Dumbarton Oaks Papers: Number Fifty-Six, 2002 (review)

Rarely are volumes of professional journals reviewed, but in this case, Dumbarton Oaks Papers has published nine articles on the theme of pilgrimage in the Byzantine Empire after 600. These papers were first presented at the Dumbarton Oaks Symposium, May 5-7, 2000. Taken together, they represent a major work regarding Byzantine pilgrimage, to be placed next to that of John Nesbitt and Virgil Crisafulli on the Miracles of Saint Artemios.

In introducing these articles, Alice-Mary Talbot emphasizes that Greek had no term for pilgrim, an English word derived through Italian from the Latin peregrinus (foreigner). The Byzantine term for those who traveled to a religious shrine was proskynetes (worshiper), a word which did not imply a journey. Another Greek term, xenos, most closely reflects peregrinus, but it has always retained a more general meaning of stranger or guest, and thus survives as the Greek word xenodocheion (hotel) or the English xenophobia, terms with no connection to pilgrimage. Three subsequent articles present evidence to support what Talbot infers from Greek terminology.

In the first article, Talbot herself focuses on the years after iconoclasm; she examines miracle tales associated with saints' shrines in Asia Minor and Palaeologan Constantinople. Such miracle tales form a peculiar genre of hagiography. The most famous example of this genre is the Miracles of Saint Artemios, a seventh-century source recording forty-five miracles most of which describe how visitors to Saint Artemios' tomb in Constantinople were healed of disease. In studying Anatolian miracle tales, Talbot discovers that most visitors came from the local area rather than from distant lands. One could thus describe them as worshipers (proskynetes) rather than pilgrims. Unfortunately, no miracle tales survive from Ephesus and its wonder-working tomb of Saint John the Evangelist. Other sources prove that Ephesus did attract true pilgrims from all over the Mediterranean, including some Moslems, as Clive Foss's article emphasizes.

The second article, by Jon Rosenqvist, focuses on Eugenios of Trebizond. In the miracle tales concerning this saint's shrine, Rosenqvist found again that visitors came only from Trebizond, not even from nearby mountain villages. Eugenios' tomb never attracted pilgrims, despite two attempts by local religious leaders to move his feast day from January to June, a month favoring long-distance travel.

In the third article, Richard Greenfield reaches the same conclusion in examining the Life of Saint Lazaros of Mount Gelasion. Lazaros attracted thousands during his lifetime who came for spiritual advice, for material assistance, or simply out of curiosity, but none were pilgrims who traveled from distant provinces.

Like Anatolian Ephesus, Thessalonike attracted true pilgrims to the tomb of Saint Demetrios in the city's great basilica. Charalambos Bakirtzes presents a study of how the archbishops of Thessalonike preserved the tradition of Demetrios' relics even though they were not sure where the saint's remains were buried. Bakirtzes suggests that church leaders might have deliberately forgotten where the relics were to foil imperial requests to move them to Constantinople. By the eleventh century, pilgrims visited Demetrios' church to fill ampullae with miracle-working myron, an aromatic liquid which had begun to flow from beneath the church. After Italians took the relics to the West, the Thessalonians conveniently discovered a new detail of Demetrios' martyrdom. He had fallen into a well at his death, and this well, now by the side of the church, was the true source of the myron. In the fifteenth century, Turkish pilgrims came to visit the shrine of Demetrios, and Sultan Murad II even sacrificed a ram in honor of the saint.

Constantinopole also attracted true pilgrims. George Majeska presents clear evidence of this in examining Russian pilgrims and their guidebooks to the shrines of the capital. Russians, Armenians, and even Latins came to Constantinople just as Northern Europeans visited Rome. Unlike Rome, Compostella, or Jerusalem, however, Constantinople did...