Pilgrimage to shrines and places of particular holiness was a feature of all three major religious traditions in medieval Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. Pilgrims exposed themselves to risk and loss in order to experience the spiritual benefits of devotion to the shrine of a saint or a holy place. This authoritative and comprehensive Companion offers a thematic approach to the experience of the medieval pilgrim, from departure to return. The central focus is on how pilgrims prepared for and negotiated their journeys; what they saw and did at shrines; and how they understood their journeys. The Holy Land stands at the centre of the book, because it was the main site of pilgrimage for Jewish, Christian, and Muslim pilgrims, but pilgrimages to other sites across Europe and the Near East, and to the shrines of local saints, are also explored.

This book offers a fresh, approachable look at medieval pilgrimage in the Christian West, the first of its kind in over twenty years and the first to take account of prevailing trends in anthropological studies of pilgrimage. Previous works have described pilgrimage as it happened in the medieval period, but this study also offers a framework for understanding the concept of pilgrimage. The book first challenges the reader to question the definition of pilgrimage itself and provides a critical overview of the key historical and anthropological literature. It then presents readers with a short history of medieval pilgrimage, fleshing out the core argument that pilgrimage was both contested and dynamic, and firmly rooted in its local and regional contexts. It concludes by exploring the vexed question of reconstructing the medieval pilgrim experience, emphasizing the messiness and unpredictability of pilgrim behaviour.