167 Representations of travel motivation 3.6 Conclusion The question central to this chapter was how hagiographers represented travel motivations in hagiographical narratives. Asking this question served two aims: firstly, to establish which interpretations of the many journeys made by monks the hagiographers represented for their audiences and whether and how the hagiographers used this representation for discursive aims. Secondly, the analysis aimed to establish whether value judgements on (particular types of) monastic mobility can be deduced from the way in which hagiographers represented travel motivation. In answering the first question, we can conclude the following: authors interpreted monastic mobility in a plurality of ways by providing many travel motivations. Amidst this plurality each author gave special prominence to particular motivations and employed these prominent travel motivations for discursive aims. Firstly, we can establish that travel motivations are used by the hagiographers to explain the mobility of monks. In the Lives of Euthymius and Elias the hagiographers included a travel motivation for most journeys in the narrative, whereas in the Life of Gregory many journeys are not directly preceded by a travel motivation. However, also in this Life the representation of travel motivations explains Gregory’s mobility, but the hagiographer used a general travel motivation that interprets many journeys to come, rather than providing each journey with a motivation separately. The overall impression that we get from the representation of the reasons for mobility is that it is multifarious. Various types of travel motivations are provided for the journeys of the monks in the narratives: educational and professional mobility, involuntary mobility, pilgrimage and mobility inspired by loyalty to personal connections are some of the examples. By including these motivations the hagiographers show the monks to share experiences with other movers in the medieval Mediterranean. That is, these motivations correspond to the historical reality of the manifold forms of medieval mobility. On the other hand, certain types of travel motivation, and the way in which these motivations are presented, represent the monks as ‘special movers’, rather than sharing experiences with many ordinary travellers. These travel motivations are also the ones that the hagiographers give most prominence to in their narratives over other travel motivations: divinely inspired travel and travel for spiritual progress. The narrative of the Life of Euthymius emphasises mobility for spiritual development, the narrative of the Life of Elias divine revelations and of the Life of Gregory both a divine revelation and spiritual development. We thus observe overlap in how the hagiographers present the motivations for monastic mobility in their narratives, relating their protagonists’ mobility to a reality of medieval mobility and by singling out particular travel motivations that represent them as special. We also see divergence between the Lives: the strategies that the hagiographers employ to give prominence to travel motivations differ. The hagiographer of Gregory gives 3
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