The Influence of Pilgrimage Routes on Local Culture and Imagination: the “Italian Compostela” as a case study

Abstract

In the middle of the 12th century Pistoia achieved an important relic of Saint James the Greater from Santiago de Compostela, becoming in a short time the most important Italian landmark for the worship of the Saint. As a consequence, the Tuscan city, placed near the Francigena route, became also an important center of pilgrimage, as demonstrated by several aspects of its topography and material production. Mostly within the first half of the 16th century, both local culture and popular imagination have been deeply influenced by the worship of the Apostle, especially by his characterization as pilgrimage’s patron; this influence can be recognized not only in some artistic works (above all through the representation of scallop shells – the pecten jacobeus – or through the representation of biblical figures clearly related to pilgrimage), but also in miracles’ tales and in the morphology of the Patron Saint’s festival.

Through an iconological and anthropological analysis of some of these material and written sources, the example of Pistoia can demonstrate how pilgrimage, «a kinetic ritual, full of real and “sacred” objects» (Turner-Turner, 1997), influences in a wide sense the culture of the places interested by this important phenomenon.