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Mediaeval Pilgrims
Hardcover
128 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1970
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 13, 2021
A fine read with enough detail to make me feel like I was actually learning something.
January 19, 2025
bought it for the medieval illustrations but the text was a struggle
January 10, 2023
For anyone curious to learn more about Christianity's fascination in pilgrims, saints, and piety in the Middle Ages, Alan Kendall's slim book is a perfectly fine overview of the topic. Three points of frustration keep Kendall's work firmly in the "meh" category. One is Kendall's focus on just a few sources for his narrative. This isn't so much a grand discussion of medieval pilgrims as it is illustrating that idea through the journeys of one or two specific pilgrims.
The second is that Mr. Kendall's own views on pilgrimage leak into the text from time to time, sprinkling it with sympathy or some deeply weird nostalgia for the Middle Ages. This is in and of itself harmless, but it blinds the author to any potential criticism of the era's institutions. For instance Kendall cites the Pardoner's Tale from Chaucer to draw attention to contemporary criticisms or skepticism of relics or the church, then quickly blows it off as "an exaggeration". Kendall never draws attention to that kind of satire again, or only does so from the conservative or humanist frames provided by Erasmus or Bernard of Clairvaux.
The final annoying detail is just a sin of time. Like many authors of the era, while Kendall's purportedly writing a surface level discussion of this topic, he makes a great deal of assumptions about the author's own base of understanding. Who is "Barbarossa?" What is "Piers Plowman?" Those are answers one only finds looking outside the text, Kendall never bothers to explain and just assumes the reader is already familiar with 12th Century German Emperors by nickname and 14th Century poetry.
The second is that Mr. Kendall's own views on pilgrimage leak into the text from time to time, sprinkling it with sympathy or some deeply weird nostalgia for the Middle Ages. This is in and of itself harmless, but it blinds the author to any potential criticism of the era's institutions. For instance Kendall cites the Pardoner's Tale from Chaucer to draw attention to contemporary criticisms or skepticism of relics or the church, then quickly blows it off as "an exaggeration". Kendall never draws attention to that kind of satire again, or only does so from the conservative or humanist frames provided by Erasmus or Bernard of Clairvaux.
The final annoying detail is just a sin of time. Like many authors of the era, while Kendall's purportedly writing a surface level discussion of this topic, he makes a great deal of assumptions about the author's own base of understanding. Who is "Barbarossa?" What is "Piers Plowman?" Those are answers one only finds looking outside the text, Kendall never bothers to explain and just assumes the reader is already familiar with 12th Century German Emperors by nickname and 14th Century poetry.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews