Summer Lecture Series to Take Audiences on Pilgrimages

This summer's lecture series from The University of Arizona Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies' will take audiences back in time to the Middle Ages and lead them to four pilgrimage sites that were significant for European Christianity: the Holy Land, Rome, Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela.

The speakers, all doctoral students in the division, will detail the pilgrims' journeys and listen in on their social interactions and learn of the sites that memorialize the lives of Christ and a major saint, a great miracle or divine appearance and of the rituals that evolved in association with each place.

The lectures will probe the motives of pilgrims. Did their motives originate in piety, penance for a sin committed, the fulfillment of a vow or in the search for a miraculous cure?

• July 26 – "Umbilicus Mundi: Jerusalem as a Medieval Pilgrimage Destination" by Sean Clark
• Aug. 2 – "Roma Caput Mundi: Pilgrimage to Rome in the Middle Ages" by Paul Buehler
• Aug. 9 – "Another Tale of Canterbury" by Amy Newhouse
• Aug. 16 – "To the End of the Earth: The Camino de Santiago in Medieval and Modern Times" by Elizabeth Ellis-Marino

For more information, contact Luise Betterton, coordinator for the UA Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies at 520-626-5448 or bettertm@u.arizona.edu.