3.0

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What motivated Christian pilgrims to undertake long, taxing, and occasionally dangerous journeys to shrines in Renaissance Italy? And what did they find upon arriving? In this course, we seek answers to these questions over two interrelated units: in the first, we will explore the goals and customs of pilgrimage in pre- and early modern Europe; in the second, across a series of case studies of individual shrines, we will consider the ways in which art and architecture mediated a pilgrim’s connection to God. Over the course of the semester, we will examine primary sources, scholarly analyses—including comparative material on secular, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu pilgrimage traditions—and, where possible, original artifacts contained in JHU’s Special Collections and the Walters Art Museum.