Spirits in the Material World
A PILGRIMAGE TO ETERNITY: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith
BY TIMOTHY EGAN
Viking, 384 pp., $28
DOMINION: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World
BY TOM HOLLAND
Basic Books, 624 pp., $32
TIMOTHY EGAN SETS out on a pilgrimage—following the Via Francigena, an ancient route that takes him from Canterbury to Rome—in part, as he tells us, “to find God in Europe before God is gone,” and perhaps also in himself, caught as he is in “the squishy middle” between belief and atheism. Raised Catholic, Egan has seen betrayals of the unfortunately usual sort: the stickler priest who
