Zur Shalev
CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGE
AND RITUAL MEASUREMENT IN JERUSALEM *
Measurement and quantification have often been linked to the
rise of rational and scientific thought in early modern Europe.
Historians have described the growing importance of number and
measure in multiple aspects of European life, political, commercial,
and cultural. Both admirers and critics of this new quantifying and
rational outlook have marked it as one of the pillars of an emerging
modernity, particularly related to the Renaissance and later to the
Enlightenment 1. While the contours of this narrative may be true,
the actual transition into a number – and quantity – oriented culture presents more than one interpretative complexity 2. The case of
measurement as performed during Christian pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which I present in the following pages, may help to reconsider
some of the assumptions regarding the quantification process. I
demonstrate that in the religious tradition of Christian pilgrimage,
measurement and number were uniquely rich cultural symbols,
which informed much of the new kind of measurement – precise,
systematic – that defined the sixteenth century onward.
* An almost identical version of this paper was published in the Max Planck
Institute for the History of Science Preprints series (no. 384, 2009). I would like
to thank Rehav Rubin, Ronnie Ellenblum, Joseph Ziegler, Yamit RachmanSchrire, Mitia Frumin, Tania Munz, and especially Ora Limor, for their helpful
suggestions and corrections.
1. A. W. Crosby, The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society,
1250-1600, Cambridge 1997. D. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An
Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change, Oxford 1989.
2. P. Gautier Dalché, «The Reception of Ptolemy’s Geography (End of the
Fourteenth to Beginning of the Sixteenth Century)», in The History of Cartography, III, 1, Cartography in the European Renaissance, ed. D.Woodward, Chicago
2007, 285-364.
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In the historiography of Palestine exploration, too, scholars single
out the nineteenth century, especially its later half, as a period of
unprecedented systematization and accuracy in measurement 3. This
narrative has been to a certain extent the fruit of nineteenth-century rhetoric itself. Palestine explorers have used measurement as an
ideology to legitimize and authenticate their findings. Edward
Robinson, an influential American Bible scholar, clearly opposed his
Protestant measuring tape and meticulous topographical study to
the spurious traditions first expounded by some Church Fathers and
maintained by Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians:
The truth is, that the Onomasticon of [Eusebius and Hieronymus] is a
record of the traditions and opinions current in their day, as to the biblical
topography of the Holy City and Holy Land; but these traditions and opinions must be sifted and proved in the same manner as all others.The testimony of these writers, and through them that of the Church, cannot surely
stand against “measuring tapes” and topographical impossibilities; and just
so is it with the testimony respecting the Holy Sepulchre 4.
It is not for nothing, then, that Robinson has been titled by William Thomson, one of his contemporary admirers and himself a traveler and an author of a well-known geography of Palestine, «the
greatest master of measuring tape in the world» 5. As historian and
literary scholar Hilton Obenzinger notes, Robinson made symbolic
use of measurement as when he refused to measure the Holy Sepulcher, a site he did not recognize as genuine 6.
The point of this article is indeed to present a spectrum of earlier
symbolic uses of measurement in the context of religious pilgrimage
to Jerusalem.
3. J. J. Moscrop, Measuring Jerusalem:The Palestine Exploration Fund and British
Interests in the Holy Land, London 2000. H. Goren, «Sacred, but Not Surveyed:
Nineteenth-Century Surveys of Palestine», Imago Mundi, 54 (2002), 87-110.
4. E. Robinson, «The Reputed Site of the Holy Sepulchre», in Id., ed., Bibliotheca sacra, New York 1843, 154-202, 176.
5. W. M. Thomson, The Land and the Book, London 1861, 234, n. 1.
6. H. Obenzinger, American Palestine: Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land
Mania, Princeton, N.J. 1999, 53. More on modern Protestant involvement in
Palestine see in U. Makdisi, «Reclaiming the Land of the Bible: Missionaries,
Secularism, and Evangelical Modernity», American Historical Review, 102 (1997),
680-713; E. Bar-Yosef, The Holy Land in English Culture 1799-1917: Palestine and
the Question of Orientalism, Oxford 2005.
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The rich literary tradition of the Grand Voyage, of Christian pilgrimage to Jerusalem, contains a perhaps surprising amount of
numerical and quantifying observations. Along the way and in the
holy places themselves, pilgrims were busy noting down distances,
currency exchange rates, expenses, and indulgence years. The
fourth-century Bordeaux pilgrim, in the earliest known Jerusalem
voyage narrative, carefully notes distances between stations and
towns along the route 7. Time too, is often measured or counted,
whether the number of days in each location, or prayer hours, as the
detailed descriptions of Egeria clearly demonstrate 8. In other words,
numbers are everywhere in pilgrimage accounts, and, we may presume, in the actual journey as well. This is a highly regimented
experience, at least in theory, in which procedure and order are to
be carefully followed. Quantification thus plays a significant role in
structuring the pilgrim’s world.
Arguably the most common measuring practices by pilgrims surrounded the holy sites themselves. Pilgrims were recording distances
between points along a procession, most commonly the Via Dolorosa, and describing the size of the monuments and their various
architectural elements. Let us look at one illustrative example from
Johannes Poloner, a pilgrim of the early fifteenth century, who in
one dense paragraph captures this quantifying spirit. Describing the
tomb of Mary, Poloner notes:
Lastly, beyond the brook, on the left hand, twenty-eight paces down the
valley of Jehoshaphat, down forty-eight steps, there is a fair church, wherein is the sepulchre of the glorious Virgin Mary, which measures the
length of two outstretched arms, and three joints of the middle finger, and
has eight lamps continually burning 9.
7. «Itinerarium Burdigalense», in Itineraria et alia geographica. Vol. CLXXV,
Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina. Turnholt 1965, I. Exchange rates are mentioned by the fifteenth-century pilgrim William Wey, The Itineraries of William
Wey, Fellow of Eton College. To Jerusalem, 1458 and 1462; and to Saint James of
Compostella, 1456, London 1857, 1-3. Indulgences are discussed extensively by
the fourteenth-century pilgrim Niccolò da Poggibonsi, mentioned below.
