Sul pellegrinaggio medioevale europeo in Terrasanta

Abstract

Particularly in recent decades, late medieval Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre has been the subject of numerous studies. Historiography has moved mainly along two lines: that of the description of the phenomenon (in itself extremely diverse) as an accumulation of anecdotes, or that of the exceptional nature of the single pilgrim, irreducible as such to the unique category of traveler devotee. This special issue aims to improve our understanding of what it meant to visit the Holy Land during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, starting from practical observation until other more abstract: from the role of the Friars Minor to the problems of interpretation that the travel texts pose, from judicial pilgrimage to relations between Mamluk sultans and Christian rulers.