A friend of mine did the Camino de Santiago this summer, which involved walking well over a 100 miles over the course of two weeks. There are obviously resources along the way to accommodate pilgrims and at this point there are tourism resources to get you to the start and home from the end, but over 300,000 participated last year (not all at once, but over the course of the year). That’s a lot of people individually deciding to walk a long way for personal reasons without a driving coordinating body involved.
Errr, no. Crusades were most definitely top-down. Had to be ordered and sanctioned by the Pope his ain self, and the message was then relayed and hammered home in every Mass sermon from here to Denmark. Of course, while the first crusade was the then Pope’s own idea, when it became apparent that waging war in the Levant carried a certain prestige, and perhaps most importantly a very deep *richitude *about it, the next Popes might have been discreetly encouraged. For the Faith and our Lord God of course.
The big pilgrimage roads were major & heavily disputed economical interests very, very far back. Hell, one reason Muhammad was kicked out of Mecca in the first place was because there was a lot of money in them heathen idols…
Yes, but that’s exploiting the people who decided on their own to come. That’s not what drives individuals to go in the first place.
Why did thousands of Syrians leave en mass at the same time . . . I’m putting money on large group. Hard to stop and hard to prey on . . .