History of Pilgrimages: All Roads Lead to Rome?
Pilgrimage waymarker, Chastleton, Oxfordshire, England. Image: Wikimedia
History of Pilgrimages: All Roads Lead to Rome?
A pilgrimage is a temporary journey to a “holy” place for a variety of personal or spiritual reasons, including enlightenment, healing, or transformation. Thereafter, a pilgrim returns to their regular daily life.
This is the first of three articles on pilgrimages in general and specifically the one to Rome during this Jubilee Year.
What does pilgrim mean, what are the secular and sacred pilgrimages of the world’s religions, including the monotheistic ones: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity?
Meaning of Pilgrim
Peregrine Falcon. Image: Wikipedia
The word “pilgrim” comes from the Latin perigrinus, meaning a traveler or wanderer from afar or abroad.
For example, the peregrine falcon, or “wandering falcon,” is a migratory bird, the world’s most widespread raptor, and one of the most widely found wild bird species.
In modern parlance, a pilgrim is on a physical journey for spiritual or moral purposes to a shrine, church, or location important to the pilgrim’s faith.
These important locations might be the birthplace or deathplace of a religious founder or saint, where their remains (relics) lie, or where a miracle was witnessed.
Pilgrims to America
The 17th-century Pilgrims who – because of persecution, left Plymouth, England, on the Mayflower for the “New World” and sailed to Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts – were Calvinistic Dissenters of the Church of England and religious Separatists.
They initially traveled from England to Holland but found it unsatisfactory for their needs and ultimately returned to England briefly before sailing to America to practice religious freedom and pursue economic opportunities.
Secular Pilgrimages
The term cultural pilgrimage applies to secular journeys in which the pilgrim visits a significant location associated with a popular celebrity or historical event.
For example:
- Fans of Elvis Presley visit Graceland, the King’s home outside Memphis, Tennessee.
Graceland. Author’s photo
- Fans of The Beatles might visit Liverpool to see where the Fab Four grew up and “The Cavern” where they first performed. In London, they might walk across the zebra crossing in front of Abbey Road Studios.
Abbey Road, London. Author’s photo
- For historical or personal reasons, one might visit the significant German Concentration Camps, like Dachau or Auschwitz.
Dachau Gate: Arbeit Macht Frei “Work Makes Free”. Author’s photo
Sacred Pilgrimages
World Religions
All religions have sacred sites that attract pilgrims.
- Hindus visit Varanasi, in Uttar Pradesh, India, which is considered the holiest ancient site. It is regarded by many as the most sacred place of Hindu pilgrimage.
- Buddhists make pilgrimages to Lumbini in Nepal’s Rupandehi District. It is the place where, according to Buddhist tradition, Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) was born in 563 B.C.
- Taoists would visit the Wudang Mountains in Shiyan, Hubei Province, China. This is the home to a famous complex of Taoist temples and monasteries and is renowned for the practice of the martial art Tai Chi, as I’ve previously written.
Abrahamic Religions
The three monotheistic religions that derive from the patriarch Abraham are, in chronological order: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For our purposes, I’ll conclude with Christianity, the world’s largest religion, with 2.3 billion adherents.
Judaism
Western Wall. Men on left, women on right. Image: Wikipedia
Historically, the holiest place for Jews was the Holy of Holies, the inner sanctuary of the Tabernacle. The mobile Tabernacle traveled with the Children of Israel and was placed on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Since the time that Solomon built the permanent Temple in Jerusalem, that has been the location. The Temple was destroyed during the Babylonian Captivity of Judea, rebuilt under King Herod the Great, and destroyed again in A.D. 70 by Rome.
The location of the Holy of Holies is thought to be slightly to the north or east of the Muslim Dome of the Rock. Consequently, the only remaining part of the Temple Wall to survive to this day is the Western Wall, sometimes called the “Wailing Wall” in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, as I describe in my article on a Jewish tour guide to Jerusalem.
Indeed, even in modern Judaism, there are Three Pilgrimage Festivals when Jews are to return to Jerusalem: Passover (Pesach), Shavuot (Feast of Weeks/Pentecost), and Sukkoth (Festival of Booths), as originally mentioned in the Torah (first five books of the Bible).
Islam
Pilgrim at Kaaba. Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Image: Wikimedia
Islam is the second-largest religion in the world, with approximately 2 billion adherents. The most sacred place for Muslims is the Kaaba, a cubical structure in the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Indeed, one of the five pillars of Islam is for Muslims to visit it as part of the Hajj, the pilgrimage.
