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Kathryn Hurlock, "Holy Places: How Pilgrimage Changed the World" (Profile, 2025)
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A
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B
Hello, and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Professor Kathryn Hurlock about her book titled Holy How Pilgrimage Changed the World, published by profile in 2025, taking us on a fabulous tour across time and space to investigate particular places that people have gone to in pilgrimage, and, of course, how they got there. What were the pilgrimages like? How did this have an impact, obviously, on the individual people who went, but also on the cities, on the politics, on the economics of the places that these things happened. Turns out pilgrimages is a really fascinating lens to understand rather a lot of history. So we've got lots to discuss here. Katherine, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
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C
Thank you very much for having me.
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B
Could you please start us off by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book?
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C
Yeah, so I'm a professor of religious and military history at Manchester Metropolitan University, and so I've been working for many years on pilgrimage and crusading, first of all in the medieval period, but then I got into the modern period increasingly, and I wanted to write this book because people tend to have quite fixed ideas of what pilgrimage entails. So they either envisage the medieval pilgrim walking across the landscape on a journey of atonement or suffering of some kind. Or they think about Muslims going on Hajj to Mecca and so they think about what they see in the media, or they have the image of walking to Santiago, to Compostela, what's been called, you know, the caminoisation of pilgrimage, whereby it's a long distance journey, it's all about putting on your walking boots and staying in hostels, collecting your stamps along the way. So people have these very set ideas and they're not wrong for those particular kinds of pilgrimage. But I really wanted to show how not only is it much more varied practice than that, across temporal settings, across different geographical places and of course across faiths, but also that it has such a broad impact on all kinds of things that you might not think about. Yes, it has impacts on the individuals who go on pilgrimage. It's quite often where they're choosing to go, and on religious communities, but also on the economics of pilgrimage, routes of pilgrimage, cities of pilgrimage, mountains and settlements, of tourism, of transport, of the production of souvenirs, everything from basically geopolitics, international politics, diplomacy, it taps into all kinds of things. So I wanted to explore the breadth and depth, as much as anything, to perhaps throw up some new ideas and approaches that people might not always think of unless they are deep in the pilgrimage studies hole.
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B
That's a very intriguing, but also pretty ambitious sort of set of goals for this project, especially given that once you do take that broader lens of not just saying everything has to be like this one instance of pilgrimage, then there's a lot of options to choose from. So how did you choose the 19 places that you focus on in the book? Why 19? What was that process like?
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C
That process was quite painful because, as you say, there's so much I could talk about. So I wanted to choose. Well, there were some I couldn't leave out. You can't write a book about pilgrimage and leave out Mecca, Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago de Compostela, Lourdes, Amrits and things like that. So there was some I just couldn't skip. And then I wanted to ensure that geographically I was able to cover a broad range, which wasn't easy. So, for example, example, there were lots of interesting sites, natural sites in places like Africa, so cave paintings in Lesotho, various sacred groves, but the source base is just not there to be able to write a full chapter. Aside from anything else, you've got oral cultures and they don't write about the kind of things I needed to know. About those sites. So I was basing it slightly on what I could get and geographical spread. And then I needed a mix of faith. So I know I haven't covered them all because that would be impossible, but I was trying to cover, obviously, Christianity in its various forms. So a lot of these sites are Catholic. Some of them are now very ecumenical. Then I wanted to cover Japanese religion, Chinese, Indian religion, because often you've got different faiths going to the same pilgrimage spots. I chose, obviously, Mecca for Islam, but I also wanted to look at Nukzima in Angola for Catholics, and I wanted to look at Karbala in Iraq for Muslims, because it's this vast pilgrimage site and very little is actually known about it outside of sort of Islamic circles, if you like. So I thought it was important to cover that. And then I also wanted to pick some little ones. So the big pilgrimage sites, the international, the Rome, the Jerusalem, yes, they can tell you amazing things about geopolitics, about global travel, about how pilgrimages shaped and shaped our world. But if you look at sites that are smaller in terms of their geographical reach, in terms of how long they've been around, perhaps that can still tell you an awful lot about particular communities and particular moments in time. So that led me down the road of choosing Saint Marie de la Mer in southern France, which, yes, it's another Catholic pilgrimage site, but it's the famous gypsy pilgrimage. So that was very much about bringing together a disparate group of people to form a community once a year in the same place. So it's very important for me to choose that one. And then when I looked at New Zealand, I chose Ratana Pa, because it started out as a pilgrimage site based around a healer. He had visions when his son was ill, and he became a healer in the 1920s. But then it morphed into this politically important site for the MORI in New Zealand, and that's what it has remained. So it's not about healing anymore, it's about politics for a minority group in New Zealand obviously doesn't have that international reach, but it's still very, very important in their own particular context. So that's how I landed on these 19. I wasn't consciously saying 1920 felt a bit contrived in that I had to have a 20th. And so when I had a list that I felt covered, what I wanted to do, I stopped, essentially.
