2.1 Old Testament

In the Old Testament, the Hebrew ger, which relates to ethnicity but is more defined by class and landlessness, and the Hebrew toshav may be translated as stranger, sojourner, immigrant, or resident alien (Jobling 2009; Matlock and Arnold 2009). A ger was an individual who resided with, but did not originate from, the Israelite or Jewish community. Since the status of such residents was neither ‘nokhri, a foreigner temporarily in the land’, nor ‘ezrah, a citizen with full rights and obligations’, the concepts of ger and toshav had sociopolitical and theological significance as Israel lived in relation to various lands (Pullan 2005: 394). These terms, which tie to land and community, join with New Testament terminology to nuance Christian theories and practices of pilgrimage.

2.2 New Testament

In the New Testament, the Greek paroikos (alien) designates ‘otherness’ from a majority group while xenos (stranger) implies that one should be treated hospitably (Matlock and Arnold 2009). These concepts are distinct from the legal status of polites (citizens; Pullan 2005: 395). Parepidemos (pilgrim, stranger, or sojourner) may apply metaphorically to one whose home is heavenly but whose journey is earthly. Beginning in the Old Testament with Abraham, who is among the parepidemoi or peregrini (Heb 11:13, Vulgate), and extending to all who follow Christ, who are each parepidemos or peregrinos (1 Pet 2:11, Vulgate), the language of pilgrimage threads throughout scripture.

The English words ‘pilgrim’ and ‘pilgrimage’ are etymologically related to the Latin peregrinus and peregrinatio derived from the root per ager, meaning ‘across the fields’. Employed during the Roman period to refer to foreigners or people travelling abroad, the terms held legal and political significance for those who were not Roman citizens but were free subjects able to move throughout the Roman Empire though restricted by common laws (Eade and Albera 2017: 7–8). The terms did not initially carry religious connotations, but semantic shifts, church traditions, and lived experiences resulted in what is now a multiplicity of meanings, attitudes, and practices associated with Christian pilgrimage.

3.1 Pilgrimage in the early church tradition

As the nascent church navigated its Jewish roots and Graeco-Roman context, traditions began to take shape. In early Christianity, peregrinus, peregrinatio, and similar terms such as itinerarium (itinerary), via (way, road), and viator (traveller) referred to physical travel to holy places or people, or to spiritual exile and pilgrimage of the soul (Pullan 2005: 395). Christian pilgrimage was thus based on heritage and living saints, as recognized in scripture, but also came to incorporate ritual practices and material relics, icons, and images (Elsner and Rutherford 2005: 28–29; Wilkinson 1977: 40–42). Such objects were associated with or depicted holy people or places, and they functioned to bridge the material, the sensory, the memorial, and the spiritual.

The tide of Christian movement went out from Jerusalem, in part because of missional mandate and in part because of sociopolitical dynamics. In fact, Jerusalem was not a major pilgrimage site from 70–325 CE, during which time the second temple was destroyed, Jews were expelled, the city was called Aelia Capitolina, and Christians were persecuted. However, three Christian pilgrims are known to have travelled to Jerusalem in the first two centuries: Melito, the bishop of Sardis; Pionius, who was later martyred; and Alexander, a Cappadocian who became bishop of Jerusalem (Walker and Hoyland 2023: 282). According to Eusebius Pamphilius (c. 260–341) in Ecclesiastical History, Alexander journeyed ‘in consequence of a vow and for the sake of information in regard to its places’ – also translated ‘for the purpose of prayer and investigation of the [sacred] places’ (NPNF 2/1: 6.11.2; Eusebius 1995a: 257; Eusebius 1942: 37).

