Maribel Dietz, Wandering Monks, Virgins, and Pilgrims: Ascetic Travel in the Mediterranean World, A.D. 300-800

Catholic New Times, March 19, 2006

Maribel Dietz, Wandering Monks, Virgins, and Pilgrims: Ascetic Travel in the Mediterranean World, A.D. 300-800, (Pennsylvania State University Press: 2005) 270 pp.

After these extended pieces of subjective introspection, I welcomed a dose of readable and stimulating scholarship. History professor Maribel Dietz studies a variety of late ancient and early medieval sources to prove that before Christian pilgrimages were common and before monasticism was rooted in Benedict-inspired stability, many Christians took up wandering as an ascetic lifestyle. Intriguingly, a good number of the venturesome travellers were women. In later centuries it became virtually impossible for females to move about so freely.

These travels, often rebuked by and later quashed by monastic leaders, were not strictly speaking pilgrimages, if pilgrimage is defined as "goal centered, religious travel for an efficacious purpose." They often focused more on visiting exemplary people of faith, rather than holy places.

There was perceived merit in being a stranger or wanderer. While we take travelling for granted, this book reminds us of the dangers of violence, illness, and accidents that made mobility hazardous. Tourism as leisure is only a recent phenomenon.

Dietz shows that much of the most impressive religious travelling grew from Irish (Celtic) Christianity. Another source of such wanderers was Galicia, the Spanish region surrounding Santiago. Destination-focused pilgrimages were slow in coming. For example, Christians long were uninterested in visiting Jerusalem; it was regarded as the cursed location of Christ's death.

The Dietz volume helps us ponder the possibility that our understanding of pilgrimage needs to be expanded and stretched.