8. «Itinerarium Egeriae», in Itineraria et alia geographica, II, passim.
9. «Item ultimo (ultra) torrentem a sinistris 28 passus in valle Josaphat deorsum 48 gradus est grata ecclesia, in qua est sepulchrum gloriosae virginis
Mariae, habens duo extensa brachia et tres articulos medii digiti, octo lampades
assidue lucentes.» Latin text in T.Tobler, ed., Descriptiones Terrae Sanctae, ex saeculo
VIII. IX. XII. et XV, Leipzig 1874 (repr. Hildesheim 1974), 225-81, 232-33. I use
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We see that Poloner was measuring paces from one monument to
another, counting steps and lamps, and actively using his body to
measure an individual monument.
This amassing of numbers during pilgrimage and in the holy sites,
as we shall see, is typical of pilgrim behavior, and it calls for interpretation. Scholars of the Grand Voyage have indeed paid serious
attention to these numbers as a source of quantitative data, usually
in an attempt to reconstruct the physical conditions of the journey,
the realities of travel, the historical geography of Jerusalem, and the
architecture of the sacred monuments. They have less emphasized,
however, the acts of enumeration and measurement in themselves. In
what follows, I will describe these pilgrim measuring performances
and try to understand their significance, both in practice and as a
literary element in pilgrim narratives 10. I will focus mainly, but not
exclusively, on the measurement of sacred monuments, and on the
narratives of late-medieval and Renaissance pilgrims.
Pious measurement
In this section I discuss the measurement of the holy places in
Jerusalem as a pious pilgrim performative act, characterized by multiple layers of meaning and religious connotations. In looking at the
measurement of a sacred site, I am less concerned with the actual
obtained figures than with the act in itself. It would seem that many
pilgrims adopted a similar approach, in which measurement is one
among a series of meaningful pious performances related to the
sacred sites 11. Indeed, number symbolism – attaching significance to
particular numbers – seems to play a very minimal role in pilgrimage.
The religious symbolic value of measuring a shrine appears
already in Revelation:
the translation by A. Stewart in Library of the Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society; 6,
London 1887-97 (repr. New York 1971), 7.
10. Yvonne Friedman has made a few insightful remarks on the question in
her «Sacred and Profane in the Conception of the Holy Land in the Fourteenth
Century», in Y. Drori, ed., Eretz Israel in the Mamluk Period, Jerusalem 1993, 12841 [Hebrew].
11. On performance as a category for analyzing pilgrimage see J. Feldman,
«Constructing a Shared Bible Land: Jewish Israeli Guiding Performances for
Protestant Pilgrims», American Ethnologist, 34 (2007), 351-74.
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And there was given me a reed like unto a rod: and the angel stood,
saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that
worship therein. But the court which is without the temple leave out, and
measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles …” (11:1-2, KJV)
Saint John’s task here is not to accomplish an exact survey of the
Temple, but rather to perform measurement, and thus, as the glossators say, to constitute the true Church. The profane and unholy
remain unmeasured, outside the core of the Temple and thus outside
the bounds of true religion. In his Postillae Nicholas of Lyra interpreted the literal meaning of John’s verses in the light of church
dedication ceremonies, wherein the bishop rounds the exterior and
interior of the church and thereby consecrates it 12. John’s encounter with the angel alludes to similar Old Testament encounters told
by prophets Zechariah and Ezekiel 13. Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem, as far as I know, did not refer directly to John’s measurement of
the Temple as prefiguring their own. We may assume, however, that
ritual measurement of holy places during pilgrimage was at least
indirectly informed by such canonical precedents 14.
However, many pilgrim accounts testify to the devotional aspect
of the act of measurement. One of the earliest examples of pious
measurement comes from the sixth-century anonymous pilgrim of
Piacenza, also called Antoninus. His fairly detailed account pays
strikingly close attention to popular pilgrim practices. Hence,
describing the column of the flagellation the pilgrim notes that
This column is marked thus: when He [Christ] hugged it, His chest
clung to the marble, and His two hands, fingers and palms could be seen in
this stone, so that for each illness measures are taken accordingly, which are
placed around the neck and bring cure 15.
12. Bibliorum sacrorum cum glossa ordinaria,Venice 1603, v. 6.
13. Zecharia 2:1-2: «I lifted up mine eyes again, and looked, and behold a
man with a measuring line in his hand. Then said I, Whither goest thou? And
he said unto me, To measure Jerusalem, to see what is the breadth thereof, and
what is the length thereof.» Ezekiel 40:3: «[…] there was a man, whose appearance was like the appearance of brass, with a line of flax in his hand, and a
measuring reed […]».
14. Edward Robinson, in avoiding measurement of the Holy Sepulcher did
follow, in a way, the angel’s command.
15. «In qua columna tale est signum: dum eam amplexasset, pectus eius
inhesit in ipsa marmore et manus ambas apparent et digiti et palme in ipsa
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Similarly, The Piacenza pilgrim tells us that Jesus left a mark on
the stone on top of which he stood during his trial.
Many miracles are effected by this stone. People take the measures of this
mark and they tie them for each illness, and get well. (23:6).16
One plausible interpretation of these passages describing the interaction between pilgrim and monument would suggest that the
believers placed strings on the imprints of Christ’s body. Imbued
with healing power, the measured strings were now tied to the body
of the pilgrim. We may reasonably presume, although the pilgrim
does not state so explicitly, that different measures were taken for
different illnesses.The Piacenza pilgrim’s words may also lend themselves to other explanations, involving other methods of copying
and transmission – wax, paper, or stone. However, the guiding principle of these actions remains one: the stone records an exact
imprint of Christ’s body, which the pilgrims touch, often imitating
Christ’s original position in relation to the monument.The pilgrims
then record as precisely as possible the monument and carry this
record in a physical or numerical form 17.
