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Journey, Geography, and Time in Felix Fabri’s Sionpilger

Reise, Geografie und Zeit in Felix Fabris Sionpilger

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Abstract

In his essay, »Of Other Spaces,« Michel Foucault contrasts a medieval sense of time and place with that of the modern, and he characterizes the modern concept of space and time as a network. However, this essay suggests that careful attention to medieval artefacts of cultural history reveals that Foucault’s supposed transition from a sense of medieval »emplacement« to a sense of modern »network« is not quite accurate. Analysis of the Sionpilger, a fifteenth-century guide for »imagined« pilgrimage written by the Dominican Felix Fabri, reveals that far from being a modern concept, an idea of space and time connected as a network was very much a medieval phenomenon. In the Sionpilger, the concept of geography is imbricated with the concepts of journey and time; all three of these concepts then serve to create a local, southern-German landscape of religious reform that is connected across space and time to Jerusalem and the events of sacred history.

Zusammenfassung

Michel Foucault kontrastiert in seinem Aufsatz »Of Other Spaces« ein mittelalterliches Zeit- und Ortsgefühl mit dem der Moderne und charakterisiert das moderne Konzept von Raum und Zeit als Netzwerk. Dieser Aufsatz hingegen legt den Schluss nahe, dass für mittelalterliche Texte und Praktiken der von Foucault angenommene Übergang von der »Verortung« zum »Netzwerk« nicht ganz zutreffend ist. Die Analyse des Sionpilger, eines Leitfadens für »imaginäre« Pilgerfahrten des Dominikaners Felix Fabri aus dem 15. Jahrhundert, zeigt, dass die Vorstellung von Raum und Zeit, die als Netzwerk verbunden sind, nicht erst ein modernes Konzept ist. Im Sionpilger ist der Begriff der Geografie mit den Begriffen der Reise und der Zeit verflochten. Alle drei Konzepte dienen dann dazu, eine lokale süddeutsche Landschaft religiöser Reformen zu schaffen, die über Raum und Zeit mit Jerusalem und den Ereignissen der heiligen Geschichte verbunden ist.

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Notes

  1. Michel Foucault, »Of Other Spaces«, originally published as »Des Espaces Autres«, Architecture-Mouvement-Continuité 5 (October, 1984). The English version used here was translated by Jay Miskowiec and published in Diacritics, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Spring, 1986), 22–27, here: 22–23.

  2. Foucault (note 1), 22.

  3. Foucault (note 1), 23.

  4. Foucault (note 1), 22.

  5. Felix Fabri, Felix Fabri, Die Sionpilger, edited by Wieland Carls, Berlin 1999. I also have written extensively about the Sionpilger in other publications, particularly, »Reading Mental Pilgrimage in Context: The Imaginary Pilgrims and Real Travels of Felix Fabri’s ›Die Sionpilger‹,« Essays in Medieval Studies 25 (2008), 39–70; and Beebe, Pilgrim and Preacher: The Audiences and Observant Spirituality of Friar Felix Fabri (1437/8-1502), Oxford 2014.

  6. Cf. Christian Kiening, »Hybride Zeiten. Temporale Dynamiken 1400–1600«, Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur Vol. 140, No. 2 (June 2018), 194–231.

  7. On the twenty-seventh day’s journey, the pilgrims encounter a strong wind and storm while on board ship: »Vnd dar zů werden sӱ schwindlig • vnd erbrechen sich …« (»and therefore they become dizzy and vomit …«). Fabri (note 5), 98.

  8. The forewords of the four extant manuscripts differ greatly from one another, as will be discussed below. However, each foreword speaks of the request made of the author by various persons, particularly »closterlúten« (in Ulm, Stadtarchiv, Cod. 9727; here, Fabri [note 5], 77), or »Closterfrawen in schwaben sant dominicus ordens,« (in Vienna, Schottenstift, Cod. 413 (Hübl 248); here Fabri [note 5], 529). The twentieth rule given to the spiritual pilgrim readers of the text states that the rules themselves (and presumably the text of the Sionpilger) were sent to the »beschloßnen frowen clœster brediger ordes in schwaben« (»the enclosed women’s houses of the Dominican order in Swabia«). [Due to technical limitations, the vowel o with a superscript e is here represented as œ.] Fabri (note 5), 84.

