The Piacenza Pilgrim, in his account of Alexandria (Lower Egypt), lists the graves there of *Athanasios (bishop of Alexandria, ob. 373, S00294), *Phaustos/Faustus (presbyter and martyr of Alexandria, S00299).*Epimachos (presumably Epimachos of Pelusium, martyr of Alexandria, S00222), 'Antoninus' (either *Antony 'the Great', monk of Egypt, ob. 356, S00098, or *Antoninus, martyr of Alexandria, S00327) and *Mark (the Evangelist, S00293). Account of an anonymous pilgrim, written in Latin, probably in Placentia (northern Italy), c. 560.
Evidence ID
E00513
Type of Evidence
Literary - Pilgrim accounts and itineraries
Major author/Major anonymous work
Pilgrim of Piacenza
Pilgrim of Piacenza, Itinerarium 45
First recension
Alexandria ciuitas splendida, populus leuissimus, sed amatores peregrinorum; haereses multae. Ibi enim requiescit sanctus Athanasius, sanctus Faustus, sanctus Epimachius, sanctus Antoninus, sanctus Marcus uel alia multa corpora sanctorum.
'Alexandria is a renowned city, but its people is very reckless, though they welcome travellers. It is full of heresies. Saint Athanasius lies buried there, and also saint Faustus, saint Epimachius, saint Antoninus, saint Mark, and many other saints.'
Second recension
Alexandria, ciuitas pulchra, populus leuis, sed amatores peregrinorum, haereses multae; ibi enim requiescit Athanasius ipsius ciuitatis episcopus, qui contra Arrium presbyterum ipsius ciuitatis haereticum pro fide Christi certando multa pericula mortis sustinuit temporibus constans imperatoris Constantini Helenae filio. Ibidem requiescit sanctus Faustus et sanctus Epymachius et sanctus Antonius uel sanctus Maurus et alia multa sanctorum corpora.
'Alexandria is a beautiful city, but its people is reckless, though they welcome travellers. It is full of heresies. Saint Athanasius lies buried there, the bishop of this city who, in the times of the emperor Constantine son of Helena, steadfastly endured many dangers of death, when fighting for the faith of Christ against Arius, a heretic presbyter of the same city. There lies saint Faustus and saint Epimachius, and saint Antony, saint Maurus, and many other saints.'
Text: Geyer 1898, 190 and 217.
Translation: Wilkinson 2002, 149-150, lightly modified.
Cult PlacesBurial site of a saint - tomb/grave
Non Liturgical Activity
Burial site of a saint - tomb/grave
Burial site of a saint - unspecified
Place associated with saint's life
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
The second recension differs from the first by its discussion of Athanasius' role combating Arianism, and by a slightly different list of saints named as buried in Alexandria. Maurus (replacing Marcus) is, however, certainly an error (whether of the author or of a subsequent scribe), though a curious one since Mark the Evangelist was Alexandria's greatest saint, and no saintly Maurus is known from the city.It is less obvious whether the pilgrim writes of the grave of 'Antonius' (and, if so, the great ascetic of the 4th century), as transmitted by the second recension, or 'Antoninus' (a martyr of Alexandria), as transmitted by the first. According to his Life by Athanasius, Antony the Great was originally buried in an unmarked grave in the desert (see E00669). However, in 562 his body was discovered and transferred to Alexandria (see E00712). Thus the Piacenza pilgrim certainly could have visited his tomb here; indeed, given his interest in ascetics (he had already written of the grave of *Hilarion near Gaza [E00506], and visited the cave of the anchorite *Paul [E00510] in the eastern desert), it is quite likely that our pilgrim would seek out, and mention, the grave of perhaps the greatest anchorite of them all, whose body had quite recently arrived in Alexandria, presumably with considerable fanfare.
Antoninus of Alexandria was, by contrast, a comparatively minor figure, though we should note that neither Faustus/Phaustos nor Epimachus, whose identities here are not in doubt, were major saints. But it could be argued that our pilgrim included him in his list of Alexandrian saints because he associated him in some way with *Antoninus (martyr of Piacenza, S00328), who was his special protector (see E00578).
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
16/05/2015
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00098 | Antony, 'the Great', monk of Egypt, ob. 356 | Antonius/Antoninus | Uncertain | S00222 | Epimachos, of Pelusium, martyr of Alexandria | Epimachius/Epymachius | Certain | S00293 | Mark the Evangelist | Marcus | Certain | S00294 | Athanasios, bishop of Alexandria, ob. 373 | Athanasius | Certain | S00299 | Phaustos/Faustus, presbyter and martyr of Alexandria | Faustus | Certain | S00327 | Antoninos, martyr of Alexandria | Antonius/Antoninus | Certain | S00328 | Antoninus, martyr of Piacenza | Antonius/Antoninus | Uncertain |
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