Here I Walk: A Thousand Miles on Foot to Rome with Martin Luther by Andrew L. Wilson (review)

This is an account of a pilgrimage undertaken by the author and his wife in 2010 as they sought to follow Luther's journey to Rome five hundred years after the event. It traces their one thousand mile journey as they walked through cities, villages, and the countryside from Germany to Italy. As the author later discovers, their pilgrimage was not only off by a year (1510 rather than 1511) but it began in the wrong city (Erfurt rather than Wittenberg). In addition, the route was impossible to reconstruct at times and even when it was faithful to Luther's journey, the evidence of his presence was meagre at best. This may sound like the pilgrimage was a dismal failure but in fact, it offered the author the opportunity to reflect on varied landscapes, the architecture of churches, Luther's theology, the ecumenical movement, and modern life. This all makes for an engaging narrative that easily flows from mundane details (including the travails of a camper toilet) to abstract theological reflection. It integrates the physical and the spiritual, medieval and modern, Catholic and Lutheran. It is evocative, poetic, and even quite funny at times. It is a fitting tribute to Luther's life and theology for the 500th anniversary of the posting of his 95 theses.

In the end, the book is not ultimately about Luther's journey to Rome (given that so little information about it has survived) but the author's own journey to connect with the history and theology of the past and bring it into the present. For theologians, Wilson's book offers insightful commentary on late medieval piety, Luther's theology, and Lutheran-Catholic dialogue today. A visit to a Baroque basilica, for example, prompts him to reflect on the relationship between popular piety, the cult of saints, and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.

For historians, Wilson's pilgrimage evokes the frustration and joy of attempting to discover and interpret the past. Texts are lacking and buildings have succumbed to fire, rot, or renovation. Wilson muses before Luther's cell in the Erfurt Augustinian cloister: "How many times can you take apart and move and reassemble a room and have it still be Luther's? How many times can you rebuild a cloister and call it the same cloister?" (14). The fragility of the past is a constant theme but so is its power to shape the present—in architecture, worship, music, and the lives of the people encountered on the road. Luther's legacy may be found in the most unexpected places: "It seems to be here in Italy—here where Luther met his fiercest resistance, here where popes and cardinals, vicars and theologians sought to reduce to nothingness the threat of Luther's message—that he now has the most attentive ear" (163).

Although informed by Wilson's knowledge of history and theology, the book is not scholarly or academic. It would serve as an engaging text for an undergraduate course on the Reformation or a book discussion in a Lutheran or Catholic congregation. It raises questions about the purpose of pilgrimage, the nature of religious devotion, the possibility of ecumenical consensus, and the complications of modern life. As Wilson concludes: "In pilgrimage, as in life, the more certain we are of what we'll find, the less likely we are to find it" (194). Fitting words for a pilgrimage that began in the wrong place and the wrong time and yet led to such rich encounters with the legacy of the past and the possibilities of the present.