Recreating the Judean Hills? English hermits and the Holy Land

Abstract

This article explores the place of the Holy Land in the devotions of medieval English hermits and recluses between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. It first outlines the important place of physical travel to Palestine in the career of anchorites, with pilgrimage to Jerusalem followed by seclusion held up as a powerful ideal in literary sources. It then suggests that some of the dwellings of English solitaries formed deliberate monumental recreations of the holy places of Palestine. I consider the extent to which the cells of recluses were understood as recreations of the tomb of Christ, functioning as living Easter Sepulchre structures, and the dedication of churches used or built by hermit and recluses. Finally, I note possible links between the hermitage of St Robert of Knaresborough and Jabal Quruntul (Mount Quarentayne), the site of Christ's temptations in the wilderness.

Biblical field study as experiential pedagogy: Jerusalem University College as a case study

“…Pilgrimages to the Holy Land have been a feature of Christianity since at least the 2nd century (Colby, 1983). Medieval monks saw them as a way to affirm or reinvigorate their spiritual vocation (Slater, 2016). Pilgrimages continued over the following centuries, despite ongoing tensions between Christianity and Islam (Ritsema Van Eck, 2019).…”