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Pilgrimage and
England’s Cathedrals
Past, Present, and Future
Edited by
Dee Dyas · John Jenkins
Pilgrimage and England’s Cathedrals
Dee Dyas • John Jenkins
Editors
Pilgrimage
and England’s
Cathedrals
Past, Present, and Future
Editors
Dee Dyas John Jenkins
University of York University of York
York, UK York, UK
ISBN 978-3-030-48031-8 ISBN 978-3-030-48032-5 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48032-5
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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To Sarah and to Stuart
Preface
This volume grew out of a large three-year interdisciplinary research

project, ‘Pilgrimage and England’s Cathedrals, Past and Present’, which
was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The project
was carried out by a team based at the University of York (Dee Dyas, John
Jenkins, Tiina Sepp, Louise Hampson, Patrick Gibbs, Anthony Masinton,
Geoff Arnott), together with co-investigators Marion Bowman (The
Open University) and Simon Coleman (University of Toronto).
In partnership with the Church of England, Historic England, the
Association of English Cathedrals, and other national bodies, the project
team examined historical and contemporary experience of pilgrimage in its
broadest sense, through the lens of four English cathedral case studies:
Canterbury, Durham, Westminster, and York. The essays which make up
this volume have been produced by the research team and by leading
scholars and practitioners who have generously contributed their expertise
and experience to the project.
The editors are grateful to all the scholars and those responsible
for managing cathedrals at national and local levels who took part in
cross-disciplinary conferences and workshops and thus helped to shape
and inform this volume. We would particularly like to thank the staff and
volunteers of our case-study cathedrals, the Cathedral and Church
Buildings Division of the Church of England, and Historic England for
the enthusiasm with which they engaged with the project and continue to
vii
viii PREFACE
implement its findings. We are greatly indebted to the project Executive

Board, chaired first by Professor Mark Ormrod and then by Professor
Grace Davie. We are also grateful to Joe Johnson and Emily Russell, our
editors at Palgrave Macmillan. Finally we would like to thank our families,
especially Stuart and Sarah, for their encouragement, support, and
patience.
York, UK Dee Dyas

John Jenkins
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Dee Dyas and John Jenkins
Part I Historical Survey 27
2 Pilgrimage and Cathedrals in Early Medieval Britain 29

Jonathan M. Wooding
3 Pilgrimage and Cathedrals in the Later Middle Ages 49

Eamon Duffy
4 Visiting England’s Cathedrals from the Reformation to

the Early Nineteenth Century 75
Ian Atherton
5 Pilgrimage and Cathedrals in the Victorian Era109

Elizabeth Macfarlane
6 Pilgrimage and Cathedrals from the 1900s to the

Present Day131
Michael Tavinor
ix
x Contents
Part II Key Themes and Issues, Past and Present 145
7 The Multivalent Cathedral147

Simon Coleman and John Jenkins
8 Cathedrals, Community, and Identity169

John Jenkins and Tiina Sepp
9 The Role of Sensory Engagement with Place, Past, and

Present193
Dee Dyas
10 Leaving and Taking Away: Cathedrals and Material Culture215

Marion Bowman and John Jenkins
Part III The View from English Cathedrals Today 235
11 Canterbury and Becket Today237

Christopher Irvine
12 Pilgrimage and Cathedrals Today247

Michael Tavinor
13 Cultivating Pilgrimage to Westminster Cathedral257

Mark Langham
14 Pilgrimage, Cathedrals and Shrines Today263

John Inge
Afterword271
Grace Davie
Index277
Notes on Contributors
Ian Atherton is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern British History at Keele

University who has published a number of essays and articles on cathedrals
in early modern Britain, including in The Oxford History of Anglicanism.
Volume 1, Reformation and Identity c. 1520–1662 (2017), as well as co-
edited Norwich Cathedral, 1096–1996: Church, City and Diocese (1996).
He is working on post-Reformation British cathedrals and on the com-
memoration of battlefields from the Middle Ages to the modern era.
Marion Bowman is Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at The Open
University, a Guest Researcher at the University of Oslo, and external sci-
entific expert on the Baltic Research Programme project Re-storied Sites
and Routes as Inclusive Spaces and Places: Shared Imaginations and Multi-
layered Heritage (EMP340). She has published widely on pilgrimage, ver-
nacular religion, Glastonbury and materiality, and in 2020 co-edited
‘Reframing Pilgrimage in Northern Europe’, Numen 67 (5–6). She was
co-investigator on the ‘Pilgrimage and England’s Cathedrals’ project.
Simon Coleman is the Chancellor Jackman Professor at the Department
for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto. He is an anthropologist
who has done fieldwork on Pentecostalism, pilgrimage, hospital chaplain-
cies, cathedrals, and the contribution of religious movements to urban
infrastructures. He was a co-investigator on the ‘Pilgrimage and England’s
Cathedrals’ project. Coleman is a co-editor of the journal Religion and
Society and of the book series Routledge Studies in Pilgrimage, Religious
Travel and Tourism. Among his recent books is Pilgrimage and Political
Economy: Translating the Sacred (2018, co-edited with John Eade).
xi
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Grace Davie is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of

Exeter. She publishes widely on religion in Britain and Europe, including
Religion in Britain Since 1945: Believing Without Belonging (1994) and
Religion in Britain: A Persistent Paradox (2015). She is a co-editor of The
Oxford Handbook on Religion and Europe (2020).
Eamon Duffy is Professor Emeritus of the History of Christianity in the
University of Cambridge. His publications include The Stripping of the
Altars (1992), The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an
English Village (2001), and Royal Books and Holy Bones: Essays in Medieval
Christianity (2018).
Dee Dyas is Reader in the History of Christianity and Director of the
Centre for the Study of Christianity and Culture and the Centre for
Pilgrimage Studies at the University of York. She has studied the meaning
and practice of pilgrimage for twenty-five years and spearheaded major
research projects and initiatives in Pilgrimage Studies. She advises the
Church of England on the development of cathedrals as pilgrimage and
heritage sites. Dyas is a co-editor of Routledge Studies in Pilgrimage,
Religious Travel and Tourism.
John Inge is the Bishop of Worcester. He served as the lead bishop on
cathedrals and church buildings until 2019 and is the author of A Christian
Theology of Place (2003). He was introduced to the House of Lords as a
Lord Spiritual in 2012 and has a particular interest in culture and heritage.
Christopher Irvine was formerly the Canon Librarian and Director of
Education at Canterbury Cathedral and is now priest-in-charge of Ewhurst
Green and Bodiam and an Honorary Teaching Fellow at St Augustine’s
College of Theology.
John Jenkins is a research associate and teaching fellow at the University
of York. He has published on medieval and modern church history and is
working on an edition of the Customary of the Shrine of St Thomas Becket
and a monograph on the cult of Becket in late medieval Canterbury.
He was a post-doctoral research associate on the ‘Pilgrimage and
England’s Cathedrals’ project.
Mark Langham is a priest of Westminster Diocese. From 2001 to 2008,
he was the Administrator of Westminster Cathedral. More recently, he
worked in Rome at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity
and is the Catholic chaplain at the University of Cambridge.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xiii
Elizabeth Macfarlane is Chaplain of St John’s College, Oxford. Her

doctoral work focused on saints in the nineteenth-century Anglican
tradition, and she has published on commemorative culture in the
Victorian period.
Tiina Sepp is a research fellow at the Institute of Cultural Research,
University of Tartu, Estonia, and has published on European and English
pilgrimage and cathedrals. She was a post-doctoral research associate on
the ‘Pilgrimage and England’s Cathedrals’ project.
Michael Tavinor has served at Ely Cathedral and Tewkesbury Abbey and
has been Dean of Hereford since 2002. At Hereford he has focused on
developing pilgrimage, especially through the refurbishment of the shrines
of St Ethelbert and St Thomas Cantilupe.
Jonathan M. Wooding holds the Sir Warwick Fairfax Chair of Celtic
Studies at the University of Sydney. He has wide-ranging interests in the
history and culture of pilgrimage.
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Dee Dyas and John Jenkins
My impression of this place was—wow. There is something … This

cathedral is rooted so deep down in the earth. A feeling I have never
had in this intensity, or in this deepness, this depth. And not only rooted
in the earth, but it’s at the same time rooted in time. As if the
Cathedral was here as a … what’s the word? … a witness.
—Pilgrimage and England’s Cathedrals Project, interview data
This response, recorded in 2014 by a visitor to Canterbury Cathedral,

confessing himself almost overwhelmed by the combined impact of archi-
tecture, setting, and a sense of history evoking eternity, is testament to the
continuing power of cathedrals and other sacred sites to elicit profound
responses. Initially self-identifying as ‘no religion’, this 32-year-old respon-
dent struggled to define his identity and motivation for himself—and for
the cathedral admission criteria. Was he a heritage visitor? In part. Had he
come to pray? Not really. Was he a pilgrim? Partly, but perhaps not. In the
end he refused to define himself by any one of these categories but never-
theless announced that he was adopting the idea of pilgrimage as a fram-
ing device for his life.
D. Dyas (*) • J. Jenkins

University of York, York, UK
e-mail: dee.dyas@york.ac.uk; john.jenkins@york.ac.uk
© The Author(s) 2020 1

