ABSTRACT
In 1508, Pope Julius II gave Florian and Barbara von Waldenstein a twofold gift. He not only granted the burial chapel they had founded in Hall in Austria privileges equivalent to those of the Campo Santo Teutonico in Rome, but also gave the couple the right "to strew its surface with the dust or holy earth of the cemetery of the Campo Santo". In its turn, the Campo Santo Teutonico had a material connection with the Holy Land, as it was understood to contain earth from the burial ground of Akeldama in Jerusalem. This chapter explores these and other contexts in which Christian burial places were equated through the movement of earth in the later Middle Ages, allowing people buried in one location to enjoy the benefits of another. As the papal grant suggests, this phenomenon was associated with Jerusalem-based piety, but it was far from restricted to interest in the Holy Land.
