The Piacenza Pilgrim records his visit to the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem where he saw the tombs of *Pelagia the Penitent (recluse of Jerusalem, 5th c., S00250), *James (the Apostle, son of Zebedee,S00108) or *James ('brother of the Lord', S00058), *Cleophas (pupil of Jesus, S00249), and other unnamed saints. Account of an anonymous pilgrim, written in Latin, probably in Placentia (northern Italy), c. 560.
Evidence ID
E00456
Type of Evidence
Literary - Pilgrim accounts and itineraries
Major author/Major anonymous work
Pilgrim of Piacenza
Pilgrim of Piacenza, Itinerarium 16
First recension
Et sursum in monte in loco, unde ascendit Dominus, uidimus mirabilia multa et cellula, ubi fuit inclausa uel iacet sancta Pelagia in corpore. In ipso monte iacet Iacobus, Zebedaeus, Cleophas uel multa corpora sanctorum.
'On the summit of the mountain [of Olives] where the Lord ascended, we saw many wonderful things, including the cell where saint Pelagia was enclosed, and her body lies. James, Zebedee, and Cleophas lie buried on this mountain, and also bodies of many other saints.'
Second recension
Et rursum in monte, unde Dominus ascendit ad patrem, ubi et iudicare ueniet, uidimus copiosa et cellula, ubi inclusa fuit uel iacet in corpore sancta Pelagia. Et in ipso monte iacet Iacobus Zebedaei et Cleophas et multa sanctorum corpora.
'And again on the mountain [of Olives] where the Lord ascended to the father, and where he will come in judgement, we saw many things, including the cell where saint Pelagia was enclosed, and her body lies. James, son Zebedee, and Cleophas lie buried on this mountain, and also bodies of many other saints.
Text: Geyer 1898, 170 and 203.
Translation: Wilkinson 2002, 138, modified.
Cult PlacesPlace associated with saint's life
Non Liturgical Activity
Place associated with saint's life
Burial site of a saint - unspecified
Non Liturgical ActivityPilgrimage
RelicsBodily relic - entire body
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 passage is interesting primarily for its record of our pilgrim visiting the cell and grave of Pelagia, whose story is that of an actress of Antioch who adopted an ascetic life at Jerusalem disguised as a man, and was only revealed to be a woman after her death (see E02571). Whether or not there ever was a real Pelagia, she was certainly real for the pilgrim of Piacenza, and listed first in his list of saints visited on the Mount of Olives.There is uncertainty over which James our pilgrim thought he had found on the Mount of Olives. In the second recension of the text, James is described as Iacobus Zebedaei ('James of Zebedee'), which would make him James the Apostle, the son of Zebedee (S00108); but in the manuscripts of the first recension Zebedaeus is a nominative, not a genitive, making Zebedee a separate saint and the identity of our James uncertain. There is no other evidence of Zebedee attracting cult, which suggests that the text originally read 'James of Zebedee' and so refers to James the Apostle.
However, we should note that the grave of another James, James 'brother of the Lord', believed to have been the first bishop of Jerusalem and an early martyr (S00058), is well attested on the Mount of Olives in the sixth century (see E07922 and E00491). It is therefore possible that the grave the Piacenza pilgrim saw was of this James (see Cronnier 2016, 55-68). It is also very possible that the two Jameses were conflated, at least in the mind of our pilgrim - this would not be at all surprising since the identity of the various Jameses in the New Testament remains hotly debated and very uncertain.
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).
Further reading (on the tombs of James):
Cronnier, A., Les inventions de reliques dans l'Empire romain d'Orient (IVe-VIe S.) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016).
Record Created By
Robert Wiśniewski
Date of Entry
30/04/2015
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00058 | James, 'brother of the Lord' | Iacobus | Uncertain | S00108 | James, the Apostle, son of Zebedee | Iacobus | Uncertain | S00249 | Cleopas, pupil of Jesus | Cleophas | Certain | S00250 | Pelagia the Penitent, recluse of Jerusalem, 5th c. | Pelagia | Certain |
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Robert Wiśniewski, Cult of Saints, E00456 - http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E00456