D. Dyas, J. Jenkins (eds.), Pilgrimage and England’s Cathedrals,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48032-5_1
2 D. DYAS AND J. JENKINS
Around 850 years earlier Reginald, a monk of Durham, recorded the

cathedral preparing for one of its major annual feasts:
At the time when Pentecost was approaching many people resolved to come
from all around to the church of St Cuthbert … The monks had therefore
decorated the walls with various beautiful ornaments, and had embellished
the ceremonial of their services with suitable arrangements. Then the largest
bells, which were at the church doors, were made to sound according to the
custom of the great festival. So the young men, with those older and
younger, rushed to that place and because the weight of the bells was too
much for the combined strength of many men, gathered together a great
crowd. Those who had been born in Durham had more experience and skill
knowledge of bell-ringing because practice and training in the work pro-
duced experience and a thorough knowledge of this skill. So the officers of
the church preferred a few of them to very many of the others and put for-
ward the young men of Durham City for the task of ringing the bells. So
when the office of prime had to be sung in the church, a large group of
young men from the City of Durham came up to perform the task of ringing
and to make those bells sound out. As they rang the bells they competed
with one another using all their might and for some long time dedicated
themselves to this burdensome task and charmed the ears of the crowd with
pleasant sweetness…1
Here we are provided with a valuable glimpse into the relationship

between the resident cathedral community and the series of communities
that surrounded and interacted with it. The cathedral and St Cuthbert, its
resident saint, drew crowds on major feast days from the city and the wider
region of its diocese and beyond. The monks and servants of the cathedral
were attentive to the need to present the church appropriately. The citi-
zens are shown as skilled bell ringers, who took their role in creating the
appropriate sensorily pleasing soundscape for the festival very seriously
and enthusiastically, but were chosen and trained by the cathedral authori-
ties. We cannot retrieve their experience, but we can note even in this
short description the complexities of the lay relationship with the medieval
cathedral. The story goes on to relate that one of the bell ringers was
fatally struck by the bell’s heavy clapper and his life only saved by the inter-
cession of St Cuthbert, thus further modifying his relationship with the
1
Reginald of Durham (1835, p. 202) translation by Margaret Coombe, modified by John
Jenkins.
1 INTRODUCTION 3
saint and the building and ensuring that all who had come to the cathedral
at Pentecost were witnesses to a miracle. We can thus identify a range of
modulating devotional behaviours and meanings around the cathedral on
this important feast day.
These accounts affirm the enduring ability of cathedrals to surprise and
engage. They are huge presences in their landscapes, they inspire feelings
of belonging, and they have formed and continue to form a key part of
local, regional, and even national identity. For many centuries they have
offered some of the fullest sensory and devotional experiences available.
However, they also problematise our understanding of, and ability to
define, pilgrimage.
The Purpose of This Volume

The area of pilgrimage studies has grown and diversified considerably over
the last three decades and now embraces a very wide range of disciplines,
each with its own preoccupations, methodologies, and definitions. This
volume seeks to contribute to cross-disciplinary conversations about pil-
grims and pilgrimage, past and present, through interrogating the mean-
ings of these terms within a particular geographical context (England) and
with reference to a distinctive group of holy places (cathedrals). It draws
its inspiration from a three-year Arts and Humanities Research Council-
funded research project,2 which employed a combination of methodolo-
gies drawn from history, art history, archaeology, theology, religious
studies, the social sciences, and digital humanities, to identify and analyse
the core dynamics of pilgrimage and cathedrals in England from the elev-
enth to the twenty-first centuries, to assess the renewed significance of
English cathedrals as sacred/heritage sites today, and to use historical per-
spectives to inform future management of these iconic buildings. This
book therefore brings together work by historians, social scientists, theo-
logians, religious studies scholars, and cathedral practitioners, employing
cathedrals as the lens through which to study pilgrimage, and pilgrimage
as the lens through which to study the cathedral experience.
Alongside the now relatively well-established field of pilgrimage stud-
ies, this volume also looks to the more nascent area of ‘cathedral studies’.
To date this has largely been embodied in two main approaches. Traditional
2
‘Pilgrimage and England’s Cathedrals, Past and Present’: https://www.pilgrimageandca-
thedrals.ac.uk accessed 1.10.19.
cathedral historiography has tended to focus on institutional or art and

architectural aspects. On the other hand, recent work in social science and
religious studies has sought to ‘evaluate the impact of cathedrals as key
points of growth’ in the modern Church and build on the idea that cathe-
drals represent both ‘sacred space’ and ‘common ground’,3 functioning as
sites which have historically been shaped by one faith but are now seeking
to offer spaces of shared exploration and significance to those of all faiths
and none.4
In line with the approach of Simon Coleman and John Elsner that the
‘landscape of pilgrimage’, the setting within which pilgrimage takes place,
is instrumental in shaping the pilgrim experience, this volume provides
in-depth historical studies of the ‘landscape’ of England’s cathedrals and a
new framework for analysing past and present visitor experiences.5 The
central analytical chapters combine thorough historical research focusing
on a discrete set of case studies to provide a solid basis for analytical inter-
pretation, and each chapter offers a number of analytical frameworks for
historians to interrogate and understand the past in new ways. By bringing
these two approaches together, this volume offers a more experiential view
of cathedral history than previous studies have offered. This has the poten-
tial to integrate previously fragmented evidence and perspectives and thus
enrich each discipline.
English cathedrals provide a unique ‘laboratory’ in which to observe
and analyse a wide range of pilgrim behaviours through time. Pilgrimage
was highly important to the development and status of many English
cathedrals in the early and later Middle Ages. Although most shrines were
destroyed at the Reformation, a number of the great churches and mon-
asteries which housed them remain as cathedrals today, literally shaped by
their pilgrim past and retaining a strong pilgrimage legacy. There are
marked parallels and connections between the decline and revival of pil-
grimage in England and the very similar pattern evident in the history of
cathedrals. Suppressed in England at the Reformation, pilgrimage began
3
Coleman and Bowman (2019, pp. 2–4, 11–12), Francis (2015), Muskett (2016,
pp. 275–276). Judith Muskett, Shop-Window, Flagship, Common Ground: Metaphor in
Congregation and Cathedral Studies (London: SCM Press, 2019) was published after the
completion of this introduction.
4
The resonance of this concept is illustrated by the fact that ‘Sacred Space: Common
Ground’ was the title given to the first National Cathedrals Conference for England held in
Manchester in September 2018.
5
Coleman and Elsner (1995, pp. 202–213).
1 INTRODUCTION 5
to re-emerge in the nineteenth century, and place-focused activity, includ-

ing visits to sacred sites and the creation of wayside shrines, is now of
considerable, and still-growing, significance. The history of cathedrals fol-
lows a similar trajectory. Cathedrals lost shrines at the Reformation, expe-
rienced abolition (and threats of demolition) under the Puritans and
suffered decline in the long eighteenth century, only beginning to recover
purpose and identity in the nineteenth century. Today English cathedrals
function as both sacred and heritage sites where national and local history
and identity, material culture, and traditional and emerging religious prac-
tice can be encountered in unique combination. Anglican cathedrals, vis-
ited by over ten million people each year,6 are increasingly refocusing on
and reinstating shrines, reflecting an international multi-faith phenome-
non in which an estimated 200 million people across the world engage in
pilgrimage and religious tourism annually.7
However, it is also important to recognise that cathedrals have always
been far more than the shrines they may have housed. As Simon Coleman
and Marion Bowman note, by contrast with more rural pilgrimage sites
cathedrals are largely urban and highly multifunctional spaces. Pilgrimage
is only one of a number of parallel activities which these buildings and
communities have accommodated, a fact which has frequently generated
tensions, and the multivalency8 of cathedrals, past and present, is a key
concept which is explored in the chapters which follow.9 Multivalency is
relevant not only to those who study cathedrals but also to those who
manage them: the staff and volunteers who find themselves responsible for
the day-to-day running of an important heritage site which is also an active
church, a focus for major civic and cultural events, and a nexus for pilgrim-
age. In addition to contributing to scholarly discussions, this volume
brings historical perspectives and insights from the social sciences to bear
on conversations about the current and future management of these sacred
sites at a time when the practice of pilgrimage is more popular in England
than it has been since the Reformation. This approach provides an impor-
tant counterbalance to the material that is currently available. English
cathedrals, both old and new, are proud of their history, and many
6
https://www.englishcathedrals.co.uk/news/2018/10/record-numbers-visiting-cathe-
drals/ accessed 1.10.19.
7
Eade (2016, p. 77).
8
Defined as the capacity to contain many values, meanings, or appeals. See Chap. 6.
9
Coleman and Bowman (2019, pp. 16–17).
cathedral constitutions begin with a preamble giving an overview of the

history of the individual cathedral.10 A number of both general and indi-
vidual histories of cathedrals have been produced in recent years, which
have tended to focus on art, architecture, institutional politics, biogra-
phies of senior clergy, and theology, reflecting the main historiographical
traditions within ‘cathedral studies’, although increasingly the lay experi-
ence within the church and relationship to the cathedral has become a
historiographical concern.11 Another strand of ‘cathedral studies’ has
come from a theological and devotional standpoint, many of the authors
being members of cathedral chapters. Many reflect a preoccupation with
the history of the cathedral in question, particularly in the case of medieval
monastic foundations, but also focus firmly on the present-day experience.12
The ‘experiential history’ of cathedrals offered in this volume comple-
ments these approaches through exploring in depth the meanings these
institutions and buildings have held for successive generations. It also
demonstrates that the issues and opportunities faced by cathedrals today
are, in many cases, as old as cathedrals themselves. The analytical sections
interrogate evidence from the past and the present to identify key dynam-
ics which not only shed light on earlier experiences but also suggest ways
in which cathedrals today can offer meaningful interaction in which the
‘authenticity’ many visitors seek is clearly rooted in their own history.
The Multivalency of Christian Pilgrimage

Christianity has, through the centuries, exhibited a complex range of atti-
tudes towards pilgrimage and holy places. Christian pilgrimage is not and
never has been a monolithic concept. Instead it represents a mosaic of
sometimes conflicting ideas, which has evolved from a wide range of
sources and has also been modified through interaction with host cultures
through the centuries. It is indebted not only to the writings of the
Hebrew Bible and the New Testament but also to practices incorporated
from Greek and Roman polytheistic religion, the development of the Cult
of the Saints, the highly influential creation of a Christian ‘Holy Land’ in
Doe (2017)
10
Aylmer and Cant (1977), Orme (2017), Brown (2014), Lehmberg (2006), Cannon
11
(2007), Nilson (1998), Barrett (1993).