The narrative of the early-twelfth-century Russian pilgrim,
the monk (or abbot) Daniel contains other clear instances both of
Christ’s body as a measuring standard and of the ritual dimension of
measurement. In his description of the Holy Sepulcher, Daniel
plainly records architectural configurations and dimensions:
And the Church of the Resurrection is circular and in length and
breadth it is 30 fathoms. In it there are spacious rooms in the upper part
and here lives the Patriarch. And from the doors of the cave to the wall of
the great altar it is 12 fathoms.
Daniel notes however another telling detail:
petra, ita ut pro singulis languoribus mensura tollatur exinde; et circa collum
habent et sanantur». C. Milani, ed., Itinerarium Antonini Placentini: Un Viaggio in
Terra Santa del 560-570 d.C., Milano 1977, 21:5 (early recension).
16. «Nam de ipsa petra [on which Jesus stood during his trial] multae fiunt
virtutes; tollentes mensuram de ipso vestigio et ligant per singulos languores et
sanantur». Milani, Itinerarium, 23:6 (early recension).
17. See also E. Kitzinger, «The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm», Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 8 (1954), 83-150, 105-6. On the importance of
sight and touch see G. Frank, The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints
in Christian Late Antiquity, Berkeley, CA 2000, 118-33.
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Beyond the wall behind the altar is the navel of the earth and a vault has
been built above it and high up is depicted Christ in mosaic and a scroll
which reads: ‘Behold I have measured heaven and earth with my hand’ 18.
The pilgrim’s own measures and very act of measurement acquire
a new meaning in light of Christ’s role as measurer and architect of
heaven and earth. The inscription (directly alluding to Isaiah 40:12,
and echoing Wisdom 11:21) utilizes the proximity of the tomb and
the navel of the earth, and thus Christ’s body and the cosmos collapse into one another, which is a common feature in mappaemundi
as well 19. In this particular context, the pilgrim not only records
measures related to the Christ’s tomb, but also replicates Christ’s
cosmic measuring action on a microcosmic level 20.
Another passage in Daniel’s text recounts his privileged access to
the tomb, following the ceremony of the Holy Fire. The Russian
monk arrived to collect the lamp which he had left on the tomb
during the ceremony, by special permission of Prince Baldwin. He
was allowed by the keeper to enter the place alone, where he saw his
lamp burning with the miraculous light.
[A]nd bowing down before the holy tomb and kissing with love and
tears the holy place where the most pure body of Our Lord Jesus Christ
lay, I then measured the tomb in length and breadth and height, for when
people are present it is quite impossible to measure it. And having honored
the tomb of the Lord as best I could, I gave the keeper of the key a small
present and my poor blessing. And he, seeing my love for the Lord’s tomb,
pushed back for me the slab which is at the head of the holy tomb of the
Lord and broke off a small piece of the blessed rock as a relic and forbade
me under oath to say anything of this in Jerusalem 21.
18. «The Life and Journey of Daniel, Abbot of the Russian Land», trans. W.
F. Ryan, in J. Wilkinson et al., eds., Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 1099-1185, London
1988, ch. 10, 128.
19. «Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out
heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and
weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?» (Isaiah 40:12); «but
thou hast ordered all things in measure and number and weight» (Wisdom
11:20[21 Vulgate]). On mappaemundi see, among others, E. Edson, Mapping Time
and Space: How Medieval Mapmakers View Their World, London, 1997.
20. See more in C. Morris, The Sepulchre of Christ and the Medieval West: From
the Beginning to 1600, Oxford 2005, 26-27.
21. «The Life and Journey of Daniel», ch. 97, 170-71.
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Measurement for Daniel is, on the one hand, a practical task that
requires unhindered access to the monument. It can only be performed when the tomb is empty of other believers. On the other
hand, this very solitude in the presence of the monument allows a
special kind of devotion, of which measurement is part. The Holy
Fire narrative is structured around Daniel’s privileged access, being
allowed first to leave his lamp, then to enter the tomb alone, measure and honor it, and finally, to receive a broken chip of the monument itself. Measurement is part of a process of engagement with
the monument, honoring it, appropriating it, making it one’s own by
recording and preserving its materiality. It is again measuring rather
than the actual measurements that is at stake.
The uniquely rich description of Felix Fabri, a Dominican friar
of Ulm who traveled twice to the Holy Land in the late fifteenth
century, provides us with ample evidence for the continuation of
measurement as religious performance within pilgrimage. As a pilgrim of the learned kind, Fabri gathered as much information about
his voyage, from books and fellow pilgrims alike. For the description
of the Holy Sepulcher, Fabri wrote, he made use of an account by
Johannes Tucher of Nuremberg, who had visited the place in 1479,
one year before Fabri’s first voyage. Tucher, according to Fabri,
[E]xamined the Lord’s sepulchre with the most minute care, and took its
measurements with his hands, feet, and outstretched arms. I had his account
of it with me at Jerusalem, and found all that he had written concerning
the holy sepulchre to be true: wherefore I have translated it from the
German tongue into Latin, and have inserted it into my Book of Wanderings, as being a really true description, and written by a respectable and
truthful man 22.
22. «Pro quo notificando accipio descriptionem, quam honestus vir Johannes
Tucher, civis Norimbergensis, confecit in lingua theutonica de dominico sepulchro, qui anno 1479, uno videlicet anno ante meum primum introitum, fuit
multis diebus in Jerusalem, et dominicum tumulum curiossisime inspexit, et
manibus, pedibus, digitis, et extentis brachiis mensuram ejus accepit. Cujus
quidem descriptionem mecum in Jerusalem habui, et per omnia, sicut scripsit
de sancto sepulchro, sic inveni. Ideo eum de theutonica scripsit de sancto sepulchro, sic inveni, et evagatorio meo inserui, uti veram et a viro maturo et veraci
confectam.» K. D. Hassler, ed., Fratris Felicis Fabri Evagatorium in Terrae Sanctae,
Arabiae et Egypti peregrinationem, Stuttgardiae 1843, 1:327-28. I use the translation in The Book of Wanderings of Brother Felix Fabri, 2v., trans. A. Stewart,
London 1896, 1:404. Fabri then explains how he translates Tucher’s German
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CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGE AND RITUAL MEASUREMENT IN JERUSALEM
Fabri is fully committed to a true description of the monument.
