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).

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, translated 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 through 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, although they were restricted by common law (Albera and Eade 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 came to incorporate ritual practices and material relics, icons, and images (Elsner and Rutherford 2005: 28–29; Wilkinson 1977: 40–42).

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, when 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.; 1942: 6.11).

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). The turn toward physical pilgrimage was significant and problematic for Christians, who for the previous three centuries of the church’s existence moved away from Jerusalem’s centrality 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 shadows of the heavenly counterpart (ANF 4: 7.29). 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: 3.25–58). 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: 13.7; 14.16, 22–23; 18.33). 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: 382–383). Yet, Gregory also wrote favourably about faithful Christians and holy places in Letter XVII: To Eustathia, Ambrosia, and Basilissa (NPNF 2/5: 542–245). 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, citizenship (NPNF 2/6: 1–35). Finally, imagining what has been described as an ‘ethic for Christian life’ (Augustine of Hippo 2012: 75), Augustine of Hippo (354–430) in City of God uses imagery of pilgrims, citizens, journey, and home to reflect a terrestrial situation with a celestial end (Augustine City of God).

In addition to visiting locations spreading the Levant, early church pilgrims 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 Saints Patrick, Columba, and Columbanus embraced ascetic, wandering pilgrimage and mission as a way of life. They were, 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 the relationship between place, event, ritual, as well as the physical communicability of blessing: washing in a spring at Cana, baptising in the Jordan, reclining where Christ was betrayed in Gethsemane, taking a blessing from a lantern and dirt 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, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem, followed by Caliph ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab (634–644) and the Muslim Arab army entering Jerusalem in 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 fed the wider Orthodox tradition. Christian pilgrims, mostly Eastern, 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, Ethiopia were constructed in the twelfth and thirteenth century 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 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, the Bulgarian Bdinski sbornik (1360), and the Serbian Gorički zbornik (1442) exemplify 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 (Majeska 1984: 4–5). However, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox pilgrims persisted. Long-distance physical pilgrimages essentially ended with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire (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 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; Rock 2015: 53). Contemporary practices have emerged as ‘nomadic Orthodoxy’ challenges ecclesiastical structures through religious experiences beyond the parish: pilgrimage, networks around leaders or projects, and ‘flash mobs’ around travelling holy objects (Kormina 2012: 195–227).

Orthodox views on pilgrimage tend to emphasize presence, and tie 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 distance covered. 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. Pilgrim, missional 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). Journeying 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 being preparation for death (Hummel and Hummel 1995: 43). More profoundly, ‘dying in Jerusalem’ symbolically or mystically 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 perspectives 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 opportunity through war (Coleman and Elsner 1995: 96). To go on crusade was to go on pilgrimage. This period also saw the institutionalisation of indulgences, which could take the form of voluntary or mandatory penitential pilgrimage (Sumption 2003). Following the Crusaders’ defeat, 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 were popular. Veneration of relics and the cult of the saints thrived, with pilgrims seeking thaumaturgical experiences. Holy places, events, and people or relics were interconnected so that a pilgrim tapped 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), 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 are also pilgrimage destinations, such as the Twenty-Six Martyrs Museum and Monument in Nagasaki, Japan, commemorating the deaths of saints in 1597.

