The Earliest Phase of Christian Pilgrimage in the Near East الحج المسيحي ق (original) (raw)
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Jerusalem Quarterly, 2023
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Pilgrimage to Jerusalem Journeys, Destinations, Experiences across Times and Cultures
Byzanz zwischen Orient und Okzident | 19 Veröffentlichungen des Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus Mainz / Frankfurt, 2020
Jerusalem is a city holy to three world religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. From the early Byzantine period, Christian pilgrimage here and to other holy sites became a »mass phenomenon« after Saint Helen was said to have miraculously discovered the »True Cross of Christ«, and her son Constantine the Great had built churches in this area. Thousands of Christian believers made their way to holy sites in Palestine, Egypt and other places in order to physically experience salvation history and seek divine intervention in their lives. Numerous travel reports, pilgrim guides and other written sources highlight important aspects of pilgrimage. In addition, many well-preserved churches, monasteries, hostels and other buildings, as well as rich archaeological findings, provide us with a vivid and synthetic picture of the history of pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In the course of these religiously motivated journeys, people of the three »religions of the book« came into contact and interacted in a multitude of ways. Full download avalable here: https://books.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeum/reader/download/711/711-29-89704-1-10-20200721.pdf
Byzanz zwischen Orient und Okzident 19, 2020
Proceedings of the Conference held in Jersualem, 5th to 7th December 2017 Jerusalem is a city holy to three world religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. From the early Byzantine period, Christian pilgrimage here and to other holy sites became a »mass phenomenon«. Thousands of Christians set out to holy sites in Palestine, Egypt and other places in order to physically experience salvation history and seek divine intervention in their lives. Numerous travel reports, pilgrim guides and other written sources highlight important aspects of pilgrimage. In addition, many well-preserved churches, monasteries, hostels and other buildings, as well as rich archaeological findings, provide us with a vivid and synthetic picture of the history of pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
in "Storia della Storiografia", 64/2 (2013), pp. 105-130
Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land began in the age of Constantine and developed consistently until the eleventh century when pilgrimage’s nature totally changed. Until the end of the nineteenth century studies on the Medieval pilgrimage were closely connected to the history of the crusades. The sense of Hegel’s lesson was not grasped. The German philosopher had emphasized the role of Jerusalem as the centre of the Christian world, focusing on the dual nature of the pilgrimage, between infinity and material, temporality and eternity. During the age of colonialism, French scholars in particular – e.g. Michaud – revealed an increasing interest for the crusades searching for the origins of the French expansion in the Mediterranean area. In this perspective, history of pilgrimage was considered as a sort of brief preface to the history of the crusades. Although the literary sources for a study of pilgrimage were almost all already known and published, the historiographical topic had still not been examined independently. A specialized historiography on Christian pilgrimage was developed in the second quarter of the last century. The interest for the topic gradually grew. With the Nineties, in view of the Jubilee of the Millennium, studies on the history of medieval pilgrimage have largely increased. Anthropological perspective has had a great influence on the Medieval studies on pilgrimage.
Pilgrimage to Jerusalem: Journeys, Destinations, Experiences across Times and Cultures, eds. F. Daim et al. Mainz 2020, 87-107., 2020
The city of Jerusalem has been associated with Christian pilgrimage since antiquity. By the sixth century, Christian pilgrimage from all over the Mediterranean toward the city had become a mass-phenomenon. However, testimonies for pilgrims become sparser after the Arab conquest in 638 and in the centuries of Muslim rule over Palestine. Yet there can be no doubt that Jerusalem remained the most desired pilgrimage destination of the entire Christendom in the Early and High Middle Ages. The paper gathers pilgrimage testimonies and analyses the dates and travel routes of individual pilgrims in order to draw a picture of Jerusalem pilgrimage activity and its frequency over the centuries. A contextualisation of the reported travels within the political situation between Byzantium and the Muslim potentates ruling over Palestine accompanies the analysis. It raises the question which of the political conditions we can consider as critical for the pilgrims’ decisions regarding their travel route and the date of departure.
Jerusalem Reformed: Rethinking Early Modern Pilgrimage, Renaissance Quarterly 75.3 (2022): 796–848
Recent scholarship has challenged the still-powerful claim that long-distance pilgrimage and the journey to Jerusalem dramatically declined in number and significance in the sixteenth century. This article seeks to explore the different ways in which pilgrimage was embedded in the culture of the period. We interpret pilgrimage as a field of shared cross-confessional practices, representational conventions, and contestation. The paper presents a series of interlinked case studies, based on printed sources, correspondence, family archives, and material evidence. Together they demonstrate that early modern pilgrimage perpetuated medieval practices and yet was in constant dialogue with contemporary, post-Reformation religious and intellectual trends.