The Piacenza Pilgrim records events at Epiphany at the site on the Jordan river where Jesus was baptised, and mentions there a large monastery of *John the Baptist (S00020) with two hospices. Account of an anonymous pilgrim, written in Latin, probably in Placentia (northern Italy), c. 560.
Evidence ID
E00452
Type of Evidence
Literary - Pilgrim accounts and itineraries
Major author/Major anonymous work
Pilgrim of Piacenza
Pilgrim of Piacenza, Itinerarium 11-12
The Piacenza pilgrim spent Epiphany at the site on the Jordan where Jesus was baptised by John. He describes the large crowds who gathered there for the vigil of the feast, and the miraculous behaviour of the water of the river on the feast-day itself.
Tunc omnes Alexandrini habent ibi suas naues cum hominibus habentes colaphos plenos aromatibus et balsamo. Et hora, qua benedixerint fontem, antequam incipiant baptizare, fundunt illos colaphos in fluuium et tollunt aquam benedictam et exinde faciunt aquam sparsionis in suis nauibus, antequam exeant ad nauigandum. Baptismo completo descendunt omnes in fluuium pro benedictione induti sindones et alias multas speties, quas sibi ad sepulturam seruant.
'All the ship-owners of Alexandria have men there that day with great jars of spices and balsam, and as soon as the river has been blessed, before the baptism starts, they pour them out into the water, and draw out blessed water. This water they use for sprinkling their ships when they are about to set sail. After the baptism every one goes down into the river to gain a blessing. Some wear linen, and many other materials, which will serve them at burial.'
After describing the cells of seven holy virgins, the pilgrim mentions the nearby large monastery dedicated to John:
Super Iordane non multum longe <a loco>, ubi baptizatus est Dominus, monasterium est sancti Iohannis grande ualde, in quo sunt xenodochia duo.
'By the Jordan, not far from the place where the Lord was baptised is the very large monastery of saint John, which has two hospices.'
The second recension follows the text of the first without important modifications.
Text: Geyer 1898, 168 and 201.
Translation: Wilkinson 2002, 137, lightly modified.
Cult Places
Cult building - monastic
Places Named after SaintHospital and other charitable institutions
Non Liturgical ActivityPilgrimage
Source
This Itinerary was written by an anonymous pilgrim to Palestine whose home town was Piacenza (ancient Placentia) in northern Italy: he explicitly states in the first sentence of his text that he set out from Piacenza, under the protection of the local martyr Antoninus (see E00578), and references later in the text make it clear that he successfully made it home (e.g. E00455). Otherwise we know nothing about him, except that he was male (since he occasionally refers to himself using the masculine gender: e.g. 'ego indignus' in 1.4). Unlike the earlier pilgrim Egeria, who wrote the account of her travels while still abroad (see E05245), our pilgrim wrote up, or at least edited, his account once he was home (see again E00455).His visit to the East can be dated with reasonable confidence to after 556, and before about 570, because he tells us (in chap. 1) that the terrible earthquake and tsunami that devastated coastal Phoenicia in 551 had occurred 'recently' (nuper), but also states that it happened 'in the time of the emperor Justinian' (tempore Iustiniani imperatoris), a phrasing that tells us he was writing after Justinian's death in 556.
The Itinerary opens with the pilgrim travelling (evidently by sea) to Cyprus and then on to Tripolis (modern Tripoli in northern Lebanon), and from there by land to Palestine and the holy sites of the Old and New Testaments. Within the Holy Land he travelled extensively, and his individual itineraries can be reconstructed with some precision (Wilkinson 2002 has excellent maps showing these). After this (he gives no indication of the passage of time) he travelled to Lower Egypt by way of Mount Sinai, ending up in Alexandria. The Itinerary then jumps back to Jerusalem (suggesting a leg by sea), where the pilgrim was delayed by illness. He then sets off northwards for home, but from Antioch takes a long detour eastwards into Mesopotamia. The text ends abruptly, and without comment, on the Euphrates close to Rusafa/Sergiopolis, suggesting that the final pages of the account are lost.
For the most part it is evident from our pilgrim's phrasing that he saw the places he lists in person - 'then we came', 'we saw', etc. - but on occasion he introduces the impersonal third person singular - 'two miles from the city is the shrine of', etc. - and he also mentions places that were not on his direct route; so he may have derived some of his information at second hand (Wilkinson 2002, 13).
The Itinerary is extant in two recensions. The first recension is accepted to be essentially what our pilgrim wrote. The second recension, which cannot be dated, is not massively different but makes some small alterations to the text: some deletions, some explanatory additions (e.g. E00513), and some 'corrections'. It is evident that the author of the second recension had not visited the Holy Land, and some of his supposed corrections in fact introduce obvious errors (e.g. E00413, and, most egregiously, E00571). We have ignored the second recension wherever changes from the first are not substantive; but quoted its text where there are significant differences, for two reasons: because some of these differences are interesting in themselves, even though they are undatable (e.g. E00457), and because sometimes., for instance with a name, the manuscripts of the second recension may actually preserve the pilgrim's text better than do those of the first recension (see, for instance, E00456 and E00513).
The Itinerary can be readily compared with an earlier pilgrim's diary written in the 380s by another western pilgrim, Egeria. The Piacenza pilgrim's text is less detailed than her account, but shows the development of cultic practices and infrastructure which had taken place in the course of two hundred years: there are more places to visit, more objects to see, and more saints to venerate.
As with all the pilgrim texts from the Holy Land, it has been difficult to decide what to include, and what to exclude from our database, focused as it is on the 'cult of saints'. We have necessarily excluded the vast number of sites associated exclusively with the life and miracles of Jesus, and have, of course, included all obvious references to cult sites of Christian saints: their graves, churches, and references to important places in their lives, such as their place of martyrdom. A problem, however, arises when our pilgrims write about sites associated with figures from the Old Testament, since in time many of these certainly acquired Christian cult, but it is generally impossible to tell whether our pilgrims regarded these figures as saints in the Christian tradition, whose power and aid they might invoke, or whether they record the holy sites associated with them through a broader and looser biblical curiosity and veneration. The compromise position we have taken with regard to these Old Testament figures is to include all references to places associated with them where our Christian writers record miraculous occurrences or where there was a church or oratory, and also all references to their graves (though with these latter there is often no explicit reference to Christian cult).
(Bryan Ward-Perkins, Robert Wiśniewski)
Discussion
This site (which features on the Madaba mosaic map, E02524) acquired its holiness, of course, not just from John, but also from Jesus himself. Pilgrims to the site were taking away some remarkably powerful objects: water that could protect ships sailing out of Alexandria, and clothes that had been immersed in the Jordan that could help those who were later buried in them.The monastery of John the Baptist, mentioned here, is certainly the same one that the pilgrim Theodosius, writing earlier in the sixth century, tells us was built by the emperor Anastasius (E07914).
Bibliography
Edition:Geyer, P. (ed.), Antonini Placentini Itinerarium, in Itineraria et alia geographica (Corpus Chistianorum, series Latina 175; Turnholti: Typographi Brepols editores pontificii, 1965), 129-174. [Essentially a reprinting of Geyer's edition for the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 39, Wien 1898.]
English translations:
Stewart, A., Of the Holy Places Visited by Antoninus Martyr (London: Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society, 1887).
Wilkinson, J., Jerusalem Pilgrims Before the Crusades (2nd ed.; Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 2002).
Record Created By
Robert Wiśniewski
Date of Entry
28/04/2015
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00020 | John the Baptist | Iohannes | Certain |
|---|
Please quote this record referring to its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL:
Robert Wiśniewski, Cult of Saints, E00452 - http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E00452