In the Land of the Thebaids: Landscape, Place, and Ambulatio

The fourth and fifth century desert of Anthony the Abbot and Paul of Thebes have long been revered as a locus of spiritual purification. Indeed, the ascetic practices performed and forged in the desert inspired the very formation of western monasticism. This paper explores the symbolic and spiritual role of the desert in late medieval devotional practice. The desert as a real and metaphorical space was central to devotion in a variety of ways: as a literal haven for the Desert Fathers and Mothers, as a symbol of religious isolation, as a mental locus for pilgrimage. This paper considers the desert as it is represented in landscape looking specifically at the fourteenth-century Thebaid at Santa Marta in Siena. It argues for walking or ambulatio in Latin as the chief means by which the viewer engages and processes the thematic landscape of the desert. This peripatetic processing of the desert allows the viewer to embody the role of quester, the person who withdraws to the desert seeking someone who surpasses her in spiritual perfection. Rather than focus on the experience of the desert landscape as primarily a visual one, this paper offers that the ascetic practices of the desert could be re-lived and understood through the revelatory process of walking and experiencing the environment peripatetically.