The pilgrimage tide slowly but surely rose. Emperor Constantine’s assumption of power in 324 and the Council of Nicea in 325 marked a shift in imperial attitude towards Christianity, which led to greater attention on the Holy Land (Walker 1990). The early fourth-century pilgrimage of Helena, Constantine’s mother, was an imperial, religious venture that sparked new interest in sites, archaeology, and relics (Hunt 1982: 28–49). Another female pilgrim, Egeria, travelled from northern Spain or southern Gaul through Israel-Palestine, Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor in the late fourth century (c. 381–384). She is a notable figure in the development of Christian worship, monastic life, and engagement with sacred places, as well as the development of itineraries as a literary genre (Egeria 2018). The turn towards physical pilgrimage was significant and created tensions for Christians, who for the previous three centuries of the church’s existence had moved away from Jerusalem’s centrality both literally and theologically. Patristic texts evidence that pilgrimage was subject to debate. Origen (c. 185–254) in Against Celsus writes that Judea and Jerusalem are cursed, yet are shadows of the heavenly counterpart (ANF 4: 7.29; Origen of Alexandria 1995: 622). Eusebius in Life of Constantine describes the blessedness of places associated with Christ’s life, the building of churches, and the destruction of temples (NPNF 2/1: 3.25–59; Eusebius 1995b: 526–555). Notably, however, Eusebius does not call Jerusalem a holy city. Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 320–384) in Catechetical Lectures argues for worship and witness in what he designates the holy city of Jerusalem (NPNF 2/7: 14.16, 22–23; 17.22, 31; 18.33; Cyril of Jerusalem 1995: 98, 100, 129, 131, 142). In contrast, Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–394) in On Pilgrimages takes a theological and moral stance against pilgrimage, writing, ‘When the Lord invites the blest to their inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, He does not include a pilgrimage to Jerusalem amongst their good deeds’ (NPNF 2/5; Gregory of Nyssa 1995b: 382). Yet, Gregory also wrote favourably about faithful Christians and holy places in Letter XVII: To Eustathia, Ambrosia, and Basilissa (NPNF 2/5: 6.17; Gregory of Nyssa 1995a: 542–545). Similarly, in Letter CVIII: To Eustochium, Jerome (c. 345–420) wrote to Eustochium concerning her mother Paula’s pilgrimage, describing it as faith, disinheritance, inheritance, affliction, martyrdom, and citizenship (NPNF 2/6; Jerome 1995: 195–212). Finally, imagining what has been described as an ‘ethic for Christian life’ (Claussen 1991: 75), Augustine of Hippo (354–430) in City of God uses imagery of pilgrims, citizens, journeying, and home to reflect a terrestrial situation with a celestial end.

In addition to visiting locations spanning the Levant, early church pilgrims travelled to North African sites such as Tipasa and Timgad – the latter of which attracted Donatists who leaned into itinerancy, asceticism, and martyrdom (Frend 1984). Early church pilgrims also visited living saints. These men and women – who themselves practised internal pilgrimage through ascetic, contemplative faith in the deserts of Syria and Egypt – were sought by those seeking to learn of God’s ways and encounter God’s presence (Wortley 2013: N.487, N.618; Chitty 1966). Alternatively, fifth- through seventh-century Celtic monks such as St Patrick, St Columba, and St Columbanus embraced ascetic, wandering pilgrimage and mission as a way of life. We are, according to a sermon by Columbanus, to ‘live as travelers and pilgrims on the road, as guests of the world, free of lusts and earthly desires’ and to ‘fill our mind with heavenly and spiritual forms’, singing psalms and speaking scripture about desire to be with God (1999: 356). This branch of Christianity blended various expressions of pilgrimage with ministry.

By the sixth century, the ambiguous terminology of pilgrim and pilgrimage stabilized somewhat, as exemplified in the account of the Piacenza Pilgrim (c. 570; Piacenza Pilgrim 1977: 78–89; Pullan 2005: 396). This account suggests a strong relationship between place, event, and ritual, as well as the physical communicability of blessing: washing in a spring at Cana, baptizing in the Jordan, reclining where Christ was betrayed in Gethsemane, touching light and earth in Christ’s tomb, drinking at the casket of a martyr named Theodota, bathing at Siloam, consuming manna, collecting ointment from a stone near Clysma, visiting saints’ beds in Caesarea Philippi. However, tides shifted again with the Byzantine-Sasanian War (602–628) that overran monastic sites as well as Jerusalem and Bethlehem, after which Caliph ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab (r. 634–644) and the Muslim Arab army entered Jerusalem (638). The early era of Christian pilgrimage closed, having charted a ‘new sacred geography’ that called to the spiritual imaginations of numerous travellers (Markus 1990: 153).

3.2 Pilgrimage in the Eastern Orthodox tradition

The first seven centuries of Byzantine Christian pilgrimage set the precedent for the wider Orthodox tradition. Christian pilgrims, mostly Eastern but also Latin Western, filtered into the Holy Land during the early Islamic period (638–1099). Simultaneously, places associated with different branches of Eastern Christianity grew in importance. In Oriental Orthodoxy, the Rock-Hewn Churches of Lalibela in Ethiopia (constructed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries) served as a new Jerusalem after Muslim conquests prevented Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Land. The monolithic cave churches continue to be places of pilgrimage and devotion according to the Ethiopian Church calendar. In Eastern Orthodoxy, Constantinople became the most important depository of Christian relics by the eleventh century, in part due to the amassing of relics by Constantine and Helena centuries prior (Majeska 1984: 2–3). Russian Orthodox pilgrimages to the Holy Land, Constantinople, and other sacred places began in the late tenth century, with figures such as Anthony of Kiev (c. 983–1073) and Theodosius of Kiev (1009–1074) taking part. Sources such as the Old Russian Vita of St Eufrosinija of Polotsk (late twelfth to fifteenth century), the Bulgarian Bdinski sbornik (1360), and the Serbian Gorički zbornik (1442) verify that noble women also participated in pilgrimage during this time (Belyakova 2015). The Sack of Constantinople by Crusaders (1204), the Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus’ (1237–1241), and the dangers inherent to long-distance pilgrimage decreased traffic to Jerusalem and Constantinople from the thirteenth century (Majeska 1984: 4–5). Greek Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox pilgrims persisted for a time, however long-distance physical pilgrimages essentially ended with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. Russian Orthodox pilgrimages re-emerged in the nineteenth century with backing from the government, and the majority of pilgrims were peasants (Hummel and Hummel 1995). During the Soviet era, religious repression and its effect on pilgrimage varied. Some lay leaders facilitated processions, such as the Velikoretskii procession of the cross in Kirov, while some laity worshipped at natural sites instead of churches (Rock 2014: 275–301; 2015: 53). Contemporary pilgrimage practices have emerged as ‘nomadic Orthodoxy’ challenges ecclesiastical structures through religious experiences beyond the parish, including networks around leaders or projects and ‘flash mobs’ around travelling holy objects (Kormina 2012: 195–227). Finally, two enduringly significant sites are Saint Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai in Egypt and Mount Athos (known as the Holy Mountain) in Greece. Both sites point backward to the Byzantine history of their monastic communities while simultaneously pointing forward to the ongoing importance of literal and figurative mountains as pan-Orthodox pilgrimage sites (Worobec 2014; Speake 2002).

