Review article
THE ROLE AND IMAGE OF THE HOLY LAND IN ACCOUNTS OF MEDIEVAL FEMALE PILGRIMS
Taisiya BELYAKOVA
Abstract
This article discusses the role of Jerusalem in medieval texts concerning the activity of female saints and pilgrims to the Holy Land. It is argued that during the period of Late Antiquity it was predominantly noble women who contributed to the shaping of the historical and symbolical sacral space of the Holy Land. Examining medieval vitae and pilgrimage descriptions it is possible to understand the importance of the Holy Land for gendered piety, and to discover the differences in Western and Byzantine pilgrimage traditions and religious and legal practices. The main focus
is on selected texts of the East Slavic and the eastern portion of the South Slavic traditions which describe the sacral space of Jerusalem within the discourse of depicting female religiosity based
on images from the New Testament: the Old Russian Vita of St. Eufrosinija of Polotsk, as well as the South Slavic miscellanies the Bdinski sbornik (Bulgarian) and the Gorički zbornik (Serbian).
Keywords
Female pilgrimages; Jerusalem; relics; sacral space; St. Eufrosinija of Polotsk; Bdinski sbornik; Gorički zbornik; the Holy Land; monastic foundations; female monasticism; religiosity
Hrčak ID:
144050
URI
Publication date:
30.6.2015.
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