  9. Fabri (note 5), 86.

  10. Fabri (note 5), 89 and 91, respectively.

  11. Fabri (note 5), 78.

  12. Fabri (note 5), 78.

  13. See Rudy, Virtual Pilgrimages in the Convent: Imagining Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages, Turnhout 2011, 45–49; Mecham, »A Northern Jerusalem: Transforming the Spatial Geography of the Convent of Wienhausen«, in: Sarah Hamilton, Andrew Spicer (eds.), Defining the Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Aldershot 2005, 139–160, here: 158.

  14. Henry Suso, The Exemplar, With Two German Sermons, ed. and trans. Frank Tobin, New York and Mahwah 1989, 83–86.

  15. For St. Katharina, Augsburg, see Marie-Luise Ehrenschwendtner, »Virtual Pilgrimages? Enclosure and the Practice of Piety at St. Katherine’s Convent, Augsburg«, Journal of Ecclesiastical History Vol. 60, No. 1 (2009), 45–73. For the Bickenkloster, see Renate Stegmaier-Breinlinger, »›Die hailigen Stett Rom und Jerusalem‹: Reste einer Ablaßsammlung im Bickenkloster in Villingen«, Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv 91 (1971), 176–201; and Rudy (note 13), 235–238.

  16. While the foreword of the earliest extant manuscript of the Sionpilger (Ulm, Stadtarchiv A [5925]) does not mention that Fabri first suggested that the »closterfrawen« read the Intinerarium mentis in deum, the manuscripts now in Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. theol. et phil. 4° 143 (1494, by scribe Petrus Renz); St. Petersburg, Eremitage, Inv.-Nr. 169562 (1494, by scribe Felicitas Lieberin aus Ulm); and Vienna, Schottenstift, Cod. 413 (Hübl 248) (1495, by scribe Susanna von Bintzendorff), all do. See Fabri (note 5), 525–526; 527; and 529–530, respectively.

  17. »Aber die closter leüt hand von im wöllen haben sein bilgerfart indem aüssern raüchen wandel von ainer tagraiß zu der andern« Vienna, Schottenstift, Cod. 413, f. 4v. Fabri (note 5), 529.

  18. »gand sӱ hinden hin vmb an der mur zum Glœcklis thor vß In der Iunckfrowen garten gen Sefflingen in das closter • Da ist ablas T vnd hailtam vnd gůt gespilschaft haben sӱ da« / »They go from there to the [city] wall out through the Glöcklertor [Gögglinger tower]. In the nun’s garden near Söfflingen in the cloister, there is plenary indulgence and relics and they [the Sion pilgrims] have good company there.« [Due to technical limitations, the vowel o with a superscript e is here represented as œ.] Fabri (note 5), 87. In his Tractatus de civitate Ulmensi, the final section of Fabri’s Evagatorium, Fabri identifies the Gögglinger tower as the one situated to the West of the city, which »unlearned people« (perhaps like his Sionpilger readers) called the »Göcklertor.« Felix Fabri, Tractatus de civitate Ulmensi / Traktat über die Stadt Ulm, ed. Folker Reichert, Norderstedt 2014, 46.

  19. Fabri (note 5), 87.

  20. Fabri (note 5), 89.

  21. Fabri (note 5), 90.

  22. Fabri (note 5), 90.

  23. Fabri (note 5), 90.

  24. Fabri (note 5), 81.

  25. On this, see Donald R. Howard, Writers and Pilgrims: Medieval Pilgrimage Narratives and their Posterity, Berkeley 1980, 40–52. Howard claims that in the Evagatorium, Fabri was the first pilgrimage account writer to include the journey home. Howard, 46. Further illustrating the uncommon description of the return journey in accounts such as these, Rob Lutton suggests that the 1511 printed account of Richard Guldeford’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land may have been the first pilgrimage account in English to describe both the journey out and back again. Rob Lutton, »Richard Guldeford’s Pilgrimage: Piety and Cultural Change in Late Fifteenth- and Early Sixteenth-Century England«, History Vol. 98, No. 329 (January 2013), 41–78; here, 66.

  26. [Due to technical limitations, the vowel o with a superscript e is here represented as œ.] Fabri (note 5), 250.

  27. Fabri (note 5), 260.

  28. Fabri (note 5), 263.

  29. Cairo: Fabri (note 5), 264–272. Alexandria: Fabri (note 5), 273–281.

  30. Both animals are described in Day 154. Fabri (note 5), 272.

  31. »So ist es sorglich von der bœsen tier wegen die in dem wasser sind.« [Due to technical limitations, the vowel o with a superscript e is here represented as œ.] Fabri (note 5), 272.

