Walking in the City Within a Religious Context on the Example of the Roman Catholic Church
摘要
Various spaces of human activity coexist in the cities. The religious space may require infrastructures needed by religious man (lat. homo religious) and it has the features of a public space. The analysis of “walking in the city” can be conducted, among others, from the perspective of time geography. The aim of this chapter is to show the relations between religion and walking in the city limited only to the Roman Catholic Church. Four types of walks driven by religious or religious and sightseeing motivations were identified: (1) walking to a sacred building in order to participate in collective prayer or for other reasons; (2) a walk as an element of liturgical or paraliturgical ceremonies; (3) pilgrimages; (4) sightseeing of sacred buildings and sites of significance for believers. If a society is strongly secularized, it might be difficult to find an adequate reference group for research. Another factor of different motivations for walking in the city is the level of individual religiosity. In different time intervals, one can see different itineraries of walks, based on religious motivations.