12
Brown (2004), Brown and Loades (1995), Inge (2003), Irvine (2015), Lewis (2005),
Platten and Lewis (1998, 2006), Platten (2017).
1 INTRODUCTION 7
Palestine by a newly converted pagan Roman Emperor and his mother,

and the deep-rooted human instinct to frame devotion with materiality
and attach meaning to place.13
The diverse origins of Christian pilgrimage have given rise to tensions,
which have prompted ongoing debate and conflict. They have also created
a multifaceted set of devotional practices which have shown a remarkable
capacity for adaptation and reconfiguration across different periods and
cultural contexts. The fact that within Christian thought ‘pilgrimage’ has
been a contested concept, variously understood as a journey of daily obe-
dience through life towards heaven, an inner journey of prayer and medi-
tation, or a journey to a holy place has led to significant division (not least
at the Reformation). However, the vulnerability engendered by a plurality
of meanings (viewed by some as mutually incompatible) has also been
offset by an accompanying flexibility of application. This internal com-
plexity has endowed pilgrimage with a multivalency which has enabled
sequential reinvention of its appeal and relevance across disparate contexts.
In an essay on pilgrimage in the Early Church, E.D. Hunt declared:
‘There should by rights, of course, be no such thing as Christian pilgrim-
age [to holy places]’,14 and in strictly theological terms he was correct. The
Hebrew Scriptures had offered the infant Church two models of pilgrim-
age: the experience of journeying with God, illustrated in the life of
Abraham15 and in the Exodus from Egypt, and a model of journeying to
God manifested in a system of fixed-place pilgrimage which focused on
Jerusalem—and the multi-sensory splendours of the Temple in particu-
lar—as the place where the divine was to be encountered.16 The New
Testament writers and the Early Church Fathers chose the former option.
For them, sacred sites had become irrelevant,17 for in the Gospels God was
portrayed as present in the person of Jesus and, following the Day of
13
See Dya (2020).
14
Hunt (1999)
15
‘Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your
father’s house to the land that I will show you”’ (Genesis 12:1). Unless otherwise specified,
biblical quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright ©
1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by
permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
16
‘How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! … the God of gods will be seen in
Zion.’ Psalm 84: Illustrated in the three great Jewish pilgrimage festivals of Passover,
Pentecost and Tabernacles.
17
St Paul is recorded as stating categorically: ‘the God who made the world and everything
in it … does not dwell in shrines made by man’ (Acts 17:24).
Pentecost, as being available to anyone, anywhere, through the Holy

Spirit. Pilgrimage in Christianity now meant belonging to a community of
‘pilgrims’ and ‘exiles’ journeying through life towards heaven, rather than
visiting ‘holy places’ on earth.18
Christianity may have seen no need for sacred places, but the world in
which it was establishing itself was full of them. The polytheistic cults
which made up Greek and Roman religion had a very strongly developed
sense of place; frequently a particular spot, such as a mountain, cave, or
spring, was recognised as having an inherent sacred quality and a shrine
established there. Pilgrims travelled to Delphi, Epidaurus, and other cen-
tres to pray for guidance, healing, and other material benefits, sleeping
close to shrines to experience revelation and healing and offering ex votos
in supplication or thanksgiving.
Against this background, Christianity was to undergo a seismic shift of
emphasis in the early fourth century as a result of the conversion of
Emperor Constantine (c. 272–337), who brought with him expectations
of sacred places derived from his pagan background. He ordered an exten-
sive building programme to be undertaken in Palestine,19 and his mother
was instrumental in the ‘recovery’ of a number of important Christian
sites in Jerusalem and elsewhere. Palestine was reinvented as a Christian
‘Holy Land’, and the resulting synergy between place, biblical text, emo-
tive liturgy, and intense sensory experience20 became a model for Christian
pilgrimage to holy places, which eventually took root in England. These
developments were supported by, and in turn served to strengthen, the
emerging cult of the saints, with its emphasis on direct access to the holy
and the importance of the material in facilitating spiritual contact. The
perceived presence of the saints in their relics drew pilgrims to a multitude
of sites and helped to establish a ‘new sacred geography’21 across
Christendom. Both the concept of Christian holy places and the swift
growth of the cult of relics met with opposition, particularly as elements
of pagan practice were being incorporated into Christian patterns of
18
1 Peter 2: 11: ‘I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims (Vulgate, advenas et peregrinos)
to refrain yourselves from carnal desires.’ Hebrews 11; Dyas (2001). As Robert Markus has
stated, ‘The Christians’ God was wholly present everywhere at once, allowing no site, no
building or space any privileged share of access’ Markus (1990, pp. 140–141).
19
Mirroring the glories of the Temple described in the Hebrew Bible.
20
‘Others only hear,’ proclaimed Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem, ‘but we see and touch’.
21
Markus (1990, p. 273).
1 INTRODUCTION 9
engagement with the holy, but the momentum of the new place-centred
forms of devotion proved unstoppable.
The fourth century also witnessed another, very different, develop-
ment. For decades men and women had been retreating from Rome and
Alexandria to seek God in the deserts of Judea and Sinai. The conviction
that their true status was that of ‘pilgrims and strangers’ in this world
impelled many to renounce earthly ties and pleasures in order to pursue
the spiritual goals they saw set out in the New Testament. This emerging
monastic movement came to be seen in time as a specialised form of life
pilgrimage, characterised by exile from home and family and by a growing
insistence on the necessity for physical stability as a precondition of inner
spiritual journeying.
By the beginning of the fifth century, therefore, the concept of pilgrim-
age was capable of multiple interpretations and permutations. ‘Interior
Pilgrimage’ encompassed monasticism, anchoritism, meditation, and mys-
ticism, and stressed ‘stability of location to facilitate the pursuit of God
within the soul. ‘Moral Pilgrimage’ also emphasised stability, together
with daily obedience to God in the place of one’s everyday calling while en
route to the heavenly Jerusalem. ‘Place Pilgrimage’, which involved jour-
neying to holy places to express devotion and seek forgiveness, healing, or
other material benefits, was essentially about mobility and leaving one’s
daily responsibilities to seek special tangible, measurable, experiences of
the sacred. It is the existence of these multiple strands, sometimes working
in combination, sometimes conflicting, which has made Christian pilgrim-
age so prone to controversy and conflict—and yet so powerful and persis-
tent in its appeal.
Who or What Is a Pilgrim?

The problems with defining ‘a pilgrim’ or ‘pilgrimage’ stem from this
fundamental multivalency. In medieval historiography, ‘pilgrimage’ can
look very different depending on whether the study is of particular pil-
grims, of a pilgrimage site, or of the concept of medieval pilgrimage gener-
ally. The idealised version of the medieval pilgrim, based on contemporary
Church strictures and reinforced through appearances as a stock literary
character, is of the ‘palmer’ with a scrip, staff, and hat, travelling long dis-
tances on foot and often shoeless, having undergone a series of rituals to
transform him (usually so gendered) into a ‘liminal’ wandering figure.22

This is, in effect, the combination in its fullest form of ‘Interior’, ‘Moral’,
and ‘Place’ pilgrimage as delineated above. However, analysis of past prac-
tice suggests that it was an ideal that many did not even strive for while ‘on
pilgrimage’.23 It was instead one of a number of competing discourses that
comprised and informed the ‘landscape of pilgrimage’ and continues to do
so as part of the search for ‘authenticity’ in the modern world.
It is also necessary to be cautious in using the term ‘pilgrim’ as a histo-
riographical category. Those present in the miracle accounts of a particular
shrine or saint have often been assumed by historians to be de facto pil-
grims by their presence, largely regardless of how they are actually
described. It seems obvious, for example, that a layman who had been the
recipient of a miracle at the shrine of St Cuthbert at Durham in the twelfth
century should be called a pilgrim. Yet in St Cuthbert’s twelfth-century
miracles, only 2 of around 100 miracle recipients are called ‘pilgrims’, and
both of them were stated to have travelled Christendom as penance for
their sins. All the others are individually designated by name or by status
and origin: ‘a boy from Berwick’, ‘a woman named Osanna from Foxton’.24
Chaucer’s narrator says of his journeying storytellers in the Prologue to
the Canterbury Tales that ‘pilgrimes were they alle’ (l. 26),25 citing their
destination and intention to pray at the shrine of St Thomas at Canterbury.
However, the narrative also subtly questions the depth of the spiritual
commitment and pilgrim motivation of many of the group. There may
well have been a similar ambivalence about some of their real-life counter-
parts. The early fifteenth-century ‘Customary of the Shrine of St Thomas’
gives the two categories of laity who came to pray at the shrine as ‘pilgrims
and travellers’ (peregrini et viatores), although fails to clarify how the
monks made that distinction.26
The idea, adopted into modern historiography from the work of Victor
and Edith Turner in the 1970s, that the pilgrim automatically becomes a
liminal figure has been significantly modified by subsequent work.27 Yet
historians continue to use ‘pilgrim’ as primarily a label for status rather
than a form of behaviour or type of experience. This is despite the far more
22
Sumption (1975, p. 172).
23
Webb (2000, pp. 215–232).
24
Reginald (1835, pp. 164, 208) for ‘pilgrims’.
25
Chaucer (1987, p. 23).
26
British Library Add MS 59616 fo. 1v.
27
Turner and Turner (1978), Dyas (2010).
1 INTRODUCTION 11
common use in the medieval miracle stories and accounts themselves of

