We know little about the mood of the ancient travelers often made the long journey to St. The land with which they filled the days and nights before they entered the boundaries of the holy city; But even the little that we know deserves full attention. The pilgrims spent their travel time in fasting and prayers; The former seemed to purify the soul for the contemplation of glorious places, while the latter were supposed to make the journey itself, always difficult and restless, less noticeable. Bl. Theodoret gives the following information about two ascetics known to him, who made a journey to Jerusalem. "Desiring to see the sacred places of salvific suffering, Marina and Cyrus hastily went to Jerusalem, not taking any food on the way; having come to that city and having venerated the holy thing, they took food and again made the return journey in fasting, and the distance (from the place from which they undertook the journey to Jerusalem) was not less than twenty days' marches." And Gregory of Nyssa himself testifies that "the chariot (in which he and his companions rode) was for us a church and a monastery, where all the way together we sang the praises of the Lord and fasted" (Tv. VIII, 459).

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* Istoriya bogolyubtsev. Hl. 29.

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Let us say a few words about the motives that disposed the Christians of the fourth and fifth centuries to take upon themselves the difficult feat of crossing the seas, passing through many countries, enduring the inconveniences of the road, and even exposing themselves to various dangers, in order to attain the goal of visiting the Holy Trinity. Earth. Some of these motives are already evident from what we have said above about the most remarkable pilgrims in the Holy Scriptures. Earth. First of all, of course, I was prompted to take upon myself this podvig by the desire to resurrect in my soul in all its power those great events that took place in the Holy Spirit. To the earth in the times of the Old Testament and the New Testament, to warm, strengthen and revive in oneself the religious feeling, which in the midst of ordinary surroundings weakens and dulls. The veneration of the holy places of Jerusalem could serve to a large extent for this purpose, for, as Jerome beautifully put it, "our whole religion has its homeland in this country and in this city" (Tvor. II, 5). Here everything could remind us of the Saviour and of His accomplishment of the great work of redemption and fill the soul with joy and peace according to the natural law to which Bl. Theodorite that "whoever is attached to someone feels joy not only when he sees him, but also if he sees his house, clothes, shoes." For other travelers, this motive was to aggravate the religious feeling in themselves, and others joined them. Thus, according to Eusebius, St. Helena came to Jerusalem both in order to see the places marked by great events and to satisfy her religious aspiration, to feel vividly all that had happened there, and to thank God for the blessings with which He had bestowed upon her son and grandsons (Life of Const. III, 42). Other travelers still wanted to express through the feat they had accepted a feeling of gratitude on the occasion of the misfortune that had passed them. According to the testimony of Jerome, the invasion of barbarians and the danger of captivity prompted some to take an oath - during the danger itself or after it had passed - to go to the holy places (Tv. III, 229). Some of the pilgrims in Jerusalem thought to find for themselves the motive for this work in the commandments of Christ Himself. Precisely, it was thought that in the words of the Saviour, spoken to His disciples, that they should not depart from Jerusalem, there was an incentive to wander to the Holy Spirit. Earth*. Some learned Christians did not forget when visiting St. Earth and purely scientific motives. St. The earth had to explain to them what seems incomprehensible and unclear in the Holy Scriptures. Without a direct study of the country where the events described in the Bible took place. Such motives, by the way, guided Bl. Jerome. Jerome, going around the holy places of Palestine, took with him a learned Jew as a guide, because for him to fully know the Holy Scriptures. The Scriptures not only wanted to see with their own eyes all this wonderful country, but also to learn in the very places what was to serve for the benefit of theological science. "Those who have visited Athens," he says, "have a much better understanding of the history of the Greeks, and those who have sailed from the Troas to Sicily, and thence to the mouth of the Tiber, know better the third book of the Aeneid. The same is necessary for the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. Scripture"**. These and similar motives, such as, for example, heavy grief, the desire to pacify one's conscience by podvig, which was crushed by some great sin, led and brought to Jerusalem and the Holy Spirit. Earth.

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* Gregory of Nyssa, who reports this, considers such a motive to be groundless and artificial (Tv. VIII, 460).  ** The Life of Bl. Jerome (at the first volume of his works). P. LXXXIII.