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 they became a compressed, transplantable form of pilgrimage 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 enable pilgrims to walk and contemplate the Passion. For example, the crypt chapel at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., USA, features glazed ceramic tiles depicting the stations, while Saint Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal, Canada, has an 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 at the Sacred Heart Cathedral of Algiers, Algeria (Kern 2000: 88). Its function in Christian pilgrimage is uncertain compared to labyrinths as a form of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages. For example, the Chartres Cathedral in Lourdes, France, was built c. 1220 as a symbolic copy of Jerusalem, and it functions in 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, her heart like a citadel in which Jesus Christ sits, suggesting unity of spiritual place, self, and Christ (1901: ch. 67). Julian also refers to Christ on pilgrimage: he is present with and guides people to heaven (1901: ch. 81). 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; Ignatius of Loyola 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 of good works unto salvation, and whether works such as pilgrimage held 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’s Works 44: 40, 171). John Calvin (1509–1564) includes pilgrimage in a litany of medieval piety practices which Christians are to reject because they are corrupt, licentious, and not commanded in Scripture (Calvin 1844: Ps 50:16; 1846: Hos 4:13–14; 5:6; 14:1–2; 1847: 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 toward avoiding pilgrimage entirely rather than carefully extricating it from aspects they deemed unwise or unhealthy. These perspectives influenced the history of pilgrimage from the sixteenth century (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). 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 play a role in Protestant identity and piety. For example, American Methodists may visit sites from John and Charles Wesley’s lives 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 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 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. Pentecostal forms of pilgrimage do exist, however, 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). In contrast, among Scandinavian pilgrimage movements, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sweden opened a pilgrimage centre in Vadstena in 1997. Ordained ministers – pilgrim pastors – lead shrine visitors on physical pilgrimages with an emphasis on freedom, simplicity, silence, lightheartedness, 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.

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, blessings in Byzantine art; Vikan 1982: 10–14) that signify one visited a sacred site. The general purpose of such objects was to facilitate physical, internal, or allegorical pilgrimage.

Relics and icons are intertwined with pilgrimage traditions. 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. Eusebius NPNF 2/1: 4.7; Cyril of Jerusalem 2000: 68–70). The finding 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 (Calvin 1870), Christian pilgrimages integrated 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. They 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, iconography that became 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 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, 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 – lacquer frames containing oil paintings or featherwork – 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).

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 Romans, 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 Pamphilius 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, mileage, and events associated with the places he visited (Bordeaux Pilgrim 1877). Egeria, who travelled from northern Spain or southern Gaul to the Holy Land c. 381–384, conveys her impressions and experiences of biblical sites to her sisters (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).

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). For Orthodox writings, the pilgrim motif existed 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 his heart in relation to God (Savin 2001). His method of internal pilgrimage is hesychasm, uninterrupted reciting 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 as well as Western spirituality (Phillips 2010: 300).

4.3 Music

Ethnomusicologist Philip Bohlman has stated, ‘Pilgrimage does not exist without music’ (Bohlman 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 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 sea’ (Fabri 1896: 290). Yet, music was also spontaneous. Some of Fabri’s fellow pilgrims sang Christmas hymns and all sang ‘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 psalms and Jerusalem to feature in diverse physical, spiritual, and allegorical pilgrimages. In Orthodox and Catholic traditions, music can be highly liturgical. Egyptian Christians incorporated cantillated biblical prose, antiphonally chanted psalms, and sung strophic hymns into place-based pilgrimage (MacCoull 1998: 408). Seventh-century pilgrims to the shrine of Saints Cyrus and 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 its 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, a distant place and a local base. Pilgrims were members of the body of Christ who were commissioned by a community, and they returned to that community after visiting a site that held significance for their wider tradition.

In the Protestants tradition, internal and allegorical expressions of pilgrimage run through 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), compiled for Caribbean churches, even 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 it has been incorporated into music about the ‘Jesus road’ (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 shared and personal musicking (Brother Roger 2006).

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 the founder of a religion, 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, communitas, and Christianity, in which followers of Jesus are 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 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 demonstrated in ongoing empirical research on communitas and contestation, and since the 1990s theoretical debates have generally turned to postmodern and interdisciplinary enquiries.

The sociocultural anthropological study of pilgrimage has continued with 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 from Anglophone to non-Anglophone voices and from Eurasia to the Global South, which features both Christian and non-Christian pilgrimages, sometimes intertwining (Albera and Eade 2015; 2017). Additionally, the internet facilitates new experiences of virtual or cyber pilgrimage that appeal to return visitors, diasporic communities, and the curious. 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 pilgrimage, these features are distinguished in secular pilgrimage research. Attempts to disentangle the divine from pilgrimage allows 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).