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Document Details : Title: Imaginary Experience of the Divine Subtitle: Felix Fabri's Sionspilger - Late-Medieval Pilgrimage Literature as a Window into Religious Mentality Author(s): CLASSEN, Albrecht Journal: Studies in Spirituality Volume: 15 Date: 2005 Pages: 109-128 DOI: 10.2143/SIS.15.0.2003471 Abstract : To understand some of the basic elements of late-medieval mentality, we must always take a careful look at religious documents, although anticlerical criticism was a staple of fifteenth-century public discourse. We can in fact discover a new form of individualized spirituality that motivated many people to go on pilgrimages. However, the majority of people did not have the financial means available, could not afford the time, or were not allowed to leave their convent. Not surprisingly, we can therefore discover a most fasci- nating account of a spiritual pilgrimage in Felix Fabri’s Sionspilger (after 1492). Here the readers (mostly women) are invited to accompany the narrator, who could authenticate his account by means of his personal experiences gained on his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, on a spiritual journey to Palestine and see, with their spiritual eyes, the holy sites. The critical reading of Fabri’s Sionspilger allows us to gain immediate insight into late- medieval mentality insofar as the account provides the basic literary framework for the spiritual exercises of a large audience of female readers, mostly in urban convents. |
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