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This study examines three of the most iconic sites associated with Islamic mysticism, or Sufism, in Ottoman Hungary. These are three mausoleums located in Buda, Pécs, and Turbék, near Zigetvár. The first two are the final resting places of the Sufi mystics known as Gül Baba and Idris Baba. The third is Sultan Süleyman's mausoleum next to a Sufi dervish lodge, the foundations of which were uncovered during recent excavations. The research sheds light on the (embodied) material practices associated with these sites, as well as their sensory engagement and synaesthetic experiences. The bodies of the spiritual leaders, presented in the first two cases, serve as living sites of mystical experiences, both through self-destructive acts graphically represented on their bodies, and through bodily miracles such as hypercorporeality, multilocality, and dream visions. The third case concerns the body of a secular and a spiritual leader, the temporary burial of his disemboweled and embalmed body in the mausoleum at Turbék, and the tradition that his heart and entrails were kept in a reliquary-like vessel at the site, which interestingly paralleled contemporary Habsburg customs. Building on Thomas Csordas (1990) and Manuel Vásquez (2011), I explore the role of human and non-human "supernatural" actors interacting in these mystical networks, focusing on the role of their embodiment and materiality, their movement and their physically fragmented bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every year thousands of pilgrims, most on foot, travel to Santiago de Compostela, a medieval pilgrimage destination in northwestern Spain. Recent scholarship has mapped a historical shift of the focus in contemporary pilgrimage from the relics of St. James, ostensibly held in the crypt in Santiago's cathedral, to the journey itself as a primary site of meaning and transformation. However, this scholarship has not addressed the ways in which the meaning of pilgrimage is bound up with pilgrims' practices relating to their own and others' bodies. Pilgrims' feet, in particular, have become a fraught focus of contemporary pilgrimage. Pilgrims' practices of walking the pilgrimage, together with recorded images of their feet in social media videos, work to materialize two forms of nostalgia. The first involves the desire to return to a past time of imagined authentic pilgrimage. The second encompasses a melancholic recognition of the fragility of the present moment and longing for human connection. A detailed reading of two YouTube videos documenting the care of pilgrims' own and others' injured feet allows for an analysis of how recorded images of feet posted by pilgrims on social media reveal the complex relationship between bodies, social media, and nostalgia in pilgrimage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reliquaries were among the most highly valued items in the medieval churches, and cathedrals accumulated hundreds of them. Their shapes and materials, the relics contained within, and other essential details were registered in lists written by cathedral treasurers. In the Nordic countries, most medieval reliquaries as well as written documents concerning them have disappeared. However, a few inventories with relics and reliquaries from Nordic cathedrals are preserved. This essay examines how the material dimensions of reliquaries were put into words in those lists and what the chosen words reveal about the way these objects were perceived by their keepers and audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]