labels of lay status, origin, age, and the like, to identify a range of individu-
als undergoing a particular religious experience within, or in relation to, a
particular site, which may or may not have been described by them or by
contemporary observers as ‘pilgrimage’. Nor was that experience necessar-
ily uniform. As this volume explores, the ‘pilgrim experience’ at the shrine
was greatly variable even at the same site by reason of the time of year or
day or of the status and need of the individual. While Chaucer’s ‘pilgrims’
may have travelled together, the innate social distinctions and the resultant
tensions within the group are still very evident. A fifteenth-century con-
tinuation of the Tales composed at Canterbury states that when they got
to the cathedral door, their varying statuses were highlighted once again:
‘courtesy began to arise’, and they were treated ‘right as they were of
states’.28 This ties in with modern frameworks of understanding pilgrim-
age as a ‘realm of competing discourse [with] multiple meanings and
understandings brought to the shrine by different categories of pilgrims,
by residents and religious specialists, that are constitutive of the cult
itself’.29 People going on pilgrimage, past and present, do so from within
an initial framework of their own social structures, and the evidence sug-
gests that these structures for the most part endure. The pilgrimage, and
particularly the ‘landscape of pilgrimage’ comprising the space and man-
agement of the shrine, the myths of the cult, and the route to and from
the cultic centre, has inherent potential to affect as well as to accommo-
date those structures, and as such the ‘realm of competing discourse’ is
not completely unmediated.30 The very pilgrims who at Canterbury were
treated ‘right as they were of states’ were also each of them sparged with
holy water at the entrance to the cathedral: a literal rite of passage marking
them out as pilgrims within the space of the church, with clear behavioural
expectations.
This flags another important issue with the modern understanding of
medieval pilgrimage. Inherent within the concept of ‘place pilgrimage’ is
the journey. For the modern Christian pilgrim to Compostela and its
numerous ‘pilgrim trail’ imitators, the journey, and more specifically the
journey to the shrine, is the key part of the pilgrimage.31 For the medieval
28
Bowers (1992, pp. 63–65).
29
Eade and Sallnow (1991, pp. 3–5).
30
31
Bowman and Sepp (2019).
pilgrim, the journey to and from the shrine was an intrinsic if necessary
part of the pilgrim experience but normally secondary to the experience
of, and journey through, the shrine. A reasonable comparison could be
drawn with the modern Hajj, where for most the mode of transport to
Mecca is unimportant, there is no compulsion to walk there and meditate
upon the way, but the pilgrimage ‘proper’ starts on arrival at the holy
site.32 In medieval Christianity the subversion of journey length to experi-
ence at the holy site meant that pilgrimages could be made to sites in one’s
own neighbourhood.33 We might also think of Pentecostal or Rogationtide
processions, which to the modern social scientist or anthropologist would
look suspiciously like pilgrimage, as movement through a landscape with
a religious and potentially transformative purpose, but would rarely be
considered as such by the historian of medieval pilgrimage.
‘Pilgrimage’ has also come to the fore in the vocabulary of cathedral
management over the past century. Its popularisation, and much of what
it means in application, was largely thanks to the Dean of Chester, Frank
Bennett, who in 1925 wrote: ‘regard [the cathedral] as a great Family
House of Prayer and its chief purpose to make it easy and natural for those,
who come to it, to listen and to talk to God, and every visitor becomes a
potential pilgrim’. ‘Visitor’ was shorthand for the spiritually unengaged
laity, who might pay a fee to enter; a ‘pilgrim’ had a religious experience
and gave an offering. Or, to put it another way, ‘pilgrim’ was shorthand
for the ideal ‘satisfied customer’ of the cathedral. For Bennett, charging
for entry was anathema to the creation of pilgrims: ‘a cathedral [cannot]
begin to do its proper work until it has replaced visitors’ fees by pilgrims’
offerings’.34
Bennett’s language, if not his wider recommendations, became a com-
mon currency in cathedrals in the twentieth century. Thus while the 1979
English Tourist Board Commission on Cathedrals recommended that
entry charges should be reintroduced as a method of improving the qual-
ity of the visitor experience, it also echoed Bennett in stating that ‘every
visitor is a possible pilgrim and it is the task of the Church to draw him
into the spiritual dimension of the experience of visiting a cathedral’. Yet
at the same time some cathedrals recognised the potential undesirability of
forcing a spiritual experience on their visitors: ‘We hesitate to make a
32
33
Duffy (2002).
34
Bennett (1925, p. 45).
1 INTRODUCTION 13
distinction between pilgrims and tourists … [We] respect each visitor’s

right to appreciate the Cathedral in his or her own terms and at the level
which he or she finds most natural.’35 The 1961 Cathedrals Commission
Report had set the groundwork for this approach, using ‘tourist’ and ‘pil-
grim’ interchangeably without definition.36 The idea that best practice
was, as far as possible, to let the building do the talking was repeated in the
1994 Cathedrals Commission Report, which described the transformation
of ‘tourists’ into ‘pilgrims’ as when they are ‘beguiled by place, mood and
size into a mode of wonder. They can acknowledge a desire to understand,
to question, even to confront the God whose inspiration has made possi-
ble both the building and the moment.’ Unconsciously shadowing
Bennett’s idea of the Family House of Prayer, the Report saw the prob-
lems of staff dealing with ‘strangers’ whom the cathedral wants to treat as
‘guests’ rather than ‘intruders’.37 However, at a meeting of cathedral deans
in the 1990s, what was seen as the essential vacuity of the terminology was
admitted with the joke that ‘I am a pilgrim, you are a visitor, he is a
tourist’.38 At the heart of this lies an insight that these are labels applied by
visitors, staff, volunteers, and clergy to themselves and each other. Naming
is in itself an act of controlling, and as such these labels act as forms of
behavioural control.39 It is an intrinsic part of the ‘realm of competing
discourse’ of pilgrimage, and historians and social scientists, as much as
cathedral staff, should be wary of the trap.
In cathedral discourse the term ‘pilgrim’ is not only still in use in much
the same manner as Frank Bennett applied it nearly a century ago but if
anything has become more widespread. Clearly the term itself is too pow-
erful to drop. Yet, as discussed above with regard to the earlier history of
pilgrimage, it contains within it problematic tensions which lurk beneath
the modern ‘realm of competing discourse’ of cathedral visitor manage-
ment. Despite the constant use of the ‘pilgrim’ topos, cathedrals have not
arrived at a consistent understanding of the meaning of this term in prac-
tice. On the one hand, it is used broadly as a label of desirability for those
considered to be particularly ‘well-behaved and responsive visitors’; on the
other hand, there remains a narrow conceptualisation of ‘the pilgrim’
35
English Tourist Board (1979, pp. 5, 8).
36
Cathedrals Commission (1961, pp. 4–5).
37
Archbishops’ Commission (1994, p. 36).
38
Lewis (1996, p. 26).
39
Primiano (1995, p. 38).
based on a romanticised medievalism of the ‘palmer-pilgrim’, as witnessed

by the continued use of medieval imagery to underpin modern pilgrimage-
focused cathedral activity. In the case of the latter, at many charging cathe-
drals, the visitor self-presenting as ‘a pilgrim’ (often wearing walking
boots) is allowed in free, while others who may also be engaging spiritually
with a building or shrine are classed as ‘tourists’ or ‘visitors’, with conse-
quences for the ways in which they are welcomed or encouraged to engage.
Yet pilgrimage has always had a broad range of meanings and encom-
passed a wide range of transformative experiences, many of which may be
unplanned and unanticipated. It is evident that these often occur within
the setting of the cathedral itself and can be helpfully supported and facili-
tated by the provision of access and interpretation (used ‘independently’
by the individual or ‘directed’ by the cathedral). A certain ambiguity in the
use of the term ‘pilgrim’ can help cathedrals to embrace multiple audi-
ences, but this needs to be underpinned by a clear understanding of the
potential meanings of pilgrimage and a flexibility of response to individu-
als as they engage with buildings. In both respects (the transformation and
the process of creating ‘pilgrims’) a thorough understanding of the his-
torical relationships between people and sacred sites has much to offer, as
the issues around modern cathedral management of lay visitors have
deep roots.
Returning to the saying ‘I am a pilgrim, you are a visitor, he is a tourist’,
it is the contention of this volume that at any point during a pilgrimage or
visit to a sacred or meaningful site it is entirely possible that most people
will have experiences that belong to more than one of these categories. It
is not helpful or necessarily accurate to assess behaviour on a theoretical
pilgrimage-tourism scale (with its implicit value judgement of pil-
grim = good, tourist = bad).40 For the visitor, all these modes of relating
to sacred spaces are potentially valid, and many find themselves moving
from one to another while within the space. Some may come seeking a
particular experience, but for others the site engenders the experience. A
twelfth-century example from Durham is given by Ralph de Capella, a
knight who was visiting the cathedral on business from his home 17 miles
away. He was suffering from a terrible toothache, but it was only after hav-
ing been in the cathedral church for some time that he decided he would
seek St Cuthbert’s intercession for a cure. He then pressed his face against
the tomb and the pain stopped. A few days later while riding his horse, half
40
Smith (1992), Palmer et al. (2012), Knox et al. (2014), Feldman (2017).
1 INTRODUCTION 15
his tooth fell out and he quickly rode back to the tomb to present it as an
offering and as evidence of the miracle.41 Here we have an example of a
visitor on business spontaneously ‘turning into’ a pilgrim whilst within the
space of the cathedral itself, then returning as a pilgrim following further
evidence of answered prayer and building an enhanced relationship with
the holy site. Similar shifts of ‘identity’ are evident today. A ‘tourist’ may
visit Durham Cathedral for the architecture and history yet also experience
a growing awareness of a spiritual dimension to the building as they move
through the space, with the result that they light a candle at the feretory
of St Cuthbert and leave having felt a connection that gives rise to return
visits. At what point did this individual become a ‘pilgrim’?
We might say, then, that pilgrimage is broadly speaking a ‘spiritual’42
and meaningful experience, planned or spontaneous, and that it is often
transformative. It is linked to concepts of belonging and relationality, as
this volume explores, and is, as Dee Dyas’ chapter shows, rooted in sen-
sory engagement with space and place. While ‘pilgrim’ and ‘pilgrimage’
still have uses as broad categories of actor and behaviour, we must accept
that they are too rigid for a proper understanding of the nature of the
experience we are trying to study and of little more than nominative use
in managing or providing that experience within contemporary sites. ‘The
pilgrim experience’—the transformative or meaningful moment—is and
has been available to all who go to a site of historical or contemporary
meaning. This volume shows how cathedrals, as highly visible sites of spiri-
tual and historical meaning, have been actively managed (and misman-
aged) to provide that experience. This is what makes cathedrals such a
valuable laboratory in which to examine pilgrimage.
The Roles of Cathedrals

