Journeying and border-crossing in The Legend of Saint Julian Hospitaller
Résumé
A late fourteenth-century saint’s life taken from The Scottish Legendary, The Legend of Saint Julian Hospitaller relates the circumstances of Julian’s journey from home for fear that the parricide predicted by a hart he was hunting should come true. The marvel of the prophecy uttered by the animal followed by the accomplishment of the dreadful fate which, like Oedipus, Julian is unsuccessful in circumventing, trigger a redemptive process in the form of a long contritional peregrination, an unremitting endeavour to atone for his sin. To achieve this spiritual goal he uproots himself from familiar ground and travels across borders until he reaches an edgeland both physical and metaphorical. There he establishes a hospice to accommodate the travellers he ferries across the nearby river. This remote place where Julian selflessly takes care of weary wanderers in want of temporary shelter is where the satisfaction of his self-imposed penitence becomes complete. It is signified in the miraculous transfiguration into an angel of light of a leprous child that Julian spares no effort to save from death. This paper focuses on Julian’s taxing progress to sanctity and attempts to show how access to holiness depends on displacement and the crossing of boundaries involving a salutary loss of possessions and bearings too.