IMC 2019: Sessions

Session 1550: Mortal Journeys and Journeys to Mortality

Organiser:	Ian Styler, Department of History, University of Birmingham
Moderator/Chair:	Bernadette McCooey, Independent Scholar, Birmingham
Paper 1550-a	The Perilous Road to Sanctity: The Reality and the Metaphor of St Æthelthryth's Flight to Ely (Language: English) Ian Styler, Department of History, University of Birmingham Index terms: Hagiography, Monasticism, Religious Life
Paper 1550-b	Dying to Travel: The Pull of Clairvaux Abbey in 12th-Century Cistercian Texts (Language: English) Georgina Fitzgibbon, Department of History, University of Birmingham Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Monasticism, Religious Life
Paper 1550-c	Your Money or Your Life!: The Role of the Highway in 14th-Century Crime and Punishment (Language: English) Janine Bryant, School of History & Cultures, University of Birmingham Index terms: Daily Life, Law, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Social History
Abstract	This session explores the links between medieval travel and the likelihood of death or danger. The topics range from the flight of an Anglo-Saxon saint from her husband to keep her virginity intact, to the Cistercian monks who travelled to the abbey of Clairvaux so that they could die at the tomb of St Bernard, and to the significance of the English highways to 14th century criminals for whom the culmination of their journey was either death or freedom. Although the papers cover a 750-year period, the theme of mortality and travel is a common thread that runs through them all.