PILGRIMAGE TO ETERNITY

'From Canterbury To Rome In Search of Faith', the book traces an ancient pilgrimage route and explores the past and future of Christianity. Moved by his mother's death and his Irish Catholic family's complicated history with the church, Timothy Egan decided to follow in the footsteps of centuries of seekers to force a reckoning with his own beliefs. He embarked on a thousand mile pilgrimage through the theological cradle of Christianity exploring the collapse of religion in the world that it created. He sets out along the Via Francigena, once the major medieval trail leading the devout to Rome, overland via the alpine peaks and small mountain towns of France, Switzerland and Italy, with the goal of walking into St. Peter's Square in hopes of meeting the galvanizing pope who is struggling to hold together a church through the worst crisis in half a millennium. He finds a modern Canterbury Tale in the Chapel where Queen Bertha introduced Christianity to pagan Britain; parses the supernatural in a French town built on miracles; and journeys to the oldest abbey in the Western world, founded in 515 and home to continuous prayer over the 1,500 years that have followed. He is accompanied by a quirky cast of fellow pilgrims and by some of the towering figures of the faith - Joan of Arc, Henry VIII and Martin Luther. With our companion we'll feed mind, body and soul along the winding paths of the French and Italian countryside as Egan draws us in, making us feel frozen in the snow-covered Alps, joyful in valleys of trees with low-hanging fruit, sceptical in the relics of embalmed saints, and hopeful for the healing of his encrusted toes! Egan is 'a masterly collector of memorable stories.' 367pp, tiny remainder mark, maps.