And yet,Tucher’s authority in Fabri’s eyes does not arise from his special instrumentation or meticulous technique, but rather from his
respectability and devoutness. Tucher, we read in Fabri, performed
just what the pilgrim of Piacenza and Daniel the Russian monk had
before him – an unmediated approach to the sacred stone and its
measurement with one own’s body. Fabri’s use of Tucher’s measurements thus point to the communal character of pilgrimage and its
ceremonial practices. Tucher’s respectability and truthfulness have
more to do with his devoutness than with the accuracy of his figures.
Fabri’s engagement with other sacred sites is in accordance with
this pattern. In Sinai Fabri and a few companions reached the
summit of Mount Catherine (the highest in the peninsula at
2642m), where the saint’s body lay, until, according to tradition, it
was transferred to the nearby monastery:
We bowed ourselves to the earth before the place in which the virgin
lay, and placed ourselves therein, not out of presumption or curiosity, but
out of piety. We measured our bodies against the form of the hollow, and
inferred that she must have been of tall stature 23.
Fabri relates a very similar encounter on the Mount of Olives,
where a stone wall was believed to bear the imprint of Christ’s body.
So we bowed ourselves down round about this rocky wall, and, after we
had said our prayers, rose up, and one after another went up to the place
and laid our bodies, as far as we could, in the holy imprint, putting our
measurement units into Latin (Klaftern=Cubit, etc.). On similar measuring
practices by Gabriel Pécsváradi, a Hungarian Franciscan traveling in the early
sixteenth century see Y. Porat, A Hungarian Pilgrim in the Holy Land, MA
thesis, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 2007 (Hebrew). For the fullest treatment
of Fabri’s pilgrimage within the context of his wider literary work see K.
Beebe, «Reading Mental Pilgrimage in Context: The Imaginary Pilgrims and
Real Travels of Felix Fabri’s Die Sionpilger», Essays in Medieval Studies, 25
( 2008), 39- 70.
23. «Ad loculum ergo virginis nos prostravimus et in ipsum non ex praesumtione vel ex curiositate, sed ex pietate nos posuimus et corpora nostra commensuravimus cavaturae et ipsam longae staturae fuisse deprehendimus.
Demum dum locum illum sanctum debito vel nobis possibili honore venerati
fuissmus, convertimus nos ad alia.» Fabri, Evagatorium, 3:467 (=The Book of Wanderings, 2:571).
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arms, hands, face, and breast into the hollow, and measuring it by our own
figures 24.
The pattern is clear. A miraculous imprint in the stone, recording
a sacred event or person, calls for adoration, which includes prostration and also measurement by physical imitation of the position
recorded. As Yamit Rachman-Schrire notes, here is a case of «not
merely copying but rather enacting Christ’s figure» 25. Commetior, the
verb Fabri uses in these two paragraphs signifies not a simple measurement but the creation of a common measure, of symmetry and
proportion. The pilgrim’s body becomes commensurate with the
sacred stone. That units of weights and measures at the period were
predominantly anthropomorphic is significant, in preserving a permanent cultural affinity between the human body and the world.
Being too accurate and attached to figures could make a pilgrim
suspect of «presumption or curiosity» – the words used by Fabri in
Sinai. But there is evidence that some pilgrims made a pronounced
effort to provide as accurate figures as they could. A well-known
example is that of Niccolò da Poggibonsi, who made the voyage in
the mid-fourteenth century. His account, giving the most detailed
calculations of indulgences attached to the sacred sites of Palestine,
was printed many times under another’s name in later centuries.
Niccolò was as careful about the quality of his information and
measurements as he was about indulgence years:
And what I saw with my eyes and touched with my hands and asked of
others, and when I was well certified of the things, that I wrote on two
small tables, which I carried by me. Later, when I was in Jerusalem, I procured a measure of one braccio, with one of one foot, and going my
rounds, I measured everything in order, as herein you will hear: the area,
the length, and the breadth, and I at once wrote them down 26.
24. «Est autem petra illa adeo dura, quod incisioni videtur inepta, et nullis
ferramentis quidquid deponi potest. Circa hunc igitur parietem prostravimus
nos, et orationibus dictis surreximus, et singuli unus post alium accessimus, et
sacrae impressioni corpora nostra, prout potuimus, induximus, brachia, manus,
vultum, et pectus concavitati imponentes, nos ipsos ipsi figurae commensurantes.» Fabri, Evagatorium, 1:382 (=The Book of Wanderings, 1:477).
25. Y. Rachman-Schrire, «Evagatorium in Terrae Sanctae: Stones telling the
Story of Jerusalem», in A. Hoffmann and G. Wolf, eds., Jerusalem as Narrative
Space, forthcoming.
26. Niccolò da Poggibonsi, A Voyage beyond the Seas, 1346-1350, trans.T. Bellorini and E. Hoade, Jerusalem 1945, 11.
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It is significant that the pilgrim obtained his measuring standards,
a braccio and a foot, in Jerusalem itself. Were these items in regular
demand, catered for by the local pilgrimage industry (like tattoos,
holy water and other objects)? 27 We may only speculate here. Other
authors, in later centuries, printed a 1:1 measure unit, according to
the standard they had used. In the late sixteenth century Christian
van Adrichem produced very influential textual and cartographic
studies on the sacred topography of Jerusalem, despite never having
visited Palestine. In Urbis Hierosolymae desrcriptio (1588) he provided
a detailed and measured description of the Via Dolorosa, based on
pilgrim reports, and took care to print a quarter foot according to
the measure that he used 28. The noble Bolognese Vincenzo Favi,
whose «Relatione del Viaggio di Gerusalemme» [1615], remains in
manuscript, provided at the end of his account a half foot divided
into six inches 29.These graphic length standards were practical tools
for the informed reader who may have been interested in constructing an accurate image of the sites. At the same time, these authors
use the reproduced standards as symbols of spiritual authenticity and
as a means to building a communal link with their readers, as in the
case of Fabri and Tucher.
