For almost two thousand years, Christian pilgrims have been making the journey to the Holy Land to experience firsthand the sites where Jesus lived and conducted his ministry, as well as follow the road he travelled during his last days on earth.
Fortunately, many of the pilgrims recorded their adventures in writing and over the ages, a rich body of literature on the Holy Land has accumulated. Many of these texts testify not only to actual events that occurred along the pilgrims routs, but to the intense emotional experience that the holy sites aroused in these travellers.
Along with nearly one thousand stunning maps, illustrations, etchings. Lithographs, and photographs, this album brings you the fascinating stories of these pilgrims and the history of the holy sites from the day they were sanctify until the present in a special format, that of a newspaper chronicling Christian history and legend in the Holy Land since the birth of Jesus until today.
Some confusion obscures the next section of the Traveler's account, because he writes (improbably) that he next reached the place where Jesus fed five thousand people with five loaves of bread, which he describes as a wide plain with olive trees.
Read more...
As evening drew near, the soldiers came to break the legs of the crucified in order to hasten their death. When they saw that Jesus was already dead, they did not break his legs, but one of them pierced his side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. When night fell, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a secret disciple of Jesus, asked Pilate to let him take Jesus off of the cross and bury his body. He and Nicodemus, who had brought with him about seventy-five pounds of myrrh and aloes (scented oils), rubbed the body with them, wrapped it in shrouds, and buried it in a new tomb in the garden near the place of crucifixion.
Read more...
The local inhabitants of the Holy Land, like the authorities, saw the pilgrims first and foremost as a source of income, and they treated them accordingly.
Read more...
Female Pilgrims Who Made an Impression: Bridget of Sweden and Margery of England The improvement in pilgrimage conditions brought about not only a significant growth in the total number of pilgrims but also renewed the presence of Western women in the Holy Land. Most of the female pilgrims hailed from the European bourgeoisie, a fact that is reflected in the literature of the period. The Wife of Bath, for example, one of the heroines of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canter- bury Tales, written at the end of the fourteenth century, announces that she has been to Jerusalem three times.
Read more...
|
Jericho was situated six miles from the River Jordan. It looked like the Garden of Eden to the Traveler, though its walls lay in ruins. The Traveler reports that the house of Rahab still stood in the town, though in his day it served as a hostel. The room where Rahab left the spies was dedicated to prayer to Saint Mary.
Read more...
 On 21 March 2000, Pope John Paul II arrived in the Holy Land, to commemorate the second millennium of the birth of Jesus Christ, as well as to realize a life-long wish to visit personally the sites of the Gospel—in his words: "To come here and to pray in the most important places which, from ancient times, have seen God's interventions, the wonders he has done."
After the death of Jesus, his mother Mary lived on Mount Zion in the house where the disciples and the first Christians gathered. It would later be the site of the Hagia Zion Church, "mother of all churches." When it came time for Mary to leave this world, she fell asleep at home surrounded by all of Jesus' disciples except Thomas. After she fell asleep, Jesus came down and took her soul to heaven.
 The apostles laid the body in a casket and buried it in Gethsemane in the Jehoshaphat Valley. After the burial, Jesus descended again and took Mary's body to heaven as well. Three days later, tradition says, Thomas arrived in Jerusalem and asked to bow down before Mary. When they told him that Mary had risen to heaven, he refused to believe it and requested that they open the grave for him. When they opened Mary's casket they found it full of lilies and roses, a wonderful scent arising from it. Thomas cast his eyes to the heavens and saw Mary there surrounded by a halo; she uncinched her belt and it fell into the hands of doubting Thomas. The "Traveler from Placentia," who visited Jerusalem in the sixth century, saw the belt displayed in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. At the end of the fourth century an ornate church was erected over Mary's burial grotto. The upper church was destroyed and restored several times over the years, but the crypt has been preserved in its original condition.
In the city of Tiberias, recounts the Traveler from Placentia, were hot, saltwater baths, though the seawater as fresh.
Read more...
From Hagia Zion the Traveller went to the basilica of Saint Mary (the Nea Church, built by Justinian), where he found a large community of monks, hostels for men and women pilgrims, countless dining tables, and more than three thousand beds for the sick.
Read more...
|
