The Essence and Importance of Pilgrimage
The idea of pilgrimage is that at the end of the journey there is something worth the effort—a kind of Holy Grail. The best example of this is the Jewish pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem, the purpose of which was to reach the Temple and touch the sacred, to be inspired by the presence of the Shekinah. The Christian and Muslim pilgrimages to Jerusalem should be understood in the same way. Pilgrims generally have a goal, a belief that something is waiting for them at the end of the road, which has to do not only with the physical place, such as the Kaaba stone in Mecca, but with something beyond that. Therefore, the question to be asked when approaching the subject of pilgrimage should first and foremost be: What is waiting at the end of the road?
This is a point most academic researchers and writers on the topic of pilgrimage miss. They find it difficult to accept the idea that there is anything at the end of the road that has a nature different from what is. For them, the world is “flat,” and there is no difference in experience between being in one place or another. That is why I titled one of my previous books dealing with the Temple Touching the Sacred. I believe that the purpose of pilgrimage is to experience the sacred, eternal, and meaningful plane of existence instead of the routine, mundane, and random one. And the physical destination—the holy place—is only a means to this end.
For this to happen, a person needs to undergo change—a process of purification—by which they will be ready to connect with the higher parts within themselves and for the encounter with the sacred. The change happens throughout the process of the pilgrimage, thanks to the effort and the act of the pilgrimage itself. One can view the pilgrimage process as a kind of Hero’s Journey, which Joseph Campbell describes in his books [1]. As in Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, the pilgrimage journey involves overcoming obstacles; in its course, there are crises and triumphs over them, and at the end, there is a glorious and victorious return home. The best example of this is again the Jewish pilgrimage to Jerusalem, at the end of which there were purification rites and preparation before entering the Temple, and the visit to the Temple itself.
The pilgrimage adds a religious–sacred dimension to the Hero’s Journey. Campbell’s archetypal model describes a special object or magical power that the hero receives at the beginning of his journey, helping him achieve his goals— from the perspective of the pilgrim’s journey, this is the Holy Relic. During Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, the hero acquires wisdom and experience that can be realized in both worlds; the pilgrim gains religious wisdom and mystical experience. Campbell’s Hero’s Journey involves crossing a threshold, and this is what happens the moment the pilgrims board the ships that take them to the Holy Land. Campbell’s Hero’s Journey is aided by a mentor; for the pilgrimage, these are the priests and religious leaders who led the convoys. Campbell’s Hero’s Journey brings about a union with the feminine principle; in the case of the Christian pilgrim, this is connected to the figure of Mary or the Holy Spirit. The pilgrim needs to become receptive and passive at some stage, instead of active and outgoing.
It is possible to expand on the archetype of the Hero’s Journey identified by Campbell and its connection to the process of religious pilgrimage, but the scope of this book is limited, so I have only briefly mentioned the topic and its implications. It is also possible to expand on the internal, psychological, and spiritual meaning of pilgrimage. Pilgrimage is essentially the journey each of us goes through in life.
Theorists of religious studies, especially Mircea Eliade, argued that the journey—any journey—is essentially a desire to get home; that the only safe, true, nourishing, and satisfying place is in contact with the sacred (according to the mystics, this brings about a state we experienced before birth) [2]. Indeed, when we walk along a road and arrive at some inn, the desire is to feel at home. But it is not just a physical home: there is something in humans that constantly strives to reach home, and the only real home is the sacred place and the sacred time.
However, as in Michelangelo’s famous painting of the Creation of Adam, where man appears to be touching—but not quite touching—the divine, we never fully reach it; we can only touch it. Sometimes, in order to come into contact with the divine, one must set out on a journey, and the process is as important as the destination. The expectation of arrival is not necessarily negative: through expectation we charge the anticipated goal, and when we reach it, we encounter our own projection, which helps us to meet ourselves. The difference between humans and animals is that the animal goes from place to place, while the human walks and knows that he is walking—he imagines the place he is walking toward, and in that sense, he is already there before he arrives and meets himself when he reaches it.
