| Abstract | Paper -a:
Penitential and substitute pilgrims were a growing group in the Later Middle Ages. Both groups needed special regulations on preparations, travel conditions, licit and illicit interaction on journey, obligations before, during and after the journey etc. There are a lot of sources, which have however hardly been used in a systematic way. They allow also interesting insights into notions of space, time, and conceptions of reality: substitute vs. real pilgrimage, etc.
Paper -b:
My paper discusses physically disabled children as pilgrims, asking if their social status during the journey was different compared to what it was in everyday life. The troubles they had to face during pilgrimages are often emphasized in miracle accounts, thus making them more deserving for the cure, but at the same time their impairments could marginalise them just as before the journey. Furthermore, I will examine their own, active roles before and during the pilgrimage, which sheds light on the way also disabled children were socialised to become full members of the community. The paper is based on high and late medieval sources from France, Italy, England, Scandinavia.
Paper -c:
This paper considers the special features of under-age participation in the First Crusade (1095-1099) and the description of children in the early crusader sources. Children participated in crusading right from the outset. Guibert of Nogent and Ekkehard of Aura describe European roads filling with groups of pilgrims, setting forth for Jerusalem with their entire households including boys and girls during the spring and summer of 1096. During the later crusaders also, the sources frequently refer to the presence of child crusaders.
Unlike adults, the great majority of crusader children did not make a decision to leave home. The children left with their parents, relatives or guardians, and in many cases they were later released from their 'vow' on the grounds of their young age. The number of unsupported children on crusade could rise high, as many were orphaned or abandoned in the course of the atrocities. These children and young adults were compelled to develop survival strategies in circumstances, in which the social support available to the weakest could be extremely limited.
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