Pilgrimage writing in the Renaissance draws, as the epigraphs to this
section suggest, on biblical, patristic, and late medieval tradition.
The tradition is not stable, however, nor do all those who speak the
language use it in identical ways. Indeed a characteristic of pilgrim-
age discourse is that its terms are as subject to constant displacement
as the pilgrims of our epigraphs: they may find themselves temporar-
ily housed in devotional handbooks, letters, itineraries, dialogues,
journals, chronicles, romances, or poems. Pilgrimage writing can-
not, therefore, be delimited as a specific genre, nor yet can a straight-
forward chronological development of its terms be established.
There are as many kinds of pilgrims as there are 'princes princesses
gens habitans sur la terre'.

Many readers of pilgrimage writing, particularly those who write
of medieval texts, none the less argue that generic typologies can
indeed usefully be established. Of these the most fruitful categoriza-
tion is that which divides pilgrim texts into guides, logs, and narra-
tions, with this latter category further subdivided into letters,
diaries, and narratives. ¹ All of these forms of writing survive into the
Renaissance, and a number of texts remain either one or other of the
three primary kinds even if they change name: Estienne Guides, for
instance, are in effect logs, while Balourdet Guide is in truth a

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