Nations Shall Come: Accounts of Western Christian Pilgrimage to the Holy Land

Abstract The practice of journeying as a pilgrim to the Holy Land pursuant to religiously defined and sanctioned purposes and objectives within Christianity has generated a significant body of cultural institutions and artifacts during the last two millennia. Access to the complex range of experiences and knowledge encountered by the traveler for the sedentary literate population of western Europe took the form of personal accounts, a genre whose initial structure drew upon the travel writing of the late Roman Empire. This article explores the creation and evolution of pilgrimage stories from the fourth to the twenty-first century, the varied array of women and men (both laity and clergy) who wrote them, and examines the research literature based upon them in the humanities and social sciences.