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ThePilgrim's Road orPilgrims' Road[1] was a route throughAsia Minor to theHoly Land.[2]
The name Pilgrim's Road has been traditionally given to the network of roads that connected Constantinople with the eastern provinces of theByzantine Empire such asSyria andArabia.[3] The route started inChalcedon, opposite toConstantinople and went to Antioch viaNicomedia,Nicaea,Ancyra, theCilician Gates and thenTarsus.[4] The surface was paved with small pebbles covered with gravel shortly after the Roman conquest.[2] It was widened from 21.5 feet to 28 feet in theChristian era to accommodate commercial travel.[2]
While the route ensured primarily a rapid connection especially for military forces, pilgrims such as the anonymous pilgrim of Bordeaux who wrote theItinerarium Burdigalense came to take this route in 333-34 and thus gave it the name Pilgrim's road. Apart from theItinerarium Burdigalense, two other sources, theItinerarium Antonini and theTabula Peutingeriana, describe the route with only one minor divergence between the sources.[4] Pilgrims would also often take detours to visit shrines of saints, such asEgeria who visited the shrine ofSt. Thecla close to Tarsus in the 380d.[5]
The possibly first prominent pilgrim that took the Pilgrim's road was the mother ofConstantine the Great,Helena, whose route was retraced by the author of theItinerarium Burdigalense and who took around two months to get from Constantinople toJerusalem in 326.[5] In the century after the Bordeaux pilgrim, possibly on instigation of bishopBasil of Caesarea, many hostels were founded along the road, often by wealthy Roman women. These hostels, also known asxenodochia, resembled earlier Greek or Roman inns but were catering specifically to pilgrims, were operated by monks and were typically funded from Church funds or bydonations so that also poor pilgrims could use the facilities.[5]
During the middle Byzantine period the route via Ancyra fell out of favour as the Byzantines preferred the route to the Cilician Gates viaDorylaeum,Amorium andIconium. There were also several other important roads that branched of the Pilgrim's road to theAmasia andNeocaesarea or toMelitene.[3]