Abstract
By 891, the year of this entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, exile or peregrinatio for the sake of God had been practiced as an extreme form of Christian devotion for centuries. There are numerous accounts of such devotional journeys in the early Middle Ages; most often they are labeled peregrinationes [pilgrimages], and those who embarked upon them, peregrini [pilgrims]. But these pilgrims did not journey to seek out relics or miracles: they left their homeland and their kin never to return.
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Notes
Charles Plummer and John Earle, eds., Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel: With Supplementary Extracts from the Others, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892–1899, repr. 1965), 1:82.
The standard critical edition remains G.S.M. Walker, Sancti Columbani Opera, Scripteres Latini Hiberniae 2 (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1957).
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani, ed. B. Krusch, Ionae Vitae Sanctorum Columbani, Vedastis, Iohannis, MGH SSRG (Hannover, 1905), pp. 148–224
For pilgrimages to holy men see Peter Brown, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971): 80–101.
Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 3.
For an extensive discussion of this phenomenon see Georgia Frank, The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), esp. pp. 102–33.
Victor Turner and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), p. 2.
See discussions in Bonnie Wheeler, “Models of Pilgrimage: From Communitas to Confluence,” Journal of Ritual Studies 13.2 (1999): 26–41, esp. 28–30.
M.A. Claussen, “Peregrinatio and Peregrini in Augustine’s City of God” Traditio 46 (1991): 33–76 at 37.
see Gerhart B. Ladner, “Homo Viator. Medieval Ideas of Alienation and Order,” Speculum 42.2 (1967): 233–59.
David Dumville, “The Floruit of St. Patrick—Common and Uncommon Ground,” in Saint Patrick: AD 493–1993, ed. David Dumville, Lesley Abrams et al., Studies in Celtic History 13 (Wbodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 1993), pp. 13–18;
Clare Stancliffe, “Red, White and Blue Martyrdom,” in Ireland in Early Mediaeval Europe: Studies in Memory of Kathleen Hughes, ed. D. Whitelock, R. McKitterick, and D. Dumville (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 21–46 esp. 22–23.
cf. Fergus Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law, Early Irish Law Series 3 (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1988), pp. 5–6.
Also see M. Bateson, “A Worcester Cathedral Book of Ecclesiastical Canons,” English Historical Review 10 (1895): 712–31 at 721–22.
Kathleen Hughes, “On an Irish Litany of Pilgrim Saints compiled c. 800,” Analecta Bollandiana 77 (1959): 303–31.
James F. Kenney, The Sources for the Early History of Ireland: Ecclesiastical: An Introduction and Guide, 2nd edn. (New York: Octagon Books, 1966; repr. Dublin, Four Courts Press, 1997), pp. 487–89.
Quote from George Lawless, “Augustine’s Decentring of Asceticism,” in Augustine and his Critics: Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner, ed. Robert Dodaro and George Lawless (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 142–63 at 143.
See, for example, Chris C. Park, Sacred Worlds: An Introduction to Geography and Religion (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 245–85;
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© 2005 Stephanie Hayes-Healy
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Hayes-Healy, S. (2005). Patterns of Peregrinatio in the Early Middle Ages. In: Hayes-Healy, S. (eds) Medieval Paradigms. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-03706-0_1
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