A Pilgrimage through the Global Middle Ages

Welcome, fellow pilgrim!

Whether you’re traveling for contemplation, worship, healing or the thrill of a new encounter, you’ve come to the right place.

Popular concepts of the Middle Ages—think Game of Thrones—draw on limited, mostly European, models of the world between 500 and 1500. The Global Middle Ages movement, on which there is substantial scholarship, expands our idea of the Middle Ages to celebrate the breadth of cultural, religious and social interchange that characterized the entire world between 500 and 1500.

Find out more by going on a “pilgrimage” route that connects you to our global past.

Start Your Pilgrimage Here

About this project

This project is a public-engagement research project that uses geocaching to recreate medieval pilgrimages. Visitors are prompted to select a medieval pilgrimage based on a brief description – such as “travel a forested path” – and then use textual, visual, and latitude/longitude clues to locate a site in their local city that correspond to the original pilgrimage. The project provides a research-publication platform for academics, and connects the public to that historical research by putting the context of the original pilgrimage into the participant’s own city, creating historical-thinking, historical-engagement, and digital-history opportunities for members of the public and for academic researchers alike.