The Piacenza Pilgrim describes the shrine at the oak of Mamre, and the tombs of the Old Testament Patriarchs *Abraham (S00275), *Isaac (S00276), *Jacob (S00280) and *Joseph (S00277), and of Abraham's wife *Sarah (S00278), which is frequented by both Jews and Christians, separated by a screen; he also mentions the feast of the deposition of *Jacob and of *David (king of Israel and psalmist, S00269), celebrated on the day after Christmas by large numbers of Jews. Account of an anonymous pilgrim, written in Latin, probably in Placentia (northern Italy), c. 560.
E00489
Literary - Pilgrim accounts and itineraries
Pilgrim of Piacenza
Pilgrim of Piacenza, Itinerarium 30
First recension
De Bethlem autem usque ad ilicem Mambre sunt milia xxiv, in quo loco iacent Abraham et Isaac et Iacob et Sarra, sed et ossa Ioseph, basilica aedificata in quadriporticus, in medio atrio discopertus, per medio discurrit cancellus et ex uno latere intrant christiani et ex alio latere Iudaei, incensa facientes multa. Nam et depositio Iacob et Dauid in terra illa alio die de natale Domini deuotissime celebratur, ita ut ex omni terra illa Iudaei conueniant, innumerabilis multitudo, et incensa offerentes multa uel luminaria et munera dantes ad seruientes ibidem.
'From Bethlehem it is twenty-four miles to the Oak of Mamre, the resting-place of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Sarah, and also Joseph's bones. The basilica has four porticoes and no roof over the central court. Down the middle runs a screen. Christians come in on one side and Jews on the other, and they use much incense. The Deposition of Jacob and David are celebrated in this area, on the day after Christ's Birthday, with much devotion, and Jews from all over the country congregate for this, too great a crowd to count. They offer much incense and lights, and give presents to those who minister there.'
Second recension
De Bethleem usque ad ilicem mambres milia xxiiii. In quo loco requiescunt Abraham, Isaac, Iacob, et Sarra, simul et Ioseph ossa. Est basilica in quadriporticus, atrium in medio discoopertum et per medio cancellum; ex uno latere intrant christiani, ex alio uero Iudaei, incensa facientes multa. Nam depositio Iacob et Dauid in terra illa die primo post natale Domini deuotissime ab omnibus celebratur, ita ut ex omni terra Iudaeorum conueniat innumerabilis multitudo, incensa ferentes uel luminaria et dantes numera ac seruientes ibidem.
'From Bethlehem it is twenty-four miles to the Oak of Mamre, the resting-place of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Sarah, and also Joseph's bones. The basilica had four porticoes and no roof over the central court. Down the middle runs a screen. Christians come in on one side and Jews on the other, and they use much incense. On the day following Christ's Birthday the Deposition of Jacob and David is celebrated in this area by everybody with much devotion, and Jews from all over the country congregate for this, too great a crowd to count. They offer much incense and lights, and give presents to those who minister there.'
Text: Geyer 1898, 178 and 209.
Translation: Wilkinson 2002, 143, lightly modified.
Saint’s feast
Cult PlacesCult building - independent (church)
Burial site of a saint - unspecified
Non Liturgical ActivityPilgrimage
Appropriation of older cult sites
RelicsBodily relic - entire body
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesJews
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
The Piacenza pilgrim merges together, as if they were a single shrine, the basilica built by Constantine at Abraham's oak at Mamre, and the graves of the Patriarchs at Hebron, some four kilometres to the south. This confusion suggests that he may not have visited this site, and depended on second-hand information.It is therefore uncertain which shrine - Mamre or Hebron - was divided by a screen, with separate entrances for Jews and for Christians. However, since a fair at Mamre is well documented in other sources, it seems evident that it is Mamre that is referred to in the description of the great festival on the day after Christmas; so very possibly it is the focus of this entire passage.
The second recension follows the text of the first with one exception. It claims that the feast of the deposition of David and Jacob was celebrated by everybody in the country, which may suggest that the Christians did it as well as the Jews, but since the rest of the text concerns only the latter, the participation of the former is dubious.
For a tomb of Joseph recorded on the mosaic map of Madaba, see E02524.
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).
Robert Wiśniewski
11/05/2015
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00269 | David, Old Testament king of Israel, Psalmist | David | Certain | S00275 | Abraham, Old Testament patriarch | Abraham | Certain | S00276 | Isaac, Old Testament patriarch | Isaac | Certain | S00277 | Joseph, Old Testament patriarch | Ioseph | Certain | S00278 | Sarah, Old Testament matriarch, wife of Abraham | Sarra | Certain | S00280 | Jacob, Old Testament patriarch | Iacob | Certain |
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