So far I have discussed the various meanings of measurement and
quantification during pilgrimage as it relates to the individual pilgrim on site. However, number and measure were also important for
individual prayer cycles in the context of vicarious pilgrimage. The
notion of mental pilgrimage, of spiritually rather than physically visiting the shrines, is almost as old as Christian pilgrimage itself 30.
Monks and especially nuns were encouraged to make this kind of
pilgrimage and evade the mortal and moral dangers along the way.
Laymen, too, especially in late medieval Europe, engaged in vicarious pilgrimage using guides, maps, and full-scale reconstructions,
27. M. Lewy, «Towards a History of Jerusalem Tattoo Marks among Western
Pilgrims», Cathedra 95(2000), 37-66 (Hebrew). (also in Zeitschrift für Religionsund Geistesgeschichte, 55(2003), 1-39).
28. See text and translation in J. Van Heerwarden, Between Saint James and
Erasmus: Studies in Late Medieval Religious Life: Devotion and Pilgrimage in the
Netherlands. Trans. W. Shaffer and D. Gardner, Leiden 2003, ch. 3, 84.
29. British Library, MS Add. 33566, f. 158a.
30. B. Bitton-Ashkelony, Encountering the Sacred: The Debate on Christian Pilgrimage in Late Antiquity, Berkeley, CA 2005. G. Constable, «Opposition to Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages», Studia Gratiana, 19 (1976), 125-46.
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which I discuss below. The influential Spiritual Pilgrimage of Hierusalem (Dutch, 1563), by the Flemish Carmelite Jan Pascha (d. 1539) –
a work modeled on and informed by contemporary pilgrim narratives – offered a year-long devotional plan with detailed and precise
daily instructions for prayer and meditation. Like pilgrim narratives,
Pascha’s meditations are often informed by number. For example,
the praying reader is asked to imagine his embarkation in Venice on
a ship bound to the Holy Land:
The lord of this shippe must be Saint Peter, to whom comende thyselfe.
Thou must agree to give the Patrone of the Galy, fiftie Ducats of gould for
thy passage, which are 50 Paters, and 50 Aves. or some other 31.
In Pascha’s text, the hardships of the voyage, which pilgrims often
liked to elaborate on, turn into a number-oriented prayer. Thus the
notorious tough bargaining with the Venetian ship captain over sleeping conditions and food rationing turns into an element of devotion. On the 207th day of the cycle Pascha informs the reader that
the Crosse was. 15. foote longe and 8. foote over thwart. and it weighed,
150. pounde waight. […] and from the place where the Crosse was laied
on him [Christ] to the place where he first fel, are 40. strides, and every
stride conteineth two comon paces, or six foote. […] There went with our
Lord to Mount Calvaries 15000 parsons 32.
This number-rich paragraph suggests that in Pascha’s mind, recitation and contemplation of measures, especially measures related to
sacred sites and histories, was an effective aid for devotional regulation and focus. The Stations de Jérusalem, another widely-circulated
work in this tradition, was published by the Jesuit missionary Adrien
Parvilliers in the mid seventeenth century and was remarkably successful well into the nineteenth century 33. The Stations is a short
31. Jan van Paeschen, The spiritual pilgrimage of Hierusalem, contayninge three
hundred sixtie fiue dayes iorney wherin the deuoute person may meditate on sondrie
pointes of his redemption. With particular declaration of diuers Saints bodies and holy
places which are to be seene in the said-voyage: As also sundrie deuout praiers and meditations verie healpful to the pilgrimes …[Douai] 1605, 40th day, 21-22.
32. Paeschen, The spiritual pilgrimage, 104. Pascha then indicated (127) that
«6666 (or as some maintain, 5475) was the number of wounds Christ received».
33. I have used Les Stations de Jérusalem, pour servir d’entretien sur la Passion de
Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ, par le R. P. Parvilliers de la Compagnie de Jésus, qui a
vérifié le tout sur les lieux, Paris 1874.
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CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGE AND RITUAL MEASUREMENT IN JERUSALEM
devotional text designed as a practical guide for meditation on the
passion of Christ by evoking the sacred sites in Jerusalem 34. Parvilliers leads the reader along the Via Dolorosa, counting steps between
the stations, and suggesting themes for contemplation and prayers at
each one. While the Christian reader, according to Parvilliers, could
practice his devotion almost anywhere (even the garden or the open
fields would be appropriate), Parvilliers himself, as the subtitle of his
work suggests, «verified everything on location». However, this
mode of quantitative piety, despite «verification» on site, had only
little to do with historical veracity. In Pascha’s and Parvillier’s devotionals, quantification provided mnemonic signposts as well as structure and discipline to the vicarious pilgrim following Christ.
Quantified celebrations of the sacred topography of Jerusalem
were not only individual but often public and well integrated into
the liturgical year in Europe, especially during Easter. Niccolò da
Poggibonsi explained why he had troubled himself about recording
and measuring so faithfully and accurately:
[F]irstly, many who have a great desire to visit the holy places, poverty
impedes; and others abandon it, for the too great fatigue; and others again
for want of a permission, which must be had from the Pope.
Thus one of the main motives for taking exact measures during
pilgrimage was the desire to physically replicate Jerusalem in Europe
for the sake of those who could not make the Grand Voyage 35. Since
late antiquity, bringing back home sacred mementoes such as water,
chips broken off monuments, relics, and images was a universal pilgrim habit. The recording and depiction of the holy places was part
of that devotional practice, aimed at the community back home.