Orthodox views on pilgrimage tend to emphasize presence, and to make reference to mission and death. The sacred presence of venerable people or objects, as well as sensory engagement, are paramount. As Annemarie Weyl Carr explains: ‘More than one who traveled, the Byzantine pilgrim was a proskynetes, one who venerated; the critical movement was over the threshold of access to the one venerated. The space claimed was one less of distance than of presence’ (2002: 76). Thus, entering a sacred space and touching a venerable object constituted pilgrimage, regardless of the distance covered to reach it. Ordinary and special (miraculous) icons were integrated into Orthodox devotion and revenue generation, and in the fourteenth century pilgrims began travelling for their sake (Carr 2002: 87). For example, pilgrims sought to be present with the icons of Megaspilaion, Soumela, Kykkos, Karyes, and Pelagonia as well as named icons such as the Virgin of the Blachernai, the Virgin of the Chalkoprateia, and the Virgin Hodegetria (Carr 2002: 87; Oikonomides 1991). Not only did pilgrims travel to shrines, but icons and relics became pilgrims, in a sense, during processionals. This form of ‘inverted pilgrimage’ gained post-revolution popularity, taking sacred objects to different regions and becoming an accessible liturgical, even missional, activity (Rock 2014; Rock 2015: 48–49, 55–57). An Orthodox missiology views the church as an allegorical pilgrim people that invites those from all nations to join in pilgrimage towards the heavenly land. Missional pilgrim identity is rooted in the Divine Liturgy and the real presence of Christ: ‘The liturgy is an invitation to join with the Lord and to travel with him’, and ‘[t]he eucharist is precious food for missionaries, bread and wine for pilgrims on their apostolic journey’ (Bria 1986: 18, 94). This allegorical journey may involve physical pilgrimage towards the end of one’s life; indeed, death is a motif in Eastern Orthodox pilgrimage. Travelling to the Holy Land has been considered ‘a vicarious visit to one’s future home – the heavenly Jerusalem’, with associated acts of penance, prayer, and blessing seen as preparation for death (Hummel and Hummel 1995: 43). More profoundly, ‘dying in Jerusalem’ (symbolically or mystically) is seen as tied to Christ’s death – and to resurrection into the heavenly kingdom (Belyakova 2015: 2, 11).

