Dorina Dragnea, Emmanouil Ger. Varvounis, Evelyn Reuter, Petko Hristov, and Susan Sorek, eds. Pilgrimage in the Christian Balkan World: The Path to Touch the Sacred and Holy

This book is a result of the project financed by the Balkan History Association (BHA) of Romania. It is an original and important publication, edited by a group of authors pursuing research on topics ranging from the Middle Ages to modernity, and examining religious pilgrimage in the Balkans—be it Orthodox Christian, Catholic, or Muslim—in Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Romania, Albania, and North Macedonia. The edited collection containts a table of contents, an introduction by Dorina Dragnea and Emmanouil Ger. Varvounis, fourteen contributions by scholars at various stages of their careers and based in diverse locations, a conclusion by Evelyn Reuter, and a general index. It also includes twenty-four illustrations in color, one table, and one map.In the first chapter, Magdalena Lubańska investigates the relationship between pilgrimage and healing, using the example of the Orthodox pilgrimage in Bulgaria. The author examines healing aspects of pilgrimage, led by the observation that "Orthodox Christians in Bulgaria usually equate veneration with healing" (p. 45). Aleksandra Dugushina and Alexander Novik delve into the topic of coexistence and mixed neighborhoods, while centering their research on the Christian (Orthodox and Catholic) and Muslim (Sunni and Bektashi) populations of Albanian, Serbian, Macedonian, Croat, and Roma ethnicity in the Devoll region of Southeast Albania, and the Vitina/Vitia region in Southeast Kosovo. Konstantinos Glakoumis examines the complex theory of the "pilgrimage polycentrism" and counterbalances it with the concept of pilgrimage diffusion. Glakoumis opens his thorough and complex elaboration with the analysis of three pilgrimage sites dedicated to Saint Nicodemus of Berat in Albania. The pilgrimage to the monastery dedicated to St. Naum, located in the southwest of North Macedonia, represents the main topic of Evelyn Reuter's contribution. Both Christians and Muslims visit this shrine, which makes it appealing for wider masses. Zoran Ladić explores the themes related to pilgrimage in Croatia and spacial mobility in relation to pilgrimage. The author engages in a detailed historical analysis, starting from the Late Middle Ages and the pilgrim diary of the "Bordeaux pilgrim" in which the pilgrim-way passing through the regions that become contemporary Croatia were first mentioned.Ion Gumenâi threads his study around the Moldavian monastery of Neamţ. The author bases his research on the material collected and provided by Archimandrite Andronic Popovici, who lived in the monastery during the nineteenth century. Maria Alexandra Pantea embarks on a complex historical and contextual analysis and proposes to view pilgrimage in the Arad county of Romania from a diachronic perspective and through a sociopolitical lens, and connected to confessional tolerance in the region. In a comparative and diachronic study, Mirela Hrovatin explores the Bistrica shrine, built during Ottoman rule, and located in the northwestern part of Croatia. The author aims at presenting this site as both a European and national heritage center.Constantin Necula discusses the specific topic of the pedagogy of faith using the example of pilgrimage to Romanian Orthodox shrines. The author promotes the idea of a "fundamental pedagogical character" attributed to pilgrimage (p. 185), and examines pilgrimage theology in its cultural and social aspects. In his comparative study, Emmanouil Ger. Varvounis analyzes various aspects of pilgrimage while focusing on the continuity and change of pilgrimage sites in modern Greece from a historical perspective. The author also examines the issues relating to religious tourism and religious art craft. Dorina Dragnea's contribution sheds more light on the reenacted forms of the Orthodox Christian religiosity in the Republic of Moldova after the fall of the communist regime. Dragnea dissects the history of mentalities and socioeconomic factors that all led to the profiling of the contemporary religious landscape in Moldova.Biljana Anđelković writes about the monastery of Tumane, built in the Middle Ages and situated in the vicinity of Djerdap in eastern Serbia. The detection of the sociocultural factors that contributed to the changing shape of the Serbian monastery of Tumane in its historicity occupies the core of this article. The author elucidates the reasons leading to the renown that the monastery enjoys today. Vassiliki Chryssanthopoulou engages with the topic of pilgrimage to the monastery of St. Penteleimon, situated in a depopulated southeastern Aegean Island, and raises several important questions relevant to the communal pilgrim identity. Georgios Kouzas investigates issues of continuity and change, desacralization and consumerism, in an example of the pilgrimage sites in Attica, and "the dialectical relationship between sacred and secular" (p. 288).This is one of the rare works on pilgrimage in the Christian Balkan world, an unjustly underrepresented topic in contemporary scholarship. This volume offers some new insights and pathways for future explorations.