As English cathedrals form the basis for this volume’s study of pilgrimage,
it is worth asking whether there is anything particularly distinctive about
them. Are English cathedrals particularly ‘English’? Historically speaking,
there have been a number of peculiarly English features, particularly from
the general reformation and rebuilding of the eleventh and twelfth
41
Reginald (1835, pp. 278–279).
42
Spirituality is frequently defined as a sense of connection to something bigger than our-
selves, typically involving a search for meaning in life, not necessarily limited to a particular
religious framework of belief or practice.
centuries. Notably the presence of a number of ‘monastic’ cathedrals,

where the chapter was provided by Benedictine monks or, in the case of
Carlisle, Augustinian canons, was a feature almost entirely confined to the
British Isles. Following the Reformation English cathedrals became part
of a national church and, as such, were demarcated, subdivided, and codi-
fied in national law. From the Reformation there were ‘Cathedrals of the
Old Foundation’ and ‘Cathedrals of the New Foundation’, depending on
their date of creation. The nineteenth century gave rise to the further dis-
tinction between ‘Dean and Chapter Cathedrals’ and ‘Parish Church
Cathedrals’ depending on functionality and governance. Legally, although
not necessarily functionally, these distinctions were collapsed by the 1999
Cathedrals Measure.43 From the Reformation we can also note the curious
continued existence of these grand edifices designed for remote and sol-
emn services in a Protestant Christian tradition, which has often empha-
sised the individuality, parochiality, and intimacy of the relationship with
God. We can also see how the nineteenth-century campaigns of cathedral
building in America and India reflected their role as repositories of
English/Anglican memory and culture, as part of a colonial installation of
Western ideals.44 The Roman Catholic cathedrals of England, built from
the mid-nineteenth century, are deeply rooted in an English tradition of
design and function. Even the pseudo-Byzantine shell of Westminster
Cathedral is packed with symbolically potent claims to a particularly
‘English’ religiosity and history stretching back to the medieval Church.45
In a rapidly changing world, cathedrals represent continuity and are evi-
dence of long-standing social and personal networks of relationship, which
are perceived as disappearing. The human interest in the past starts with
the self, and many people come to cathedrals to explore the achievements
and experiences of their ancestors. English cathedrals have in many ways
long been distinctively English in their form and function, but in their role
as highly visible containers of heritage within the landscape they have in
many ways come to embody a sense of ‘Englishness’ themselves, particu-
larly in the past two centuries.46
The question that is posed by a number of recent cathedral study vol-
umes is, ‘what is a cathedral for?’ It may, perhaps, be assumed that prior to
43
Doe (2017, pp. 11–23).
44
Coleman and Bowman (2019, pp. 5–11).
45
Jenkins and Harris (2019).
46
This point is discussed further in Chap. 7.
1 INTRODUCTION 17
the modern age, ‘there was once a time when cathedrals were untroubled
by fundamental uncertainties as to their purpose’,47 but this is something
of a medievalism, as cathedrals have always attracted criticism and have
always sought, rather than been automatically awarded, validation. The
present age is therefore not the first ‘in which people have valued the
monumental splendour of cathedrals without being entirely certain what
they are for’.48 This uncertainty has been shared by those who manage
them as well as those who visit. The purpose for which medieval cathedrals
were originally built is superficially clear: they were intended to be the seat
of the bishop and the centre of the diocese. Yet while all other functions
proceed from this principle, in one way or another, the place of the bishop
within the cathedral has long been relegated to a largely theoretical impor-
tance, measured episodically or personally—how many services does the
bishop attend, and does (s)he approve of cathedral policy?49 Indeed, very
swiftly after their foundation, the resident clergy—either monastic or secu-
lar—appointed to perform the liturgy of the church, protect its saints and
treasures, and administer its holdings, were able to carve out for the cathe-
dral institution a role largely independent from, and often in conflict with,
the judicial and pastoral functions of the bishop.
For the resident cathedral ‘chapter’ (in whatever guise), the predomi-
nant function of the cathedral, both pre- and post-Reformation, was as a
house of liturgy and prayer. The splendid building was one ‘with which’
and ‘within which’ God was worshipped. In the medieval period the effi-
cacy and immediacy of this worship was increased by the bodily presence
of the saints and was supported by lay donations of land, money, and ser-
vices. However, the presence of the laity at the regular acts of corporate
worship was not necessary, and at many points in their histories not par-
ticularly encouraged, and as such the cathedral had no natural congrega-
tion. Following the Reformation, this issue of engagement with the laity
remained unaddressed, with the 1559 Cathedrals Commission recom-
mending that the functions of a cathedral were to attend to its liturgical
and administrative duties and to provide sound theology. This is not
merely a medieval or early modern phenomenon—despite dealing fully
with the issues of chapter and liturgy, neither the 1927 nor the 1961
Cathedrals Commission contained recommendations on visitor
47
48
49
management or lay worship, despite the increasing popularity of both

throughout the first half of the twentieth century.50
At the heart of the English cathedral there remains a tension between
this institutional quasi- (or fully) monastic liturgical function and its situ-
ation within the secular world and at the apex of the hierarchy of wor-
ship.51 Although there have been occasional attempts to resolve this
tension by making the liturgy more publicly focused and accessible, nota-
bly in the work of Dean Dwelly following the foundation of Liverpool
Cathedral, throughout much of the history of cathedrals the laity have
been tolerated rather than encouraged to visit.52 Yet history also shows
that the existence of the cathedral is justified, the worship within it acti-
vated, and its prestige elevated by the presence of the laity within its walls.
Cathedrals have only blossomed when they have made themselves attrac-
tive to a lay audience. While it would be wrong to think of medieval cathe-
drals as raised by public subscription as such, although there was an
element of community funding, the buildings dominated the physical and
spiritual landscape to such an extent that various lay groups within the sur-
rounding city, diocese, and beyond felt a sense of ‘ownership’ and ‘belong-
ing’ as stakeholders in the institution of the cathedral. For all the
well-defined and complex functions of the historic and contemporary
cathedral, perhaps the most important for the largest number of people is
as a place of pride, beauty, emotional investment and a building in which,
however temporarily, they have a stake. This can be seen almost literally in
the public enthusiasm for the Lego model of Durham Cathedral set up in
the cloisters there in 2013. Each individual brick could be sponsored and
personally placed on a detailed replica, and thus visitors could see ‘their’
brick become part of a model of the cathedral proper. This did not neces-
sarily create the evident sense of ownership but emphasised a pre-existing
need for involvement.
‘What is a cathedral for?’ may, then, be the wrong question. Can we
suggest that, for the contemporary Church, the question should be, ‘what
can a cathedral do?’ The cathedral, as the ‘views from modern cathedrals’
chapters at the end of this volume so eloquently demonstrate, is an impor-
tant site of mission. Perhaps, in the contemporary church, the site of mis-
sion with the greatest potential to engage with varying audiences.
50
Cathedrals Commission (1927, 1961).
51
Stancliffe (1998, pp. 54–57).
52
Kennerley (2015).
1 INTRODUCTION 19
Outline of the Volume

The first five chapters provide an overview of the history and interaction
of cathedrals and pilgrimage in England from the Anglo-Saxon period to
the present day. We asked five historians to consider similar questions as
they related to their period of study: What is the nature of pilgrimage in
this period? Are English cathedrals peculiar as institutions, and what makes
them so? What is the relationship between pilgrimage and cathedrals?
What is the cathedral/pilgrimage dynamic? How do cathedrals fit into the
landscape of pilgrimage (if at all)? All of the chapters show the great com-
plexity of understanding the role of cathedrals and the nature of pilgrim-
age at any historical point, even during what might be considered as the
‘Golden Age’ of the High to Late Middle Ages.
From Jonathan Wooding’s chapter on pre-Conquest developments and
Eamon Duffy’s examination of the relationship between cathedrals and
pilgrimage at its most fully formed, it is clear how dynamic and mutable
the medieval period was both institutionally and devotionally. Prior to the
major reorganisation of England’s ecclesiastical units in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, there was a deal of fluidity around the nature and num-
ber of cathedrals, and they were often hard to distinguish from other min-
sters and collegiate churches with important regional presences. It is also
difficult to track pilgrimage as a general lay phenomenon prior to the late
tenth century. Its practices and meanings were instead being defined and
developed by monks and religious individuals looking and travelling to the
Continent and the Holy Land for inspiration. The eleventh and twelfth
centuries saw a widespread increase in the popularity of pilgrimage as an
activity for all, with concomitant developments in the promotion and
accessibility of saintly relics, grand programmes of church rebuilding, and
attempts to clarify the roles of the Church and its major institutions such
as the cathedrals.53 Until the Reformation of the 1530s, cathedrals fitted
into a flourishing pilgrimage culture. They were in many ways indistin-
guishable from other great churches with relics and images but, as Eamon
Duffy notes, with a few advantages in their claims to diocesan authority.
The period from the Reformation to the nineteenth century is described
by Ian Atherton (Chap. 3) as being potentially the ‘hole in the doughnut’
for the historiography of both cathedrals and pilgrimage in England.
While there were isolated instances of the continuity of pilgrimage
53
Dalton et al. (2011, pp. 4–16).
practice, and in general the language of pilgrimage and the attraction of

