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Why Medieval Pilgrimages Were the Original Social Network · Theology Made Podcast

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Theology Made Podcast.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Jordan,
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: and in today's episode,
• 0:14
  we're going to look at why medieval pilgrimages were the
• 0:18
  original social network.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 1.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Before TikTok, there was Canterbury.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Long before Instagram stories,
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  SPEAKER_00: trending hashtags,
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  SPEAKER_00: and viral tweets,
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  SPEAKER_00: people still went out of their way to share stories,
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  SPEAKER_00: connect with strangers,
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  SPEAKER_00: and show off just enough to feel significant.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: The difference is,
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  SPEAKER_00: they did it on foot,
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  SPEAKER_00: in sandals,
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  SPEAKER_00: on horseback,
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  SPEAKER_00: through mud and forest,
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  SPEAKER_00: and rain-soaked dirt paths.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: And they called it...
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Pilgrimage.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Today we think of pilgrimage as this intensely spiritual act,
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: something between a religious quest and a long walk.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: But in the Middle Ages, it, well, was that.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: But also, well, something more.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: A sprawling network of people, ideas, relics, rumors, and rituals.
• 1:06
  If Twitter is where you go to argue with strangers and
• 1:08
  Instagram is where you
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  SPEAKER_00: pretend your life is better than it is,
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: pilgrimage was where medieval Europe did both.
• 1:14
  Because it wasn't just spiritual discipline,
• 1:16
  it was network culture without the Wi-Fi.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 2.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone was going somewhere.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: From the 11th to 15th centuries, pilgrimage was all the rage.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: The shrine of St.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thomas,
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  SPEAKER_00: Becket,
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  SPEAKER_00: and Canterbury,
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  SPEAKER_00: the Holy Scepter in Jerusalem,
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  SPEAKER_00: even the toenails of obscure saints tucked away in French villages.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone, from kings, peasants, merchants to monks, were on the move.
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  SPEAKER_00: Some traveled for healing,
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  SPEAKER_00: others for penance,
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  SPEAKER_00: some to see a miracle,
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  SPEAKER_00: others to be seen making the journey.
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  SPEAKER_00: But all of them participated in something larger,
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  SPEAKER_00: a living,
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  SPEAKER_00: breathing network of spiritual movement.
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  SPEAKER_00: You couldn't scroll, so you walked.
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  SPEAKER_00: You couldn't post, so you knelt.
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  You couldn't swipe,
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  so you sang psalms and traded gossip with a tanner from
• 2:00
  Bristol.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: It was slow, embodied, and full of risk.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And yet for some reason, millions did it anyway.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Let's take the idea of a relic.
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  SPEAKER_00: It could be a saint's tooth,
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  SPEAKER_00: a fragment of a cross,
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  or even a piece of cloth that allegedly touched a holy object
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  or was owned by a
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  SPEAKER_00: holy person.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: In our world, memes go viral through screens.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: In the medieval world, relics went viral through feet.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because the more pilgrims visited a site, the more sacred it became.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the more sacred it became, the more people wanted to go.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was a feedback loop.
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  SPEAKER_00: Canterbury became famous,
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  SPEAKER_00: not just because Thomas Beckett was martyred there,
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  SPEAKER_00: but because people kept showing up.
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  SPEAKER_00: His shrine, in many ways, was the original trending location.
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  And this is how spiritual influence scaled before modern media,
• 2:55
  proximity,
• 2:56
  not pixels.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter four, the road as marketplace.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing a lot of people miss.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Pilgrimage wasn't just about relics or repentance.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was also about commerce.
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  SPEAKER_00: You could buy everything along the road.
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  SPEAKER_00: Food, clothing, candles, wine, prayers.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they survived on pilgrimage traffic alone.
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  SPEAKER_00: Pilgrimage sites were the medieval equivalent of an influencer collab.
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  The churches got attention,
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  towns got money,
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  and pilgrims,
• 3:24
  well,
• 3:24
  they got stories.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: But everyone benefited from the traffic.
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  SPEAKER_00: So merchants sold holy souvenirs.
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  SPEAKER_00: Bakers would charge double for the blessed bread.
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  SPEAKER_00: Entire economies grew around spiritual movement.
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  And the line between sacred and secular wasn't so much blurred,
• 3:41
  it was braided.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now today we scroll through Amazon Instagram.
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  SPEAKER_00: In the Middle Ages, you walk through markets and miracle shrines.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's a different medium, but it's the same dynamic.
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  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 5, Cross-Class Collisions.
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  One of the most striking effects of pilgrimage is the way it
• 3:58
  collapsed social boundaries.
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  SPEAKER_00: In most of medieval life, people would rarely leave their village.
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  SPEAKER_00: They spoke in dialects,
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  SPEAKER_00: they ate from the same field,
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  SPEAKER_00: and typically they would die in the same house they were born in.
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  SPEAKER_00: But on pilgrimage roads, the rules broke down.
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  Rich,
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  poor,
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  noble,
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  peasant,
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  scholar,
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  illiterate,
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  everyone walked the same road.
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  Everyone slept in the same inns,
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  and everyone would get the same foot sores.
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  It was one of the only times that the rigid class structure of
• 4:23
  feudal Europe briefly breathed.
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  SPEAKER_00: and gave way to something that looked like social mobility.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, that doesn't mean inequality disappeared.
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  SPEAKER_00: It just means everyone was temporarily in the same thread.
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  SPEAKER_00: And pilgrimage didn't just move people.
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  SPEAKER_00: It moved ideas.
