Life on a medieval pilgrimage

The Way People Live

by Don Nardo

Describes the daily life of pilgrims in the Middle Ages, analyzing why they went on pilgrimages and what they hoped to accomplish

Genres: Nonfiction, History

95 pages, Library Binding

First published December 1, 1995

About the author

Don Nardo (born February 22, 1947) is an American historian, composer, and writer. With close to four hundred and fifty published books, he is one of the most prolific authors in the United States, and one of the country's foremost writers of historical works for children and teens.

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book does a great job of covering pretty much exactly what the title promises: it describes medieval pilgrimages and pilgrims and what kinds of lives the pilgrims lead, before during and after a pilgrimage.
It's written for a middle or possibly high school audience, so any difficult words in the sources that are quoted are explained. And the author does a marvelous job finding interesting and pithy passages to quote. This book is a nice overview of the topic, and I give the author credit for handling some sensitive topics, like the risk of being robbed or raped while on pilgrimage, the prejudices of Europeans and saracens in the Holy Land, and the improbable relics and holy sites that became destinations. However the brevity of the book also means that relatively few examples are cited and the details are scattered and few.