The second most significant place for Muslims is the Masjid al-Nabawi in Medina, the burial place of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad, under the Green Dome.
The third most important site for Muslims is the Dome of the Rock on what is called the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. There, Muslims believe that Muhammad ascended to heaven, as I describe in my article on a Muslim tour guide to Jerusalem.
Christianity
Christians throughout the centuries have visited sites of relics and miracles. Relics are the bones, clothes, or articles of religious leaders or saints.
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem. Image: Diego Delso, delso.photo
The original destination for Christian pilgrimages was Jerusalem. Constantine built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the 4th century upon the site where Jesus was crucified, buried, and resurrected from the dead, as I describe in my article on a Christian’s tour guide to Jerusalem. Other notable locations in and around Jerusalem include the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane. Indeed, during Easter Week, pilgrims walk the “Stations of the Cross” along the Via Dolorosa.
In Roman Catholic dogma, veneration of a saint’s relics can grant an indulgence, releasing one from the temporal penalty for sin in Purgatory. The closer the relation to Jesus Christ, the more important the saint’s relics and their final resting place are considered.
For example:
- St. Peter is buried at the Basilica of St. Peter in Vatican City.
- St. Paul‘s remains are in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome.
- St. James‘ remains are enshrined in the Cathedral of St. James in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, a major pilgrimage destination.
- St. Mark‘s remains are found at the Basilica of San Marco in Venice.
- St. Francis‘ remains are found at the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi.
But other relics, including reputedly the bones of saints, the Crown of Thorns (at Sainte-Chapelle, Paris), the True Cross, and even a drop of Jesus’ blood, can be found in churches across Europe and the Middle East.
Paying to Visit Relics
In the early 16th century, Prince Frederick III, Elector of Saxony, was a collector of relics. He was the protector and patron of Martin Luther when Luther was a professor at the university that the Prince built in Wittenberg.
It was said that Frederick had amassed between 17,000 and 19,000 relics, which, paying pilgrims, venerating them, would have obtained an indulgence sufficient for 1,902,202 years of respite from Purgatory.
He even had a catalog printed, including Mary Magdalene’s hair, a thumb from St. Anne, a twig from Moses’ burning bush, and hay from the holy manger.
Wittenberg Reliquary Book. Image: Art Institute of Chicago
Eastern Orthodox
Made up of four patriarchal centers —Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, and Jerusalem — major pilgrimage sites include churches in Constantinople (modern Istanbul). Examples are
- St. George’s Cathedral in Istanbul
- Hagia Sophia was originally the world’s largest Christian cathedral until 1453, when, following the Ottoman conquest, it became a mosque. It was a museum from 1935 to 2020 and is now a mosque again.
Protestant
Some Protestants visit the homes or workplaces of the principal Protestant Reformers. For example:
- Martin Luther: pilgrims visit his birthplace in Eisleben, Germany; his Latin school in Eisenach; his university and monastery in Erfurt; and his church and home in Wittenberg.
- John Calvin: pilgrims visit his home, St. Peter’s Church, and the academy in Geneva, Switzerland
- John Knox: pilgrims visit St. Andrews, where he preached and served as chaplain, and St. Giles’ Church in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he preached and founded the Church of Scotland.
Anglican
Canterbury Cathedral. Image: By Antony McCallum of WyrdLight.com
While Anglicans may visit important churches in London, such as Westminster Abbey or St. Paul’s, as I describe in my article on London touring, they make pilgrimages to Canterbury. The cathedral there contains the shrine of Thomas Becket, who was Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury. He came into conflict with King Henry II of England (think: Peter O’Toole in A Lion in Winter) over the rights of the church vis-à-vis the King’s, and was subsequently martyred by the King’s followers.
Geoffrey Chaucer‘s book The Canterbury Tales recounts stories told by Christian pilgrims on their way to Canterbury Cathedral and the shrine of Thomas Becket.
Roman Catholic
In a word, Rome. All roads do lead to Rome.
Even Protestants visited Rome. When he was still a Catholic monk, Martin Luther visited Rome in 1510 on church business and made a pilgrimage to the Scala Sancta there, as I describe in my article on the life of Martin Luther.
Major Christian Pilgrimages
The three peregrinationes maiores (major pilgrimages) of the Middle Ages have been to Jerusalem, Compostela in Spain — the destination of the Camino de Santiago (as I wrote about previously) —and Rome.
See my next article on how all kinds of people, not just Christians, make the pilgrimage to Rome.
Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
billpetro.com
