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Martin Locker, Landscapes of pilgrimage in medieval Britain

The academic literature on pilgrimage is rarely experiential, so a PhD thesis derived from walking along local medieval pilgrimage routes in Britain is rather novel. The popular literature is often written out of piety – albeit mostly a Protestant devotion rather than anything close to the worldview of pre-Reformation pilgrims. Landscapes of Pilgrimage side-steps piety almost entirely, focusing on the journey rather than on the shrines. Locker develops an interdisciplinary methodology to consider the ‘processes motivating pilgrims, the practicalities of sacred travel, and the experiential aspects encountered en route’. He does this by comparing archaeological evidence (principally buildings, crosses, and souvenirs such as ampullae) with documentary sources, and by walking four selected routes: Ely to Walsingham, Salisbury to Winchester, St Asaph to Holywell, and Camelford to Bodmin. About half the publication is devoted to detailed descriptions of the landmarks along these routes, which were chosen to avoid areas where modernity has intervened excessively. The review of the archaeological evidence shows that while some shrines are associated with souvenir badges and leaden ampullae, at the greater number such artefacts are entirely unknown. Although this might be a result of poor survival or diminished opportunities for recovery, the complete absence of such lead souvenirs for a significant number of shrines does suggest they may never have been produced. Perhaps souvenirs in less durable materials were sold there instead. Locker is keen to differentiate between the experiences of pilgrims and those of secular travellers such as merchants. And he is very keen on the ‘sensory dialogue’ between pilgrims and the landscape ‘through theories of liminality and perception applied to topographical data’. But what was the difference between pilgrimage and supposedly secular travel in the Middle Ages? Merchants sought the protection of the saints in wayside chapels and churches. The routes used by pilgrims were, in large part, those created by trade and other secular uses. Eamon Duffy ((2002) 2010, 165–166) considered that: