ABSTRACT

Pilgrimage had its relevant place in the activities of religious orders, and the Franciscans were no exception. According to the legacy of their founder they were supposed to live like ‘pilgrims on earth’, tanquam peregrini, spreading the gospel to the world. There was no stabilitas loci as held by the old monastic orders, and most of the friars spent part of their lives outside the friary, on the road. They went on missions, travelled to provincial or general chapters, visited other friaries or collected alms for their houses. But they were pilgrims in a literal sense too. They wandered to the Holy Land, to sites associated with the life of Francis of Assisi or to other major pilgrimage shrines in Europe and elsewhere. Many times they accompanied noble pilgrims, serving as both secular and spiritual guides on their journey. And even those friars who never left their own province had many opportunities to visit popular shrines in the vicinity of their houses. But pilgrimage practice did not only play an important role in the spirituality of the friars themselves.2 It belonged – besides administering sacraments in friary churches, preaching and organizing religious brotherhoods – among the most effective means of Franciscan mission. Some of the friaries became popular pilgrimage centres; others regularly hosted a number of visitors, at least annually on 2 August for the feast of Portiuncula. Pilgrimage festivity, when thousands of people joined in processions, was a sphere of interaction between two worlds: the inside world of the friary and the outside world of society. It was also

1  This contribution was written with the support of the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic. I am also grateful to the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities in Edinburgh for its hospitality and help in my research.