Inscribing Pilgrimage

Inscribing Pilgrimage uncovers the diverse, multilingual literary tradition surrounding the Camino de Santiago, one of the three most prominent routes of Christian pilgrimage, which guides travelers across Europe to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain. Focusing mainly on literature about pilgrims and their journeys, including references to visual art and music, the theoretical and methodological approach of the book links the historical construction of pilgrimage, as well as the action of journeying, to processes of writing and reading. Rachel Schmidt and Martha García examine permutations of the Camino in the medieval, early modern, and contemporary periods, tracing its origins in early Christian writings about pilgrimages to Jerusalem and Rome.

Ranging from medieval literature written in Latin, Castilian, and Portuguese, to early modern Spanish texts by Cervantes and others, before concluding with considerations of the current revitalization of the Camino de Santiago, Inscribing Pilgrimage underscores the extent to which pilgrims who wrote about their journeys helped create ideas about pilgrimage, and vice versa. Journeying on a pilgrimage becomes, in turn, a model for writing, a means of promoting and imagining pilgrimage, and a form of plotting the act of writing. Schmidt and García highlight the ancient theological model of the pilgrim—depicted as a visitor and stranger in an unknown land—to demonstrate not only the creation of the homo viator identity of the Christian pilgrim, but also the way this model morphs into other tropes and figures found in texts from the Iberian Peninsula such as the exile, the pícaro, the knight errant, and the devotee.

Throughout Inscribing Pilgrimage, Schmidt and García foreground the historical participation of women in pilgrimage rituals, including early Christians such as Egeria and Paula, as well as the fifteenth-century Spanish prioress Constanza de Castilla, whose work illustrates the ways in which pilgrimage intersects with modes of reading, writing, and thinking. The authors also explore how pilgrimage sanctuaries served as an informal safety net and retreat for the impoverished populations of early modern Spain. By tracing the dialectic relationship of pilgrimage to writing, this innovative, interdisciplinary study offers a new perspective on the literary imaginings that shaped the Camino de Santiago historically and culturally.