Medieval Pilgrimage

by Nicholas Orme

Pilgrimage was popular throughout medieval England until it was suppressed at the Reformation. This book explains how it originated, what it involved, and what it meant to those who practised it. Normally it is imagined in terms of long journeys to famous places in England or Christendom. In fact most pilgrimages were short ones, made to hundreds of nearby shrines and images. This study breaks new ground by exploring the subject through these local journeys and reveals the places that most people visited for most of the time. It shows who went, where and why they went, and what they experienced when they got there. The general study is followed by a detailed survey of the whole of the West of from Bristol to the Scillies and back to east Dorset. It lists over 80 sites, ranging from great churches like the cathedrals at Bristol, Exeter, and Wells down to small rural chapels and holy wells. Many of these sites still exist, allowing the book to be used as a guide to places to visit, where one can get a sense of what it was like to be a medieval pilgrim. The book contains four maps and forty illustrations.

208 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2018

About the author

A specialist in the Middle Ages and Tudor period, Nicholas Orme is an Emeritus Professor of History at Exeter University. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, and has worked as a visiting scholar at, among others, Merton College, Oxford, St John's College, Oxford, and the University of Arizona.