Focusing on Christian pilgrimage to locales as far flung as Lourdes, Italy, Jerusalem, Sri Lanka, and Peru, this collection assesses the qualities and power of pilgrimage shrines as sites for accommodating various, often competing, meanings and practices, both among pilgrims and between shrine custodians and devotees.

This volume brings together thirteen case studies devoted to the establishment, growth, and demise of holy places in Muslim societies, thereby providing a global look on Muslim engagement with the emplacement of the holy. Combining research by historians, art historians, archaeologists, and historians of religion, the volume bridges different approaches to the study of the concept of “holiness” in Muslim societies. It addresses a wide range of geographical regions, from Indonesia and India to Morocco and Senegal, highlighting the strategies implemented in the making and unmaking of holy places in Muslim lands. Contributors: David N. Edwards, Claus-Peter Haase, Beatrice Hendrich, Sara Kuehn, Zacharie Mochtari de Pierrepont, Sara Mondini, Harry Munt, Luca Patrizi, George Quinn, Eric Ross, Ruggero Vimercati Sanseverino, Ethel Sara Wolper.

A multidisciplinary study of the commonalities between heroes, icons, saints, and their institutions, across several cultures.

A study of pilgrimage to the Njelele shrine - a major centre of the Mwali cult, South Africa's cult of the High God. The study mainly delineates the importance of sacred spaces as central places for nodally organised cults, raising questions of intermediaries between the High God and the various congregations lying in the vast cult domain; the relationship between oracular cult centres and low-level shrines and affiliated congregations; the nature and volume of traffic of pilgrims between cardinal shrines; and the symbolic exchange implied in pilgrimage tradition.

The Seductions of Pilgrimage explores the simultaneously attractive and repellent, beguiling and alluring forms of seduction in pilgrimage. It focuses on the varied discursive, imaginative, and practical mechanisms of seduction that draw individual pilgrims to a pilgrimage site; the objects, places, and paradigms that pilgrims leave behind as they embark on their hyper-meaningful travel experience; and the often unforeseen elements that lead pilgrims off their desired course. Presenting the first comprehensive study of the role of seduction on individual pilgrims in the study of pilgrimage and tourism, it will appeal to scholars of anthropology, cultural geography, tourism, heritage, and religious studies.

At what point is a place perceived as holy? And when does it become officially so in its definition? Inspired by the UNESCO debate and decisions made concerning holy places, the authors seek answers to these questions. "Naming the Sacred" is a diachronic excursus into the issues of perception and denomination of holy places. The volume examines historical cases in which names and places have been modified or literally eliminated and others where places were subject to policies of protection and tutelage. The work appertains to an ongoing, evolving global debate where the challenge of the reciprocal recognition of holy sites has become increasingly complex.

These essays examine changes in Israel's political, social and economic institutions, and describe how Israeli culture and institutions are resisting convergence. They are in four categories: political institutions and organizations; political economy; ethnicity and religion; and public policy.

Pilgrim shrines were places of healing, holiness, and truth in early modern France. This book explains how this came about.