‘relics’ (increasingly of secular figures) endured and continued to develop,
the history of cathedrals and that of pilgrimage are largely separate during
this time. There were still, however, a wide range of reasons for the laity to
visit cathedrals, whether from a desire to attend services and sermons, a
curiosity about the art and architecture, or just to walk and be seen, and as
in all historical periods those behaviours and experiences were commin-
gled and overlapping: cathedrals contain many values, meanings, and
appeals at once.
From the mid-nineteenth century both cathedrals and cathedral pil-
grimage experienced a revival of fortunes (Chaps. 4 and 5), thanks to a
combination of the impetus provided by the emancipation of Roman
Catholics, the increased mobility enabled by the coming of the railways,
and a renewed interest in the role that cathedrals could play within reli-
gious life. Much of the lay activity described in the previous chapter con-
tinued, but there was a flowering of the idea of the cathedral as a natural
repository of regional or national identity, often in this period expressed
through a rediscovery of medieval saints. In architectural and artistic reno-
vations, and an appeal to some of the practices if not the theology of pil-
grimage, the concept of the medieval ‘Golden Age’ of cathedrals was born.
Michael Tavinor’s chapter ends with a gazetteer of the ways in which cathe-
drals in the twenty-first century have dealt with their medieval saints and
history of pilgrimage, including the ‘restoration’ of shrines and even relics.
The second part builds upon the historical overview and looks at par-
ticular aspects of past and present cathedral experience. The authors are
drawn from the core research team on the AHRC ‘Pilgrimage and
England’s Cathedrals: Past and Present’ project, and the themes (multiva-
lency, belonging, the sensory experience, and leaving and taking away)
grew out of the research and writing of reports on the case study cathe-
drals (Canterbury, Durham, York Minster, and RC Westminster).54 While
the chapters utilise both historic and contemporary evidence, they do not
attempt to compare past and present behaviour directly. Instead, the
chapters take the form of dialogues between disciplines. For the social
scientists, an understanding of the long history of practice and behaviour
gives depth and nuance to phenomenological study. For the historian, new
analytical tools offer exciting and challenging ways into the historical
evidence.
54
https://www.pilgrimageandcathedrals.ac.uk/reports accessed 1.10.19.
1 INTRODUCTION 21
The chapter by Simon Coleman and John Jenkins looks at ‘multiva-

lency’ in cathedrals and particularly how cathedrals are able to house dif-
ferent activities with different meanings and appeals, often simultaneously,
within close proximity. The boundaries between these activities may be
fuzzy, but this is one of the key characteristics of cathedrals: the ability to
play host to ‘adjacency’. Cathedrals contain ‘tight’ and ‘loose’ spaces:
sometimes activity in a cathedral is highly focused and regulated in space
and time, as during a service; sometimes activities are far less regulated and
focused, as during times of open access. Staff manage the often swift tran-
sitions between these different uses of space. Thus cathedrals are spaces
with controlled norms of access and behaviour. It is important to convey
behavioural protocols (ideas of ‘appropriate behaviour’ not necessarily
shared by or explained to visitors) without censure, as these are often key
in determining the experience of visitors. Cathedrals are also spaces of
transformation, not merely in the sense of being places that ‘turn tourists
into pilgrims’ but by actively offering spaces which can stimulate a range
of interactions and experiences within the same visit.
Following on from this John Jenkins and Tiina Sepp discuss cathedrals
and pilgrimage and their relationship with the somewhat nebulous con-
cepts of ‘community’, ‘belonging’, and ‘identity’. Cathedrals often pro-
mote themselves as ‘at the heart of the community’ or as a ‘cathedral
community’ or family themselves. Being within such an in-group is seen to
be a goal of the regular cathedral attendee. Yet by looking at the cathedral
experience through the lens of ‘vernacular religion’, the individual, per-
sonal relationship with others and with religious practice, the importance
of the institution as a place of much more than communal relations is
clear. Cathedrals are spaces which inspire relationality of many forms, in
that they are places where people may seek anonymity but may also seek
connections with fellow visitors, faith, history, their ancestors, their city,
their country, and so on. This desire for anonymity and community are
not mutually incompatible but are indicative of the range of interpersonal
behaviours that cathedrals effectively host. However, while cathedrals now
are widely accepted as places which embody a national or regional identity,
and have largely occupied that position since the mid-nineteenth century,
it is more difficult to show that this was the case in the more ecclesiastically
crowded medieval landscape. The place of cathedrals in the communal
memory of region or nation is neither constant nor assured but responsive
to the needs and circumstances of particular contexts and times.
In the part’s third chapter Dee Dyas examines the principles of design,
decoration, and enhancement of sacred places within Christian tradition
and explores the importance of ecclesiastical ‘stage management’ in creat-
ing and maintaining spaces which offer the possibility of revelation,
encounter, and transformation. It brings together a range of disciplinary
perspectives to highlight the indispensability of the senses in these pro-
cesses, the immense skill with which material culture was deployed to
shape pilgrim experience during the Middle Ages, and ways in which
cathedrals today are looking to the past as they seek to offer greater multi-
sensory engagement to their increasingly diverse audiences.
Finally Marion Bowman and John Jenkins look at the ways in which
material culture has formed a key part of the experience and promotion of
cathedrals and pilgrimage places, through representations from lead pil-
grim badges to digital photography, and in providing visitors and pilgrims
with tangible mementos of and physical connections with such places. The
analysis revolves around materiality and relationality, as people use mate-
rial culture (from candles and selfies) to make their mark at places and feel
that they maintain a link with—even a conduit of power from—such sites.
The affordances of materials and objects over time allow different forms
and ideas of connectivity. Both by ‘leaving’ and ‘taking away’ meaningful
objects, the visitor to a shrine or sacred space is able to maintain a feeling
of connection to place and to a community of others, past, present, and
future, joined together by their experiences at that same place.
The final part, ‘The View from the Cathedrals’, is an important part of
this volume, earthing historical perspectives and theoretical insights in the
realities of practice today. Cathedrals and pilgrimage are not simply phe-
nomena from the past but living entities with which the current genera-
tion of managers of sacred spaces still wrestle. English cathedrals face
multiple challenges as they seek to balance meeting the needs of congrega-
tions and pilgrims while remaining accessible to wider communities and
tourists and maintaining and explaining the rich heritage of their historic
buildings.
The authors of these contributions have all carried the responsibility of
cathedral management and faced the challenges of enabling their multiva-
lent spaces to speak to very diverse audiences. Their reflections offer the
perspectives of practitioners for whom the re-emergence of the religious,
social, and cultural importance of sacred sites and the resultant close inter-
action between pilgrimage, heritage, and tourism have long been daily
realities. As part of their response to the challenge of integrating past and
1 INTRODUCTION 23
present, each author records and illustrates the continuing power of sacred
sites to elicit response, even from those who have no formal religious affili-
ation. Christopher Irvine explores the ways in which stories, such as that
of Thomas Becket, which are embodied in the very fabric of a cathedral
church, interact ‘with the fluid and indeterminate stories that we tell about
ourselves and our world’. Michael Tavinor presents an analysis of prayers
left at Durham Cathedral by contemporary visitors, which illustrates the
continued desire of many, whether ‘religious’ or not, to express their
needs within sacred places, needs which mirror very closely those expressed
by medieval pilgrims. Mark Langham summarises the dilemma facing
those in charge of any great cathedral as learning how to honour ‘the faith
and genius of those who built it, while opening it up to modern visitors
with vastly differing attitudes towards religion’. Finally John Inge shows
the importance of destination and place in providing fulfilment in life and
the power of both pilgrimage and cathedrals to aid in looking beyond
concrete realities to the numinous and powerful meanings of reality.
Through bringing rich understandings of the past together with fresh
analytical approaches and the contemporary experience of cathedral prac-
titioners, this volume consciously offers a rigorous and innovative history
of cathedrals and pilgrimage for the present and the future.
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———, ed. 2014. Durham Cathedral: History, Fabric, and Culture. New Haven:
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———. 1961. Cathedrals in Modern Life: Report of the Cathedrals Commission of
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Dyas, Dee. 2010. Chaucer and the Communities of Pilgrimage. In Chaucer and
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Dyas, Dee. 2020. The Dynamics of Pilgrimage: Christianity, Holy Places, and
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Hunt, E.D. 1999. Were There Christian Pilgrims Before Constantine? In

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———, eds. 2006. Dreaming Spires: Cathedrals in a New Age. London: SPCK.
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Ed. James Raine. Surtees Society 1.
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Spirit: Cathedrals in Society, ed. Stephen Platten and Christopher Lewis, 50–73.
London: Darton, Longman, and Todd.
Sumption, Jonathan. 1975. Pilgrimage: An Image of Medieval Religion. London:
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Culture: Anthropological Perspectives. Oxford: Blackwell.
Webb, Diana. 2000. Pilgrimage in Medieval England. London: Hambledon.
PART I
Historical Survey
CHAPTER 2
Pilgrimage and Cathedrals in Early Medieval

Britain
Jonathan M. Wooding
Our familiar images of pilgrimage and cathedrals most strongly reflect the
forms into which these phenomena settled in the High Middle Ages
(c. 1000–1250). Their origins are much earlier, however, reaching back
into the Roman period. Pilgrimage is amongst a number of diverse, but
broadly related, expressions of Christian spirituality that emerged in the
late Roman period. With monasticism it shares motifs of retreat into a
liminal existence, penitential living and formation of interior as well as
exterior spirituality. It also converges with the cult of saints, as many saints
travelled away from their places of origin to live a holy life or to spread the
faith, presenting models for pilgrimage and their shrines afterward became
natural destinations for devotional journeys. Our great medieval cathe-
drals in Britain, mostly products of the second millennium, in many
instances owe their prominence to first millennium saints—for example at
Canterbury (SS. Augustine and Dunstan), Durham (St Cuthbert), Ely (St
Ætheldreda), Lichfield (St Chad), Winchester (St Swithun), Worcester
(SS. Oswald and Wulfstan) and St Davids (St David). The form and
J. M. Wooding (*)
University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
e-mail: jonathan.wooding@sydney.edu.au
© The Author(s) 2020 29

