9-10 miles) complied with public health precautions and also refocused attention on cathedrals both as centers of worship and as centers of cities. Eventually, English cathedrals would reopen to guests and worshipers in limited ways that, after long closures, invited something perhaps closer to rediscovery. Later still, several English cathedrals would be once more re-imagined, offering themselves as vaccination sites to their surrounding communities.
Much of this would seem to lend itself to the impression that the various attempts to re-imagine the year’s theme of discovery have occasioned significantly more localized notions of cathedrals and of pilgrimage. The combined effects of pandemic response closures, restrictions, and limitations on travel meant that would-be pilgrims could not cover long distances to visit far-flung precincts or crisscross the country filling their ‘passports’ with stamps and jotted memories. Others, however, living within sight or walking distance of one of England’s cathedrals, might avail themselves of the strange opportunities afforded by the pandemic’s disruptions to intentionally reengage with their local surroundings, walking with prayerful or meditative purpose in landscapes marked by a religious architecture that might otherwise pass unnoticed or be taken for granted.
In recent scholarship there has been a growing appreciation of the reality that—for all of its pluriformity—most medieval pilgrimage was local pilgrimage. This is not to say that there were no medieval shrines of national or international significance; in the late Middle Ages, Compostela, Rome, and, above all, Jerusalem loomed large in the pious imaginations of European Christians. Those who could actually afford to undertake such grand itineraries, however, were relatively few. In his contribution to Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan, Eamon Duffy puts it this way: “most fifteenth-century pilgrimages were to sacred sites within one’s own region, journeys that might take one no further than the next parish, and rarely further than the nearest market town.” (‘Dynamics of pilgrimage in late medieval England,’ 166) More recently, in Medieval Pilgrimage with a survey of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset and Bristol Nicholas Orme suggests that, in contrast to notions of ‘real’ pilgrimage as an arduous practice of taking extended leave of one’s home and local surroundings,
Most religious journeys were local rather than distant. At cities like London, Bristol, and Exeter, the fact left a mark on the landscape in scatterings of churches and chapels a few miles away, to which such journeys were made. Visiting a nearby church, chapel, or holy well did not need permission if permission was required to go on pilgrimage, as it was for some people. Nor did it entail missing much of one’s work, spending much money, or meeting with hardship or danger. (7)
As an illustration of just how ubiquitous and pedestrian late medieval pilgrimage could be, Duffy offers the example of the wife of John Baylis of Rolvenden.
When she went to her own parish church on Relic Sunday in 1511 to gain the annual indulgence for venerating the parish’s relics, she described herself as going on “pilgrimage at the relics.” She applied the metaphor of journeying to her stroll to the parish church, recalling that “the parson declarid and said for every foote that a man or a woman sett to the reliques he shal have great pardone.” (166)
Duffy’s point is that late medieval practitioners and practices of pilgrimage were not constrained by an ideal that required arduousness, danger, or ‘liminal’ experiences of profound social or geo-physical dislocation. ‘Real’ pilgrimage could be efficaciously performed by the relatively undemanding, safe, and accessible exercise of making one’s way to church with special intention.
Over the course of the last year and a half, however, many Christians have discovered a new variety of challenges associated with local church attendance. Lockdowns, closures, streaming video, masking, social distancing, modifications to Eucharistic practice great and small: even this generalized and incomplete list can suffice to suggest some of the ways in which arduousness, danger, and dislocation have insinuated themselves in places and practices we were unaccustomed to expecting them to be. Now, for many, making one’s way to church with special intention is something more like the rule than the exception.
Perhaps, then, pilgrimage—especially in its more localized manifestations—may offer us a set of lenses through which we can see and order our own contemporary experiences, helping us to press on in the journey of devotion and service.
Fr. Thomas Buchan will be teaching CH601 Anglican and Episcopal Church History this winter at Nashotah House. Course Dates are January 3-28, 2022, and Residential Week is January 10-14, 2022. Visitors are welcome and may click here for more information. Degree seeking students and anyone else who has taken a course at Nashotah House can register in Populi. This is an intermediate course in Anglican church history covering important events, figures, movements, and religious, social, and intellectual developments from the time of the English Reformation through the development of the global Anglican Communion to the present day. It is normally the third course in church history taken by students in residential and hybrid-distance degree programs. It presupposes prerequisite Masters level work in church history or basic competence in the subject area.
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The post above is Part 2 in a series entitled “Pilgrimage Now and Then.” For Part 1, please visit this link. Called to ordained ministry in his teens, Fr. Thomas Buchan began an undergraduate degree in biblical studies with the intention of going on to seminary and the pastorate. Somewhat unexpectedly, a required course in historical theology awakened interests in the history of Christianity that would not abate. While completing his bachelor’s degree in biblical studies he also began work on a master’s degree in church history. Later, as a doctoral student at Drew University, Fr. Buchan read widely in church history East and West, ancient and modern. He also contributed to several volumes of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (IVP), edited by Dr. Thomas C. Oden. Fr. Buchan’s wide-ranging interests in church history were focused during his research at Drew, taking him on a journey through Latin, Greek, and finally Syriac Christianity.
He was ordained deacon and priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida in 2009. He began teaching in Nashotah House’s Distance Learning program in 2010 and was invited to join the residential faculty in the Spring of 2012. Fr. Buchan’s academic interests include historiography, ancient Christian martyrdom and asceticism, the history of doctrines and practices of sanctification and holiness, Trinitarian theology, Christology, and the history of exegesis.
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Hi Everyone! Nashotah House is offering a $250 scholarship to Nashotah Alums who take a Winter 2022 course. Eligible students can claim their scholarship by filling in the promo code ALUM22 in this form before December 6, 2021:
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