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Pilgrimage and Comparison of Two Pilgrims

Introduction

A pilgrimage may be described as a journey to a sacred shrine or sanctuary for a religious motive. Such journeys are a common religious phenomenon not restricted to any one person or a group of people. In this paper, we will be examining the concept of pilgrimage and pilgrimages of Felix Fabri and Margery Kempe. The essay compares that how these two pilgrimages are similar and how they differ from one another and the significance between similarities and differences.

Pilgrimages have a long history in the ancient Near East among Semitic peoples; they are as old as the sacred shrines uncovered by archeologists. To these various cultic centers the common man carried a part of the fruits of his land and livestock to offer it to the gods in homage and thanksgiving. The sanctuaries were places believed to be chosen by the gods as special abodes and manifested as such by peculiar natural phenomena (a height, a spring, a tree) or by a Theophany, e.g., Jacob's dream.

Discussion

Felix Fabri

Fabri (15th century) is the Dominican monk in Ulm (Germany). In 1480, he accompanied the German noble Georg von Stein on a pilgrimage to Palestine. Landing at Jaffa, Fabri proceeded by way of Ramleh to Jerusalem. From there he visited Jericho and Bethlehem, and a longer journey took him through Hebron and Gaza to Mount Sinai. He returned to Ulm in 1483 (Abramsky et al. 2007: pp. 143-232). Fabri noted many remarkable details in the countries he visited and wrote an account of his travels that have been translated in the Palestine Pilgrims' Texts.

Margery Kempe

Were it not for the rediscovery in 1934 of a fifteenth-century manuscript, Margery Kempe might not have secured an entry in this encyclopedia. From a contemporary literary standpoint, such a suggestion seems impossible, since it is to Margery Kempe's name that the first English-language autobiography is credited. Most, if not all, of what we know of Kempe's life, comes from her text, The Book of Margery Kempe. Born c. 1373 in the English port village then known as Bishop's Lynn (now King's Lynn), Kempe was the daughter of John Brunham, a successful burgess in Lynn. Nothing is known of Kempe's mother or childhood, except that she spent it in relative comfort and wealth because of her family's position (Goodman 2002: pp. 19-25).

When Margery was twenty, c. 1393, she married John ...