Bishop Arculf, whose account of the holy places was written by
Adomnán (c. 670), supplied plans of the Holy Sepulcher with measures in feet and palms 36. Saint Petronius, the fifth-century bishop of
34. Loyola, who made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1523, had plans to
remain in the Holy Land, but was ordered to leave by the Franciscans.
35. R. G. Ousterhout, «Loca Sancta and the Architectural Response to Pilgrimage», in Id. ed., The Blessings of Pilgrimage, Urbana 1990, 108-24. Id. «Architecture as Relic and the Construction of Sanctity: The Stones of the Holy
Sepulchre», Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 62 (2003), 4-23.
36. «Adamnani de locis sanctis», L. Bieler ed., in Itineraria et alia geographica,
Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, 175,Turnholt 1965, 175-234, 186-89 (I, ii).
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Bologna, according to his twelfth-century Vita, measured the Holy
Sepulcher with a rod and then designed the monastery and church
of San Stefano accordingly 37. In the fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries there was a real surge of replicating Jerusalem in images,
sculptures, and architecture and integrating these material elements
into the local liturgies of churches and brotherhoods. In Florence,
Leon Battista Alberti designed for Giovanni Rucellai a miniature
marble Holy Sepulcher in the church of San Pancrazio, based on pilgrim reports 38. In 1487 began the building of the Sacro Monte of
Varallo, which in the following decades inspired other such shrines
recreating the Passion in a fabricated Jerusalem, such as San Vivaldo
in Tuscany 39. The fresh technology of print offered new possibilities
for replicating a sacred object as an image.
The role of measurement and numerical repetition in image and
ritual became more pronounced in the late fifteenth century, as the
Via Crucis – the route from Pilate’s House to Calvary – began to
assume a special status. Measuring the distance between the stations
was an act of piety in itself, and a service to fellow believers back
home, who could not travel to Jerusalem. An early measurement of
the route appears in Poloner’s account of 1422.
On Adomnán’s work see T. O’Loughlin, Adomnán and the Holy Places: The Perceptions of an Insular Monk on the Locations of the Biblical Drama, London and
New York 2007.
37. H. Thurston, S.J., The Stations of the Cross: An Account of their History and
Devotional Purpose, London 1906, 8. C. Morris, «Bringing the Holy Sepulchre to
the West: S. Stefano, Bologna, from the Fifth to the Twentieth Century», in R.
N. Swanson, ed., The Church Retrospective,Woodbridge 1997 (Studies in Church
History, 33), 31-60, demonstrates that the Vita of St. Petronius reflects contemporary Crusader ideals and is not a reliable source for the early history of San
Stefano.
38. A. Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti: Master Builder of the Italian Renaissance,
Cambridge, MA 2000), 322.
39. C. Morris, «Pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages», In Id. and
P. Roberts, eds., Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan, Cambridge 2002, 141-63, 154, with further examples of churches and Jerusalem
brotherhoods. See also K. Rudy, Northern European Visual Responses to Holy
Land Pilgrimage, 1453-1550, Ph.D., Columbia University 2000, 124. B. Dansette,
«Les pèlerinages occidentaux en Terre Sainte: une pratique de la Dévotion
Moderne à la fin du Moyen Âge? Relation inédite d’un pèlerinage effectué en
1486», Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 72 (1979), 106-33, 330-428.
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CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGE AND RITUAL MEASUREMENT IN JERUSALEM
And it should be noted that from the place of Calvary to the aforesaid
judgment-hall is four hundred and fifty paces, which I counted with the
greatest care that I could 40.
Aranda, the guardian of the Franciscan friary at Alcalà, stayed for
a long period as a guest on Mount Sion, and reported 1,862 ‘passos’.
Martin Ketzel, who sponsored the famous stations erected at
Nuremberg, had lost his measurements from a first journey (c. 1468)
and undertook a second a few years later to recover the data. In
Seville, Don Fadrique Enríquez de Ribera (1476-1539) built the
«Casa de Pilatos» based on measurements from a pilgrimage he
undertook in 1520 41.
Published pilgrim narratives during the sixteenth century multiplied and developed into a characteristically early modern genre,
enriched by both the technology of print and the humanistic and
antiquarian styles that dominated erudite Europe. Devout pilgrims
were eager to describe their Mediterranean journey and, in the
manner of secular Isolarii, to pay close attention to classical antiquities and myths. Jean Zuallart’s popular account is a good example,
containing references to Vergil, Ovid, and descriptions of Greek and
Roman antiquities 42. The accurate tabulation of monuments in text
and image was also a marked characteristic of the antiquarian
movement. Indeed, Zuallart became equally famous for his detailed
and precise images – maps, views, architectural plans – that were
immediately copied by many others 43. Thus the exact measurement
40. «Et est notandum, quod a loco Calvariae usque ad idem praetorium sunt
ccccl passus, quos omni diligentia, qua potui, numeravi». Tobler, Descriptiones
Terrae Sanctae, 229.
41. Thurston, The Stations of the Cross, 56-57. See A. Wunder, «Classical,
Christian, and Muslim Remains in the Construction of Imperial Seville ( 15201635)», Journal of the History of Ideas, 64 (2003), 195-212, on the «Casa de Pilatos«
in Seville. Bernardino Amico (discussed below) counted 940 paces, 34 (30).
Parvilliers measured 700 steps. Les Stations de Jérusalem, 99-100.
42. J. Zuallart, Il Devotissimo viaggio di Gerussalemme, Rome 1587. Second
expanded edition in French: Le tresdeuot voyage de Ierusalem, Antwerp 1608.
43. In the preface to the French edition Zuallart told the reader that it was
an angel rather than his talent who guided him in the process, for he had only
three or four months to take drawing lessons in Rome prior to leaving («guidée
plustost d’un bon Ange, que de ma science, comme n’ayant par occasion mis
que trois ou quatre mois, avant partir de Rome, pour apprendre un petit à
craionner«). Zuallart, Le tresdeuot voyage, sig. *3v.