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B
Yeah, that makes sense. And I can imagine it was definitely a really tricky process to sort of figure out what the criteria were. But the spread you've described to us, definitely seems to cover rather a lot of things, which is.
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C
There were some amazing sites I would have loved to look at. So Saint Andapopra in Canada, again, another huge Marian Catholic site, has got great resources to write about. There's a whole book there and St Winifred's, well, in North Wales, which I've been researching for academic book. And there's a book coming out on that separately, because I felt like I knew too much about that to get it into a chapter for this kind of book. So I thought I'd just save myself the pain and just do that one separately.
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B
Yeah, no, that definitely makes sense. Thank you for telling us about the behind the scenes part of it, then going into some of the things you figured out from putting all of this together. I think obviously there's no way I can ask you about all 19. Right. That's not going to be possible here, but of course, listeners can read the book for all of that. So I've picked out sort of particular pilgrimages, but also sort of similarities or common threads across them that I'm hoping we can discuss. So the first one is obviously, why do people go on pilgrimage? Is it about that particular place? Is it about something of going to the place? What sorts of common threads do we.
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C
See, I think, across these. These chapters, that it really is about the place. So modern interpretations and approaches to pilgrimage are very much about the journey, particularly if you're talking in a Christocentric, Western kind of context, particularly in Europe, hence this whole caminoisation of pilgrimage. And people talk a lot about taking time out, going on a journey, finding yourself, things like that. But when you look at all these sites, it's very much about the sites themselves. People aren't particularly bothered, with the exception of the last two places I cover Santiago and Chicago in Japan with how they get there. The actual journey there is of less importance for the most part. Perhaps Karbala in Iraq, that you could say that getting there is important. But in many, many cases, people don't really discuss their journeys or they don't get concerned about whether they're walking there, sailing there, riding there on a donkey, going on a steamship, because it's very much about the destination. So the primary driver is that they want to go to a particular place. Now, why they choose that place, of course, is what very massive. Sorry, let me say that again. Why they choose that place is, of course, what varies massively. So pilgrimages are often about health, for example, and that will cover a whole range of things. And people will also go and give thanks for health that they've managed to secure after appealing to a saint. Or they might go and help for aid. And that can be anything from, you know, my child is sick, I'm trying to conceive a child, my business is failing, things like that. You might also go and ask for advice, which for most of these pilgrimage sites is implied when people go and pray. But if you look at somewhere like Delphi, the ancient pilgrimage site in Greece, it was more literal than that because people went to consult the oracle, often wanting rubber stamping for decisions they've already made, to be perfectly honest. And the advice they received was ambiguous enough that quite often they completely misinterpreted it or interpreted it as the the oracle intended, but we don't really know. So that's a lot more niche. So asking for things, giving thanks for things. But depending upon which sections of society you're looking at, I think the pilgrimages vary because they're not usually just about one thing. So, for example, if you look at the leaders of China, ancient China, when we're talking about imperial power, they would go to Taishan, which is one of the five sacred mountains of China, and they would do it, if you like, to gain a rubber stamping sign of sacred authority for their rule. And in some cases, emperors would go on this pilgrimage quite soon after they'd taken power because they wanted to be able to show that they had authority. And in other cases, they were a bit more circumspect, didn't want to sort of anger the deity, and so they might delay going for quite a while. A good example of that is the leader of China in the 7th century who took power and was very, very successful. And he held off going because he did not think the text says his merits were so glorious as to deserve the honor. So he holds off going to Taishan. And this particular Emperor Gaozong, the reason he goes is that his wife, his second wife, essentially insists that he does so. This is the Empress Wu, a former courtesan and the only woman ever to be called emperor in her own right in China. A former courtesan. She was wildly ambitious and incredibly ruthless, and she insisted that her husband undertake the pilgrimage. And they set off. And this pilgrimage took months. It involved a train of followers, apparently 60 miles long. And when they got to Taishan, Empress Wu was very concerned to undertake the rituals there that normally the emperor would undertake because she was trying to show I've got as much authority and power as he does. She's often known as the power behind the imperial throne. And in many ways she was. She would literally sit in imperial meetings behind a beaded curtain and whisper what she wanted done to the emperor. So it's very much driven by her. So you get really, really political pilgrimages and obviously pilgrimages of that kind of. They're only for the elite. You know, if you're a farmer or a peasant, a merchant, you're not really going to be conducting pilgrimages of power because that's not the kind of thing that you're displaying in other places. People simply want to see the most sacred places of their faith. They want to walk where Jesus has walked in Jerusalem, or they want to see where various saints have lived and died somewhere like Iona, for example, or they want to come together as a community. So I've already mentioned Saint Marie de la Mer in France, Amritanapa in New Zealand. Those places have their annual pilgrimages where people come together from those communities, Gypsy and Marie respectively. And it's where they might then transact business, agree marriages, conduct christenings, all the sorts of things they can't do when they're spread out in their different communities. So it's a way of bringing them together. So lots and lots of different reasons. And of course Mecca, if you are able to go, it's one of the five pillars of faith that you undertake, the Hajj. So there's a sense of obligation to that pilgrimage that is not present in the others. But that doesn't make it any less sacred. And it's no less about wanting to go and appeal for aid or ask for assistance with poor health and for the wealthy to show, show off a bit. So I think rarely does. Well, I don't think any site you can say there's one thing driving people to go, but even within one individual there are often myriad reasons for going. And you might think that they are tensions that can't be resolved within an individual. You know, how can you be on a sacred holy journey? And yet it's all about politics and power. Well, you can, because the two things don't have to be distinct.
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B
Yes, very rarely is anything sort of by for one reason. So of course this isn't either. But that kind of intertwining is really interesting. So thank you for telling us about it. In some ways though, it makes the next sort of thing I'd like to talk about from the book to me, even more surprising because if there's so many different reasons that someone might go on pilgrimage and so many different reasons that places would be significant, it seems like it would be hard to untwine all of those different strands such that a place is a site of pilgrimage and then isn't. But there are some instances of places that used to have pilgrimages but don't as much. And then of course, places that sort of are relatively new sites of pilgrimage. So can you tell us about some of these and what sorts of reasons we might understand for a place no longer becoming a pilgrimage site?
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C
Yeah, absolutely. So you're right that many go into decline and from the book that the two best examples of that are Delphi in ancient Greece and Chichen Itza in modern day Mexico. So when it comes to Delphi, this was the place where the ancient Greek oracle gave advice to various city states as centuries and so, well, millennia ago. And as you got the change from Greek power in the area and the move to Roman power, it became less important. And then of course, as the Roman Empire embraced Christianity, they were no longer appealing to the God Apollo through the oracle at Delphi because they moved to Christocentric worship and so they stripped Delphi of its wealth. So really the decline of Delphi as a sacred pilgrimage center, it begins around about the mid 4th century BCE and it takes a while, but really it ramps up because of the Roman switch to Catholicism. And after that, it simply can't survive. And as I said, people strip out the wealth, people no longer visit there. The buildings fall into disrepair, and so it declines over time. When you look at somewhere like Chichen Itza, however, it's about, yes, religion, but conquest and empire building and imperialism. So in this particular case, the pilgrimage to Chichen Itza involves going to this huge sinkhole in the forest, and people will put offerings into the sinkhole. Not entirely sure why either. To appeal to one particular deity to help with rain, because it isn't an area that has rivers, so irrigation and farming is problematic, but also it might be for a range of other reasons. And what happens in the mid 15th century is Diego de Landa, a Spanish Franciscan friar, he comes to the New World and he begins a campaign against the religion of the indigenous peoples. He attacks the mayor. He attacks basically everything that doesn't agree with his Catholicism. This is physically smashing up icons. And there are stories of missionaries and conquerors that are full of brutality. But Diego de la De is a cut above. He really is passionate about stamping out indigenous religion. And what he does is basically he. He goes to the Yucatan Peninsula, where Chichen Itza is. He burns texts that he's found, and he prohibits, you know, any sort of activity that could be deemed, you know, in opposition to Catholicism. So there you have one individual driving it very much because of his religious beliefs. When they go to the New World and they find religions that they don't. Don't approve of, that they find heretical as a way of stamping their mark on it, but also promoting their own faith. So in those cases, those places really obviously are attacked. Others fall out of favor over the years, particularly small sites, perhaps holy wells dry up or relics are stolen. So a site might fall out of use because there's no longer anything there to really draw pilgrims. And if you think in the broader context across Europe in the Reformation, so many shrines are destroyed in Protestant countries that you could find lots and lots of local examples of pilgrimage sites that are no longer considered sacred, though some have been revived. So that is often how one's falling when it comes to one's emerging anew. There are actually quite a lot of ways that this happens, and it's a continual progress process. It isn't as if we have lots of ancient sites and then nothing happens. And then maybe in the last 50 years, new ones have emerged. It is always going on. So a really obvious way this happens in European context are Marian apparitions, which crop up throughout medieval, early modern and modern history. But there are certain periods where you get a concentration of them. The most famous of these, of course, is Lourdes, but there are plenty of others. And pilgrimage sites will then develop around those because quite often they respond to local concerns. So Mary has a knack of appearing to often young children or youths and giving messages that resonate with the audience of the time. And then pilgrimage sites emerge around that because people want to go where Mary has appeared in other places. And this I find really interesting. You get secular individuals who are. They're not saints. They're often vilified by people, and they have no official status. But popular acclaim, much like it did in the early Middle Ages. Actually, popular acclaim turns these people into sacred figures. And in the book, I use the example of Eva Peron, the wife of Juan Peron, who was president of Argentina. Now, she's a really contentious figure. She started life in a poor family in Argentina. She was born of an illegitimate union. And she wanted to escape her poverty by going to the capital, Buenos Aires, where she became a radio star. And that's how she caught the attention of General Peron, who she then married. And she became the first lady of Argentina. And she dressed in fabulous clothing. And, you know, there are wonderful pictures of her. She appeared on the radio, things like that still, Obviously, that was where her skill set lay. But she also developed this Persona as somebody who cared for the poor, that understood the poor, which, with her background, was a convincing story to sell. And she would support them through the. The Ministry of Labor, where she had her headquarters. And many people absolutely adored her in Argentina, she was sent as an envoy overseas. You know, she was lauded as, you know, a Marian sort of figure. And when she died at the age of 33, which had its own resonance as the age when Christ died, many of her supporters flocked to Buenos Aires on what they described as a pilgrimage to see her, her body lying in state. They turned her former offices into a place of pilgrimage. They wanted to turn the shrine that was going to be built for her, but never was, into a place of pilgrimage. And this hasn't ever really gone away. So she's revered virtually as a saint. Her supporters did actually ask the Catholic Church to canonize her, but the Pope said no. But the imagery around her, the language used to describe her, Santa Evita, she's almost like a Catholic saint without official sanction. Obviously, there's a lot of opposition to that in Argentina. In Buenos Aires, you know, the politics of Peronism is not popular with many people, but in her case, she's sort of a secular saint. It probably helps that she has this amazing rags to riches story, but also that when she died, her husband decided to have her embalmed so that she could have this amazingly tall mausoleum built. It's going to be higher than the Statue of Liberty, where people would be able to come and see her. But there was regime change before this could happen, and instead they didn't know what to do with her embalmed body. And it was moved around various places. At one point it was moved out of an office when there was another regime change, and stored in an attic and then found again by a very shocked administrator. And then it was spirited off to Europe and buried in a secret grave under a false name in Milan before it was found, taken to Spain and kept apparently on Peron's dinner table, where he was living with his third wife before eventually finding its way back to Argentina and being buried in the Recoleta cemetery in the family vault. And people now go to that family vault and leave flowers on what they describe as pilgrimages. So she's a great story, and obviously that there's been the stage play and the film with Madonna, so she's very well known. But it has, as I said, all the hallmarks. But it isn't an official cult, and I wonder, will it ever become one once people are distanced from actually having lived through Peronist politics? Or will it always remain this sort of unofficial saint, as many saints are, how that will play out. But they've adopted all the religious trappings that you would expect to see in a Catholic shrine, which I find fascinating.
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B
Yeah, it's a great example of sort of what these dynamics look like more sort of in our timescale and how that develops. And kind of you can then think backwards and go, oh, okay, maybe this is also how things developed, you know, much, much longer ago. So it's a really great example in terms then, of the kind of people actually engaging with this. I mean, obviously you gave some examples there in terms of going to the tomb and sort of flowers and things. But more broadly, what was it like to go on pilgrimage? Obviously, lots of things have changed in the last few hundred years, but obviously on a wider timescale, too. But you talk about some consistent aspects in the book that maybe we would expect to only be recent ones, like commercialization or concerns about overcrowding. What sorts of consistent experiences might pilgrims have had across Time.
