Tenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

The contemporary renaissance of the Way of St. James is a cultural-religious phenomenon of a complex nature. Andea Hesp said that, “At the heart of the Camino culture lies the diary. It serves as part of the Camino practice and the published Camino narratives feel and read like highly-edited diaries” (Hesp 2010). There are many narratives about Camino published in Polish (Plichta 2016) as well as in English, Italian, Spanish, German (e.g. Lopez 2013; Sepp 2014). Many of them are in online form (Ogden 2016; Nuenen & Beek 2016). Polish pilgrims participate in this “Camino culture,” and expand the online space of modern traveling to Santiago. The source texts – blogs – used in the research, have been produced by people who have travelled along the medieval versions of the trails, in accordance with modern requirements, with final or in the case of continuation of journey to “the world’s end” (Finisterre, Muxía) culmination point at the Galician shrine of St. James the Greater Apostle in Santiago de Compostela (Plichta 2018). The aim of this paper is to present and characterize Polish blogs connected with St. James’s routs. This issue is all the more interesting because it is one of the most important sources of information, and an incentive for Internet users to decide to go on the route in physical space. However, it is a fact that many of modern pilgrims seem to be “immersed” in online space.