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Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman & Early Christian Antiquity : Seeing the Gods

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Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman & Early Christian Antiquity : Seeing the Gods 9 Pilgrimage as Elite Habitus: Educated Pilgrims in Sacred Landscape During the Second Sophistic Marco Galli A Rita Zanotto Galli, con profonda amicizia e stima PATTERNS OF RELIGIOUS MEMORY AND PAIDEIA DURING THE SECOND SOPHISTIC Is it possible to reconstruct, at least in part, the suggestive and intricate frame that connected the monuments and images, the ritual actions, and the pilgrim who actively and subjectively participated as collector and observer of sacred experience? What indices permit us to trace the emotional reactions of pilgrims in contact with the sacred landscape? What mental processes and emotional reactions made the tangible objects (the monuments, the images, and the rites) into mental objects, and how did these become Wxed in the memory of the pilgrim? With these questions as guidelines, I shall argue that we can apply a contem- porary approach to the investigation of the social functions of ancient pilgrimage. For the exploration of the relationship between the religious experiences of the pilgrim and social instances of collective memory for the reconstruction and reactivation of a sacred traditional landscape, we may turn to a moment in history that provides an unusually dense 254 Marco Galli representation of the internal states of sacred experience.1 This is the period dubbed ‘The Second Sophistic’. It was a period virtually obsessed with the problem of memory, when even religious tradition, because it formed one of the most signiWcant communicative functions of collect- ive life, was subjected to fundamental revision within the process of social memory.2 Plutarch’s writings cast light on the role of memory and its interaction with religious tradition. In his dialogues ‘On the Pythian Oracles’ Plutarch expresses a clear awareness of how a religious geography would be possible by means of a fuller, more active, contribution of memory:3 Men in those days had to have a memory for many things. For many things were communicated to them, such as signs for recognizing places, the times for activities, the shrines of gods across the sea, secret burial-places of heroes, hard to Wnd for men setting forth on a distant voyage from Greece! (Plut. De Pyth. Or. 27.407 f ) In this passage memory emerges as a fundamental support for pilgrim- age. Whereas for the ancients preceding Plutarch the dimensions of the pilgrimage trip and the search for focal points in the sacred landscape might be understood as collective memory,4 for Plutarch’s Second Sophistic contemporaries these were better deWnable in terms of paideia. Intellectual competence and educated habitus5 are not simply a leit- 1 For an example of a topographically constructed memory, see Cancik (1985/6). On the conWguration of the sacred sphere see in general the recent contribution of Graf (1996); on the concept of ‘The Sacred’ see Burkert (1977), 420: ‘Fu¨r die Griechen ist zweifellos hieros seit mykenischer Zeit der entscheidende BegriV, um die Spha¨re des Religio¨sen abzugrenzen’. For the semantics of the sacred sphere see Morani (1983). 2 Bowersock (1969) formed innovative and fundamental criteria for the contempor- ary discussion of this period. See also Schmitz (1997); Swain (1996); Gleason (1995); Anderson (1993). On self-representation in this cultural climate: Smith (1998); Zanker (1995), ch. 5. Regarding the question of social memory in this period see Alcock (2001): I owe my thanks to S. E. Alcock for her generous permission to view the paper before the date of publication. 3 Many new approaches to the religious habitus of Plutarch in Gallo (1996), esp. Burkert (1996) and Sfameni-Gasparro (1996). 4 On memory and religion see Assmann (2000). 5 For the key concept habitus I use notions drawn from Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory: for a schematic account see the editor’s introd. in Bourdieu (1991): ‘The habitus is a set of dispositions which incline agents to act and react in certain ways. The Educated Pilgrims during the Second Sophistic 255 motif in the literary panorama of the Second Sophistic nor a mere matter of erudition in restricted circles.6 It is crucial, for a greater understanding of the mentalite´ of the Second Sophistic, to grasp the particular function of paideia as an active support for reactivating mental images and making them collectively accessible.7 Of particular signiWcance is the role of paideia as a catalyst for public behaviour. Plutarch in the Delphic dialogues oVers examples of how cultural patrimony—that baggage of notions, traditions, and habits—became a dynamic channel of communication. Using local guides (more or less learned),8 distinguished members of the local and international elite ‘visit’ the most famous