3.3 Pilgrimage in the Roman Catholic tradition

Early church perspectives on pilgrimage shaped Roman Catholic outlooks on pilgrimage. However, Western pilgrimage to the Holy Land decreased during the early Islamic period (638–1099). The difficulties pilgrims faced en route to Jerusalem became a motivating factor for the Crusades (1099–1291), which wedded religious pilgrimage with ideals of chivalry and war-based opportunity (Coleman and Elsner 1995: 96). To go on crusade was to go on pilgrimage. This period also saw the institutionalization of indulgences, which could take the form of voluntary or mandatory penitential pilgrimage (Sumption 2003). Following the Crusaders’ defeat in the thirteenth century, the only remaining Latin Christian influence in the Holy Land was the Custodia Terrae Sanctae, a Franciscan priory designated to guard Christian sites. However, physical pilgrimages to European sites such as Rome, Santiago de Compostela, Canterbury, and Cologne remained popular. One fifth-century pilgrimage site, St Patrick’s Purgatory (a cave at Lough Derg in County Donegal, Ireland), garnered renewed interest during the Middle Ages following the publication of Henri de Saltrey’s Treatise on Saint Patrick’s Purgatory (c. 1180–1184). Veneration of relics and the cult of the saints thrived during the Middle Ages, with pilgrims seeking thaumaturgical, or miraculous, experiences. Holy places, events, and people or relics were interconnected, allowing a pilgrim to tap into the continuity of what was past, yet present. Some Catholics, such as John Wycliffe (c. 1329–1384), Jan Hus (c. 1369–1415), Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380–1471), and Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536), criticized the inconsistency and immorality associated with pilgrimage antecedent to the Protestant Reformation. Long-distance pilgrimage decreased after the Reformation, but local and regional pilgrimages in northern and western Europe increased and were even considered Counter-Reformative (Tingle 2020). Medieval and early modern sites remain attractive to present-day pilgrims. For example, the 1531 apparition of the Virgin Mary to Aztec Christian Juan Diego led to the building of a shrine – what is now the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City – and its replicas (Peña 2011; Ruiz-Navarro 2010). Martyr sites also became pilgrimage destinations, such as the Twenty-Six Martyrs Museum and Monument in Nagasaki, Japan, commemorating the deaths of saints in 1597. The global proliferation of Catholic pilgrimage sites suggests the complicated expansion of both Christianity and European colonialism in the early modern period. For example, the mythohistory of the Santa Casa in Loreto – with its purported miraculous re-locations from Judea to Dalmatia and Italy, as well as its replicas throughout Europe and the Americas – exemplifies how Catholic devotion spread in various places, through various peoples (Vélez 2019). The broader Roman Catholic tradition continues to recognize new pilgrimage sites, including those related to Marian apparitions reported in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Stations and labyrinths are accessible forms of physical, internal pilgrimage in the Roman Catholic tradition. Stationed liturgies developed in Jerusalem in the fourth century and became a compressed, transplantable form of pilgrimage that have endured to the present day. The Via Dolorosa is a processional route in the Old City of Jerusalem that represents the way Jesus walked to his crucifixion. Widespread replicas of this route in the form of Stations of the Cross enable pilgrims to walk and contemplate the Passion. For example, the crypt chapel at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (Washington, D.C., USA) features glazed ceramic tiles depicting the stations, while Saint Joseph’s Oratory (Montreal, Canada), has a winding, outdoor garden walk featuring statues representing the stations. The first known church labyrinth is a mosaic from the Basilica of Reparata (c. 324), now located at the Sacred Heart Cathedral of Algiers in Algeria (Kern 2000: 88). Its original function in Christian pilgrimage is uncertain, however more is known about the function of labyrinths in the Middle Ages. For example, the Chartres Cathedral in Chartres, France (built c. 1220) served as a symbolic copy of Jerusalem, and walking its path continues to be a feature of liturgy today (Connolly 2005). Alternatively, miniature labyrinths may be traced with one’s fingers.

Roman Catholic perspectives on pilgrimage have both inward and outward orientations. Like their forebears, medieval Christians appreciated the internal and allegorical dimensions of pilgrimage, developing contemplative forms of spirituality in monasticism, anchoritism, meditation, and mysticism. The destination was an ‘inner Jerusalem’, according to St Bonaventure (1221–1274), who wrote The Mind’s Road to God (1259) after a mystical, ecstatic walk on Mount Alverne (1953: 7.1). Similarly, in Revelations of Divine Love (1373), Julian of Norwich (c. 1342–1413) writes of God opening her spiritual eyes to see her soul or heart like a citadel in which Jesus Christ sits, suggesting unity of spiritual place, self, and Christ (1901: 166–167). Julian also refers to Christ on pilgrimage as he is present with and guides people to heaven (1901: 193–194). An early modern source, The Spiritual Exercises (1548) by Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556), is a guide for prayer and spiritual formation that engages an exercitant’s imagination and senses (1996: 281–360). Ignatius, who went on physical pilgrimage to Jerusalem via Rome in 1523 and called himself ‘the pilgrim’ in his autobiography, was, like many Jesuits, a practitioner of internal pilgrimage as well as a lifelong pilgrim and missionary (Ignatius of Loyola 1996: 3–66; 1959: 332; O'Malley 1984). The Roman Catholic tradition upheld the church’s dual identity as pilgrims and missionaries in Ad Gentes: ‘The pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature’ (Second Vatican Council 1965: 1.2).

3.4 Pilgrimage in the Protestant tradition

During the Reformation, Protestants contested sacred space, saints, and relics, all of which featured in Catholic traditions of physical pilgrimage. Protestants also challenged the belief that good works secure salvation and questioned whether works such as pilgrimage hold any value at all. Martin Luther (1483–1546) separates pilgrimage, one of many allegedly good works, from salvation and care for others in Treatise on Good Works (1520) and To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate (1520; Luther 1966: 40, 171). John Calvin (1509–1564) includes pilgrimage in a litany of medieval piety practices that Christians are to reject because they are corrupt, licentious, and not commanded in scripture (Calvin 1844 on Ps 50:16; 1846 on Hos 4:13–14; 5:6; 14:1–2; 1847 on Jonah 1:16; 2:8–9). While the former criticized pilgrimage because it was caught in a theology of merit (a concern with faith), the latter criticized pilgrimage because it conflicted with a theology of worship (a concern with idolatry). Their views are nuanced – Luther does not condemn pilgrimage in itself and Calvin implies that a proper form of pilgrimage is possible – but they tend towards avoiding pilgrimage entirely rather than carefully extricating it from aspects they deem unwise or unhealthy. These perspectives influenced the history of pilgrimage from the sixteenth century on (Tomlin 2016).

