ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the physical objects used to reify virtual pilgrims' experiences as tools of mediation between the embodied and disembodied facets of virtual pilgrimage. It discusses pilgrimage maps that used increments of time rather than mileage to communicate distance. Scale representations of certain holy items, people, and places further supplemented virtual pilgrims' imaginative faculties. These scale representations – known as metric relics – include manuscript illustrations of the wound in Christ's side and the implements of Christ's torture, that is, the arma Christi. Since no record of consecration exists, it is possible that the apotropaic powers of metric relics were automatically assumed through the replication of sacred measurements. It is apparent that a desire for a communicable replication of experience was paramount from early pilgrims' narratives through late medieval accounts. Using pilgrim travelogues, souvenirs, devotional images, and metric relics, medieval monastics successfully brought the Heavenly Jerusalem into the interior of their confined worlds in a genuinely physical manner.
