Pilgrimage Narration as a Genre

PILGRIMAGE NARRATION AS A GENRE Linda Kay Davidson & David M. Gitlitz University of Rhode Island Studies of pilgrims' memoirs of the early Renaissance to the Enlightenment tend to situate their subject within the religious framework and rhetorical traditions of a particular religion, be it Roman Catholicism, Judaism, or Islam.1 Here, instead, we contrast the narratives ofpilgrims of two different religions in order to highlight their points ofcommonality. We think that by doing so we can identify the basic elements that define a pilgrimage memoir genre that transcends the modalities of a single religious tradition. Additionally, we discuss some aspects of the two narratives that are idiosyncratic and others that are religion-specific. Much of our energy over the past three decades has been focused on the nature and practice ofpilgrimage - energy expended on foot, in libraries and archives, churches and temples, and countless interviews with pilgrims. Our passion for this topic has led us to read a multitude of pilgrim memoirs from a variety of epochs and religious traditions. From those fascinating hours springs this essay. 1 For example, Donald R. Howard, Writers and Pilgrims: Medieval Pilgrimage Narratives and Their Posterity; Dale Eickelman and James Piscatori, eds., Muslim Travellers: Pilgrimage, Migration, and the Religious Imagination; David M. Gitlitz and Linda Kay Davidson, Pilgrimage and the Jews. The study that most nearly breaks ranks to compare and contrast pilgrimage memoirs is Barbara Nimri Aziz, "Personal Dimensions ofthe Sacred Journey: What Pilgrims Say". La corónica 36.2 (Spring 2008): 15-37 16Davidson & GitlitzLa corànica 36.2, 2008 We contrast the memoirs of two Italian pilgrims, one of a Jew who traveled to the Holy Land in the 1520s, and the other of a Catholic who went on pilgrimage three times to Santiago de Compostela in the 1670s. Though separated by a century and a half, their pilgrimage narratives share a Renaissance curiosity with the world and have enough points in common to suggest the parameters of the pilgrimage memoir genre, at least as it was before modern times. Moses Basóla, born in 1480 in Soncino, a small but powerful commune near Milan, was a member of an elite Jewish family. His father was employed with the Soncino Press, the most prestigious Jewish publishing company ofits time. As a young man, Moses moved to Pesaro on the Adriatic coast, a center of Jewish culture and an up-and-coming port city that aspired to be a rival of Venice. There he taught Jewish students and developed an interest in Kabbalah, the esoteric strain of Jewish mysticism, an interest that continued for his entire life. After his pilgrimage to Palestine, 1521-1523, Basóla returned to Italy and settled in Ancona, a larger port citythat commanded an important share oftrade with Turkey, where he took part in commercial ventures and owned part of at least one Ancona bank. His knowledge and important connections led him to be named chiefrabbi ofthe region. Around 1560, at the age of 80, Moses Basóla returned to Safed, the Kabbalistic center in the Galilee, where he died.2 Domenico Laffi, born probably near Bologna in 1636, was educated at its university and ordained a priest. While it is recorded that he taught doctrine in the Church of Santa Maria Inceriola and celebrated masses there, he does not seem to have exercised parish functions. His reputation, instead, rests on his writings and his travels: three times to Compostela, the first in 1670; once to the Holy Land; and at least once through Portugal and Andalucía. Nearly a century after his death he 2 Ruth Lamdan provides information about Basólas identity and his life in commerce in her dissertation work in the 1980s. Her review of David's and Ordan's edition and translation notes that there is only one known surviving manuscript of the work and that its author was not known until the 1930s. See Ruth Lamdan, 'Tn Zion and Jerusalem". Pilgrimage Narration as a Genre17 was still remembered primarily as a man who had "acquired a taste for travel, to which he devoted the greater part ofhis life".3 The common points in these two pilgrim narratives suggest the topics that characterize...