Both Protestant Reformers and Catholic Counter-Reformers tended towards interiority through prayer, meditation, conversion, and transformation. However, allegorical pilgrimage, rooted in the Augustinian interpretation of the Church peregrinating, soon became the primary expression among Protestants. The concept was a metaphor in Puritan spirituality and devotion, inspiring literature such as John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678; see Bunyan 2003). Bunyan, among others, informed the sermons and spiritual autobiographies of later Protestants, whose ‘favorite allegory is the sojourner, the pilgrim and traveler in this world which is not home, for the pilgrim is only here en route to a final destiny’ (Peacock and Tyson 1989: 216–217). In what may appear to contradict allegory in favour of physicality, commemorative locations associated with the lives of Protestant figures or movements also came to play a role in Protestant identity and piety. For example, American Methodists may visit sites from the lives of John and Charles Wesley’s for the purpose of recalling the narratives of historical or spiritual events (Tweed 2000). These places can be understood as having symbolic or memorial value, not sacramental value, which reinforces the notion that Christians are allegorical pilgrims.

The nineteenth century saw explosive historical, theological, and political interest in the Holy Land. Protestant visitors grounded an appreciation for the Holy Land in an appreciation for the Bible, which manifested in numerous streams of activity: geographical and archaeological research, educational and medical services, Jewish or Muslim missionary work, and hope in prophecies or eschatology (Walker and Hoyland 2023: 296). Visitors included scholars, professionals, missionaries, clergy, celebrities, politicians, and royalty among their ranks – precursors to modern tourists (Walker and Hoyland 2023: 298–303). Present-day American visitors to the Holy Land, for instance, blur tourism with spiritual desires to ‘return to the “source” of their faith, physically and imaginatively’ and to ‘walk where Jesus walked’ (Kaell 2014: 3). Other modern Protestants, such as Anglican theologian N. T. Wright, recognize the sacramental quality of the world and the value of physical pilgrimage in teaching, prayer, and discipleship (Wright 2014).

Broader study on pilgrimage, movement, and globalization has brought pilgrimage into conversation with Pentecostalism (Coleman 2014; 2021; Fortuny and de Mola 2018). Both are international religious phenomena, yet Pentecostalism is often perceived as nimble, with an outward or centrifugal orientation, while pilgrimage is often perceived as nostalgic, with an inward or centripetal orientation. However, Pentecostal forms of pilgrimage do exist, such as the charismatic ministry Livets Ord (Word of Life) in Uppsala, Sweden, and its journeys to the Holy Land. These pilgrimages emphasize agency to move and bless globally, with a theological, imaginative, temporal, and spatial orientation towards Jerusalem and the apocalypse (Coleman 2004: 65). A contrasting example among Scandinavian pilgrimage movements is the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sweden’s pilgrimage centre, opened in Vadstena in 1997. Ordained ministers – pilgrim pastors – lead shrine visitors on physical pilgrimages with an emphasis on freedom, simplicity, silence, light-heartedness, slowness, spirituality, and sharing (Lindström 2005). These pilgrimages are contextualized to a culture that values walking and nature, attending to the journey rather than the destination (Gemzöe 2020). Thus, despite what can be a strained relationship between Protestants and pilgrimage, physical, internal, and allegorical expressions have grown and developed within the tradition.

4.1 Visual and material culture

Objects of visual and material culture are significant in Christian pilgrimage. They include images, icons, proskynetaria, altarpieces, folding triptychs, sculptures, crosses, rosaries, relics, reliquaries, ampullae, badges, medals, pins, brooches, chains, lockets, rattles, bells, whistles, mirrors, stained glass, and architecture. Some function in communal liturgy, others in personal devotion. For example, European medieval and early modern churches commissioned altarpieces, some of which were so large in the Baroque and Rococo periods as to blur the categories of image and architecture. In contrast, portable mass-produced objects fashioned from paper, textiles, plants, wood, stone, shell, glass, metal, plastic, water, oil, or soil have been desirable souvenirs (or eulogiae, meaning a blessed object, in the Byzantine tradition; Vikan 1982) that signify that one visited a sacred site. The general purpose of such objects is to facilitate physical, internal, or allegorical pilgrimage.

