Pilgrimage

This book delves into topics on pilgrimage travel and communities from a variety of perspectives through academic research based on the Middle East, Northeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and Europe, where sacred sites have become of great importance for both international and domestic tourism. In particular, Europe and Asia possess a high volume of world-renowned pilgrimage sites that are currently being developed as tourism destinations in their respective countries, such as Santiago de Compostela (Spain), Lourdes (France), and Koyasan (Japan). This book includes studies on these two continents that harbor both a great history of pilgrimage tradition, as well as tourism development related to religious travel.

This innovative study sheds new light on one of the most spectacular changes to occur in late antiquity―the rise of pilgrimage all over the Christian world―by setting the phenomenon against the wide background of the political and theological debates of the time.

Tracing an ancient pilgrimage route from Canterbury to Rome, the bestselling and "virtuosic" (The Wall Street Journal) writer explores the past and future of Christianity