We Unitarians do not go on pilgrimage.
This is not for lack of places to visit and people to commemorate. Boston and its environs are so crammed with sites associated with Unitarians, Universalists, or some combination thereof, that it’s all but impossible to heave a rock in some areas without hitting something that was used, lived in, designed by, or preached in by UU’s at some point. The majestic brownstone of the Arlington Street Church at the bottom of the Public Garden, mere yards from the Swan Boats…the Georgian elegance of King’s Chapel, mere steps from the Brutalist hulk of City Hall...the bustling campus of Harvard University, alma mater to Ralph Waldo Emerson and so many other UU ministers...the hidden calm of Tufts University, founded by Universalists who were barred from attending colleges that required belief in hell...Walden Pond out in Concord, where Henry David Thoreau meditated in a cabin before heading into town to have dinner with Emerson...the Church of the Presidents in Quincy, burial site of John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams...Lydia Maria Childs’ home congregation in Medford...Emerson’s home, where his long-suffering wife Lydia had to deal with Thoreau sponging off her husband for free meals and her for free laundry….
Seriously, if you are into three-named New Englanders of the liberal persuasion, you can’t go wrong by visiting the Unitarian and Universalist churches in metro Boston. There isn’t a single progressive movement of the last two hundred years that hasn’t involved UU’s, from Harvard’s 1798 valedictorian William Ellery Channing (abolitionist and anti-imperialist) to Civil Rights martyr James Reeb (murdered at Selma) to LGBT rights activist Kim Crawford Harvey (senior minister at Arlington Street). Concord alone was home to so many UUs in the 19th century that a popular UU hymn, “It Sounds Along the Ages,” contains the following verse that places Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, and their friends right alongside other great religious teachers without so much as a batted eyelash:
From Sinai’s cliffs it echoed, it breathed from Buddha’s tree,
it charmed in Athens’ market, it hallowed Galilee;
the hammer stroke of Luther, the Pilgrims’ seaside prayer,
the oracles of Concord one holy word declare.
Now. I personally wouldn’t put Emerson, great as he was, alongside Martin Luther, let alone the Buddha, Socrates, or Jesus. But 19th century hymnists gonna hymn (or possibly hum), and given the outsized influence of Unitarians and Universalists on the United States, one could do worse.
All the same, though, a tour of UU sites in Boston isn’t an actual pilgrimage. We don’t believe in relics, so there are no Holy Leftovers of Mrs. Emerson in Concord. We don’t believe in wonder-working saints, so there are no votive offerings festooning the Adams family crypt in Quincy. One cannot obtain a plenary indulgence for visiting the Arlington Street Church, although they’ll be happy to invite you to the post-service coffee hour on Sundays. Our current headquarters down near Fort Point Channel is staffed not by scarlet-robed cardinals or black-hatted rabbis, but by what appear to be very ordinary office workers, up to and including our current president, Susan Frederick-Gray. We don’t even hand out pilgrim badges to the faithful, unless informational brochures, luggage tags, or the occasional discounted volume from the Beacon Press backlist count.
In some ways this is a shame — I mean, seriously, wouldn’t a William Ellery Channing glow-in-the dark maple cutting board with a hand-curated selection of local cheeses, sausages, and a small jug of maple syrup be divine? — but in other ways it’s very much in line with modern Unitarian Universalism. We’re a small, casual, not overly pious religious movement that offers new members a course called “Make Your Own Theology,” after all, so it’s not like our clergy are going to insist that miscreants on the perilous mile-long journey from Arlington Street to King’s Chapel hijack a Swan Boat, somersault their way across the Common, crawl down Tremont Street on all fours at rush hour, and throw a Boston cream pie from the Parker House at Government Center to obtain remission of their sins.
Boston City Hall, the “Brutalist masterpiece” that replaced Scollay Square. Note Faneuil Hall, tiny and gold-domed, trying to look harmless in the background (Wikipedia)
(Note: chucking a pie (or a bag of stale Parker House rolls) at Government Center might be in order as a way to protest the hideous pile of concrete known as Boston City Hall. Not that I’m urging anyone to waste food, mind, but have you seen that place lately? Especially compared with poor little Faneuil Hall huddling in its shadow?)
Then again, a visit to places where the Oracles of Concord hung out like the Old Manse, the Alcott House, the Rude Bridge That Arched the Flood, and maybe Emerson’s home, followed up by a relaxing swim in Walden Pond, sounds like a dandy way to spend a hot summer afternoon, even if you’re more likely to end up with a sunburn than a plenary indulgence for your trouble.
The impulse to visit places associated with famous events and people is universal, and can be traced back literally thousands of years. The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World attracted visitors for centuries, and what’s left of them still fascinates in the 21st century; the Pyramids of Giza appear in the latest episode of Marvel’s streaming series Moon Knight, while the government of Greece has been making plans to recreate the Colossus of Rhodes only 1500 years after the remaining chunks of bronze were sold for scrap. Modern tourist guides, from the famous WPA state volumes in the 1930’s to the latest edition of Rick Steves’ books, have told travelers all about famous sites to be seen, and you can be certain that most of the said sights have docents to tell visitors all about past glories and gift shops stocked with a wide variety of tchotchkes to take home as proof of their wanderings.