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C
Well, you're absolutely right about concerns about the safety of travel, about overcrowding, about where they're going to stay. So the logistics, if you like, are problematic throughout history and throughout many of these. These particular pilgrimage sites. So the danger of the road, the danger of getting there is a constant in many cases, particularly if you are poor, if you're. If you don't have the money for somewhere safe to stay, and if you're a woman or if you're a disabled traveller of some kind, then the journey is necessarily going to be more traveling, but more challenging. But you will also be prey to people who are likely to attack you, rob you for what little amount you have and so forth. So the logistics of getting there, that's always been an issue of concern. So too has where you stay, when you actually get to a pilgrimage destination. So smaller places, it's not necessarily as much of a problem. There are abbeys that you can stay in, there are inns near the more important pilgrimage sites. But when you get to some places, there is a real pressure on where to stay and where people are physically going to move. And this becomes a huge problem in places like Rome, particularly in Jubilee years, which kick off in 1300, they're initially going to be every century, then every 50 years, then every 33 years, then they land on 25 years. So every 25 years, you have, first of all, tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands, and now millions turning up in Rome. And that puts huge pressure on places to stay. People have to sleep in the streets. If they can't find anywhere they are crammed into inns or private houses, they are ripped off, because it's very much not a buyer's market because of this pressure. But physically getting that many people into these medieval cities, in this case, when they're not designed for it, creates all kind of problems. And it's not at all uncommon for there to be crush injuries and deaths. And in one case, in one Jubilee year, a bridge over the river in Rome collapses and a crowd panics and people fall into the river and drown. So that is a huge issue in a more modern context. This is often a problem when you look at pilgrimages to the Ganges, where there have been, in the 19th and 20th centuries, several incidents where large crowds have panicked or where there have been terrorist attacks and it's caused crush injuries, death, suffocation, people being pushed into various dangerous places like rivers. And so for them, obviously, it's a great concern. So, yes, the journey is difficult. The sheer physicality of it because there are so many people, the difficulty of finding somewhere to see stay, but increasingly the difficulty of going on pilgrimage to places where modern geopolitics, terrorism is a factor, but also where climate change is a factor. So over the last few years in Saudi Arabia, when people go on pilgrimage or when they go on the Hajj to Mecca, they are erecting these huge fans that blow cool, misted water at people to try and cool them down. And if you just watch the news when Hajj is on, you will get reports of people collapsing from the heat and occasionally dying because they cannot endure the conditions that they're not used to. You know, if you live in northern England and you decide to go on Hajj, the contrast in temperature is going to be quite, quite horrific. And temperature always was a problem actually going to Mecca. It appears in lots of the earlier sources, early 20th century, 19th century, even the medieval texts, they complain about the oppressive heat, but that's something that will only get worse. And when you think of India, flooding, monsoon flooding, that's also increasingly an issue. And just the difficulties of people who are often ill or elderly or infirm undertaking these long distance journeys in hot weather is going to be increasingly of a concern for them. Away from the natural. Though you mentioned commercialization, some people see the commercialization of pilgrimage. So whether it's package deals or whether it's buying souvenirs as a problem, that this is something that is crept in increasingly. And the fact that Lourdes has been described as sort of a Disneyfied version of Catholicism because you can go on pilgrimage and then you can buy your glow in the dark rosary and your bottle of water as something negative. But commercialization, selling people badges, relics, mementos, that's always existed throughout pilgrimage and it always will. And it doesn't have to be this dreadful commercial modern idea, because people are taking home with them something sacred and they might use it in a sacred way. So in the Middle Ages, people would obtain a pewter pilgrimage badge, they would take it back to their home community, their family, and that might be brought out when somebody was ill because it would reflect some of the sanctity of the place that person had been and be useful for healing and for prayer. So there are lots of things that genuinely are a concern, and there are some things that concern people in the experience that perhaps shouldn't. But as with all these things, it's ever changing. And there are different challenges all the time, depending upon where you're going, how far away it is, how much disposable income, you've got the time of year, you go all kinds of different things.
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B
Yeah. This is really interesting to understand and of course there is so much variation, as you said, but some really striking consistencies too. One aspect of this of course is the amount of organisation it needed. Right. The examples you just gave us there, it's very clear that one person by themselves kind of isn't necessarily enough to make a pilgrimage successful. And you mentioned earlier in our conversation as well that definitely some leaders were paying attention to kind of the interest level of people coming to see them. So do generally we see leaders liking hosting pilgrimages or having problems with them or seeing them as beneficial to their sort of political agenda?