D. Dyas, J. Jenkins (eds.), Pilgrimage and England’s Cathedrals,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48032-5_2
30 J. M. WOODING
arrangement of these cathedrals owes much to the rapid expansion of pil-

grimage in the later first millennium. This chapter identifies attempt to
identify some key themes in the emergence of early medieval pilgrimage
and some of the factors that influenced subsequent development of the
cathedral as a destination for pilgrims.
Definitions and Approaches

Pilgrimage is a diverse spirituality, found in many cultures.1 The literary
association of Christian pilgrimage with the high medieval culture of
‘indulgences’—quantified remissions of sin in return for particular under-
takings—nonetheless can tend to make us think of it more narrowly, as a
journey centred on a major shrine such as Compostela or Canterbury.
Early pilgrimage, however, was not always centred on a particular destina-
tion or a ‘tariffed’ reward for reaching it. The act of travelling itself, while
a means to attaining a destination, was also an aid to reflection and thus
liturgical, as well as penitential or ascetic in intent. For some early monas-
tic and lay pilgrims, the journey marked a permanent departure into a new
state of living—sometimes expressed through symbolism of the Israelites
in the desert of Exodus (see below).
In our period of interest here, the Early Middle Ages (c. AD 400–1100),
even if we confine our interest only to those Christian journeys that in the
first millennium were labelled peregrinatio—the Latin term from which
our English word ‘pilgrimage’ is derived—we can find it applied to a num-
ber of different types of religious journeying. Within the culture of monas-
ticism, peregrinatio to other regions or countries became a particular
expression of the ‘desert’ ideal. This practice, sometimes known as peregri-
natio pro Christo (pilgrimage for Christ), led monastics to abandon not
just family but also homeland. This type of peregrinatio would decline
with the reform of monasticism around the end of the first millennium,
but pilgrimage remained an activity sourced in contemplation as well as
devotion.
It is in the nature of the sources for this period that we have less direct
evidence for pilgrimages by lay people, but from an early date we can see
that people were making journeys to the shrines of martyrs and holy
persons to seek healing and protection. Pilgrimage to shrines would
become a major activity of large churches by the turn of the second
1
For a useful summary, see Reader (2015, pp. 1–21).
2 PILGRIMAGE AND CATHEDRALS IN EARLY MEDIEVAL BRITAIN 31
millennium and was a significant factor in the development of the great

cathedrals.
The ‘cathedral’, our other main theme, is a rather more singular con-
ception than pilgrimage, but it still incorporates a diversity of earlier influ-
ences. By definition a cathedral is the church building in which a bishop
has his or her throne (Latin: cathedra). A cathedral indeed can be a build-
ing of almost any size or shape, and not all cathedrals resemble the great
medieval cathedrals of Canterbury, Durham, or York. The diverse loca-
tions of British cathedrals reflect a historic tension between the demands
of local culture and the Roman legacy of the cathedral as a mainly urban
institution. Sometimes the choice of location for a cathedral was for sym-
bolic associations, for example, at a place where a saint had a retreat or
where a martyr died, and not necessarily with regard for the site’s utility as
a pastoral centre. In England in the first millennium there emerged large
regional churches, known as ‘minsters’ (see below), that embodied some
of the pastoral functions that we would now associate with cathedrals.
Some of the great medieval cathedrals had earlier histories as minsters. The
emergence of the large medieval cathedrals that were episcopal seats, pas-
toral hubs and pilgrimage destinations was thus influenced by a number of
earlier developments.
Studying the first millennium in Britain is thus intrinsic to understand-
ing the emergence of pilgrimage to cathedrals, but we should acknowl-
edge that there has been a tendency to present the first millennium of the
British churches as a sort of lost world, in which Christianity in Britain
departed briefly from the mainstream, later to be recolonised by foreign
orthodoxies in the reform period of the High Middle Ages. Theologians
have at times found inspiration for fresh expressions of faith in these
‘bypass’ models of church history, which celebrate the regional aspects of
the Christianity of English- and Celtic-speaking peoples, but often the dif-
ference as well as the isolation of the early churches of Britain has been
exaggerated.2 Recent revisions to historiography tend to emphasise the
extent to which trends in design of first millennium churches were linked
to contemporary developments in Gaul (France). They also emphasise the
extent to which reformist trends in the eleventh century were initiated by
local rulers as well as the more recently arriving Normans. If we were
2
For one example of such inspiration see Finney (1996), Meek (2000, esp. pp. 188–189).
For critical revision of older models see Sharpe (2002, pp. 86–105), Blair (2005,
pp. 182–183).
32 J. M. WOODING
indeed tempted to treat the Early Middle Ages as a lost world, it is also
worth observing that hundreds of church buildings from Anglo-Saxon
England survive, either incorporated into newer structures or occasionally
surviving as discrete structures, and there is also a substantial legacy of
early church buildings in Ireland.3 These remains are a tangible legacy of
the early church in Britain, as indeed are frequently the churchyards and
landscapes that surround many more churches.
Nonetheless, in emphasising continuity over discontinuity, we must
also comprehend the many differences of the church in this period to its
later forms. If we were able to travel back in time to see these early churches
in their original landscapes, we would find many things in different places
to where we now expect to find them. The buildings were often small, and
some sacraments may have been delivered outdoors—such as baptism at
holy wells or Mass held in the open air. Some early Christian graves were
placed out in the countryside, reflecting Roman patterns of extramural
burial. Before the advent of consecrated churchyards, graves in cemeteries
crowded together around the graves of the most holy people and were not
spread evenly across a defined burial ground. The sensory experience and
world view of early medieval people were also likely to have been very dif-
ferent to ours. Christianity in first millennium Britain was a religion of
fairly recent origin and even more recent arrival in Britain. Many Christians
in the first millennium, following the testimony of Biblical narratives,
could have envisaged the world to be a place with only a brief history
remaining.4 These distinct aspects of first millennium belief influenced
how people invested in religion and the memory of holy people who had
lived inspirational lives. In an era before modern medicine, the daily con-
cerns of health, prosperity and the safety of loved ones were vested in small
and local rituals of devotion at sites in the landscape. In the first millen-
nium, the familiar pattern of territorial dioceses and parishes was still in the
future. Where powerful individuals were prepared to endow religious
communities would determine the placement of major churches. Where
early holy men and women had worked or were buried or where their rel-
ics were relocated would instead determine the placement of others.
3
Taylor and Taylor (1965–1978), Ó Carragáin (2011).
4
O’Loughlin (2005, pp. 84–92).
2 PILGRIMAGE AND CATHEDRALS IN EARLY MEDIEVAL BRITAIN 33
The Church from the Roman to the Reform Periods

Christianity had been introduced to Britain during the Roman period.
Roman legacies influenced the nature of both the early churches of
England and their Celtic-speaking neighbours (collectively termed the
‘Insular’ churches).5 Britain, however, was at the very northern edge of
the Roman world and seceded early from the empire (c. 406–410), a little
over two decades after the edict of AD 380 that had made Nicene
Christianity its official religion. When new kingdoms formed (c. 440–500)
across most of the heartland of the former Roman province, they were,
moreover, ruled by an Anglo-Saxon nobility, of recent arrival in Britain,
that was not Christianised.
It is nonetheless clear that Christianity was well established in parts of
Britain by the end of the Roman period. Western and some northern
regions of Britain that fell outside English control, namely Cornwall,
Cumbria, Galloway and Wales, retained their Roman-era churches into
the post-Roman period. By the sixth century there were also churches of
recent foundation in Gaelic-speaking regions in western Scotland, with
their most important centre at the monastery of Iona, which was founded
by St Columba in the 560s. This was a colonial extension of the Irish
church, which appears to have been first established through contact with
Roman Britain—St Patrick, a Romano-Britain taken as a slave to Ireland
in the fifth century, is an example of such contact.
A large part of Scotland north of the Forth-Clyde line had, however,
neither been Romanised nor Christianised during the Roman period. It
remains unclear how many Christians remained active in the territory of
England between the end of the Roman period and its reconversion after
597. At the opening of the seventh century, the greater part of the island
of Britain was thus not Christian, but by the beginning of the eighth cen-
tury the picture had changed substantially. England was progressively
returned to Christianity after the arrival of a mission led by St Augustine
of Canterbury (d. 604), who was sent in 596 by Pope Gregory I, ‘Gregory
the Great’ (590–604), arriving in 597.6 The unconverted northern regions
of Britain, notably the territory of the Picts, began to be converted through
missions from the English and Irish churches.
5
Petts (2003, pp. 29–50).
6
Bede, Historia ecclesiastica I.23–34, in Colgrave and Mynors (1969, pp. 68–73).
34 J. M. WOODING
Pope Gregory had appointed the first archbishop to Anglo-Saxon

