Gendered Spaces and Practice, Relationality and Authority at the Marian Shrine of Ta’ Pinu, Gozo, Malta

  • Avril Maddrell
Chapter
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Abstract

In this chapter, the case of Ta’ Pinu, a site of pilgrimage for Marian devotion on the island of Gozo and national shrine of Malta, is analysed as an example of the intersection of gender and religion, with attention to the spatial practices and power relations associated with these flows and processes. In contrast to pilgrimage shrines which attract large numbers of long-distance pilgrims, Ta’ Pinu draws pilgrims primarily from the Maltese archipelago. Whilst the journeys to the island shrine can have significance, drawing on feminist theories of embodiment, the focus here is less on the journey per se and more on the gendered spaces and practices of religious performance and related geographies of spiritual encounter, emotion and affect at Ta’ Pinu. This is set within the wider context of faith practices as embodied in everyday spaces and practices, reflecting the need for more scholarly attention to examining those pilgrimages which are embedded in everyday practice rather as constituting stand-alone extraordinary events (Maddrell and della Dora 2013b). This meshing of perspectives and themes combined with data from multiple sources highlights Maltese women’s agency and authority through a sense of intimate relation to Madonna Ta’ Pinu and a now deceased local devotee, despite an exclusively male priesthood and institutionalised church. This yields fresh understanding of the specific place–time dynamics of gender and religion at Ta’ Pinu, which in turn contributes to a spiritually inflected understanding of gendered discourses and practices within the assemblage of the Roman Catholic church.

Keywords

Madonna, Gender, Authority, Local, Embodied practice 
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Copyright information

© The Author(s) 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  • Avril Maddrell
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of Geography and Environmental ManagementUniversity of the West of EnglandBristolUK

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