- [33:44]
C
Absolutely, you really do. So I've already mentioned several times because it's so important, Mecca. So obviously there's an obligation, if you can, to go to Mecca because of the tenets of the faith, but it's really a combination of pilgrimage to Mecca and oil that's made the current Saudi Arabian rulers so powerful and influential. So Saudi Arabia, the Arabian Peninsula was up until the early 19th century, it was well from the 16th century onwards it was controlled by the Ottoman Empire. And I could tell you a bit about that in a moment in terms of control. But when Insad took over in the early 20th century, one first things he did was show that he could essentially put on a good Hajj. He made sure that people were welcomed, accommodated, he turned up personally, he oversaw things because for people to have a good experience showed that he was the right person to be in charge of Saudi Arabia. And this took place in the 1920s and then when oil was discovered in the 30s, the wealth from that could be used to make this experience even better. And so it has in terms of infrastructure, accommodation, allowing people to actually get to Mecca when they need to. And so the combination of wealth and religion is what has given Mecca all of that power. They are able to control who can come on Hajj. They give out a certain number of visas to each country for hajis every year and it gives them huge religious authority. They have put so much money into catering for people going to Mecca essentially that they have completely refashioned the city to do it. So many people are familiar with images of the Kaaba, the black box in the middle of Mecca with people walking around it when they're completing their hajj. And increasingly they are aware of the huge buildings that surround it. They all come from that wealth, these massive multi thousand bed hotels that have been put there to make the pilgrimage Experience better to accommodate for more. And if you're not familiar with Mecca and you look at historic and modern maps, you think, how have they fit that in? Because all of the older texts complain that, you know, Mecca is a small, dusty place with no accommodation in this narrow valley surrounded by mountains. Well, they just flattened the mountains. That's how they built all of this. So for them, it's incredibly important and incredibly useful because of the power and authority it lends them in other ways. If you look at the Ottoman Empire before them, or if you look at the British Empire in the context of pilgrimage to Mecca and Jerusalem, what you find is that the leaders of those particular empires were really keen to facilitate pilgrimage by providing better, quicker, safer or cheaper transport. So the Ottoman Empire builds a huge railway network that goes down from Istanbul to Jerusalem. They try and get it all the way to Mecca. It never quite gets there to provide, in theory, safer, quicker, cheaper travel. And there are cheaper tickets, for example, for Muslim population in Russia to be able to get there. And the British Empire does something similar. But what they are really interested in doing is facilitating pilgrimage of people coming over from India, because of course, the Indian Empire is Britain's great big jewel in the crown. And when they expand the British Empire, Queen Victoria essentially becomes the ruler over the largest Muslim population in the world. So those people need assistance to go on pilgrimage to Mecca. And the British government tries to do this by supporting shipping across the Indian Ocean, across the Gulf, and in particular when problems break out with health. Because many of these large scale pilgrimages, particularly the 19th century, spread cholera by instituting cholera stations and permits to try and help people's healthy enjoyment of pilgrimage so that it doesn't have a detrimental effect. And at the end of the 19th century, the British government actually, actually employs or commissions, I suppose, the travel agent Thomas Cook, who was the biggest travel agent of the 19th and early 20th centuries to organize and facilitate pilgrimage from India to Mecca. And in Jerusalem they had a Jerusalem office. And so they would have package deals, organized itineraries, things like that, because it was in the government's interest to say, yes, we are in charge of your country now, but look, it's been beneficial under us. Even during the First World War. When Britain takes Jerusalem in 1917, they're really keen to make sure that they have this narrative that pilgrimage to Mecca is still happening, pilgrimage to Jerusalem is still happening, and we've actually made it better and more accessible for everybody because it's such a powerful narrative to sell.
- [39:01]
A
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- [39:20]
E
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A
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E
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- [39:32]
B
Yeah, that's definitely a reason that governments would want to get involved very clearly, very publicly in pilgrimage. What about the ways in which pilgrimages themselves maybe have been political? Either, for example, from the perspective of the pilgrims doing political things on purpose with their pilgrimage or things like that? Obviously governments doing it is one thing. Do we have other ways in which politics and pilgrimages intersect?
- [39:59]
C
We do. And there's a really nice example again from, from Rome where in the end, towards the end of the 19th century, you essentially have conflict in Rome between the papacy, between the various different Italian states because it isn't unified until the middle of the century and debate and discussion about what they're going to do with the position of the Pope. So for a while the Pope is imprisoned. Pius XI becomes the so called prisoner in the, in the Vatican. He wouldn't recognize the Kingdom of Italy. And the solution of this was, well, it Ramadan for decades and it wasn't sold until 1929 when the Lateran Treaty created the Vatican City. People assume the Vatican City is ancient, it's not even 100 years old. Now the response to this from the faithful Catholics was to stage pilgrimages of support for the Pope in Rome. So people from different countries would organize national pilgrimages as well as sort of local ones from across Italy where they would go to Rome as a show of support. And it started in 1873 with a French national pilgrimage, partly because the French felt guilty about what they had done in intervening in Italian politics. So you get the French pilgrimage, then you get a Spanish one in, in 1876, then the Belgians, then the Irish. The Irish are very keen on these. It's seen as, you know, a symbol of national pride. And they are going particularly to say we support the Papacy and we support the idea that the Pope should be free and that, you know, he should be the religious leader. So you certainly get countries, individual groups holding these kinds of pilgrimages, as I said, as a show of support. You also get them using the same language in Rome. And Mussolini, who of course is a fascist leader, is not about the Catholicism, but different fascist groups around Europe who want to befriend him who admire his politics, who want to show him support. They also stage sort of fascist national pilgrimages and they send groups to Rome. So it sort of plays out 50 years later, but in a wholly different context because the language is something that people are familiar with, that they can use. And so it's something that's quite easy to adopt. As soon as you tell people it's a fascist pilgrimage, then it's a journey of meaning without having to explain what it is that you are doing. So those are two distinctly different groups that use it in exactly the same.