The journey is a different kind of consciousness, aided by the sequence of places and the continuum of time, and it allows us to develop a new consciousness while we are in it. The very act of setting out and arriving sets powerful psychic processes in motion, activating deep archetypes in our subconscious. This different kind of consciousness is further supported by the intention of the journey, and a pilgrimage to a holy place is, in this regard, the most powerful intention—especially when personal motives are added, such as seeking answers to questions, atonement for sin, and so on.
Our sense of time is different when we walk or even travel from place to place, and this can be seen in tours where every day (especially the first days) feels like a week, and a week feels like a month. This indicates that during a journey across different places, we enter a kind of altered consciousness. Evidence of this can be found in travel diaries, and I am sure that if anyone ever examines them from a psychological perspective, they will discover that during a journey, thoughts and insights arise that do not surface in daily life.
According to Eliade, pilgrimage is directed toward holy places—sites where there was a theophany, a revelation of a supreme power. Human beings always search for the holy place and the sacred time through which the numen, the other plane, appeared and continues to appear in the world, hoping that when they arrive there, a process of connection and sanctification will be possible [3]. The Platonic idea of the recollection of a previous existence—anamnesis—is part of the pilgrimage, and this is expressed in the return to the myth of God or the saint, and in contemplating it during the journey.
Dupront, a French historian and anthropologist (1905–1990) [4], describes a spiritualization of the pilgrim’s life as a result of passing through unfamiliar territory that makes him a stranger to himself and to others. This allows for a cleansing of the psyche, detachment from the mundane and random, and a powerful healing process leading to the salvation of the pilgrim’s soul and the creation of an inner new universe.
Jerusalem is holy to the three monotheistic religions, and if we refer to the purpose of pilgrimage to Jerusalem in these three religions, each of them had—and still has—a different declared purpose:
For Jews, the purpose was to appear before God (three times a year “all your males shall appear before the Lord”), and after the destruction of the Temple—to remember it and hasten the Redemption.
For Muslims, the purpose is to draw closer to the secrets of Muhammad’s Night Journey and receive the blessing of Muslim prayer in that place.
For Christians, the purpose is to connect with the figure of Jesus, to be purified, to be charged, to die and be resurrected anew—with each stream having a different emphasis: for Protestants, to connect with the Bible; for Catholics, to learn the mysteries of Jesus’ life and experience the Passion; for the Orthodox, to prepare for death and participate in holy ceremonies [6].
Yet, the pilgrimage to Jerusalem in all three religions is connected to the same themes: redemption, transition between dimensions, prayer, purification, inspiration, death, and resurrection.
The traditions of pilgrimage in the three religions led many millions of people to make their way on foot to Jerusalem over the centuries. Their experience of the pilgrimage was much more profound than it is today, because it was done on foot (or on horseback) and took far more time, demanding great effort, time, and even risk. But this is what allowed internal and external processes to occur, and only then was it possible to speak of concepts such as communitas or liminality, terms coined by Victor Turner [9] in relation to the pilgrimage process. Under such conditions, the chances of experiencing a mystical experience were much greater.
Jesus did not command his followers to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; in fact, the opposite is true. He claimed that the Temple is internal, and what is important is the Kingdom of Heaven, which has no specific place on earth but is in the heart of man. From this, it could be deduced that places should not be sanctified in Christianity, but human nature and the subconscious archetypes associated with pilgrimage and journey led to the development of holy places and pilgrimage to them. This became a common phenomenon starting from the Byzantine period—the time when Christianity became the state religion of Rome and Byzantium and spread throughout the world.
The identification of the holy places in Jerusalem was carried out at the beginning of the 4th century CE, after the acceptance of Christianity as a permitted religion in the Roman Empire, by Empress Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine. A few decades later, during the time of Emperor Theodosius, at the end of that century, Christianity became the official religion, and the importance of these places increased. Magnificent churches were built, and a tradition of pilgrimage began, documented in travelers’ literature from that period.
