Wandering Monks, Virgins, and Pilgrims

Ascetic Travel in the Mediterranean World, A.D. 300–800

Maribel Dietz

Publication Year: 2005

Religious travelers were a common sight in the Mediterranean world during Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. In fact, as Maribel Dietz finds in Wandering Monks, Virgins, and Pilgrims, this formative period in the history of Christianity witnessed an explosion of travel, as both men and women took to the roads, seeking spiritual meaning in a life of itinerancy. Much of this early Christian religious travel was not focused on a particular holy place, as in the pilgrimage of later centuries to Rome, Jerusalem, and Santiago de Compostela. Rather, the inspiration was more practical. Travel was a way of escaping hostility or social pressures or of visiting living and dead holy people. It was also a means of religious expression of homelessness and temporary exile. The wandering lifestyle mirrored an interior journey, an imitation of Christ and a commitment to the Christian ideal that an individual is only temporarily on this earth. Women were especially attracted to religious travel. In the centuries before the widespread cloistering of women, a life of itinerancy offered an alternative to marriage and a religious vocation in a society that excluded women from positions of spiritual leadership. Eventually, ascetic travel gave way to full-fledged pilgrimage. Dietz explores how and why religious travel and monasticism diverged and altered so greatly. She examines the importance of the Cluniac reform movement and the creation of the pilgrimage center of Santiago de Compostela in the emergence of a new model of religious travel: goal-centered, long-distance pilgrimage aimed not at monks but at the laity. Wandering Monks, Virgins, and Pilgrims is essential reading for those who study the history of monasticism, for it was in a monastic context that religious travel first claimed an essential place within Christianity. It will also be important for anyone interested in pilgrimage and the role of women in the history of Christianity.

Published by: Penn State University Press

Contents
Search Inside This Book
Book Details

I am deeply indebted to many people and institutions in the writing of this book, which grew out of my dissertation at Princeton University. I would like to express my deep gratitude to my advisors, Peter Brown and Bill Jordan, for their guidance, encouragement and faith in me. ...

Introduction

pdf icon Download PDF (85.8 KB)
pp. 1-10

In a letter of A.D. 399 to Oceanus, Jerome says of the travels of the Roman widow Fabiola, “Rome was not large enough for her compassionate kindness. She went from island to island, and traveled round the Etruscan Sea, and through the Volscian province . . . where bands of monks have taken up their home, ...

1 The Culture of Movement

pdf icon Download PDF (190.6 KB)
pp. 11-42

The nature, meaning, and perception of travel and of travelers changed during late antiquity. Refugees, Christian officials, women, and monks joined the ranks of the soldiers, Roman officials, merchants, and messengers who traditionally made up the majority of Roman travelers.¹ ...

2 Early Iberian Religious Travelers: Egeria, Orosius, and Bachiarius

pdf icon Download PDF (162.1 KB)
pp. 43-68

Contrary to the image of the fourth-century Mediterranean world as rigid, stagnant, and dark, it was in many ways in constant flux, where displacement and itineracy resulted from a variety of causes and were in fact commonplace. It was this broad culture of movement and the relative ease of displacement that made travel ...

3 Monastic Rules and Wandering Monks

pdf icon Download PDF (207.4 KB)
pp. 69-106

Early monasticism was an exceedingly diverse phenomenon that drew in Christian men and women who were eager to commit themselves to a religious life “outside” traditional civic society. Withdrawal from the societal conventions of marriage, public life, and trade did not, however, denote complete separation ...

4 Women and Religious Travel

pdf icon Download PDF (250.9 KB)
pp. 107-154

As the evidence from monastic rules and other forms of monastic literature has shown, there may indeed have existed monks who used wandering and homelessness as part of their ascetic practice. Evidence from fourth- and early fifth-century Spain also points to the crucial role religious travel played in the lives of Bachiarius, Orosius, and Egeria. ...

5 Travel and Monasticism on the Iberian Peninsula

pdf icon Download PDF (200.2 KB)
pp. 155-188

The fifth-century Spanish chronicler and bishop, Hydatius, who lived in the far western region of Galicia, wrote frequently of his feelings of isolation. Yet from this vantage point in the corner of the known world, his writings, the Chronica, shed light on the tumultuous history of the invasions of the peninsula.¹ ...

6 Christian Travel in the Early Islamic Period

pdf icon Download PDF (151.7 KB)
pp. 189-212

Religiously motivated travel continued to exist within a monastic context as late as the seventh and eighth centuries. Initially, the Islamic conquest did not have a major impact, as some have believed, on the ability of Christians to travel to the Holy Land. What did have a greater effect on religious travel were both the growing influence ...

Epilogue

pdf icon Download PDF (76.3 KB)
pp. 213-220

Even with all of the opposition to Christian pilgrimage and monastic wandering, the most powerful force leading to the elimination of monastic travel and wandering as a legitimate form of religious life was the growth and spread of the Benedictine Rule. The Benedictine Rule, which was adapted from the much longer Rule of the Master, ...

Bibliography

pdf icon Download PDF (224.0 KB)
pp. 221-258

Index

pdf icon Download PDF (76.3 KB)
pp. 259-270

Back Cover

pdf icon Download PDF (3.2 MB)

E-ISBN-13: 9780271052892
E-ISBN-10: 0271052899
Print-ISBN-13: 9780271052106
Print-ISBN-10: 0271052104

Page Count: 280
Publication Year: 2005