<論説>中世後期ネーデルラントにおける聖地の表象と贖宥 (特集 : 祈り)

Abstract

中世後期のキリスト教世界では、信徒たちが、煉獄での滞在期間を可能な限り短くするため、様々な方法で贖宥を獲得しようとした。個人が限定された空間で想像のうちに聖地へと旅立つ仮想巡礼や、都市空間にエルサレムやローマの表象を重ね合わせることで都市を聖地化するプロセッションなどの集団的儀礼はその有力な手段であった。本稿では、内省的な宗教運動が広まりを見せると同時に、高度な都市化を経験した中世後期のネーデルラントを対象に、一見対照的とも思われる双方の実践が、ともに聖地の表象を喚起することで聖なる時間と空間を追体験し、救霊のための祈りを試みるという同質性を有していたことを明らかにしたい。そこからは、中世後期のキリスト教世界に特有な集団と個、公と私の関係性が浮かび上がってくるだろう。

In late medieval Europe, people tried to accumulate in various ways as many indulgences as possible in order to shorten the period during which they would have to stay in Purgatory to purify their souls. Pilgrimage to Jerusalem as well as to Rome was the prevailing practice to obtain these indulgences. However, without traveling to these remote places, people were able to gain the same spiritual benefit that the pilgrimage guaranteed by other means: virtual pilgrimage, through which an individual practiced imagined travel to the Holy Land in an enclosed space such as a private room or monastery, and collective rites, as represented by processions, that would transform a city into the sacred place by imposing a representation of Jerusalem or Rome on the urban space. Those rituals enabled the devotees to evoke the representation of these holy cities and to walk through and pray at the imagined sites. Then, they would experience sacred time and space in the 'Heilsgeschichte, ' centered on the Passion of Christ, and obtain the benefit of the indulgences from their Savior. In the late medieval Low Countries that are the focus of this paper, meditative or reflective religious movements such as Devotio Moderna (the Modern Devotion) flourished, and at the same time prominent cities experienced the most advanced social development in contemporary Europe. Therefore, people were able to practice both privately as in virtual pilgrimage and collectively in urban rituals in public spaces such as procession in order to obtain the indulgences associated with them. Nevertheless, previous studies have not paid sufficient attention to the relationship between, on the one hand, the private, individual rituals and the public ones, on the other hand. This paper tries to clarify that both had the same structure and could stimulate the devotee's imagination about these holy lands in order to utilize them to experience sacred space and time and to pray for their salvation. First, I discuss how virtual pilgrimage and urban processions used the representation of Jerusalem and how they fulfilled the desire for salvation. Then, virtual pilgrimage to Rome is compared with the transformation of cities into the 'little Romes' prompted by papal indulgences. Analysis of those religious practices reveals how on many occasions they undoubtedly provided those who were enthusiastic for the accumulation of the indulgences the means of salvation of their souls.