And then there are the pilgrimages of the Middle Ages.
These were not mere tourist trips, even if some of the not-so-pious regarded them as an excuse to gossip, meet new people, and see something other than their quaint home village. Pilgrims on their way to, say, St. James the Great in Compostela, or the Shrine of the Holy Blood in Wilsnack, or the Relic of the Holy Circumcision in a dozen or so otherwise obscure Italian hill towns (take your pick), were expected to take a certain route, stop at certain churches along the way, and attend certain services to perform certain rituals. Completing the pilgrimage was supposed to result in blessings that ranged from taking thousands of years off one’s time in Purgatory to the safe birth of a child, with the precise manner of the blessing depending on the route, the saint/relic to be visited, and the specific prayers performed along the way. Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, to name just two, visited the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in hope of having a son (spoiler: they didn’t), while visitors to Rome in 1300 could expect a clean slate and full pardon for all their sins, no matter how heinous.
And then there was a now-obscure pilgrimage to the little town of Lough Derg, County Donegal, in Ireland.
Lough Derg is a pretty, island-strewn lake near the bustling metropolis of Pettigo (population 600), which in turn straddles the border between the Republic of Ireland and the British-controlled North. Pettigo, which is about as liminal as it gets (the border runs through the town, there are two Protestant and one Catholic church, etc.), is known today for agriculture, trout fishing, and a local legend where someone named “Conan” threw a worm into the lake, then barbarically slaughtered it in a rage when it grew into a monster that ate everyone’s cattle. This is why the rocks on what passes for beaches are red, or so the locals say while being quaint and posing for tourists.
It’s also home to a legendary site called St. Patrick’s Purgatory, which has been the subject of story, song, and an odd little pilgrimage for at least the last nine hundred years:
Saint Patrick’s Purgatory: A Twelfth Century Tale of a Journey to the Other World, by H. de Saltry, tr. J-M Picard — St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, had a life that was more colorful than the emerald fields of his adopted homeland. Born in Britain to a Roman Christian family, kidnapped by pirates and sold into slavery, he worked as a shepherd for six years before escaping and making his way home. He then became a priest and returned in triumph to Ireland to convert the heathens, drive out the non-existent snakes, and make the world safe for green beer, sentimental songs about The Auld Sod, green bagels, and the dumping of vast quantities of green dye into the River Liffey to delight foreign tourists.
He also, at least according to legend, visited Lough Derg.
Now, whether he actually did or not is not for us to say. Patrick lived sometime in the fifth century and the first accounts of this visit date from about seven hundred years later, so it’s almost certainly a pious fiction. However, the pilgrimage (and the purgatory) spring from the legend, not from Patrick’s own writings, so here we go:
One day Patrick (not yet a saint) was down in the dumps because his efforts at converting the heathen were not going well. These pesky sinners, who were probably horrified at the very thought of green beer, refused to be baptized unless they had actual, genuine, for-real proof that Christianity was a real thing and not some story this former slave with a funny accent had made up to get revenge on the people who sold him in the first place. God, hearing Patrick’s prayers, promptly whisked him off to Station Island in Lough Derg. There he showed Patrick a pit (or well, or maybe a cave) from which issued horrible screams and wails and cries of DESPAIR. It was Purgatory, the place where people who weren’t bad enough for Hell or good enough for Heaven had to spend thousands and thousands and thousands of years suffering and atoning for their sins before God (or St. Peter, or someone) said “you’ve repented enough, go get your harp and relax.”
Patrick was amazed, as anyone might be. He was also very happy when God said, “Show them this. That should be enough for the little [deleted] skeptics to stop making like that blockhead Thomas and believe. So go get ‘em!”
Patrick reportedly did, his flock was suitably terrified, and soon Ireland was not only Christian, but so pious that squads of artistically-minded monks were scribbling doodles that eventually became the Book of Kells.
“Turn left at the next rock and you’ll be right there. Promise!” (Wikipedia)
That all this seems to have started with a local saint named Dabheog, who started a monastery on Station Island around the time that Patrick was telling the non-existent snakes to get off his lawn, isn’t the point. “St. Patrick’s Purgatory” is far more mellifluous and alliterative than “St. Dabheog’s Purgatory,” plus being associated with a national saint instead of a local abbot ensured more pilgrims, more fame, and (you knew this was coming) mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money! for the local economy, such as it was. Soon the pious were coming to do penance, be locked up with the shrieking non-damned in the actual cave (or well, or pit) for a day, and be then carried back to the monastery for two weeks to pray/recuperate after their ordeal (if they actually lived, which was not guaranteed).
Sounds like an all-around cool and fun way to enjoy the beauties of the Emerald Isle, no?
