gave rise to all manner of religious expeditions. Even among
the Israelites, the visitation of certain cult-centres prevailed
from remote antiquity, but, when the restriction of Yahweh-worship
to Jerusalem had doomed the old shrines, the Jewish
pilgrimages were directed solely to the sanctuary on Mt Moria.
Among the Greeks the habit was no less deeply rooted. Just as the inhabitants of each town honoured their tutelar deity by solemn processions to his temple, so, at the period of the Olympic games, the temple of Zeus at Olympia formed the goal of multitudes from every Hellenic country. No less powerful was the attraction exercised by the shrines of the oracular divinities, though the influx of pilgrims was not limited to certain days, but, year in and year out, a stream of private persons, or embassies from the city-states, came flowing to the temple of Zeus in Dodona or the shrine of Apollo at Delphi. The unification of the peoples of antiquity rn the Roman Empire, and the resultant amalgam of religions, gave a powerful impetus to the custom. For, as East and West still met at the old sanctuaries of Greece, so-and yet more-Greece and Rome repaired to the temples of the southern and eastern deities In the shrine of Isis at Philae, Europeans set up votive inscriptions on behalf of their kindred far away at home, and it may be surmised that even among the festival crowds at Jerusalem a few Greeks found place (John xii. 20).
The pilgrimage, however, attained its zenith under Islam. For Mahomet proclaimed it the duty of every Mussulman, once at least in his life, to visit Mecca, the result being that the birthplace of the Prophet is now the religious centre of the whole Mahommedan world (see Mahommedan Religion; Caravan, Mecca).
II. The Pilgrimage under Christianity.—The pilgrimages of Christianity presuppose the existence of those of paganism, but it would be an error to maintain that the former were a direct development of the latter. For primitive Christianity was devoid of any point by which these journeys of Origin. devotion might naturally have been suggested. It was a religion without temples, without sanctuaries, and without ceremonial. The saying of the Johannine Gospel-that God is to be adored neither in Jerusalem nor on Gerizimf but that His true worshipper must worship Him in spirit and in truth- is in complete harmony with the old Christian piety. And, accordingly, in the ancient Christian literature, we find no trace of a conception that the believer should v1s1t a definite place in order to pay homage to his Master. The evolution of the Christian pilgrimage moved on other lines
Cicero finely observes that, in Athens, the glorious architecture caused him less pleasure than did the thought of the great men w hose work was done in its midst-“how here one had lived, and there fallen asleep, how here another had disputed, and there lay buried” (De Legg. ii. 2). This feeling was not weakened by the advent of Christianity, in fact, we may say that it was appreciably strengthened. Cicero had already compared the sites consecrated by the memory of some illustrious name with those hallowed by recollections of a loved one But with the Christian, when his Redeemer was in question, both motives coincided for there the greatest was also the dearest.
In this devotion to the memory of Jesus, we find the key to the origin of the Christian pilgrimage: the faithful repaired to those places which were invested with memories of their Lord's earthly life. And these journeys must certainly date from the 2nd century. For Origen (d. 254) mentions that in Bethlehem the cave was shown where Christ was born, and in it the manger in w hrch Mary made the bed of her child The site must have been much visited long before this, since Origen remarks that it was common knowledge, even among the infidels, that there was the birthplace of that Jesus whom the Christians worshipped (Contr. Cels. i. 51). But those who visited Bethlehem must certainly have visited Jerusalem and the places there, so rich in memorials of their Master And the sympathy of Christendom soon led them beyond this immediate circle The anonymous author of the Cohortatio ad Graecos, a work of the 2nd century, visited the remnants of those cells, in which—so legend related—the seventy interpreters laboured on their version of the Old Testament: nor, when he came to Cumae in Campania, did he fail to have shown him the old shrine of the Sibyl (Coh. ad Gr. 13 and 37). Soon we begin to hear the names of the pilgrims. In the course of the 3rd century, as Jerome relates, F rrmilian, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, travelled to Palestine to view the sacred places (De Vir. ill. 54); while, according to Eusebius, a second bishop from Cappadocia, Alexander by name, visited Jerusalem in order to pray and acquaint himself with the holy sites, and was there invited by the community to remain with them and assume the episcopate of the aged Narcissus (Hist. eccl. vi. 11). With regard to his own times—the early years of the 4th century—the same authority recounts that believers kept streaming to Palestine from all regions, there to offer their prayers at a cavern shown on the Mount of Olives (Demonstr. evang. vi. 18).
This statement, that the Christians of the 3rd and 4th centuries were in the habit of visiting Jerusalem for prayer, proves that the non-Christian conception of the religious pilgrimage had already entered the sphere of Christian thought. That men travelled for purposes of prayer implies acceptance of the heathen theory of sanctuaries which it is an act of piety to visit. We may regret the fact, for it suffied the purity of primitive Christian thought. Nevertheless, it is clear that the development was inevitable. As soon as the non-Christian ideas of priests, sacrifices, houses of the god, and so forth, were naturalized in the Christianity of the 3rd century, it was but a short step to the belief in holy places.
III. The Pilgrimage in the Ancient Church.—In the passages cited above, Bethlehem and the Mount of Olives figure as the main goal of the pilgrim: and on the Mount of Olives the mind must naturally turn to the Garden of Gethsemane and the scene of the Ascension. It may seem The East. surprising that there is no mention of Golgotha and the Sepulchre. But the visitation of these sites was rendered impossible to the Christians by the destruction of Jerusalem and the erection of the town of Aelia Capitolina. They had not forgotten them; but the grave was concealed under a mound of earth and stones—a profanation probably dating from the siege of the city and Titus’s attack on the second wall. On the summit of this mound there stood, in the days of Eusebius, a sanctuary of Venus (Eus Vit. Const. iii. 26, 30). The Sepulchre and the Hill of the Crucifixion were lost to the Christian pilgrim; and, consequently, before the era of Constantine, the one holy site in the town of Jerusalem was the so-called Coenaculum, which received its name in later years. It lay south of the city, near the outer wall, and, if Epiphanius is to be believed, was already in existence when Hadrian (130–131) visited Jerusalem (De mens. 14). It was regarded as the house, in which—according to the Acts of the Apostles (xii. 12 sqq.)—Mary, the mother of John Mark, lived; and the belief was that there the Lord held the Last Supper, and that there the eleven assembled after the Ascension. It was there, also, that the scene of the Pentecostal effusion of the Spirit was laid (cf. Cyrill. Hierus. Cat. xvi. 4).
The pilgrimage to Palestine received a powerful impetus from the erection of the memorial churches on the holy sites, under Constantine the Great, as described by Eusebius in his biography of the emperor (iii. 25 sqq). At the order of Constantine, the shrine of Venus above mentioned was destroyed, and the accumulated rubbish removed, till the ancient rock foundation was reached. There the cave was discovered in which Joseph of Arimathea had laid the body of Jesus, and above this cave and the Hill of the Crucifixion the imposing church of the Holy Sepulchre was built (A.D. 326–336). The churches in Bethlehem and on the Mount of Olives were erected by Helena, the mother of Constantine, who herself undertook the pilgrimage to the Holy Land. These churches were then endowed with new sanctuaries of miraculous powers; and relics of Christ were found in the shape of the Cross and the nails. Eusebius, the contemporary of Constantine, is silent on this point. To his continuators, on the other hand, it is an established fact that Helena brought all three crosses to light, and ascertained
