pilgrimages

Pilgrimages, visits to shrines or holy places, were undertaken for a variety of reasons—from piety, as thanksgiving or penance, in hope of a cure, or as a form of holiday. The great and mighty could visit Rome, Jerusalem, or Compostella. Other people visited the great national shrines— Becket's at Canterbury, Cuthbert's at Durham, or the Virgin Mary's at Walsingham. But there were many other shrines with regional or local fame—St Hugh at Lincoln, St Guthlac at Crowland, St Joseph at Glastonbury, St Ninian at Whithorn, St Chad at Lichfield, St David in west Wales. The possession of sacred relics was of great spiritual and financial value to religious communities, and to their towns: Walsingham was said by Erasmus to have ‘scarcely any means of support except for the tourist trade’. Though protestant reformers disapproved strongly of pilgrimages, the concept of life as a pilgrimage survived in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.