Pilgrimage and the Dynamics of Urbanism Reconsidered: Faubourg Architecture in Romanesque Aquitaine

Abstract

Since the late nineteenth century, scholars have considered pilgrimage a dynamic catalyst that influenced a range of cultural practices, not least architecture. The charismatic stewardship of such influential scholars as Arthur Kingsley Porter, Kenneth John Conant, Emile Mâle and Elie Lambert helped propel the study of ‘pilgrimage architecture’ to a leading field of study, and a handful of churches — notably St-Sernin in Toulouse, St-Martin in Tours, St-Martial in Limoges, Ste-Foy in Conques and the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela — achieved status as paradigmatic monuments. At the same time, the subject was also for a long while a source of heated debate fuelled by nationalist interests, occasionally lapsing even into ad hominem squabbles. The matter has in recent decades generated calmer discussion, including new perspectives introduced by studies of other complementary cultural phenomena. Urban and economic historians, in particular, have looked to the role of pilgrimage in relation to urban growth and the rise of commercial markets. This scholarship has contributed to re-evaluations among art historians and has shed greater light, for example, on the predatory fervour with which certain bishops, cathedral chapters and abbots enticed pilgrims to destinations like Chartres, Santiago de Compostela or Cluny, just as the infusion of interdisciplinary perspectives has helped architectural historians reassess so-called pilgrimage architecture. After all, not all churches of that type were on the pilgrimage roads, nor do all churches on those roads reflect the Toulousain-Compostelan model. The relative importance of the paradigmatic five churches has been called into question.