The Piacenza Pilgrim records his visit to the basilica of *Zechariah (Old Testament prophet, S00283) at Eleutheropolis (Palestine), where the prophet lay buried, and to the grave of *Isaiah (Old Testament prophet, S00282); the saw with which the latter had been killed was displayed in the church of Zechariah. Account of an anonymous pilgrim, written in Latin, probably in Placentia (northern Italy), c. 560.
Evidence ID
E00492
Type of Evidence
Literary - Pilgrim accounts and itineraries
Major author/Major anonymous work
Pilgrim of Piacenza
Pilgrim of Piacenza, Itinerarium 32
Extract from the pilgrim's account of his visit to Eleutheropolis:
First recension
Deinde uenimus, in loco, ubi Zacharias occisus est et iacet in corpore; basilica pulchra ornata et serui Dei multi. Inde uenimus in loco, ubi Esaias a serra secatus est uel iacet, quae serra pro testimonium ad sanctum Zachariam posita est.
'We then came to the place where Zachariah was killed and lies buried. There is a lovely basilica there, very well decorated, and many servants of God. Then we came to the place where Isaiah was sawn asunder and lies, and the saw has been put at saint Zachariah's as a testimony.'
Second recension
Dein uenimus inter templum et altare, ubi occisus est Zacharias, et ubi requiescit, est ibi ecclesia ornata; sunt in ea serui Dei multi. Inde uenimus ad locum, ubi Isaias propheta de serra lignea secatus est, et ibidem iacet sub quercu Rogel iuxta aquarum decursu. Et ipsa serra pro testimonio posita est ad sanctum Zachariam.
'We then came to the place between the temple and the altar where Zachariah was killed and lies buried. There is a well decorated church there, and many servants of God. Then we came to the place where Isaiah the prophet was sawn asunder with a wooden saw, and lies there under the oak of Rogel, next to the spring. And this saw has been put at saint Zachariah's as a testimony.'
Text: Geyer 1898, 178 and 210.
Translation: Wilkinson 2002, 143, lightly modified.
Cult PlacesCult building - independent (church)
Non Liturgical ActivityBodily relic - entire body
Cult building - independent (church)
Burial site of a saint - unspecified
Place of martyrdom of a saint
Non Liturgical ActivityPilgrimage
RelicsBodily relic - entire body
Contact relic - instrument of saint’s martyrdom
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 text is somewhat confused here in the second recension. The shrine the pilgrim was visiting was certainly that of Zechariah the Old Testament prophet (S00283), whose body, according to the historian Sozomen, was discovered near Eleutheropolis in the time of the emperor Theodosius II (E04059); but the reference to Zechariah being killed 'between the temple and the altar', from the Gospel of Matthew (23:35), was generally applied by Christians to Zechariah the father of John the Baptist (S00597).For a reference to the tomb of Zechariah on the mosaic map of Madaba, see E02524.
The story of Isaiah's martyrdom, by being sawn in half, is not biblical, but talmudic; it had, however, already entered the Christian canon by the end of the fourth century (because Prudentius refers to it - see E00884). The Piacenza Pilgrim shows that by the later sixth century the story was supported with a martyrdom relic.
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:
Maraval, P., Lieux saints et Pèlerinages d'Orient: Histoire et géographie, des origines à la conquête arabe (Paris: Cerf, 1985), 302.
Record Created By
Robert Wiśniewski
Date of Entry
13/05/2015
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00282 | Isaiah, Old Testament prophet | Isaias | Certain | S00283 | Zechariah, Old Testament prophet | Certain |
|---|
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