ABSTRACT
On 24 October 1094, Saint Anselm of Canterbury went on pilgrimage to Rome. Going into the period of the crusade, the liturgy sacralized travel and pilgrimage through ritual, with a series of ideas and images, many rooted in scripture. Medieval liturgical books included rites for departing travelers, and somewhat later, departing pilgrims, that formally sacralized a traveler’s upcoming journey. The notion that pilgrimage itself would enjoin a remission from all sins would become commonplace in the pilgrim liturgies of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and from there were ultimately integrated in the rite for taking the cross that grew out of them. Victor Turner and Edith Turner themselves used medieval pilgrimage practices as an example of liminality par excellence. Early crusading thus adopted the core ideals and religious meaning of travel and pilgrimage that had been seeded in part by the liturgical practices.
