a journey of pilgrimage, and, most Christian visitors to Jerusalem for the first 300 years after Jesus was crucified were more interested in coming to the land of the Bible to learn about it firsthand and meet with its small Christian community, than in visiting sites. It was a historical destination for them, more than a spiritually significant city. Despite this attitude and approach, the natural desire to visit the scenes associated with the birth, life and death of Jesus was part of early Christian culture as well, and it became a popular custom among Christians, from early on, to remember Jesus and feel His presence by visiting places consecrated by His having been there - Bethlehem, Nazareth, Capernaum, Jerusalem, and elsewhere.
Land; it had become the inheritance of the Church in Byzantine times and, according to Byzantine law, was perceived as the land made holy by Jesus. Most pilgrims came to stand in the presence of those sites associated with the life, death and resurrection of their Savior and to protect the land and its Christian population and sites. Others, however, came - or were obliged to come - to do penance and to obtain redemption from serious crimes. From the ninth through the 11th century, parricides were obliged to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and even later, towards the end of the 12th century, the murderers of Thomas Becket made a pilgrimage of penance to Jerusalem, where tradition holds that some of them died and were buried on the Temple Mount. Monastic Pilgrimage
The development of the cult of saints was crucial to the growth of pilgrimage as a place-orientated activity, as opposed to a focus on “heavenly Jerusalem.” The perceived presence of saints, through their relics, attracted pilgrims and helped establish a new sacred geography, not only in the Holy Land, but later throughout Christendom. However, as relics were transferred from one place to another and new local saints emerged, debates arose, often motivated by political and economic agendas, as to whether pilgrimages should be undertaken to the Holy Land, or to local shrines. In addition, monastic ascetic migration to the Holy Land began to
develop in the fourth and fifth centuries. It drew devout Christians to the Holy Land desert in acts of spiritual migration, to reflect on the experience of Abraham, of a stranger and a guest, the figure of Moses, who guided the people out of Egypt and led them to the Promised Land, as well as that of Elijah, who met God on Mt. Carmel. The believers founded monasteries, lauras, hermitages and coenobia in the desert of Judea, among other places, and many fervent followers came in their wake from all over the Christian world, either to stay with them for a short while before returning home, or establish their own monasteries and communities - which in turn drew other pilgrims. Hundreds of monasteries dotted the Judean Desert terrain about 1400 years ago, and many desert retreats were established as well, not unlike the settlement of the Essenes at Qumran, where John the Baptist grew
Christians traveled to Jerusalem as early as the second century, and Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem stated around 350 AD, that: “Others only hear but we both see and touch.” St. Jerome went on a Holy Land pilgrimage not long afterwards, and he spent the last 34 years of his life in a monastery in Bethlehem. Although he called the Holy Land “the fifth Gospel,” and wrote that: “Nothing is lacking to your faith although you have not seen Jerusalem,” Jerome also agreed with Cyril, writing that a pilgrimage to the Holy Land assists believers in understanding the revealed word of God and arguing that it is part of the Christian faith “to adore where His feet have stood and to see the vestiges of the nativity, of the Cross, and of the Passion.” Despite the costs, hazards and arduous nature of such a journey, pilgrims increasingly sought out the Holy
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