Could I call myself a peregrinator? or a pilgrim? or a holiday maker?
The English, or so it appears to me, are suspicious of pilgrims and pilgrimages.
Perhaps it smacks of the incongruity of noble knights galloping off to the Holy Land, raping and pillaging in their search for the Holy Grail.
Over the years, when I have said to an English speaking person that I am making a pilgrimage, they hear me using that word metaphorically, a poetic indication of my love for such and such a place. They might add that they love the Dordogne and they've stayed in a gite for two weeks every summer for twenty years.
However, when I have said, in broken French, I am making a pellerinage, the response is very different. They respond with silence and much head nodding-for what can one say. I imagine we are thinking of the same reference points: bell towers, rose windows, porticos with carved saints, the still air of the dim interiors muffling the secular roar outside. But mostly the connection between these places, the roads and bridges, fields and woods, customs and local specialities.
" Qui multum peregrinantur raro sanctificantur".
(which Google Translates as "Who undertake many pilgrimages seldom become holy ".)
Thank you, Thomas a Kempis, you are probably right.
I will try to not let this worry me.
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