- [42:29]
B
Way, really, which is really interesting to see such striking differences and similarities sort of all at once. So thank you very much for telling us about that example. Obviously, government involvement has come up now a few times, but is there anything further we want to understand about ways in which governments have not just tried to benefit from pilgrimages, but have tried to control them?
- [42:51]
C
Oh, they, they certainly try and stop people going on pilgrimage. So, you know, the most recent context is it is in China, where Uyghur pilgrims are prohibited from, from going to Mecca because the, you know, the communist regime in China doesn't want to support basically religious adherence that, that isn't to their, their secular ideal. So you absolutely get government stopping them for that kind of reason. I mentioned cholera. You do get governments prohibiting them when they, they need to for health reasons. And governments get on top of that and they pass various things and form organizations, which is actually what the forerunner of the World Health Organization is, that comes out of pilgrimage and cholera. So they, they do it for that reason, but that even on a smaller scale, you find that individual rulers, entire governments, whole empires, they might limit where and when people can go because they see pilgrimage as a way where people get together to ferment ideas, perhaps, and rebellion. And they don't like that sort of idea. So if you look at, again, at Delphi, different city states try and control it and stop other people going there to ask advice because they don't want them to have that kind of spiritual help and authority. So, absolutely, pilgrims become political pawns, if you like, because pilgrimage is seen as so potent. So it's something that governments feel quite often they necessarily have to control. During the days of British Empire in India, they give permits or refuse to give permits to people who want to go on pilgrimage to the Ganges. And what they might often do is only grant permission to those Indians who are willingly serving in the British Army. So it's a bit of a quid pro quo, if you like. You have to Be loyal to the regime to get the permission.
- [44:45]
B
Yeah, that's definitely a very clear instance of governments controlling pilgrimages. What about sort of other aspects of pilgrimages in terms of kind of who is and who isn't encouraged to do it? For instance, women. If we're talking about overcrowding or fears of safety, to what extent have women been more or less accepted as pilgrims in different places and times?
- [45:07]
C
In the Middle Ages, women, far fewer women went on pilgrimage. And there is, of course, the element of safety in that. Women traveling on their own or even in groups, they are more likely to fall victim to some kind of attack. But actually, there was this huge suspicion of women. And I mentioned the Middle Ages. This also happens on the pilgrimage route to Taishan in China. Why is a woman on her own or why is she traveling? Why is she not at home? There is some suspicion about women going places and doing things that is. Is not about, you know, is it safe for them to do it, it's about why are they doing it. Women, you know, they should. They should know their place. So, you know, one text that writes about Taishan says, well, women are only going on pilgrimage to Taishan to have sex with a monk. Monks, obviously. And you get the same sort of thing in many medieval texts, where the only rationale and bearing in mind many of the authors are of course, religious themselves, you know, monks, clerics, they say that women are using it as a cover for sex. And so that's why they're. They're treated with a degree of suspicion. That doesn't mean many women didn't go, and that there aren't lots of very good records about women and their devotions. But this is what they're accused of. And it probably tells you far more about the male authors of these criticisms, because they are always male, than it does about the real experience of pilgrimage. But, yeah, women are very much criticized and quite often the poor. If you look at Shikoku in Japan, where some people circumnavigate the island, Shikoku, repeatedly on repeat pilgrimages, there's great suspicion if they are poor, particularly in times of famine and there's concern that people will be sort of wasting their grain and their food stores on these people who are just begging and using it as an excuse. So the marginalised groups of society in many societies and for much of history, women and the poor are often treated with suspicion.
- [47:07]
B
And that's of course true in a lot of aspects of societal relations, not just with pilgrimages. So if we're thinking then about Some of those similarities. Do we see a direct link between these practices of pilgrimage you've been telling us about? And for example, like modern tourism and mass infrastructure, I mean, some of the things you've been describing sound a lot like kind of people going to popular places on holiday. Or is that overgeneralising?
