Pilgrimage
The pilgrim travelled from Piacenza via Constantinople and Cyprus to Tripolis. From there, he travelled south via Beirut and Tyrus before turning towards Galilea where he visited Nazareth and Capernaum before going through Samaria towards the Jordan where he visited at Epiphany the alleged site where Jesus was baptised. He then proceeded towards Jerusalem where his descriptions of the chalice of onyx that was venerated in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and of the Holy Lance in the Basilica of Mount Zion are early attestations of the cultus of these two relics. He then travelled towards the coast and passed through Gaza where he mentioned the tomb of saint Hilarion and took then the road towards the Mount Sinai. [4] [5]
The pilgrim also brought back many objects that he had collected from the holy places, a feature typical of visiting pilgrims though the pilgrim seems to have been very enthusiastic about them. These objects included medicinal herbs, earth and oil from the Holy Sepulchre and stones. [6]
The pilgrim's itinerary documents the extent of the sixth-century trade catering to the pious pilgrims in the Holy Land: "We went to Cana, where our Lord was present at the marriage feast," the Piacenza Pilgrim reports, "and we reclined on the very couch." Inspired by such a vivid figuration of Biblical truth, Antoninus indulged the classic tourists' act: "and there, unworthy as I was, I wrote the names of my parents". [7]
Although he covered in his travels nearly the same extensive territory as the Spanish nun, his work contains but few details not found in other writers; it is, moreover, marred by gross errors and by fabulous tales which betray the most naive credulity."
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also known as the Church of the Resurrection, is a fourth-century church in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. It is considered to be the holiest site for Christians in the world and has been the most important pilgrimage site for Christians since the fourth century.
Mamre, full Hebrew name Elonei Mamre, 'Oaks of Mamre', refers to an ancient religious site originally focused on a single holy tree, growing "since time immemorial" at Hebron in Canaan. At its first location, Khirbet Nimra, a pagan tree cult predated the biblical narrative. It is best known from the biblical story of Abraham and the three visitors. The tree under which he had pitched his tent is known as the oak or terebinth of Mamre. Modern scholars have identified three sites near Hebron which, in different historical periods, have been successively known as Mamre: Khirbet Nimra, Ramat el-Khalil, and Khirbet es-Sibte. The last one contained an old oak tree identified by a relatively new tradition as the Oak of Mamre, which has collapsed in 2019, and is on the grounds of a Russian Orthodox monastery.
Egeria, Etheria, or Aetheria was a Hispano-Roman Christian woman, widely regarded to be the author of a detailed account of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land about 381/2–384. The long letter, dubbed Peregrinatio or Itinerarium Egeriae, is addressed to a circle of women at home. Historical details it contains set the journey in the early 380s, making it the earliest of its kind. It survives in fragmentary form in a later copy—lacking a title, date and attribution.
Church of the Sepulchre of Saint Mary, also Tomb of the Virgin Mary or the Church of the Assumption, is a Christian church built around an ancient Jewish rock-cut tomb in the Kidron Valley – at the foot of Mount of Olives, in Jerusalem – believed by Eastern Christians to be the burial place of Mary, the mother of Jesus. The Status Quo, a 250-year old understanding between religious communities, applies to the site.
Virgilio Canio Corbo was an Italian Franciscan Friar and professor of archaeology at the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum in Jerusalem.
Zoara, called Zoar/Tzoar or Bela in the Hebrew Bible, Segor in the Septuagint, and Zughar by medieval Arabs, was an ancient city located in the Dead Sea basin in the Transjordan.
Itinerarium Burdigalense, also known as Itinerarium Hierosolymitanum, is the oldest known Christian itinerarium. It was written by the "Pilgrim of Bordeaux", an anonymous pilgrim from the city of Burdigala in the Roman province of Gallia Aquitania.
The Garden Tomb is a Christian pilgrimage site in Jerusalem that contains an ancient tomb, also named the Garden Tomb, considered by some Protestants to be the empty tomb whence Jesus of Nazareth resurrected. This belief contrasts with an older tradition according to which the death and resurrection of Jesus occurred at a site known as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Garden Tomb is adjacent to a rocky knoll known as Skull Hill. In the mid-nineteenth century, some Christian scholars proposed that Skull Hill is Golgotha, where the Romans crucified Jesus. Accordingly, the Garden Tomb draws hundreds of thousands of annual visitors, especially Evangelicals and other Protestants.
Willibald was an 8th-century bishop of Eichstätt in Bavaria.
Jerusalem's role in first-century Christianity, during the ministry of Jesus and the Apostolic Age, as recorded in the New Testament, gives it great importance, both culturally and religiously, in Christianity. Jerusalem is generally considered the cradle of Christianity.
The Muristan is a complex of streets and shops in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. It was the location of the first Bimaristan of the Knights Hospitaller. The name Muristan is derived from the Persian word Bimārestān, meaning "hospital".
Jerusalem in the Middle Ages was a major Byzantine metropolis from the 4th century CE before the advent on the early Islamic period in the 7th century saw it become the regional capital of Jund Filastin under successive caliphates. In the later Islamic period it went on to experience a period of more contested ownership, war and decline. Muslim rule was interrupted for a period of about 200 years by the Crusades and the establishment of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem. At the tail end of the Medieval period, the city was ceded to the Ottomans in 1517, who maintained control of it until the British took it in 1917.
The Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society (PPTS) was a text publication society based in London, which specialised in publishing editions and translations of medieval texts relevant to the history of pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Particular attention was given to accounts by pilgrims and other travellers containing geographical or topographical information, as well as those which discussed the manners and customs of the Holy Land. The original narratives were written in a variety of languages, including Greek, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, Old French, Russian, and German.
Daniel the Traveller, known also as Daniel the Pilgrim, Daniel of Kiev, or Abbot Daniel, was the first travel writer from the Kievan Rus. He is known for travelling to the Holy Land in the aftermath of the First Crusade and his descriptions are important records of the region during that time. Some have identified him with a certain Daniel, bishop of Yuryev between 1115 and 1122.
The New Church of the Theotokos, or New Church of the Mother of God, was a Byzantine church erected in Jerusalem by Emperor Justinian I. Like the later Nea Ekklesia in Constantinople, it is sometimes referred to in English as "the Nea" or the "Nea Church".
The Monza ampullae form the largest collection of a specific type of Early Medieval pilgrimage ampullae or small flasks designed to hold holy oil from pilgrimage sites in the Holy Land related to the life of Jesus. They were made in Palestine, probably in the fifth to early seventh centuries, and have been in the Treasury of Monza Cathedral north of Milan in Italy since they were donated by Theodelinda, queen of the Lombards,. Since the great majority of surviving examples of such flasks are those in the Monza group, the term may be used to cover this type of object in general.
Al-Shaykh Saad, historically also called Karnaim and Dair Ayyub, is a town in southern Syria, administratively part of the Daraa Governorate, located northwest of Daraa on the Jordan–Syria border. Nearby localities include Nawa, Jasim and al-Harrah to the north, Izra and al-Shaykh Maskin to the east, Tafas and Da'el to the southeast, and Adwan and Tasil to the west and Jalin to the southwest. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics, al-Shaykh Saad had a population of 3,373 in the 2004 census.
The Libellus de locis sanctis is a 12th-century Latin guide book and travelogue of Palestine designed for the use of Christian pilgrims to the Holy Places. It "stands out" from the mass of medieval guide books "for its literary and informative qualities".
Historical sources of the Crusades: pilgrimages and exploration include those authors whose work describes pilgrimages to the Holy Land and other explorations to the Middle East and Asia that are relevant to Crusader history. In his seminal article in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Dominican friar and historian Bede Jarrett (1881–1934) wrote on the subject of Pilgrimage and identified that the "Crusades also naturally arose out of the idea of pilgrimages." This was reinforced by the Reverend Florentine Stanislaus Bechtel in his article Itineraria in the same encyclopedia. Pilgrims, missionaries, and other travelers to the Holy Land have documented their experiences through accounts of travel and even guides of sites to visit. Many of these have been recognized by historians, for example, the travels of ibn Jubayr and Marco Polo. Some of the more important travel accounts are listed here. Many of these are also of relevance to the study of historical geography and some can be found in the publications of the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society (PPTS) and Corpus Scriptorum Eccesiasticorum Latinorum (CSEL), particularly CSEL 39, Itinerarium Hierosolymitana. Much of this information is from the seminal work of 19th-century scholars including Edward Robinson, Titus Tobler and Reinhold Röhricht. Recently, the Independent Crusaders Project has been initiated by the Fordham University Center for Medieval Studies providing a database of Crusaders who traveled to the Holy Land independent of military expeditions.
The Breviary of Jerusalem is a short late antique Latin guidebook for Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem.