And so, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims sailed from Byzantium and Europe on grain ships that arrived full from Alexandria and returned empty to Egypt. The voyage took about two weeks from Rome or North Africa, and a few days from Greece or Byzantium. From Alexandria, the pilgrims continued on local ships to Israel, taking advantage of the north-westerly winds. Many pilgrims from the eastern Mediterranean region used to come on foot during that period, and there was also a pilgrimage (without ships) from Constantinople through Antioch to Jerusalem. People of that period had good walking fitness and could cover about 30–35 km a day. From Constantinople to Jerusalem there are close to 1,800 km, and along the way, which took about two months, there were 58 inns for pilgrims.
At the stops, there were stables for animals and rooms, sleeping areas, and taverns. Many of the inns were official accommodations for Church pilgrims, under the supervision of the clergy, often connected to monasteries or religious complexes in the cities and settlements along the way. The pilgrims took with them the Bible and travel books based on the Onomasticon of Eusebius, translated by Jerome. They sought to visit the sites mentioned in the Holy Scriptures and experience the holiness of encountering the places where Jesus lived, acted, was crucified, and resurrected.
Over time, a whole culture began to develop around the pilgrimage journeys. According to the article by Professor Robert Worth Frank Jr. that appears in the collection Journeys Toward God [5], pilgrimage began before the journey itself. There was an aura of holiness around the sacred places, which were considered a realm of wonder and miracle that influenced both before the pilgrimage and after it. Therefore, most of the miracles occurred before the journey, on the way to the place, or after returning from it, and not in the place itself. Nevertheless, the place was considered a “field of power.”
The Via Palma
In the Middle Ages, as mentioned, there were three important pilgrim routes: the first to Santiago in Spain, the second to Jerusalem, and the third to Rome. After completing the journey to Santiago, the pilgrim would receive a shell; after completing the journey to Rome—a cross; and after completing the journey to Jerusalem—a palm branch that symbolized the possibility of eternal life. However, these were pilgrimages of the European world, while Christianity also spread to other regions, and there were other pilgrimages to Jerusalem, such as those of the Armenians, Georgians, and Ethiopians.
Professor John Eade analyzed the characteristics of contemporary Christian pilgrimage, and in my opinion, his analysis is partly relevant to understanding the essence of Christian pilgrimage in earlier periods as well. According to him, the pilgrimage to Jerusalem is different from Christian pilgrimages to other places in the world, which are more homogeneous and involve a population with similar characteristics, such as in Santiago. Eade explains that in European pilgrimages there are “drainage basins”—areas from which pilgrims come—and that pilgrimages in the past were connected to a socio-cultural system. In contrast, the pilgrimage to Jerusalem (similar to the pilgrimage to Mecca) is composed of people coming from different places in the world, belonging to different denominations and cultures [6]. In other words, the pilgrimage to Jerusalem is multicultural, multinational, and multi-religious.
Eade notes that unlike the Muslim tradition regarding the pilgrimage to Mecca, or the Jewish tradition of pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem, the Christian pilgrimage to Jerusalem is not connected to special rituals, and this is reflected in the fact that Christian worship and prayers in Israel are no different from prayers and religious rituals anywhere else. It is worth noting in this context that in the Middle Ages, there were Christian movements that did not encourage pilgrimage. Bernard of Clairvaux, for example, opposed the pilgrimage of monks to Jerusalem, arguing that it harmed the value of the constancy and stability of their work, but supported the pilgrimage of the masses, hoping that it would inspire some of them to turn to religious life.
The pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the Byzantine period was aided by the developed road network and the advanced urban infrastructure of the time, so that to some extent it resembled visiting the holy places today. Most pilgrims arrived by ship at Jaffa or Caesarea; they could move freely and safely on the roads, and even hire a horse or carriage. However, with the Muslim conquest, and especially with the beginning of the Middle Ages and the Crusades, the pilgrimage became more adventurous and gained a different and additional dimension and importance.