oracular sanctu- ary of ancient times.9 A group of friends is climbing the Sacred Way in Delphi, starting at the beginning and arriving at the Temple of Apollo. Engrossed in lively discussion, they make various stops: basilocles. You people have kept it up till well into the evening, Philinus, escorting the foreign visitor around among the statues and votive oVerings. For my part, I had almost given up waiting for you. philinus. The fact is, Basilocles, that we went slowly, sowing words, and reaping them straightway with strife, like the men sprung from the Dragon’s teeth, words with meanings behind them of the contentious sort, which sprang up and Xourished along our way. basilocles. Will it be necessary to call in someone else of those who were with you; or are willing, as a favour, to relate in full what your conversation was and who took part in it? philinus. It looks, Basilocles, as if I shall have that to do. In fact. it would not be easy for you to Wnd anyone of the others in the town, for I saw most of them once more on their way up to the Corycian cave and Lycoreia with the foreign visitor. dispositions generate practices, perceptions and attitudes which are ‘‘regular’’ without being consciously co-ordinated or governated by any ‘‘rule’’. ( . ) The habitus also provides individuals with a sense of how to act and respond in the course of their daily lives’, ibid. pp. 12–13. 6 On the notion of the ‘intellectual’ and its legitimated application in antiquity see the approach to this question by Mazza (1982) and the recently published contribution of Anderson (1998). In regard to the social implications of the religious activity for the Roman imperial elites see Bowersock (1973). 7 Concerning the social implications of the cult of paideia see Flinterman (1995), 31–55; Anderson (1989), 104 V. esp. n. 149. 8 On guides see Jones (2001). 9 For a general description of the Delphic Sanctuary see Maass (1993). 256 Marco Galli basilocles. Our visitor is certainly eager to see the sights, and an unusually eager listener. philinus. But even more is he a scholar and a student. However, it is not this that most deserves our admiration, but a winning gentleness, and his willingness to argue and to raise questions, which comes from his intelli- gence, and shows no dissatisfaction nor contrariety with the answers. (Plut. De Pyth. Or. 1.394 e) The text shows how these individuals travelled towards the sacred site, arrived there, and how they visited it. That such visits became new opportunities for a close interaction between place, object, and observer, is clearly evident in Plutarch’s picture of the relations between a visitor- observer and a bronze statue in the sanctuary.10 Through the subtle Wlter of a cultivated approach, the notable group of Lysander erected near the beginning of the Delphic sanctuary became an object for immediate personal reaction (Figure 1). philinus. The guides were going through their prearranged programme, paying no heed to us who begged that they would cut short their harangues and their expounding of most of the inscriptions. The appearance and technique of the statues had only a moderate attraction for the foreign visitor, who, apparently, was a connoisseur in works of art. He did, however, admire the patina of the bronze, for it bore no resemblance to verdigris or rust, but the bronze was smooth and shining with a deep blue tinge, so that it gave an added touch to the sea-captains ( . ) as they stood there with the true complexion of the sea and its deepest depths. (Plut. De Pyth. Or. 1.395 b) This commentary on the Lysander group at Delphi shows the impossi- bility of applying modern touristic or ‘museum’ type perceptions.11 The responses dramatized by Plutarch are not about a deep study of the objects nor the acquiring of new knowledge nor even the correction of information. This is implied by the lack of interest in the oral accounts of the local guides who were following a set programme. The example 10 Cf. Coleman and Elsner (1995), 202–6. 11 Swain (1996), 76 Delphi as ‘museum of the Greek past’; for another point of view—Delphi as place of cultural memory—see Jacquemin (1991); for a new approach in considering the Roman Greece simply as ‘Museum’ see Alcock (1993), 201: ‘The notion that Greece was simply ‘‘a country learning to be a museum’’ has been rejected as the central fact about Roman Greece, but the conscious cultivation of the glorious past was patently in operation.’ Educated Pilgrims during the Second Sophistic 257 Figure 1. Delphi, Sanctuary of Apollo, Plan (from BCH 36, 1912, pl. 8) 258 Marco Galli demonstrates the force of the tight connection between sacred place and object, whose sanctity could always be reactivated by a cultivated observer of the imperial period. The group of Lysander is not a simple ‘attribute’ of the place nor even an object of erudite discussion, but rather constitutes one of the strong stimuli which the cultivated observer faced.
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