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and documentation of the sites in the Holy Land developed significantly in this period as part of these general trends. If a measuring
Fabri had to clear himself of the charge of curiosity, the new antiquarian-pilgrims saw their number-oriented curiosity as a sign of
devotion in itself.
I would like to discuss now the foremost representative of this
trend, the Franciscan Bernardino Amico of Gallipoli, the author of
the richly illustrated Trattato delle piante & imagini de sacri edificii di
Terra Santa. Not much is known about Fr. Amico beyond the information in his treatise 44. In 1593 Amico arrived in the Holy Land and
moved between various posts in the Franciscan hierarchy. He served
a six-month term as the Guardian in Bethlehem and in 1596 was
appointed President of the Holy Sepulcher. A year later Amico was
sent to Egypt, where he was chaplain to the merchant community
in Cairo. He left the Holy Land for Italy in 1598. In between official duties Amico engaged in systematic architectural surveys of the
main holy sites in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, which were printed as
the Trattato Raimondi’s Typographia Linguarum Externarum in 1609
and illustrated by the artist and Antonio Tempesta 45. In 1620 a
second, expanded and more elegant edition came out from Pietro
Cecconcelli’s press in Florence 46.The new edition was illustrated by
the French engraver Jacques Callot (c.1592-1635) and dedicated to
Cosimo II (Florence, 20 November, 1619), who may have been the
instigator of reprinting the Trattato 47.
44. The following information is based on Bellarmino Bagatti’s useful preface and notes to the 1953 English translation, B. Amico, Plans of the Sacred Edifices of the Holy Land, trans. T. Bellorini and E. Hoade, Jerusalem 1953, henceforth ‘Amico 1953’. For a few complementary details see the commentary by
Robin Halwas to the electronic facsimile of Amico, trans. D. Sullivan, Oakland,
CA: 1999, which reproduces the Bridwell Library copy of the second edition
(1620). References will be made to the translation of the Octavo edition (and
to page numbers of the original).
45. Among numerous other prints, Tempesta produced a map of ancient
Jerusalem (1601) based on Adrichem. He is better known for his 12-sheet map
of Rome (1593 and further editions).
46. The full title of the second edition: «Treatise on the Plans and Images of
the Sacred Edifices of the Holy Land. Drawn in Jerusalem according to the
Rules of Perspective and the True Measure of their Size. By R.P.F. Bernardino
Amico of Gallipoli, of the Order of St. Francis of the Observant Minor Friars.
Printed in Rome and newly reprinted by the same author in a smaller format
with the addition of the Via Dolorosa and other sketches.»
47. After Raimondi’s death in 1614 the Press ceased its operation and Raimondi’s material was kept by the Medici family. For the new edition the rights
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CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGE AND RITUAL MEASUREMENT IN JERUSALEM
Amico’s Trattato consists of systematic and accurate documentation of Christian traditions and monuments. It is uniquely and
without precedent a commentated architectural survey of the Christian Holy Land, guided by a visual rationale and lacking a narrative
or chronological backbone. It emerged from Raimondi’s learned
press in Rome, in collaboration with Tempesta, a leading artist-antiquarian, and was thus a product of the same milieu that produced at
this exact period major works of sacred scholarship. In that capacity,
the Trattato is a learned treatise on the Holy Land, more akin to
Boniface of Ragusa’s study of the rite of the Holy Land (1573), than
it is to the personal pilgrim narrative 48. Finally, as a Franciscan
publication surveying Franciscan-controlled monuments (and
memories), Amico’s text could also be seen as an early example of
promotional monastic mapping and documentation. In the person
of Bernardino Amico the pilgrim and the scholar coalesced into
one. Amico explicitly appealed to the «devout and curious» reader –
a reader, we may assume, who would have appreciated a pious presentation of an in-depth study with carefully executed images 49.
We do not hear much about Amico’s working methods, the kinds
of instruments he used, or how he recorded his data. Obtaining
measurements in the most important locations – Bethlehem and the
Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where Amico served as the Franciscan supervisor – should have been fairly easy. In other locations,
such as the first station of the Via Dolorosa («Pilate’s Palace»), which
was inside the Ottoman governor’s residence, Amico could only
gather sketchy information 50. A Corsican convert to Islam helped
were transferred to the newly established press of Cecconcelli. Callot entered
Medici patronage in 1614 after being hired by Tempesta in 1611 to etch paintings and decorations. In 1620 Callot produced another pilgrimage-related
piece, «The Fair at Impruneta», showing pilgrims to the Madonna of Impruneta, near Florence. D. Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History
and Theory of Response, Chicago 1989, 107.
48. Bonifacius Stephanus, Liber de perenni cultu Terrae sanctae et de fructuosa ejus
peregrinatione, Venice 1573. Bonifacius was a powerful Guardian of the Holy
Land during the 1550s and undertook a major reconstruction of the tomb of
Christ.
49. Amico, 57 (55).
50. The Guardian Francesco de la Salandra sent Amico to see the governor
on several occasions. Amico used the opportunity to observe the hall in which
Jesus was said to have been tried and where «justice is administered […] to this
day.» Amico, 28 (24).
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Amico with measurements of the Dome of the Rock, which were
later confirmed by other Muslims 51.
Amico’s detailed images and commentaries, full of concrete quantitative information, were designed to enable the reader to reproduce the holy places, either mentally or physically. For example, the
dramatically foreshortened perspective of the Nativity complex in
Bethlehem came with special viewing instructions for making the
image «appear in relief, just as though it were made of solid matter».
Strolling with one eye closed along the various sections of the Nativity complex, the reader would have experienced the desired effect,
as if one were holding a model of the site and examining its different inner passages 52.
