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At its founding, the United States did not have a long history nor an official state religion to draw from to construct a national identity, so Americans turned to the creation of sacred geographies built around nature and, as time passed, the founding myths of the republic. These natural and human-built sacred places now span the United States and correspond to a civil religion that appeals to tourists. The United States even has sacred documents like the Declaration of Independence that tourists view with reverence. Sacred tourist destinations are often overtly constructed and they imbue a nation with identity, elicit something akin to religious awe, and create a place wherein public rituals and modern pilgrimages are enacted. They also underscore the diverse nature of sacred tourism in America. Religion and tourism both exist in space and use space to construct meaning. The motivations of those religious adherents who travel to sacred places are buttressed by an undercurrent of belief. Tourists, on the other hand, are not always believers, and they have diverse rationales for traveling to sacred places: some are on a quest for genuine spiritual engagement, others are seeking authenticity to offset the manufactured nature of modernity, and still others simply have an attraction to the cultural lore connected to a place. Tourists to religious sites thus arrive at a place that has been specifically designated sacred and therefore set apart, but while the place may be fixed geographically, its meanings commonly are not. Classifying a space brings it into existence as place, and this classification is regularly driven by the forces of commodification linked to tourism; it is also often contested between religious adherents and less spiritually inclined tourists and at times even within different tourist constituencies. Since human intervention is a precondition in any construction of place, sacred tourist destinations are based on mutually reinforcing relationships, and the tourists and pilgrims that seek sacred sites each play significant roles in creating, maintaining, or contesting a place’s identity. “Religious-based tourism,” “tourism to sacred places,” and “religious or spiritual tourism” each carry different connotations. While religious and spiritual tourism indicate tours undertaken solely or mainly for faith-based reasons, “religious-based tourism” acknowledges that tourists are not homogenous; those tourists whose main aim is recreational can still be religious adherents, nonreligious tourists are still usually visiting a sacred place because of its purported numinous qualities, and those whose primary goal is religious can still evince behavior typically associated with tourism. “Tourism to sacred places” or “sacred tourism” allows the flexibility to include hallowed places that are either formally religious or not. Indeed, sites of secular pilgrimage continue to proliferate wherein “pilgrim” is used indistinguishably from “tourist” because of the mixture of secular and sacred at the site itself as well as the diverse motivations of the people who journey there. A spatial examination of tourism to sacred sites must thus consider the spatial dynamics of the motivations and actions of people within a commodified and contested place that draws tourists, pilgrims, and the many who are both.

Relics, pilgrimage, miraculous occurrences, the visual arts, architecture, and patronage were closely intertwined western Christendom from the earliest period through the later Middle Ages. Relics have been venerated not only in Christianity but also in many other religions, including Islam and Buddhism. Due to the complex relationship between religious conviction, physical objects, precious materials and containers, wars and political alliances, economic and territorial interests, and the explosion in the number of pilgrimage centers in Western Europe, this brief study of relics, pilgrims, and pilgrimage must be limited to mainstream Latin Christianity, primarily from the later Middle Ages until the Protestant Reformation. Background will be provided to flesh out the special nature of the content. The profound influence on the visual arts of pilgrimage and the veneration of relics is apparent in various aspects of this study: the relics themselves and their containers; reasons and motivations for pilgrimage in the later Middle Ages; accommodations for visitors in churches and along the routes of pilgrimage. Visual arts and architecture supported the honor and veneration of holy beings and holy sites by pilgrims at reliquary shrines, with textiles, special containers, and altar vessels; painted and gilded exterior and interior sculpture programs made of stone or wood; painted stained-glass windows and wall paintings; and church furnishings. Grand and spacious churches with many formal similarities were constructed during the later Middle Ages along each route followed by pilgrims from Northern Europe to Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago de Compostela. The development of church plans and the proliferation of chapels around the choir reveal the impact of pilgrimage and the relics pilgrims sought to visit. Pilgrims undertook their arduous journeys for various reasons. Upon setting out, pilgrims usually intended to return home, though the dangers and difficulties meant that many were unable to do so. Pilgrims obtained authorization from their local bishop to be given hospitality and to be accommodated on their journeys. The later Middle Ages witnessed an explosion in the numbers of participants in extended journeys as well as in local pilgrimages, in all regions of Europe. Thefts and translations as well as pious donations brought a proliferation of relics and reliquaries. The needs of pilgrims—for shelter and sustenance, nourishment and healthcare, and well-maintained roads, bridges, and ferry crossings—meant that the architectural amenities provided in response to pilgrimage had a powerful international impact in the places they visited and upon the homelands to which they returned. The influences not only of souvenirs brought home but also of the pilgrim’s life experience on the visual arts and architecture are complex and have been long-lasting.