Location
Palermo
Start Date
26-6-2025 11:30 AM
End Date
26-6-2025 1:00 PM
Description
In an anthropological and ethical tourist exploration of religious practices, silence due to its symbolic and spiritual value stands out, among others, as an important and profound experience. It is used in different ways, depending on the religious tradition, but it always emerges as being powerful in deepening the connection with the divine and facilitating inner meditation.
In Christianity, silence, by fostering a more direct relationship with the sacred, also promotes listening to the ˜answers of the entity to which that communication is especially directed.
Since the acceptance and practice of silence is inherent and clearly compatible with ritual solemnities, especially masses, this paper aims to address the problem of that practice, especially in the context of Portuguese pilgrimages and popular festivities. The latter, although in explicit relation to the sacred, commemorate important dates of the religious calendar in a profane environment. The former, involving more or less extensive journeys along routes common to diverse everyday pragmatic uses, mostly express supplications and feelings of gratitude towards sacred icons. In both cases everything takes place mainly out of the temples and of the symbolic and mystically experiential rituals that take place there.
Historically pilgrimages in Portugal while keeping popular religiosity alive are also cultural celebrations involving local manifestations of music, dance, traditional costumes and gastronomy. Thus, they transcend faith particularly expressing the singularities and diversities of popular identities and traditions.
In summary, we intend to catalogue and critically reflect on some of the dimensions of peregrinations and pilgrimages that are apparently contradictory in relation to relevant canons of religious rituals, namely those that have to do with the enjoyment of silence and the physical restraint of its protagonists.
Creative Commons License
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Previous Versions
Jun 25 2025 (withdrawn)
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21427/f2cz-2r73
Included in
C1) Critical Reflection on the Specificity and Coherence in Portugal of Processions and Pilgrimages as Religious Practices
Palermo
In an anthropological and ethical tourist exploration of religious practices, silence due to its symbolic and spiritual value stands out, among others, as an important and profound experience. It is used in different ways, depending on the religious tradition, but it always emerges as being powerful in deepening the connection with the divine and facilitating inner meditation.
In Christianity, silence, by fostering a more direct relationship with the sacred, also promotes listening to the ˜answers of the entity to which that communication is especially directed.
Since the acceptance and practice of silence is inherent and clearly compatible with ritual solemnities, especially masses, this paper aims to address the problem of that practice, especially in the context of Portuguese pilgrimages and popular festivities. The latter, although in explicit relation to the sacred, commemorate important dates of the religious calendar in a profane environment. The former, involving more or less extensive journeys along routes common to diverse everyday pragmatic uses, mostly express supplications and feelings of gratitude towards sacred icons. In both cases everything takes place mainly out of the temples and of the symbolic and mystically experiential rituals that take place there.
Historically pilgrimages in Portugal while keeping popular religiosity alive are also cultural celebrations involving local manifestations of music, dance, traditional costumes and gastronomy. Thus, they transcend faith particularly expressing the singularities and diversities of popular identities and traditions.
In summary, we intend to catalogue and critically reflect on some of the dimensions of peregrinations and pilgrimages that are apparently contradictory in relation to relevant canons of religious rituals, namely those that have to do with the enjoyment of silence and the physical restraint of its protagonists.