ABSTRACT
This collection of essays grew out of a conference held at Walsingham in spring 2008. Some of us had written on Walsingham before; for others, it was an opportunity to extend their research into new areas. Walsingham is a place with a complex history and mythology that goes back over 1,000 years, and in different (and contradictory ways) all the participants felt something of its aura. Walsingham has inspired not only religious devotion – today, as in the Middle Ages, hundreds of thousands of visitors and pilgrims visit this village in north Norfolk with its multiple shrines dedicated to the Virgin Mary – but also a rich tradition of poems, fiction, songs, ballads, musical compositions and folk legends, solemn devotional writings and hostile satire.1 At certain periods of its history, Walsingham has seemed to be set aside and revered as a holy place, a focus of strong natural and supernatural forces; at other times, and sometimes simultaneously, it has attracted fierce opposition, even violent destruction, most notably at the Reformation, when the priory and holy relics were destroyed, its riches seized, and the famous “image” of Our Lady of Walsingham taken to London and burned, condemned as idolatrous and superstitious by the newly ascendant Protestant authorities.