The Church of the Holy Sepulcher with the internal Edicule
above the tomb of Christ – renovated in 1555 – received Amico’s
most careful attention. Having presented the special plan and then
the elevation of the Edicule, Amico provides an image which juxtaposes the two. The image is prefaced by a paragraph which captures
the essence of Amico’s project as a whole 53.The aim of this detailed
account – in some cases down to half minutes (~2mm) – was to provide a working scheme for anyone, including «simple artisans», who
wished to build a model of the Sepulcher. The less detailed plans
could still serve «experienced architects […] to reconstruct the
whole from the plans and what I have written». Amico certainly had
careful readers in mind, whether artisans or architects, «who delight
51. «But since the common report is true, that any Christian found entering this temple or even its square must necessarily become a Turk or die, having
been unable to take its measurements myself, I had them taken by an apostate
Corsican. Moreover, several Turks with whom I compared them confirmed
them to me: they were taken with the most exquisite care». 51 (47).
52. Amico, 12 (7).
53. I quote it here at length: «Reason and duty would have demanded that
each part of these venerable and holy places should have received their profile
drawn in perspective according to the rules of architecture. But I have omitted
this in order not to swell my book; nonetheless, experienced architects will be
able in each instance to reconstruct the whole from the plans and what I have
written. But I have not wanted to make any omissions in this plan of the Most
Holy Sepulchre, for the benefit of simple artisans so that, if one of them wishes
to build anything with the authority of one seeing it, he may be able to do so
with every ease, using the scale, from which they will find every detail.» Amico,
49 (45). The legend on the plate reads: «Plan and elevation of the Most Holy
Sepulchre in cross section, so that anyone may use its scale and build it of whatever material desired without too much labor».
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CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGE AND RITUAL MEASUREMENT IN JERUSALEM
in the use of the compass», and who would measure his plan according to the scale he provided 54.
Amico’s plans and numbers were indeed put to use. As Bagatti
conjectures, it was probably Amico himself who initiated in Bethlehem a local industry that produced complex models of the Holy
Sepulcher and the Church of the Nativity, made of olive wood set
in mother of pearl. Amico’s measurements may well have been taken
initially for that purpose 55. We know, moreover, that the building of
at least one real church made direct use of Amico’s plans – Patriarch
Nikon, the controversial Russian reformer, consulted Amico’s book
for the reconstruction of the Holy Sepulcher and other holy places
at his New Jerusalem monastery near Moscow, founded in 1656 56.
On the one hand, Amico is the innovative antiquarian (a perfectly
sensical term in the sixteenth century), who used complex textual
and visual documentary techinques and applyed them to sites that
until his time had been measured by amateurs. Amico performed in
Jerusalem what countless local erudites and learned travelers had
been doing since the early fifteenth century in Rome (e.g. obelisks),
Constantinople (Hagia Sophia), or Cairo (the Pyramids) 57.
On the other hand, Amico is engaged not only in precise architectural documentation, but also in the tradition of pious counting
as discussed above. Amico, for example, repeats Pascha’s numbers
with the same kind of meditative number-oriented oration:
Scholars say that he [Christ] received six thousand six hundred sixty-six
blows. And after a cross of fifteen palms in length and eight in width, a
good palm in thickness, was placed on his flayed and bloody shoulders,
consider the wolfish charity by which they were moved to take the cross
from him, fearing that he might die in the street, whereby they would lose
the full satisfaction of seeing him die on the cross between two thieves, like
a criminal.58
54. Amico, 48 (34).
55. Amico 1953, 1, 13. I would like to thank Dr. Wendy Pullan for gener-
ously sharing with me her work in progress on Amico, the models, and their
place in the western representational tradition. Several late sixteenth-century
models are extant.
56. Daniel B. Rowland, «Moscow-The Third Rome or the New Israel?»,
Russian Review, 55, no. 4 (1996), 591-614 at 609-12.
57. See for example J. Greaves, Pyramidographia: Or a Description of the Pyramids in Ægypt, London 1646.
58. Amico, 31 (27).
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Thus Amico’s obsession with measures and numbers emerged
from entrenched pilgrim practices, using measurement, commensuration, and meditative numeric repetition as devotional aids, both
on-site and back home. In Amico’s treatise the application of new
representational techniques and familiarity with the professional
language of Renaissance architecture is used in a very traditional
manner. Amico’s impulse to replicate Jerusalem relates to long-running pilgrim rituals, intended to bring the sacred back home. His
meticulous attention to numbers and proportion is generated by the
well-established tradition of performative, mystical measurement.
The new tools, then, reaffirm a live liturgical tradition. In this amalgam, the term «devout curiosity», once thought of as an oxymoron,
acquires a special meaning. Being curious is no longer a danger
threatening the pious pilgrim. It is rather a pious ideal in itself. This
is a reformulation of the mix of measurement and adoration that
defined the tradition of pilgrimage since late antiquity.
Looked at from the perspective of Christian pilgrimage, the story
of the quantification of European culture becomes a bit more twisted and complex than linear 59.When we study the history of measurement as a set of practices to which many layers of meanings are
attached, we can no longer accept that precise measurement and realistic representation suffice in themselves to explain the cultural
shifts that define the transition to modernity.
The exciting and growing new scholarship on the subject in the
history of science presents the act of measurement as part of a repertoire of scientific rituals. Measurement is studied as a performance,
or gesture, as a discourse of validation, often in the context of travel
and instrumentation 60. What this paper suggests is that there is a
prehistory of gestural, quantitative knowledge, which may be preinstrumental, and yet crucial for a fuller understanding of number in
science and society.The case of Christian pilgrimage surely provides
only one path into this lesser known earlier history.
University of Haifa, Israel
59. On qualitative attitudes to number see more in K. Thomas, «Numeracy
in Early Modern England. The Prothero Lecture», Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (Fifth Series), 37 (1987), 103-32.
60. For example, the essays in M.-N. Bourguet, C. Licoppe, and H. O.
Sibum, eds., Instruments, Travel and Science: Itineraries of Precision from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century, London 2002. N. M. Wise, ed., The Values of Precision, Princeton, N.J. 1995.
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