Encountering the Sacred: The Debate on Christian Pilgrimage in Late Antiquity.

Smith, Julie Ann

Encountering the Sacred: The Debate on Christian Pilgrimage in Late Antiquity. By Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony. The Transformation of Classical Heritage. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. xv + 254 pp. $45.00 cloth.

Jesus' response to Shenoute of Atripe concerning the abbot's desire to send his monks to Jerusalem was "my Cross is everywhere," and this perception, that the sacred could not be localized and that journeying to places where Christ's "feet have left their prints" might not be spiritually beneficial, underlies the thesis of this book. The book engages with the responses of leading theologians in the fourth and fifth centuries to the rising phenomena of formation of Christian sacred landscape and its concomitant pilgrimage to the historic places of the faith. The multiplicity of ideas about, and reservations to, the cult of holy place and pilgrimage examined in this book reveals that no definitive theology was developed. Indeed, Bitton-Ashkelony makes clear that this was not the intention of those Christian theologians whose works form the basis for her study. Rather it was protection of local interests and enhancement of episcopal power and, in some cases, concerns for monastic stability, which motivated their deliberations.

Encountering the Sacred draws on a broad range of theological and monastic writings from the fourth and fifth centuries and traces the rise of ecclesiastical power through the formation of the sacred landscape of Christianity and through development of episcopal and monastic control of its holy places. Bitton-Ashkelony emphasizes that some writers expressed a preference for distancing Christianity from the Jewish conception of the land as holy and concerns for the localization of the divine; indeed a theology of sacred place was barely developed. Rather, churchmen preferred to promote their local holy sites and cults over the growing enthusiasm for visiting sites associated with the life of Christ, in particular Jerusalem, at times leading to rivalries between episcopal and monastic centers and interests. Bitton-Ashkelony explores the multiplicity of ideas and reservations concerning pilgrimage and sacred geography explaining that there was in fact no clear program or ideology and that individual responses sprang from local and personal interests, or from concerns for the threat to the monastic ideal.

The introduction locates the study carefully within the scholarship on the idea of pilgrimage in late antique Christianity. In chapter 1, "Basil of Caesarea's and Gregory of Nyssa's Attitudes toward Pilgrimage," the ambivalence apparent in the writings of Gregory of Nyssa and Basil of Caesarea towards the veneration of scriptural places in Jerusalem, and Gregory Nazianzen's outright rejection of the idea of sacred place, are read against a backdrop of Cyril of Jerusalem's program of representing Jerusalem as the sacred site of Christendom. This particular exchange represents a broader concern for local religious leaders to promote the reputation of their local holy places as means to ecclesiastical power. Chapter 2, "Jerome's Position on Pilgrimage: Vacillating between Support and Reservations," explores Jerome's seemingly inconsistent views on pilgrimage and holy places as expressed in a number of his works. While he was initially enthusiastic about the spiritual benefits of visiting scriptural places, in some of his later works he expressed reservations. Bitton-Ashkelony traces his misgivings to the period shortly after his falling out with the bishop and monastics of Jerusalem as a result of the Origenist controversy. Overall, his advocacy for the intrinsic holiness of biblical geography was "emphatic."

Augustine, the focus of chapter 3, "Augustine on Holy Space," was conspicuously silent on the subject of pilgrimage and rarely gave his attention to the idea of sacred place. Hence, this chapter is perhaps the weakest point in a work that focuses on the inherently active notion of debate. The main point Bitton-Ashkelony makes here is that, while Augustine was apathetic in regard to pilgrimage, he was committed to developing a cult of local martyrs and hence can be seen to have made an (arguably oblique) contribution to an otherwise concerted debate. Chapter 4, "Pilgrimage in Monastic Culture," examines the ambiguous place of pilgrimage in monastic practice. The potentially conflicting expectations of the ideals of xeniteia [wandering or pilgrimage] and hesychia [stillness] were variously accommodated in monastic writings and saints' vitae. In these works journeying was construed in both physical and spiritual terms: as alienation from self and the world, as pilgrimage to holy places, and as inward journey. In chapter 5 the discussion explores another element of the complex debate. In the fourth and fifth centuries the specialization of the holy expanded to include the presence of living holy men and the burial places of saintly monks. This enhanced the spiritual value of their monasteries and attracted pilgrims, but also raised concerns for the disruption of monastic hesychia. In her conclusion, Bitton-Ashkelony links the theological, social, and political implications of the debate on sacred geography and pilgrimage to the development of the idea of the two Jerusalems with its emphasis on the heavenly goal and its long-term implications for the medieval notion of "multiple Jerusalems."

Julie Ann Smith

University of Sydney