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372 Four Years of Corruption
we do think that our focus on the microecological aspect of any
such phenomenon offers one way forward—one of many. We are
not, by the same token, intentionally ‘reductionist’, seeing pilgrimage
as ‘just connectivity in disguise’ (Squatriti 2002: 275–6,
our italics; compare CS 445). Connectivity helps us to understand
pilgrimage (and vice versa) even though pilgrimage must
always be interpreted in the light of the relevant theology and
eschatology. 42 A far more telling and accurate criticism here is
made by Fentress and Fentress (2001: 218–19). We need to
address the question of why topography is enshrined in religious
perceptions and rites in the ways we describe.
Why should the practical, hard-working people of the Mediterranean
interrupt their cabotage in order to translate their topological knowledge
into flights of mythological fancy, unless, of course . . . by reinscribing
their topological knowledge in this manner, they were
preserving it in ways that made more sense to them—more socially
meaningful and easier to remember? . . . Sacred landscapes are loci of
social memory relating communities to their real or mythological
history.
8. render unto caesar: in quest of narrative
Fentress and Fentress argue that our religious history should
have taken account of diachronic variables, and the point can be
generalized. It can be turned into a judgement of CS that brings
together a number of criticisms rehearsed above and adds a few
more. The overall judgement is that the book lacks a narrative.
This is a judgement that we take very seriously—so much so,
indeed, that we are not going to respond to it here. This is
because the scale of any adequate response would be too large
for the present context and we are not yet ready to make it. We
hope to offer something more considered in LC. Meanwhile,
our task, and our interim contribution to the debate, is to try to
characterize our omission.
First, the underlying point seems to be that we have not
clearly enough integrated cultural variables at the particular
points at which they are drawn into our account of microecol-
42
Cf. McCormick, Origins, part II generally, for pilgrimage as an index of
connectivity.