Savoirs partagés et approches de l’altérité dans deux relations de pèlerinage : Bernard (IXe siècle) et Thietmar (XIIIe siècle)
Shared Knowledge and Approaches to Otherness in Two Pilgrimage Accounts: Bernard (9th century) and Thietmar (13th century)

Author(s): Luminita Diaconu
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Literary Texts, Social history, Middle Ages, Modern Age
Published by: Editura Pro Universitaria
Keywords: pilgrimage accounts; Oriental otherness; knowledge typology; imaginary; direct knowledge
Summary/Abstract: The accounts of pilgrimage to the Holy Land, much like the chronicles devoted to the Crusades, constitute a highly valuable corpus for understanding Western perceptions of Eastern otherness. Our contribution aims to outline a typology of the forms of knowledge shared by two accounts of pilgrimage: that of Bernard, a monk from Brittany, whose journey took place around 865, and that of Thietmar, a Franciscan monk from Westphalia, written in 1217, which contains one of the earliest testimonies from the time of the Crusades. We propose to show that, even though their primary mission was to retrace the route to the Holy Land for the benefit of other pilgrims, the author of the first account displays far more interest in the peoples of the Orient than in the sacred geography. In Thietmar’s work, while many references to Oriental otherness still belong to the imaginary, the inventory of knowledge becomes visibly more diversified. In the same time, he seems to prefer direct knowledge about the traversed spaces and the Other(s), as well as to share the practical aspects of pilgrimage within the tense climate of the Crusades.

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