The road to Jerusalem: The labyrinth in western culture from the middle ages to the present day

Abstract: Throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries, unicursal, serpentine, and often times circular labyrinth designs were inlaid into the floors of several European cathedrals, including Notre Dame of Chartres, Ravenna, and Amiens. The labyrinth's re-emergence into popular culture through a new spiritual movement began in the early 1990's in California. The labyrinth pattern borrowed from Medieval European cathedrals has been recreated across North America in various mediums, including inlaid stone, painted concrete, and even portable canvas. This movement has spread across North America to large metropolitan areas and small communities alike.

Today, the people of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are again following in the footsteps of those who have walked in ages past. The labyrinth form popular today, the Chartres-type labyrinth, was adopted by the Christian church in the Middle Ages in Europe. How is it that a symbol popular almost a millennium ago and on a continent an ocean away can be revived here and now? I believe that is has to do with what the labyrinth represents---that the motif of the labyrinth has remained unchanged in almost a thousand years. The motif of the New Jerusalem, represented in the symbol of the labyrinth, has been handed down through Western culture for over a thousand years. In this paper I will describe and illuminate this motif as it is carried through Western culture for the past millennium.
 

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