The phenomenon and movement of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages developed around the pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela in Spain and Rome in Italy. After the Crusader conquest of the Holy Land, a sacred pilgrimage route developed in which groups walked from Acre to Jerusalem while visiting sites, many of which did not exist before (they were invented or “found”). The renewed pilgrimage route that resembled those of Santiago and Rome crystallized in the 13th century during the time of the Second Kingdom of Jerusalem and was known as the “Via Palma” [8], because at its end the pilgrims would descend to the Jordan near Jericho, be baptized, and receive a palm branch. But what is the meaning of the palm? And what is the meaning of the pilgrimage on the “Via Palma”?
In the same way that the cross received by pilgrims to Rome was an approval of their connection with the Church, the meaning of the palm received by pilgrims to Jerusalem was a sign of victory—and not just any victory, but victory over death, such as that achieved by Jesus for all of humanity. Rome was the capital of Christianity, the city of Peter and Paul, where the representative of Jesus on earth sat, but it was an earthly rule. To connect with the spirit of Jesus himself, one had to go east, to the place of spiritual rule. The departure from Europe to the unfamiliar world of the East was a kind of transition to another dimension, and the meaning of arriving in Jerusalem was the experience of the Passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
The pilgrim set out on the “Via Palma” knowing that his life was short and finite and that all things pass in this world, and through the pilgrimage journey and the encounter with the places where Jesus appeared, he sought to connect with eternal life and the sacred. However, the connection to the sacred and eternal does not happen automatically, and there were those who returned from Jerusalem in a worse condition than when they set out, like Frederick II, who was dragged into endless wars. In contrast, Eleanor of Aquitaine found her unique path and the courage to follow it during this journey.
The greatest mystery of Christianity is the victory over death and the possibility of reaching eternal life that it offers, thanks to the sacrifice of Jesus. Just as the sun rises in the East anew every day, so the journey to Jerusalem was a possibility for spiritual resurrection—a victory over death—but not before giving up everything known and familiar. This pilgrimage journey was the last of the three great pilgrimages of the Middle Ages and the most decisive among them. If the journey to Santiago was the incubation of faith within oneself, and the journey to Rome the connection with the order of the Church, then the journey to Jerusalem was a kind of arrival at the heavenly kingdom beyond the boundaries of this earthly world; it offered birth into eternal life. It is no coincidence that after Saint Francis arrived in Israel in 1219, and presumably also in Jerusalem, he returned to Italy a different person and, a few years later, received the miracle of the Stigmata.
Maximus the Confessor writes that the Angel Gabriel came to Mary before her death and brought her a palm branch, a symbol of her victory over death, and told her that she would ascend to heaven. When Jesus entered Jerusalem, palm branches were placed before him, a symbol of victory over the coming death and suffering. The Via Palma was intended to connect human beings with the mystery of Golgotha—the event of Jesus’ resurrection, no less. It is interesting to note in this context that the pilgrimage intensified toward Easter, when the miracle of the Holy Fire occurs in Jerusalem. By being in the place, one could connect with the Holy Spirit. Something else could happen at the place of the Resurrection—the place from which the world was created, where the worlds connect, where the blood of the crucified atoned for Adam’s sin and washed his skull. Inside the Rotunda was the empty tomb, and this emptiness was a supernatural miracle, a transition to another dimension—just like in the Temple.
Historically, the development of the “Via Palma” is partly connected to Philip Augustus, the great King of France at the beginning of the 13th century, Henry of Champagne, and especially John of Brienne, King of Jerusalem from 1210–1225—an adventurer and warrior, described as a wandering knight seeking his fortune. De Brienne, who was Philip’s man, made a pilgrimage to Santiago, returned to the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and designed the Crusader pilgrimage route, and later even became a Franciscan monk. Many pilgrims experienced a change in their lives following the pilgrimage process, and this is what happened to John of Brienne after his pilgrimage to Santiago.
