Journeying to an Antique Christian Past
Pilgrimage treatises fulfilled many functions—as sacred histories, polemics, and aids to contemplation—but they were first and foremost modes of spiritual journeying designed to take devout Christians on a virtual visitation of the Holy Places. Through their vivid descriptions of the journey of the pilgrim to Jerusalem, early modern Catholic narratives purposefully concretized the Holy Land as the place where Christ lived and evoked the transformative impact for the pilgrim of being there. Just as importantly, these narratives embedded the Catholic tradition, in the form of Catholic altars, ornamentation, and rituals, in the very fabric of the Holy Places. These twin strategies, concretization and embedding, illuminate the impact of Reformation debate over the nature and locus of Christian authority upon members of the traditional Church. They show that many Catholics staked a claim to the legitimacy of the traditional Church in the place where Christ first plied his ministry.