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figure 1
figure 2
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When pilgrims traveled to holy sites, their
goal was to receive blessings. The Piacenza pilgrim gained blessings
by taking a dip in the Jordon River, reclining on the couch in the Garden
of Gethsemene, and by drinking from a human skull enclosed in a reliquary
of gold and adorned with gems (Vikan, 11). A more tangible blessing, or eulogia, could
take the form of a portable token that came into contact with the
holy, such as oil from a lamp that hung in Christ’s tomb or soil from
the base of the column of Symeon Stylites, the famous Syrian ascetic who spent
almost forty years living on the top of columns (Vikan, 11). This desire to
be near the holy extended to death. Gregory of Nyssa asked to be buried with
his reliquary pendant so that he might be accompanied by martyrs in death.
Many pilgrims requested burial near shrines associated with resurrection,
such as the Grotto of the Seven Sleepers near Ephesus. Some pilgrims
would take their burial garments on pilgrimage to be blessed (Vikan,
26).
At the beginning
of this intense period of Christianization, monasticism, enthusiasm for the
Holy Land, and pilgrimage came together, making Christian Sinai possible. In
the fourth century, Christians discovered Mount Sinai and incorporated it into
the circuit of Holy Land pilgrimage. The Christian Mount Sinai, known in
Arabic as Jebel Musa, was not the Mount Sinai of Jewish tradition, which lay
in northwest Arabia, an identification followed by Early Christian writers,
such as Origen (d. 232 A.D.) and Eusebius (d. ca. 339 A.D.) (Kerkeslager, 146–213).
Today the monks of Mount Sinai believe that Bedouin oral tradition provided
early monks with the location of the holy places. When ascetics first arrived
in the area, looking for Mosaic sites, the Bedouins, whose ancestors were eyewitnesses
to the events of the Exodus, identified them (Hobbs, 69).
The earliest
recorded visitors to Jebel Musa were wandering monks. In the 350s, the
Syrian ascetic Symeon the Elder traveled to the holy mountain with a small
party. He climbed to the summit alone and remained there, praying, for
a week, without eating or sleeping (Grossmann, 178). Symeon was followed
by the Palestinian monk Julianos Sabas, who traveled to Mount Sinai in the
early 360s. He and his companions erected a small chapel on the summit (Grossmann,
177), which was seen by Egeria when she visited in the early 380s. Egeria
visited all of the sites associated with the Exodus, including Mount Sinai
and the Burning Bush (Wilkinson, Egeria's Travels, 107–14).
Local tradition holds that during this early period, Helena, Constantine’s
mother, built a chapel dedicated to the Theotokos at the site of the Burning
Bush and erected a tower nearby for refuge (Manafis, 18; Dahari, 21). Although
there is evidence of an early tower within the monastery’s precinct,
Helena almost certainly never visited Sinai or provided the monks with funds
(Dahari, 21). |
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