After the liberation of Jerusalem and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre from Muslim rule by Frederick II in 1229, many pilgrims arrived from the ports of Southern Italy, with many coming there after visiting Rome. Frederick II, the ruler of Sicily, Cyprus, and Jerusalem, made the routes to the Holy Land safe and fast, relying on the naval expertise that originated with the Normans. The voyage to the Holy Land by ship lasted about six weeks. Sometimes they sailed directly to Israel, sometimes to Alexandria and from there to the Holy Land, or to Constantinople and the Greek islands and from there to the Holy Land—and likewise on the way back.
The knowledge that it was possible to arrive in and visit Jerusalem relatively easily and safely, and that it was under Christian rule, contributed to a flood of pilgrims, which intensified from the new Christian conquest of Jerusalem in 1229 until its reconquest by the Muslims in 1244. The pilgrims preferred to follow the route that developed during that period: it began in Acre, passed through the Carmel and the Coastal Plain to Jaffa and Ramla, and from there to Jerusalem. The road existed physically even earlier, but as an amalgamation of sacred sites and a prescribed itinerary it developed only in the 13th century, and during its short existence, it gained momentum and inspiration from the development of pilgrimage routes in Europe and largely completed them.
Jerusalem was the longed-for destination of the journey. Pilgrims were festively received in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, thereby completing their long journey across continents and seas. They would fulfill the vows, oaths, and aspirations that had led them to set out, perform rites and ceremonies of sanctification, and rest from their labors. But this was not the end of the journey, and after a few days in Jerusalem, the pilgrims would go on day trips to Bethlehem, the Monastery of the Cross, Ein Karem, and other sites in the Judean Hills, or on longer journeys to Hebron and sometimes even to Saint Catherine’s Monastery. The final chapter of the pilgrimage journey and the “Via Palma” was the descent to Jericho via the site of the Good Samaritan and the arrival at the Baptism Site on the Jordan River, where they received a palm branch to symbolize the victory of the spirit and the definitive conclusion of their pilgrimage.
In that period, most pilgrims walked from Acre to Jerusalem and did not shorten the route by sailing from Acre to Jaffa as was customary in earlier and later periods, when they would sail by boat to Jaffa and from there walk a strenuous two-day distance to Jerusalem. This was part of the atmosphere and the sense of mission, and also part of a religious process that was partly connected to atonement for sins.
There is a connection between the pilgrimages and the Crusades. The Fifth Crusade took place in 1217–1218, and following it, the fortresses of Atlit and Caesarea were built, and the pilgrims’ route along the coast became more important. In 1229, the Sixth Crusade took place under the leadership of Frederick II, who secured a Christian-controlled corridor to Jerusalem, including control over the city, and strengthened the Christian presence in the coastal area. Caesarea was rebuilt, as was Jaffa, and the flow of pilgrims turned into a flood. The Crusader presence in the Holy Land was strengthened after the Barons’ Crusade in 1239, and during this period, we see the beginning of the Franciscan presence in the Holy Land, when they received a chapel at the Fifth Station of the Via Dolorosa.
Footnotes
[1] Campbell, J. (2008). The hero with a thousand faces (3rd ed.). New World Library.
[2] Eliade, Mircea, The Myth of the Eternal Return: Archetypes and Repetition, translated by Yotam Reuveni, Jerusalem: Carmel, 2000.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Dupront, A. (1973). Pèlerinages et lieux sacrés. Mélanges F. Braudel. Toulouse: Privat.
[5] Sargent-Baur, B. N. (1992). Journeys Toward God. Pilgrimage and Crusade. Volkskunde in Österreich.
[6] Eade, J. and Sallnow, M.J. 1991. Contesting the sacred: the anthropology of Christian pilgrimage. Routledge, London.
[7] Ibid P. 108.
[8] Prawer, Joshua (1975). The Crusaders: A Portrait of a Colonial Society. Bialik Institute.
[9] Turner, V. W., & Turner, E. L. B. (1978). Image and pilgrimage in Christian culture: Anthropological perspectives. Columbia University Press.
