A voyage to the land of mirrors: Felix Fabri’s narration of the Virgin Mary’s pilgrimages as a model for late medieval Mendicant piety

Scholars have acknowledged the role mental exercises played in virtual pilgrimages, yet their role in actual voyages to the sacred places is less recognised. One chapter in a pilgrimage account, Evagatorium in Terrae Sanctae, composed in the early 1480s by the Dominican pilgrim and preacher Felix Fabri, describes the Virgin Mary’s daily pilgrimages to the sacred places in Jerusalem in the 14 years she is said to have lived after the Ascension of Christ. In this chapter Fabri offers a normative model for visiting the sacred places, in the spirit of vita mixta, promoting mental practices as inherent in, and even superior to, the physical act of pilgrimage. A cultural-historical reading of Fabri’s chapter locates it in close relationship to other literary genres, particularly devotional works and sermons.