Kayla Sawyer - Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Classification of Pilgrimages
While reading Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture, I was especially interested in the four main types of pilgrimages. I realized that these pilgrimages can be classified, as they have different purposes. These four types are:
1. "Those pilgrimages which, on the authority of documentary or widespread traditional evidence, were established by the founder of a historical religion, by his first disciples, or by important national evangelists of his faith."
2. "Pilgrimages which bear quite evident traces of syncretism with older religious beliefs and symbols."
3. "Many of the pilgrimages best known in the popular and literary traditions of Christian world originated in the European Middle Ages and take their tone from the theological and philosophical emphases of that epoch."
4. "Finally, attention must be paid to a genus of pilgrimage which has grown steadily in the post-Tridentine period of European Catholicism, particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Such pilgrimages are characterized by a highly devotional tone and the fervent personal piety of their adherents."
I believe that each of these classifications had a different purpose, and possibly even a different goal. Each pilgrimage had its own story and end goal, and I think it is interesting how pilgrimages occurred all over the world in many different cultures.
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