- [47:33]
C
Well, it's not over generalising. People often say, has pilgrimage become touristic? Well, there was no such thing as tourism as we understand it in the Middle Ages, in the ancient period, but there was pilgrimage. So it's the other way around. Pilgrimage was the original thing people did. Tourism is the secular, more laid back version of going somewhere for a set period for a reason. That reason might be to look at the frescoes of Florence or it might be to lie on a beach in Marbella, but it's about getting there and destination a particular place. So there are lots of parallels and certainly pilgrimage, as it develops, you get the rise of the package tour. I've already mentioned Thomas cook In the 19th century, that's the obvious one. But if you go back to 15th century Venice, for example, there are guides telling you how to go around the city of Venice to prepare for the sea crossing from Venice to Jerusalem. Where to stay, depending upon which nationality you are. You know, this is the sort of the German hotel you can stay in, where to go to book your berth on a ship. So many people are familiar with Those pillars near St. Mark's on the edge of the water, and that's where they would advertise or where you would go to book your passage. And these guides even tell you what to buy. You know, you need a feather mattress, you need a cage with some chickens in it and things like that. And so guides are written about how to prepare and when you get to your destinations, whether you're at the Ganges and so you're going to be guided round by some of the Brahmins, whether you're going to rome in the 16th century and you're given one of the maps that's printed in the 1570s, 80s or 90s, showing you the seven pilgrimage churches of Rome, or whether you're a pilgrim in, you know, 1380 who lands an acre on the coast of the Holy Land hoping to get to Jerusalem, and you have to wait there for the donkeys that transport you. And then when you're in the Holy City, you have to be guided around by the Franciscans, because that's what the rulers of the city, who at that time are Muslim, say has to happen. So mass transport, packing, guidebooks, maps of where you want to go and what you should visit, you know, like the highlights as well as, as physical guides and accommodation setup that all exists in certainly some ancient but medieval pilgrimage. So that is all there before. And of course, as we've already mentioned, the buying of souvenirs, obtaining relics, stones, water, plants, all kinds, right through to the modern pilgrimage souvenirs, that's another constant. And the two things overlap a lot.
- [50:13]
B
Yeah, no, very clearly overlapping a lot. We just need to sort of get the order right of sort of which one came first. So that's.
- [50:19]
C
Yes, not everyone was necessarily happy about this. So there's this great story of this in the 15th century. Felix Fabry, he goes on pilgrimage twice to Jerusalem. And the first time he writes about, you know, he, first of all he's on a horse and then he crosses the sea. And the reason he goes on the second pilgrimage is he says, I was rushed around too fast by the guides and I couldn't see everything I wanted to see. Which is something probably quite familiar to anybody who's been on a guided holiday tour. And that's why he went back the second time, because he didn't feel like he'd got the full experience of seeing things.
- [50:54]
B
That's so interesting. You must have come across so many epic details. Of course, course, many we've discussed today. There's loads more in the book. Was there anything in particular in the process of putting all of this together that really surprised you?
- [51:07]
C
Oh, that surprised me. That is a really good question. It's interesting how you know. Well, I suppose this is something I've found in much earlier research anyway, is that there are large bits of pilgrimage that people don't really discuss. So as we mentioned at the start, people think about the journey. So many people don't actually write about that. They do for the Middle Ages because they're writing a sort of travelogue. But quite often you only know what's happened with the pilgrims when they're at the site. So actually talking about the journeys is harder than you might imagine. So that surprised me for lots of places, although it also chimed with a bee in my bonnet that I have about the fact that, you know, you don't have to walk. And for many people the journey is not the important thing. So that was interesting, but also the disparity between the way so many sites have a rich, rich resource space that's excellent. You know, first hand accounts, newspaper accounts, etchings, paintings, drawings, carvings and other ones that are still incredibly important and visited and revered. It was really hard to find anything. So there's more to be said there about why some are so written about than others. Not just in terms of, well, it's populous. Everyone goes, why do people feel that they want to put pen to paper or parchment or vellum or whatever in relation to some experiences and some pilgrimage sites and not others? What is it that makes them do that?
- [52:35]
B
I mean, that's an intriguing question in and of itself. Is that what you're researching next, or.
- [52:40]
C
I don't know if you have any.
- [52:40]
B
Upcoming projects you want to flag?
- [52:42]
C
Oh, I have so many upcoming projects. That isn't what I'm working on next. But it is interesting that, you know, people write about the journey to Rome, the journey to Jerusalem, the journey here, the journey. They don't write about the journey to Lords, necessarily. There's a couple that I've read. One. One guy in the 1930s walks to Lourdes for the health of his son and is basically reliant on charity, but he writes about it because he's being paid by a newspaper because he needs the money to do this. So it's one of those things on a back burner. So my laptop is essentially full of loads of folders of. Oh, that would be interesting because that's one of the things that really surprised me about researching pilgrimage is, as I said at the start, I started off purely as a medievalist, and there's a lot written on medieval pilgrimage and there's lots of things on miracles and cults and saints. And I assume there would be a lot for the modern history of pilgrimage, 19th, 20th century Europe, there isn't, considering the sheer wealth of material. So that really surprised me. So that's. That's where I'm going next, for the most part, really. I'm looking a lot more at the modern.
- [53:49]
B
Well, that certainly sounds intriguing. And who knows, maybe those other folders will also get to see the light of day at some point. But while you are exploring all the intriguing things, of course listeners can read the book we've been discussing titled Holy How Pilgrimage Changed the World, published by profile in 2025. Katherine, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [54:10]
C
Thank you very much for letting me talk.