Landscape aesthetics, meaning and experience in Christian pilgrimage

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Within the humanities and social sciences, and society at large, there has been a resurgence of interest in pilgrimage in recent years. The primary aim of this research project is to bring a new perspective to understanding the significance of place in studies of Christian pilgrimage, with a particular focus on landscape as a lens through which pilgrims visualise and experience the spiritual, as well as being the site of the performance of pilgrimage itself. While previous studies have identified place as a central element of pilgrimage (along with people and texts), the spatial aspects of pilgrimage have been framed in terms of static shrines and their surrounding architecture, spatial networks of shrines or pilgrims, spaces of mobility and performance, and sacred space as a reflective 'void'. While the location of many pilgrimage sites in areas of outstanding natural beauty has been noted, the role of the landscape and its aesthetics in 'sacred place', religious and emotional experience in pilgrimage centres has been given little attention. We are interested in whether landscape aesthetics adds to a pilgrimage site's 'spiritual magnetism', how this is experienced and articulated by pilgrims and other visitors, and whether this blurs the distinction between pilgrims and other visitors. Another issue is whether landscape aesthetics attract large numbers to the sites, reducing the quality of experience and environment.Drawing on an interdisciplinary perspective grounded in social and cultural geography, history and theology, this research project will examine the significance of landscape in three international case studies, reflecting and comparing different denominational practices within the Christian tradition. Each case study focuses on the landscape as a site of religious experience and repository of metaphors and journeys, exploring evolving interactions between pilgrims and landscape over time and in the present day through written accounts, visual representations, participant observation, surveys and interviews. Case Studies1. Metéora (literally 'suspended in the air'), Greece, is one of the largest monastic complexes and pilgrimage destinations of the Orthodox church, Byzantine monasteries are built on natural sandstone rock pillars several hundred meters high and are deemed to constitute one of the most evocative landscapes in the world. Largely inaccessible prior to 1923, road access has opened the monasteries to large numbers of Orthodox pilgrims and tourists. In the Orthodox tradition, pilgrimage (or proskynese) refers to the act of bowing down to an icon, or to relics, rather than the act of journeying. At the Meteora, however, proskynese cannot be divorced from moving through and gazing at the surrounding landscape. 2. The Benedictine monastery of Sacro Speco ('Holy Cave'), near the town of Subiaco in central Italy enshrines the cavern where at the end of the fifth century St Benedict lived as a hermit for three years. The monastery provides a sacred landscape engineered to evoke sites in the Holy Land and the life of St. Benedict through a complex topography of loci memoriae. The monastic complex attracts three different types of 'pilgrim': the Catholic faithful's re-activation of Benedict's life and Christian narratives; tourists' visual consumption of the scenic views from the monastery; and humanist scholars to the library of the nearby monastery of Santa Scolastica.3. The Isle of Man was a foundation site of the early Celtic church, but had little tradition of pilgrimage in the post Reformation era. The meaning and means of the recent reanimation of local pilgrimage through the 'Praying the Keeills' initiative will be explored with reference to the 1997 joint centenaries of Saints Ninian and Columbaa, Protestant and ecumenical initiatives, and the role of coastal landscapes in attracting 'pilgrims' (including non-adherents) and their experience of pilgrimage.