ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the unique position of Walsingham in the interpretation and inscription of pre-modern English space. The practice of pilgrimage had profound effects on how space was both imagined and experienced; pilgrimage invested space with meaning, essentially writing (and rewriting) place.1 I argue that the allegorization of place at Walsingham, in addition to its eccentric East Anglian location, ultimately threatened the spatial agenda of the Tudor regime in a unique and potent way. Walsingham was a threat precisely because its sanctity was about place: Norfolk’s “newe Nazareth” belonged to a domestic, devotional geography beyond comfortable metropolitan domination. The site of this “newe Nazareth” was remote from Westminster, the center of Tudor political and ecclesiastical administration.
