Skip to content Skip to sidebar Skip to footer

What is pilgrimage to Christianity?

For Christians, pilgrimages are not obligatory. However, it is a highly recommended practice. It arose spontaneously in the early centuries as believers visited the places associated with the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. Soon other destinations became popular, especially those associated with early Christian saints and martyrs.

The journey of Helen of Constantinople to Jerusalem was a pivotal moment in the long history of Christian pilgrimage. Her son, Emperor Constantine, had just promulgated the famous Edict of Milan (313), which legally sanctioned Christian worship and allowed Christians to perform their religious practices in public.

Helen’s alleged discovery of the true cross and the empty tomb of Christ (buried under a pagan temple) unleashed a wave of fervor throughout the Roman Empire and ushered in the era of Christian pilgrimage. Egeria, a Hispano-Roman and Christian matron who left a diary of her journey to the Holy Land in the 4th century, soon became well known in the early Christian world.

By the Middle Ages, pilgrimages were serious business. So serious, in fact, that one of the motivations for the Crusades was to ensure that pilgrims could get to the Holy Land. Sigeric’s journey from Canterbury to Rome inaugurated the Via Francigena. The discovery of the tomb of St. James in northern Spain established the famous Camino de Santiago.

The decision to go on a pilgrimage was a turning point in the lives of medieval Europeans. A pilgrim would distribute his inheritance and say goodbye to his family in case he could not return. Often the pilgrimage had a penitential purpose (to atone for some sin). It could also be made as a token of gratitude for graces received, or out of religious concern or simple personal devotion. In some cases, the pilgrim who managed to return home completed this “transformation” by joining a monastery.

The Protestant Reformation brought about the decline of pilgrimages. By questioning the veneration of saints and relics, interest in pilgrimages dropped in the following centuries. This was undoubtedly influenced by the political divisions and wars in Europe.

Though never completely interrupted (and flourishing in Spanish America), European pilgrimages waned in the modern and contemporary era. Most of these routes were almost forgotten from the 18th century onwards. But at the end of the twentieth century, the revival of the Camino de Santiago in Spain gave impetus to the rediscovery of pilgrimage routes throughout the continent –and beyond.

Image by Leonhard Niederwimmer at Pixabay

 

This post is also available in: Español Italiano

Leave a Comment