Relics and icons are intertwined with pilgrimage traditions. Relics are objects associated with holy people or places and may be considered sacred or powerful, while icons are depictions of holy figures and may be considered ‘windows’ to the divine. For example, the wood of the true cross was purportedly recovered from debris around the site of Calvary by Helena in the early fourth century (Hunt 1982: 28–49; cf. NPNF 2/1: 4.7; Eusebius 1995b: 527–532; Cyril of Jerusalem 2000: 68–70). This discovery is celebrated in the liturgical calendar of Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Anglican churches. With the exception of Protestants, who have heavily criticized the finding and veneration of relics (see Calvin 1870), Christian pilgrimages integrate relics, sites, the cult of the saints, and miracles into a multifaceted ritual system (Waterworth 1848: 233–236). This system is not merely about objects or places. It includes senses of sight and touch as well as a relational dimension between the pilgrim and the person whose relic is being venerated (Inge 2016: 97). Similarly, icons have been integral to Byzantine and Orthodox pilgrimage rituals. Icons serve to identify a sacred place or person (sometimes being placed near a corresponding relic), disseminate a saint from a site in the form of souvenir medals or images, function as votive gifts, develop into icon cults, and stimulate physical, internal, or allegorical pilgrimage (Carr 2002: 81–88).

Medieval badges are another common pilgrimage object. The earliest of such souvenirs were palm branches collected between Jordan and Jericho and worn by pilgrims or Crusaders returning from Jerusalem, leading to pilgrims becoming known as ‘palmers’ (Kühnel, Noga-Banai and Vorholt 2014). Similarly, pilgrims returning from Santiago de Compostela collected or purchased scallop shells, which became iconographically fashionable and somewhat emblematic of pilgrimage (Tingle 2020: 192–195). The controlled production of lead-tin alloy badges, which were cast from moulds depicting site-specific iconography, became profitable for merchants and churches (Blick 2019). Badges were multifunctional. They were identifiers or mementos, exhibiting to oneself or others that a pilgrimage had been undertaken. They were also used in ongoing personal devotion, even as secondary relics associated with miraculous stories of healing or safety.

In late medieval and early modern Europe, church and domestic altarpieces functioned as devotional aids for localized, internal pilgrimage. The frames were like thresholds or borders for the gaze to cross when embarking on a journey, while the images within depicted holy people or events and elicited spiritual responses (Sadler 2018: 194). For example, Hans Memling’s ‘Passion of Christ’ (1470) invited beholders to accompany Christ on his Holy Week journey, while ‘Joys of the Virgin’ (1480) brought beholders into Christ’s infancy – depicted in the central image of the Adoration of the Magi, themselves pilgrims encountering God – as well as his post-Resurrection appearances (Hull 2005). Multi-episodic altarpieces mapped out for worshippers ‘a sequence of meditational stops not unlike a pilgrimage’ (Sadler 2018: 34). Portable altarpieces, which were smaller-scale objects featuring similar images and iconography, functioned in private chapels or homes. Additionally, early modern Iberian Catholic missionaries used portable altarpieces in ministry in Japan and New Spain (Mexico). These objects became European and Indo-Pacific assemblages – for example, Japanese-made lacquer frames containing European-style oil paintings or Mexican-made featherworks – suggesting that pilgrimage became inculturated (Luterbacher 2019).

Objects of visual and material culture continue to symbolize or embody spiritual journeys for pilgrims. These objects suggest that the sacred and the material or commercial are related, and may blur the lines between pilgrimage and tourism souvenirs (Reader 2014). For further background on the significance of the arts in Christianity, see Visual Arts and Christian Theology.

4.2 Literature

Pilgrimage has long been a literary motif. Virgil’s Latin epic poem, the Aeneid (29–19 BCE), tells the story of Aeneas’ wanderings from Troy to Italy, his founding of the Roman people, and his sense of duty or piety (Virgil 1909). It can be interpreted as a heroic journey to a sacred centre (Mills 1983: 36). This story was part of the literary context in which the early church’s own story unfolded, and it has been suggested that its influence stretched into medieval Christianity (Valentine 1931).

The massive body of Christian pilgrimage literature includes itineraries, guidebooks, diaries, travel accounts, certificates, books of indulgences, devotional aids, poems, stories, and blogs. It has been suggested that the abundance of literature renders Christian pilgrimage an ‘overdetermined journey’ (Coleman and Elsner 2003: 13). Nevertheless, drawing from Scriptural references and echoing the impulses of broader literary traditions, pilgrims and pilgrimages have been woven into the multivocal Christian literary imagination.

