University of Oxford
Browse

File(s) not publicly available

E00578: The Piacenza Pilgrim tells, in the opening sentence of his Itinerary, how, during his travels to the holy places, he was accompanied by *Antoninus (martyr of Piacenza, S00328). Account of the anonymous pilgrim, written in Latin, probably in Placentia (northern Italy), c. 570.

online resource
posted on 2015-05-30, 00:00 authored by robert
Pilgrim of Piacenza, Itinerarium 1

First recension
Praecedente beato Antonino martyre, ex eo quod a ciuitate Placentina egressus sum, in quibus locis sum peregrinatus, id est sancta loca.

'Blessed Antoninus the martyr went ahead of me from the time that I set out from Piacenza, in all the places where I travelled, I mean, the holy places.'


Second recension
Procedente beato Antonino martyre una cum collega suo, ex eo quod ciuitatem Placentiam egressus est, in quibus locis per regnum conatus est ire, uestigia christi sequentes et miracula sanctorum prophetarum prouidere coeperunt.
'With the blessed Antoninus the martyr travelling together with his companion from when he left the city of Placentia, the places in the kingdom he tried to go to [when] they were following the footsteps of Christ and they began to look towards the miracles of the holy prophets.'


Text: Geyer 1898, 159 and 195. Translation of first recension: Wilkinson 2002, 129, lightly modified. Translation of second recension: David Lambert.

History

Evidence ID

E00578

Saint Name

Antoninus, martyr in Piacenza, ob. 3/4th century : S00328

Saint Name in Source

Antoninus

Related Saint Records

Type of Evidence

Literary - Pilgrim accounts and itineraries

Language

  • Latin

Evidence not before

551

Evidence not after

614

Activity not before

551

Activity not after

614

Place of Evidence - Region

Italy north of Rome with Corsica and Sardinia Palestine with Sinai

Place of Evidence - City, village, etc

Piacenza

Place of evidence - City name in other Language(s)

Piacenza Sardinia Sardinia Sardegna Sardinia Caesarea Maritima Καισάρεια Kaisareia Caesarea Kayseri Turris Stratonis

Major author/Major anonymous work

Pilgrim of Piacenza

Cult activities - Non Liturgical Practices and Customs

Pilgrimage

Source

This Itinerary was written by an anonymous pilgrim to Palestine who started and finished his journey in Placentia. He visited the East probably not long after the earthquake in 551, since he presents the destruction of Berytus (modern Beirut) in this year as a relatively recent event. He certainly visited Palestine before the Persian invasion in 614, since in his account Jerusalem is under Roman administration. The Itinerary is extant in two recensions. The first one is shorter and generally closer to the original, but sometimes it is the second recension which preserves the original text. Moreover, the additions that can be found in the second recension, unfortunately difficult to date, bear an interesting witness to the development of the cult of saints. The Itinerary can be compared with an earlier pilgrim's diary written in the 380s by another western pilgrim, Egeria. The Piacenza Pilgrim's itinerary is less detailed than her account, but shows the development of the cultic practices and infrastructure which had taken place in the course of two hundred years: there are more places to visit, more objects to see, and more saints to venerate.

Discussion

Antoninus, our pilgrim's companion, is not a well known saint, but his cult in Piacenza (ancient Placentia) is reliably attested in two other places: in 395/397 Victricius of Rouen, in a long list of saints and the places where they perform healing miracles, writes Curat Placentiae Antonius, 'Antonius cures at Piacenza'; and the Martyrologium Hieronymianum records that the feast of Antoninus (or Antonius) was celebrated in Piacenza on 30 September (E04972). (The names Antonius and Antoninus are very often confused.) The author of the second recension of this text, who was not the pilgrim himself, here (in a grammatically difficult sentence!) turns the pilgrim's first-person narrative into the third person.

Bibliography

Edition: Geyer, P. (ed.), Antonini Placentini Itinerarium, in Itineraria et alia geographica (Corpus Chistianorum, series Latina 175; Turnholti: Typographi Brepols editores pontificii, 1965), 129-174. [Essentially a reprinting of Geyer's edition for the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 39, Wien 1898.] English translations: Stewart, A., Of the Holy Places Visited by Antoninus Martyr (London: Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society, 1887). Wilkinson, J., Jerusalem Pilgrims Before the Crusades (2nd ed.; Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 2002).

Usage metrics

    Evidence - The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity

    Categories

    Keywords

    S00328History

    Licence

    CC0

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC