This book presents a range of case-studies of pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman antiquity, drawing on a wide variety of evidence. It rejects the usual reluctance to accept the category of pilgrimage in pagan polytheism and affirms the significance of sacred mobility not only as an important factor in understanding ancient religion and its topographies but also as vitally ancestral to later Christian practice.
Les mer
The essays in this volume examine the range of pilgrimage practices in Graeco-Roman antiquity and the early Church. From healing to oracles, from collective civic delegations to individual pilgrims seeking salvation, from localized sacred topographies to empire-wide travel, this book shows the importance of pilgrimage in pagan antiquity and its ancestry to later Christian practice.
Les mer
Introduction ; 1. Mapping out Communitas: Performances of Theoria in their Sacred and Political Context ; 2. Hiketai and Theoroi at Epidaurus ; 3. Pilgrimage to the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi: Patterns of Public and Private Consultation ; 4. Pilgrimage and Greek Religion: Sacred and Secular in the Pagan Polis ; 5. Downstream to the Cat-Goddess: Herodotus on Egyptian Pilgrimage ; 6. The Philosopher at the Festival: Plato's Transformation of Traditional Theoria ; 7. The Body in Space: Visual Dynamics in Graeco-Roman Healing Pilgrimage ; 8. Mucianus and a Touch of the Miraculous: Pilgrimage and Tourism in Roman Asia Minor ; 9. Pilgrimage as Elite Habitus: Educated Pilgrims in Sacred Landscape during the Second Sophistic ; 10. The Construction of Religious Space in Pausanias ; 11. A Journey to the End of the World ; 12. Pilgrims and Ethnographers: In Search of the Syrian Goddess ; 13. Divine and Human Feet: Records of Pilgrims Honouring Isis ; 14. Rabbi Aqiba Comes to Rome: A Jewish Pilgrimage in Reverse ; 15. 'Interningled until the end of time': Ambiguity as a Central Condition of Early Christian Pilgrimage ; 16. Piety and Passion: Contest and Consensus in Audiences for Early Christian Pilgrimage ; 17. Urban Shrine and Rural Saint in Fifth-Century Alexandria
Les mer
A pioneering collection of essays, comparing sacred travel from Greek and Roman polytheism to early Christianity
Jas' Elsner is Humfry Payne Senior Research Fellow, Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Ian Rutherford is Professor of Greek, University of Reading.
A pioneering collection of essays, comparing sacred travel from Greek and Roman polytheism to early Christianity