Early church pilgrimage literature exhibits a range of theological, historical, geographical, and personal insights. Eusebius’ gazetteer, Onomasticon (c. 313–325), alphabetizes biblical places according to sections of the Septuagint (Eusebius 2023). While Eusebius’ list is perhaps more scholarly than devotional, the genre of personal travel accounts also emerged in the fourth century. The Bordeaux Pilgrim, who travelled from Gaul to Constantinople and the Holy Land in 333, systematically lists his itinerary, his mileage, and events associated with the places he visited (Bordeaux Pilgrim 1877). Egeria, who travelled from Spain or Gaul through the Holy Land in the late fourth century, conveys her impressions and experiences of biblical sites to her sisters and may have inspired fellow women in their religious, biblical educations (Egeria 2018). These writings were contemporaneous with patristic debates on the topic, but early church tensions about pilgrimage also carried into medieval Catholic literature. For example, Dante’s The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1320), William Langland’s Piers Plowman (c. 1380), Walter Hilton’s The Scale of Perfection (c. 1380–1396), Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (c. 1387–1400), and Margery Kempe’s The Book of Margery Kempe (c. 1436–1438) exemplify (or criticize or satirize) the complexities of physical, internal, moral, and allegorical pilgrimage. New iterations of Catholic pilgrimage literature grew out of early modern missionary and colonial movements and the inculturation of Christianity in local contexts. For example, northeastern Brazilian folhetos or literatura de cordel, based on chapbooks introduced by the Portuguese, are present-day oral or written tales about local saints or miracles, and they function in pilgrimage (Slater 1991). Furthermore, historical pilgrimage travel guides continue to be explored and elaborated upon today (Bale 2023).

Protestant and Orthodox traditions each have model pilgrims. Protestant writings focus on allegorical pilgrimage. Works such as Simon Patrick’s The Parable of the Pilgrim (1664) and Benjamin Keach’s Travels of True Godliness (1684) characterize Christians as pilgrims journeying from earth to eternity. Similarly, Bunyan’s widely translated The Pilgrim’s Progress follows the character Christian, who is burdened with the weight of his sin and the question, ‘What shall I do to be saved?’ He undertakes a journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. In the portion of the book that follows the journey of Christian’s wife, Christiana, their sons, and their neighbour, Christ is referred to as ‘the Prince of pilgrims’ (Bunyan 2003: 204, 268, 279; see also European Literature and Christian Theology (1700–1900)). For Orthodox writings, the pilgrim motif was already present in Russian folklore, but pilgrim tales based on writers’ experiences developed as a literary genre in the twelfth century (Majeska 1984: 4, 6–9). A more recent example, the nineteenth-century anonymous Russian spiritual, Rasskaz strannika (the way of a pilgrim or the pilgrim’s tale), tells the journey of a common strannik (pilgrim) through Russia, Ukraine, and Siberia as well as describing the journey of his heart in relation to God (Savin 2001). His method of internal pilgrimage is hesychasm, the uninterrupted recitation of the Jesus Prayer: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner’. From an Orthodox perspective, internal pilgrimage – or ‘internal liturgy’ (Ugolnik 2016) – is closely related to prayer and stillness. Monastic hesychastic practice dates from the fourth century, and this book contributed to its revival in twentieth-century Eastern and Western spirituality (Phillips 2010: 300).

4.3 Music

Ethnomusicologist Philip Bohlman has stated: ‘Pilgrimage does not exist without music’ (1996: 435). The Songs of Ascents discussed above are a well-worn collection of pilgrimage poetry. They may even have functioned as musical souvenirs that pilgrims memorized or purchased in written form so that, whether at the temple or at home, they could sing of the blessings experienced at Zion (Hossfeld and Zenger 2011: 294). These psalms have also been translated and adapted for present day Christians on their discipleship journeys (Peterson 2000; Barker 2005).

Music has continued to play a part in pilgrimages to the Holy Land. Felix Fabri (c. 1437–1502), a Dominican from Ulm who made pilgrimages to the Holy Land in 1480 and 1483–1484, describes receiving a small book titled ‘Processional for pilgrims in the holy land’. It included ‘all the versicles, collects, responses, hymns, and psalms which ought to be said or sung at all the holy places and throughout the course of a pilgrimage beyond [the] sea’ (Fabri 1896: 290). Yet, music was also spontaneous. Some of Fabri’s fellow pilgrims sang Christmas hymns, singing ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’ in chorus en route to Bethlehem; upon arrival at the Nativity site, they modified the lyrics of ‘Christe, redemptor omnium, ex patre patris unice’ to sing of the place rather than the day of Christ’s birth (Fabri 1896: 548, 557). Fabri’s accounts portray a connection between music, holy person or event, and place, and music continues to function in such pilgrimage processions. In fact, present-day Jerusalem is a polyphonic soundscape, with diverse pilgrims adding their voices and musics (and silences) – but not without intercultural, intertraditional, and postcolonial tensions (Wood 2014).

Musicking expands beyond the genre of psalms and the location of Jerusalem to feature in a diversity of physical, spiritual, and allegorical pilgrimages. In Orthodox and Catholic traditions, music can be highly liturgical. Egyptian Christians have incorporated cantillated biblical prose, antiphonally chanted psalms, and sung strophic hymns into practices of place-based pilgrimage (MacCoull 1998: 408). Seventh-century pilgrims to the shrine of St Cyrus and St John at Menouthis sang psalms about healing; late seventh- or eighth-century pilgrims to the Hermopolis basilica or the Koskam site sang hymns commemorating the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt; and ninth-century pilgrims to the monastery of St Shenoute of Atripe followed the prescribed textual and musical liturgy of the monastery’s festal calendar (MacCoull 1998). Another liturgical source, the Sarum Missal (used in Latin rites from the eleventh century), contains an ‘Order of Service for Pilgrims’ (1913: 166–173). It reflects the relationship between an individual pilgrim and a corporate church, as well as between a distant place and a local base. Pilgrims are members of the body of Christ who are commissioned by a community and return to that community after visiting a site that holds significance for their wider tradition.