England, and there were subsequent archiepiscopal appointments made
from Rome. English writers were particular in referring to these as ‘apos-
tolic’ appointments.7 A previous Pope had also sent an apostolic bishop
(Palladius) to Ireland in 431, whose influence there does not, however,
appear to have been as great as that of local bishops.8 It is a perennial
myth, arising from this contrast, that the English churches were specially
governed from Rome. This belief is anachronistic, as the Pope did not
exercise such centrist authority before the eleventh century, but like many
myths it does reflect an element of the truth. Because Augustine’s mission
originated in Rome, Roman saints were especially popular in England, and
what Bede (d. 737) refers to as ‘the holy places at Rome’ (loca sancta
Romam) were a favourite destination for pilgrims (see below).9
The episcopate in England was, like that of the Continent, initially
predicated on the geography of its Romano-British predecessor, in which
the bishops and their cathedrals were centred on the cities and towns.10 A
record of the Council of Arles in 314 shows that there were Romano-
British bishops based at London and York. These historic sees were re-
established early in the 600s,11 but the initial foundation at Canterbury
remained the primatial church, and it became the most important pilgrim-
age destination in England.12 Today the most prominent shrine here is
that of St Thomas Becket (martyred 1170), but the present cathedral,
built following the destruction of its predecessor by fire in 1074, was first
shaped by widespread devotion to the cult of the early medieval arch-
bishop St Dunstan (d. 988).
The churches of England and its Celtic neighbours were notably decen-
tralised, and urbanism was not a strong force. The realpolitik was that
early bishops, at the frontline of pastoral care but lacking the inherited
urban resources of their continental counterparts, came to establish them-
selves in such environments as would best ensure their power and
7
Bede, Historia ecclesiastica II.1–2, in Colgrave and Mynors (1969, pp. 122–140).
8
It is interesting that St Columbanus acknowledged this apostolic heritage of his church in
a letter to Pope Boniface in 613: Columbanus, Letter 5, Walker (1958, pp. 38–39).
9
For a strong view: Howe (2004).
10
Also see Bell (2016).
11
Bede, Historia ecclesiastica II.3, II.18, in Colgrave and Mynors (1969, pp. 142–144,
196–199).
12
Bede, Historia ecclesiastica I.29, II.3, in Colgrave and Mynors (1969, pp. 104–106,
142–144); Blair (2005, pp. 69–71); Brooks (1996).
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
"Kauheata on tätä kaikkea katsella", puheli rouva Paul Nagy ja
sulki silmänsä.
"Niin kaunis ja kuolla pitää —", huoahti Gerson Zeke.
"Vielä hetki", selitti rouva Fabian, "ja jälleen on maailmassa yksi

naimakuntoinen tyttö vähemmän".
"Niitä ei olekaan kovin taajaan kylvetty", arveli Johann Szomor.
"En ole vielä koskaan ollut mukana näin ikävässä teloituksessa",

sanoi Istvan Toth kovin tärkeän näköisenä, "ja yhtä ja toista olen
sentään minäkin kokenut. Ensinnäkin: ei ainoatakaan kosteata
silmää. Vanha Burükään ei ole kokonaiseen viikkoon käyräänsä
koskenut. Toiseksi: mistäänpäin ei ole odotettavissa armonliinan
lehahdusta; kolmanneksi…"
Hänellä ei ollut aikaa lopettaa aloittamaansa lausetta, sillä paksu

pölypilvi pullahti Szegled-kadulta, uhkeita kurutsiratsureita syöksyi
säilät sojossa, hurjin sotahuudoin mestauspaikalle. Etunenässä
muuan lasketuin silmikoin kauniin ratsun selässä.
"Vihollinen, vihollinen!" huusi joukko ja hajosi kaikkiin

tuulensuuntiin.
Syntyi ankara hämminki. Isä Bruno loikkasi lavalta maahan ja

hampaat kauhusta kalisten syöksyi raatihuoneelle päin.
"Tapahtuu ihme. Minua tullaan noutamaan, minut viedään taas

pois!"
Senaattoritkin hakivat turvaa paosta. Pyöveli pudotti miekkansa,

hänkin pakeni.
Kaikki tapahtui kädenkäänteessä, etumainen rautapukuinen
ratsuniekka nelisti mestauslavan luo ja tempasi tytön kuin höyhenen
satulaansa. Ei kukaan yrittänyt hänen tiellensä, ei kukaan kysynyt
mitä hän aikoi. Ei hänkään keltään kysynyt, kenenkä luvalla hän näin
teki. Tuo pieni joukko katosi kuten oli tullutkin jollekin sivukadulle.
Vähitellen uskalsivat paenneet piiloistaan. Senaattorit iloitsivat,

että oli viety vain Czinna, ei muuta. Ei ollut väliä tytöstä.
Pyöveli oli nyrpeillään; hänelle täytyisi toimittaa työtä, koska hän

on niin kaukaa vaivautunut tänne asti.
Monet niistä, jotka taampana olivat seuranneet kohtausta,

vannoivat taivaan ja maan nimessä, että se sankari, jolla oli laskettu
silmikko ja joka karautti mestauslavan kupeelle, oli Maks Lestyak.
Hänet muka tunnettiin ryhdistä, liikkeistä, välkkyvistä,
pähkinänruskeista silmistä. Älköön häntä enää etsittäkö hiljaisen
lammen vesistä.
Rouva Johanna Deak, varsin luotettava henkilö, kuuli Czinnan

kuiskaavan ohimennen sankarilleen:
"Aijotko vieläkin odottaa, kunnes hiukseni ovat kasvaneet

entiselleen?"
Sankari vastasi kuuluvasti:
"En, Czinna, en odota enää."
*****
Oliko näin, vai ei, taivas sen tiennee. Siitä päivästä lähtien, ei
Maks Lestyakia ainakaan enää etsitty kuolleitten parista, vaan
odotettiin hänen palaavan minä päivänä tahansa.
Hänellä oli tietenkin omat syynsä kadota. Hän lähti hakemaan

viittaa ja otti morsiamensa mukaan. Mitä outoa siinä on? (Hän on
tehnyt niinkuin pitikin.)
Joskus, — te sen näette hän palaa kotikaupunkiinsa

kultasuitsisella hiirakollaan, viitta hartioilla. Kun Kecskemetiä joskus
uhkaa suuri vaara, saapuu hän kotiin, istuu ylituomarintuolille ja
iskee kuin salama vihollisiin.
He odottivat kauan, kauan. Ovat jo hautaan menneet nekin, jotka

lapsina juoksentelivat viitan perässä, mutta lastenlasten lastenlapset
odottavat yhä hänen paluutaan.
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Pilgrimage and Englands Cathedrals Past Present and Future Dee Dyas All Chapter

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Pilgrimage and England's Cathedrals:

Past, Present, and Future Dee Dyas

ISBN 978-3-030-48031-8 ISBN 978-3-030-48032-5 (eBook)

This volume grew out of a large three-year interdisciplinary research

implement its findings. We are greatly indebted to the project Executive

York, UK Dee Dyas

Part I Historical Survey 27

2 Pilgrimage and Cathedrals in Early Medieval Britain 29

3 Pilgrimage and Cathedrals in the Later Middle Ages 49

4 Visiting England’s Cathedrals from the Reformation to

5 Pilgrimage and Cathedrals in the Victorian Era109

6 Pilgrimage and Cathedrals from the 1900s to the

Part II Key Themes and Issues, Past and Present 145

7 The Multivalent Cathedral147

8 Cathedrals, Community, and Identity169

9 The Role of Sensory Engagement with Place, Past, and

10 Leaving and Taking Away: Cathedrals and Material Culture215

Part III The View from English Cathedrals Today 235

11 Canterbury and Becket Today237

12 Pilgrimage and Cathedrals Today247

13 Cultivating Pilgrimage to Westminster Cathedral257

14 Pilgrimage, Cathedrals and Shrines Today263

Ian Atherton is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern British History at Keele

Grace Davie is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of

Elizabeth Macfarlane is Chaplain of St John’s College, Oxford. Her

Dee Dyas and John Jenkins

My impression of this place was—wow. There is something … This

This response, recorded in 2014 by a visitor to Canterbury Cathedral,

D. Dyas (*) • J. Jenkins

© The Author(s) 2020 1

Around 850 years earlier Reginald, a monk of Durham, recorded the

Here we are provided with a valuable glimpse into the relationship

The Purpose of This Volume

cathedral historiography has tended to focus on institutional or art and

to re-emerge in the nineteenth century, and place-focused activity, includ-

cathedral constitutions begin with a preamble giving an overview of the

The Multivalency of Christian Pilgrimage

(2007), Nilson (1998), Barrett (1993).

Palestine by a newly converted pagan Roman Emperor and his mother,

Pentecost, as being available to anyone, anywhere, through the Holy

Who or What Is a Pilgrim?

transform him (usually so gendered) into a ‘liminal’ wandering figure.22

common use in the medieval miracle stories and accounts themselves of

distinction between pilgrims and tourists … [We] respect each visitor’s

based on a romanticised medievalism of the ‘palmer-pilgrim’, as witnessed

The Roles of Cathedrals

centuries. Notably the presence of a number of ‘monastic’ cathedrals,

management or lay worship, despite the increasing popularity of both

Outline of the Volume

practice, and in general the language of pilgrimage and the attraction of

The chapter by Simon Coleman and John Jenkins looks at ‘multiva-

Hunt, E.D. 1999. Were There Christian Pilgrims Before Constantine? In

Reginald of Durham. 1835. Libellus de Admirandis Beati Cuthberti Virtutibus.

Pilgrimage and Cathedrals in Early Medieval

© The Author(s) 2020 29

arrangement of these cathedrals owes much to the rapid expansion of pil-

Definitions and Approaches

millennium and was a significant factor in the development of the great

The Church from the Roman to the Reform Periods

Pope Gregory had appointed the first archbishop to Anglo-Saxon

"Niin kaunis ja kuolla pitää —", huoahti Gerson Zeke.

"Vielä hetki", selitti rouva Fabian, "ja jälleen on maailmassa yksi

"Niitä ei olekaan kovin taajaan kylvetty", arveli Johann Szomor.

York, UK Dee Dyas

Part I Historical Survey 27

2 Pilgrimage and Cathedrals in Early Medieval Britain 29

3 Pilgrimage and Cathedrals in the Later Middle Ages 49

4 Visiting England’s Cathedrals from the Reformation to

5 Pilgrimage and Cathedrals in the Victorian Era109

6 Pilgrimage and Cathedrals from the 1900s to the

Part II Key Themes and Issues, Past and Present 145

7 The Multivalent Cathedral147

8 Cathedrals, Community, and Identity169

9 The Role of Sensory Engagement with Place, Past, and

10 Leaving and Taking Away: Cathedrals and Material Culture215

Part III The View from English Cathedrals Today 235

11 Canterbury and Becket Today237

12 Pilgrimage and Cathedrals Today247

13 Cultivating Pilgrimage to Westminster Cathedral257

14 Pilgrimage, Cathedrals and Shrines Today263