Bishop Methodian Campanian and the Practice of Pilgrimage to the Holy Land of the Russian Emigration: (Re)Invented Tradition

Abstract

The paper deals with the Russian émigrés’ pilgrimage to the Holy Land after the Second World War. The author analyzes the phenomenon of the restoration of group pilgrimages as a process of reinventing the pilgrimage tradition first developed mainly in the peasant milieu at the turn of the twentieth century. The annual trips from France organized by Bishop Methodian Kulman served as the basis for the new pilgrimage movement and the formation of a new community of “co-pilgrims”, uniting Russian Orthodox emigrants from all over the world. Perceived as a romantic ideal, the old peasant pilgrimage to Palestine became a source of new meanings for pilgrims in the second half of the 20th century. The author explores the process of gradual ritualization and formalization of the trips; the reconstruction of the Russian mental map of the Holy Land; the use of the pilgrimage as a way to cope with longing for the lost homeland and seeking authenticity by reproducing institutions of the past. The pilgrimage, interpreted as a spiritual ideal, became one of the ways to consolidate the Russian emigration.