In the Protestant tradition, internal and allegorical expressions of pilgrimage run through many hymns, such as those by Charles Wesley (1707–1788), who linked music to prayer and meditation (Rattenbury 1954). One Methodist hymnal, Hymns for the Pilgrim Way (1937), was compiled for Caribbean churches and stated the hope that the book would be ‘a great ministry in the salvation of souls, also in the deepening of the spiritual life of God’s people […] while they journey through an alien world as “Pilgrims and Strangers” to the Better Land’ (Ives 1937). Similarly, Baptist ethnomusicological research about the Senufo peoples in Côte d’Ivoire indicates that kologo (path) is a core linguistic and cultural concept, and that expressions of kologo as the ‘Jesus Road’ have been incorporated into religious music (King 2009). As a final, unique example: the ecumenical monastic community of Taizé, France blends physical pilgrimage with aspects of internal and allegorical pilgrimage by cultivating lifelong pilgrims, in part through individual and shared musicking (Brother Roger 2006). More in-depth discussions on music in Christian theology and spirituality can be found in Music and Orthodox Theology and Music in the Western Theological Tradition.

5.1 A sociocultural anthropological perspective

Between the 1960s and 1980s, mainstream anthropological study of pilgrimage boomed. Victor Turner and Edith Turner’s Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives (1978) was a foundational contribution of theory and fieldwork. It offers a typology of pilgrimage based on historical origins: prototypical pilgrimages set by a religion’s founder, first followers, or key evangelists; archaic pilgrimages of syncretized religious traditions; European medieval Christian pilgrimages; and European post-Tridentine modern pilgrimages (Turner and Turner 1978: 18–19). Liminality and communitas are core concepts in the Turnerian model. Liminality is a phenomenon in which an individual steps onto a threshold from a mundane or structured cultural space and enters a state of ambiguity (Turner and Turner 1978: 249–250). Communitas is ‘a relational quality of full unmediated communication, even communion’ between individuals and ‘combines the qualities of lowliness, sacredness, homogeneity, and comradeship’ (Turner and Turner 1978: 250). There are resonances between liminality and communitas within Christianity, as followers of Jesus are seen as aliens, exiles, and foreigners – perpetually in transition and in relationship. Moreover, Christianity has institutionalized liminality in monastic and mendicant orders (Turner 2011: 107).

The Turnerian model has been tested and contested (Crumrine 1991; Dubisch 1995; Frey 1998; Morinis 1992; Nolan and Nolan 1998; Sallnow 1981). In Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage (1991), John Eade and Michael Sallnow argue that pilgrimage must be examined in specific historical, cultural contexts, not brought under a universal, integrative rubric of characteristics or functions. According to this view, a pilgrimage shrine may be a space for the sacred and for communitas but is more accurately ‘a religious void’ filled with discourses from diverse pilgrims (Eade and Sallnow 1991: 15). The elements of person, place, and text may be examined to understand Christian pilgrimage in context (Eade and Sallnow 1991: 9; Coleman and Elsner 1995). The Turnerian and Eade-Sallnow paradigms have been applied in ongoing empirical research on communitas and contestation, however since the 1990s theoretical debates have generally turned to postmodern and interdisciplinary enquiries.

The sociocultural anthropological study of pilgrimage has continued with increased attentiveness to globality and creativity. In New Pathways in Pilgrimage Studies: Global Perspectives, Dionigi Albera and John Eade build on their previous work by moving their focus from Anglophone to non-Anglophone voices and from Eurasia to the Global South, featuring both Christian and non-Christian pilgrimages that sometimes intertwine (Albera and Eade 2015; 2017). Additionally, the internet facilitates new experiences of virtual or cyber pilgrimage that appeal variously to return visitors, diasporic communities, and the curious. Recent examinations of non-religious pilgrimages have challenged the dichotomies between sacred and secular, religious and tourist. By one definition, ‘pilgrimage is a journey undertaken by a person in quest of a place or a state that he or she believes to embody a valued ideal’ (Morinis 1992: 4). Whereas theology, the sacred, and spirituality are integral to Christian perspectives of pilgrimage, these features are differentiated from the concept of pilgrimage in secular research. Attempts to disentangle the divine from pilgrimage allow anthropologists to draw from what people classify as ‘pilgrimage’ more broadly. From a sociocultural anthropological perspective, any linguistic or theoretical pilgrim-tourist dichotomy is more accurately a pilgrim-tourist continuum (Badone and Roseman 2004; Bauman 1996; Reader and Walter 1993; Timothy and Olsen 2006).