  32. Fabri (note 5), 280–281.

  33. Fabri (note 5), 297.

  34. It is worth noting here that although the »gebirg« and the »hǒen brenner« are mentioned, the narrative does not describe the cold, nor the hard work of climbing, that the passages describing the outward journey contained. [Due to technical limitations, the vowel o with a superscript e is here represented as œ.] Fabri (note 5), 306–307.

  35. To put it simply, »the relationship between culture and place.« See »cultural geography,« in Alisdair Rogers, Noel Castree, and Rob Kitchin, eds., A Dictionary of Human Geography (Oxford 2013). https://libproxy.library.unt.edu:2107/view/10.1093/acref/9780199599868.001.0001/acref-9780199599868-e-329 (18.11.2019).

  36. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London, New York, rev. ed. 1991.

  37. We know that Felix Fabri himself was keenly aware of the religious, social, and political geography of the region. He wrote about it extensively in his Tractatus de civitate ulmensi. See above, note 18.

  38. Fabri (note 5), 86–88.

  39. Kathryne Beebe, »The Nachleben of the Gottesfreunde: Heinrich Seuse and Felix Fabri«, in: Wybren Scheepsma, Gijs van Vliet, and Geert Warnar (eds.), Friends of God. Vernacular Literature and Religious Elites in the Rhineland and the Low Countries (1300-1500), Rome 2018, 273–289, here: 281–282.

  40. Fabri (note 5), 310–311.

  41. Fabri (note 5), 84.

  42. Fabri (note 5), 84.

  43. Fabri (note 5), 84: notes for lines 20-27.

  44. Fabri (note 5), 84: notes for line 22.

  45. Fabri (note 5), 529 and 530. See also Fabri’s Evagatorium: Ulm, Stadtbibliothek, Cod. 19555.1‑2; here: Cod. 19555.1, fol. 118r; and Fratris Felicis Fabri Evagatorium in Terræ Sanctæ, Arabiæ et Egypti peregrinationem, ed. Konrad Dieterich Hassler, Stuttgart, 1843–1849, vol. I, p. 308.

  46. Fabri (note 5), 529.

  47. Fabri (note 5), 77.

  48. Fabri (note 5), 529.

  49. [Due to technical limitations, the vowel e with a superscript a is here represented as æ.] Fabri (note 5), 118.

  50. Fabri (note 5), 113.

  51. »Die lxx tagrais ist Das sich die Sӱon bilgrin ze vlm von ainander schaiden Vnnd faren haim in ire clœster wie geschriben ist In der CCviij tagrais In der bilgerfart gen Iherusalem.« [Due to technical limitations, the vowel o with a superscript e is here represented as œ.] Fabri (note 5), 353.

  52. Fabri (note 5), 113.

  53. Fabri (note 5), 114.

  54. Fabri (note 5), 116.

  55. Fabri (note 5), 118.

  56. Fabri (note 5), 117.

  57. Fabri (note 5), 116.

  58. Fabri (note 5), 113–114.

  59. Fabri (note 5), 115.

  60. Emphasis mine. »Gar mit großem mitlӱden • stand die bilgrin vnd singent mit wainen in der person christi am crútz • das Respons • Caligauerunt oculi mei a fletu«. Fabri (note 5), 116.

  61. CANTUS 006261, »Cantus Index: Online Catalogue for Mass and Office Chants,« in: http://cantusindex.org/id/006261 (21.6.2019).

  62. Fabri (note 5), 116. CANTUS 006618, »Cantus Index: Online Catalogue for Mass and Office Chants,« in: http://cantusindex.org/id/006618 (21.6.2019).

  63. Jerome, Epitaphium Sanctae Paulae, in Andrew Cain, Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula: a commentary on the Epitaphium Sanctae Paulae, edited and translated, with commentary by Cain, Oxford 2013, 54–55.

  64. Foucault (note 1), 26.

  65. Fabri (note 5), 116.

  66. Cf. Kiening (note 6).

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  1. Department of History, University of North Texas, 1155 Union Circle, #310650, 76203, Denton, TX, USA

    Kathryne Beebe

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Beebe, K. Journey, Geography, and Time in Felix Fabri’s Sionpilger. Dtsch Vierteljahrsschr Literaturwiss Geistesgesch 93, 431–448 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41245-019-00090-2

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