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  SPEAKER_00: As travelers bumped into one another, they would swap stories.
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  SPEAKER_00: A tale from Spain would make its way back to France.
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  SPEAKER_00: A miracle in Jerusalem was whispered in Flanders,
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  SPEAKER_00: and a heresy born in Bohemia got questioned in Rome.
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  SPEAKER_00: This was belief by proximity.
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  SPEAKER_00: The road became a kind of algorithm,
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  SPEAKER_00: curating ideas,
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  SPEAKER_00: reinforcing some,
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  SPEAKER_00: discarding others,
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  SPEAKER_00: elevating what was sticky and memorable.
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  It's not that different from how today's social media platforms
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  surface what gets
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  SPEAKER_00: liked,
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  SPEAKER_00: shared,
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  SPEAKER_00: and amplified.
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  SPEAKER_00: Medieval pilgrims, they weren't just receiving theology.
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  SPEAKER_00: They were spreading it,
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  SPEAKER_00: adapting it,
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  SPEAKER_00: remixing it,
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  SPEAKER_00: like spiritual content creators with blistered feet.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 7 Spiritually Performing Pilgrimage wasn't always pious, though.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was also performative.
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  SPEAKER_00: Think of Schoffer's Canberra Tales.
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  It's a collection of fictional pilgrims,
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  each telling stories en route to Becket's shrine.
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  SPEAKER_00: Some were holy, others were scandalous, some bragged, others flirted.
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  Pilgrimage was a state,
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  and everyone was performing a version of themselves.
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  The devout pennant,
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  the curious traveler,
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  the showy donor,
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  the wandering minstrel.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Sound familiar?
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  SPEAKER_00: We're still doing this on Instagram, TikTok, and at conferences.
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  SPEAKER_00: We curate a version of ourselves to fit the platform.
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  The only difference is that the medieval version,
• 5:53
  well,
• 5:53
  it required a horse.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 8.
• 5:56
  Pilgrimage as Repentance and Reputation Management There was
• 5:59
  another side to this as well.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because for some, going on pilgrimage, it wasn't optional.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was a sentence.
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  So a noble who committed a crime might be ordered to walk to
• 6:09
  Rome as penance.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: A knight who disobeyed orders might be sent to Santiago barefoot.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: These were spiritual acts, but they also served another purpose.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Reputation repair.
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  Walking hundreds of miles in prayerful humility was a way to
• 6:23
  signal virtue after failure.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Humility.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Today, we call that a public apology tour.
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  Chapter 9,
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  The Long Tale of a Sacred Journey So what happened after the
• 6:37
  pilgrimage ended?
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  SPEAKER_00: Well,
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  SPEAKER_00: people came home changed,
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  SPEAKER_00: but also more connected,
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  SPEAKER_00: because they would bring back tokens,
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  SPEAKER_00: stories,
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  SPEAKER_00: prayers,
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  SPEAKER_00: and new relationships.
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  SPEAKER_00: Some started local shrines, others inspired new movements.
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  SPEAKER_00: Many couldn't stop walking and became lifelong professional pilgrims.
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  SPEAKER_00: But most important, pilgrimage created memory.
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  SPEAKER_00: It left a mark not just on souls,
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  SPEAKER_00: but on cities,
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  SPEAKER_00: maps,
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  SPEAKER_00: trade routes,
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  SPEAKER_00: and theological imagination.
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  And the road shaped the church just as much as the church
• 7:05
  shaped the road.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, eventually, pilgrimage lost its pull.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Reformation attacked the idea of relics and indulgences.
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  SPEAKER_00: Modern travel made the experience less grueling.
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  The printing press offered new ways to spread theology without
• 7:17
  needing to move bodies.
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  And then the Enlightenment came,
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  with its suspicion of miracles and sacred geography.
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  SPEAKER_00: Pilgrimage was no longer central to Christian life.
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  SPEAKER_00: But its structure,
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  SPEAKER_00: the idea of a connected,
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  SPEAKER_00: participatory spiritual network,
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  SPEAKER_00: well,
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  SPEAKER_00: that never disappeared.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today, it just moved online.
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  SPEAKER_00: What Pilgrimage teaches us about today.
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  SPEAKER_00: Systems tend to whisper.
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  SPEAKER_00: They don't announce their presence.
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  SPEAKER_00: But once you know what to look for, you see the patterns.
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  SPEAKER_00: Pilgrimage was just a whisper of the social internet.
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  A foreshadowing of networked faith,
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  a preview of meme logic and sacred form.
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  SPEAKER_00: You could even say, in some ways, that pilgrimage was the original feat.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was a curated stream of spiritual experiences shaped by who you met,
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  SPEAKER_00: where you went,
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  SPEAKER_00: and what stories went viral on the road.
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  Today's Influencer is really just a remix of the medieval
• 8:04
  storyteller at the fire
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  SPEAKER_00: reciting tales from a shrine across the sea.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's something poetic about how slow it all was.
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  Pilgrims walk for weeks,
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  sometimes months,
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  just to reach a shrine and pray for five minutes.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Today, we're impatient if a video doesn't load in three seconds.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you are even wondering, when is this podcast going to end?
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  And maybe the spiritual power of pilgrimage wasn't just in the
• 8:26
  destination,
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  SPEAKER_00: but in the interruption.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because here's what it did.
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  SPEAKER_00: It forced you to leave your world, walk with strangers, to learn emotion.
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  SPEAKER_00: And maybe in a world obsessed with speed,
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: it's worth asking what a spiritual walk might look like again.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not just as a metaphor, but as movement.