As for just why pilgrims might be so upset that they died from the shock and awe, just try being shut up in a cave (or well, or pit) with the shrieking non-damned for twenty-four hours and see how you like it! Especially after the hungry trout and perch and maybe the descendants of Conan’s worm in Lough Derg come and nibble on your extremities while the non-damned tell you to repent and demons cackle and St. Patrick holds a flagon of green beer just...out...of...reach.
If that isn’t enough to cause heart failure, I don’t know what will.
And then there’s the experience of Knight Owein (or Eoghan, in Irish), as recounted by one “H. de Saltrey,” who might have been named “Henry” (or Hubert, or Hugh, or possibly even Herbert). This account, which was later used by Marie de France in one of her lais, is purportedly what Knight Owein, who spoke Irish and English, told a visiting monk named Gilbert when he decided to found a monastery in County Wicklow during the reign of King Stephen in the 1130’s or 1140’s. Gilbert, who was from Lincoln (the city, not the place in Nebraska, which was originally Pawnee hunting grounds anyway and does not appear in this diary), padded out his account with a dedication to a friendly abbot, quite a few digs at the “savage Irish,” some theological rambling that was probably interesting back then and is now really boring, the story of St. Patrick and his favorite well/pit/cave, and finally the pilgrimage rituals practiced by the faithful who came to Lough Derg to expiate whatever awful things they’d done.
*whew*
The actual account of Knight Owein is the most interesting part of the entire book, to the point that nearly thirty manuscripts survive. It was enormously influential in shaping ideas of what Purgatory was like, to the point it was the only named point on a medieval map of Ireland (take that, Dublin!), and may have even influenced Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy two hundred years later.
Come to St. Patrick’s Purgatory! We have cookies! (Wikipedia)
Knight Owein’s personal odyssey is fairly straightforward. He was moved to make the pilgrimage after making confession, and after entering the cave/well/pit, he met fifteen monk-like beings who advised him to call on the name of Jesus if he ran into difficulty as he traveled through Purgatory. This he did when the following troubles beset him:
- A horde of angry demons who tied him up and threw him into a fire.
- A journey across the plains of Purgatory itself, where he gets to see the non-damned suffer, and suffer, and suffer.
- The Gates of Hell, which are guarded by a river of fire that smells really, really bad. The demons, who for some reason do not immediately attempt to throw Knight Owein into the flames this time, tell him that he can avoid going to Hell only by traversing a narrow bridge.
Needless to say, Knight Owein says the secret word and the duck comes down to give him a hundred dollars the name of Jesus, and is saved from the flames, avoids falling into any torture pits, and crosses the suddenly widened bridge. He then gets a guided tour of the Earthly Paradise, the beautiful and sweet-smelling realm where those who have managed to get through Purgatory rest before going to Heaven, thanks to a couple of presumably holy archbishops. They feed him the manna of heaven, then tell him he has to live out the rest of his life on Earth before returning to Heaven, and he goes back the way he came. This time, though, the demons see him and run away, proving that the True Faith is stronger than any fire pit, fiery river, or noisome stench.
This entertaining if somewhat repetitive tale ends with Gilbert (remember him?) stating that not only did he hear this story directly from Knight Owein’s own lips, he verified it by checking with several local abbots, monks, and a bishop who rejoiced in the name “Florentianus,” who told him yet another story of how demons besieged a local hermit on the shores of Lough Derg, praise Jesus, say a hundred Hail Marys and the duck will come down and repent, amen!
I repeat: *whew*
Alas for the curious, the cave/pit/well was closed in the early 1600’s during the Reformation, so it’s no longer possible for pilgrims (or even film crews from the History Channel) to visit the Purgatory to see for themselves. There is still a pilgrimage, but instead of the original medieval pilgrimage, which involved two weeks of pre-ordeal prayer and confession, then twenty-four hours in the Purgatory, then another two weeks being tended by the local monks, the modern version is only three days, with a single evening’s vigil and a great deal of walking unshod on the rough turf and stones from one ruined monk’s hut to another. There are no demons, but the current prior welcomes individual seekers, school groups, and organized parties. He also walks the pilgrimage route about the island himself once a week, praying and meditating as he continues the ancient tradition.
It’s a lovely place if the photos are any guide, with clean air and soft Irish breezes, and it’s easy to see why pilgrims continue to visit this little slice of the Middle Ages so close to the modern border. Maybe you can no longer hear the cries of the non-damned, but who wouldn’t benefit from a few days of meditation and walking prayer?
Besides, they have a gift shop, where you can buy religious items, tourist guides, candles, and even a children’s book about pilgrimage. Who could ask for more?
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Have you ever been on a pilgrimage or retreat? Hijacked a Swan Boat in Boston? Whipped a Boston cream pie at someone? Been to Ireland? Been to a Unitarian service? It’s a soft spring night here at the Last Homely Shack, so follow the solar lights, crack open your beverage of choice, and share….
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