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Now let us describe what objects, monuments, and places in Palestine were observed by travelers of those times. Most of these objects, monuments, and localities had religious significance, but some of them simply satisfied curiosity. Jerusalem, of course, had more than anything - something that was viewed with special zeal and honored by pilgrims to the Holy Trinity. Earth. Jerome testifies that in Jerusalem "there were so many places of prayer that it was not enough to go around them for a whole day" (Tvor. II, 12). Here, first of all, the pilgrim venerated the Life-Giving Cross of Christ, "kissed the tree of the cross" (Jeron. II, 14). Particles of the Cross of the Lord, according to St. Cyril of Jerusalem (IV century), were carried by pilgrims throughout the Christian land. Another precious monument to the Passion of Christ in Jerusalem was the tomb where He was buried and from which His resurrection took place. Travelers entered this "cave, kissed the stone rolled away by the angel from the door of the tomb, fell down to the place where the Body of the Lord lay, fell down as thirsty people fall down to long-desired waters" (Jeron. III, 25). St. St. Cyril testifies that the tomb of Christ has not quite retained its original appearance, that when buildings were erected here, "the vestibule was broken off for greater splendor" (Works, p. 230). According to the same Cyril, the Tomb of Christ was located in a cave, and in his time "signs and traces of this" were shown (p. 227). One of the most venerable places in Jerusalem was Mount Golgotha, the place of the Savior's death on the cross. On Golgotha were shown the very stones that had disintegrated during the Lord's sufferings on the Cross (St. Cyril 223). In the same Jerusalem, the travelers saw "a column supporting the church portico, stained with the blood of the Lord, to which, according to tradition, He was tied for scourging", they also examined the Upper Room, "where the Holy Spirit is stained. descended upon a hundred and twenty believing souls" (Hieron. III, 26). Although in desolation, the house of the high priest Caiaphas and the praetorium of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate were preserved even before the IV century (St. Cyril 222-223). These items were also viewed by travelers. A great many curious things were observed in Jerusalem by the above-mentioned Bordeaux pilgrim from Gaul (France), who visited St. John. In the year 333, and who left us his Itinerarium, he surveyed many things which are not mentioned by other writers of the fourth century. For example, he saw in Jerusalem interconnected reservoirs with five porticoes (narthexes), which were called Bethesda. Here, according to the Gospel story, the sick who had been possessed by illness for many years received healing. The water in Bethesda was muddy with a reddish tint. He also saw a crypt (cave) where, as he was told, Solomon tortured demons (it is difficult to say what is indicated here). He was shown the remains of a high tower, on which the devil who tempted Him had erected the Lord (Matt. 4:6). He also considered the cornerstone, a large one, of which it is said that it was neglected by those who built. Under the above-mentioned tower were many rooms that made up the palace (palatium) of Solomon. In one of these rooms they pointed out the place where Solomon sat and wrote the Book of Wisdom. In one of the buildings that had formerly formed the temple of Solomon, he saw on a marble platform the footprints of the shoes of the murderers of Zechariah, which had been preserved from the time when this pilgrim was in Jerusalem. When climbing Mount Zion, he was shown the font of Siloam, which had four porticoes, and another reservoir, from which the water ran for six days and nights, and on the seventh day, the Sabbath, the water allegedly did not flow at all during the day. Like other travelers, he visited the house of Caiaphas, Pilate's Praetorium, the tomb of Christ, saw the column near which the Savior was scourged (Itinerarium. Col. 790-791).

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* The Works of St. Cyril. Moscow, 1855. P. 196. One volume, which we will refer to later.  ** Printed by Migne. Patr. curs. Lat. ser. T. VIII.  Mf. 23, 35.

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Even more than in Jerusalem there were places, objects, monuments that were viewed by travelers outside of Jerusalem, in various parts of Palestine. It was not easy to see all this, because of the many attractions. Bl. Jerome, describing the journey of Paula, already known to us, remarks: "I would rather lack life than words, if I were a little willing to reconsider all the places that the venerable Paul traversed (in Palestine) with incredible determination" (III, 33). After Jerusalem, Bethlehem, the place of the Nativity of Christ, attracted the attention of travelers. Here they visited the "inn of Mary" (i.e. the place where the birth of the Saviour took place), "entered the cave of the Saviour, this sacred abode of the Virgin, beheld the stable, in which the will of the one who acquired and the donkey of his master's manger" (Isaiah 1:3). It was in this small earthen hollow, the travelers learned, that the Builder of heaven was born, here He was wrapped in swaddling clothes, here the shepherds saw Him, here the star pointed Him, here the Magi bowed down to Him" (Jeron. II, 12-13; III, 26). In addition, the travelers "visited Sarah's hut, examined the footprints of the oak of Abraham, under which Abraham saw the day of Christ and rejoiced; went to Hebron, where the Jews laid the grave of Adam." Near Sebastia, or Samaria, the travelers were shown the twelve tombs of the patriarchs; there, according to tradition, are also buried the prophets: Elisha, Obadiah, and John the Baptist, "no more than those born of women" (Jeron. III, 29.32). The travelers considered it their duty to visit the Mount of Olives, from which the Lord ascended and which was located near Jerusalem, the tomb of Lazarus in Bethany, to visit the Jordan, to pray at the tomb of David, to see the spring in which the Apostle Philip baptized the eunuch, to go into the caves in which the prophets stayed during the persecution against them by the impious kings of the Jewish people, to climb Mount Tabor and see "there the dwelling place of the Savior", to survey such cities as Nazareth, Cana, Capernaum, as well as the Sea of Gennesaret (Hieron. II, 15). To these important accounts of what the ancient travelers worshipped or surveyed in St. John's Church. The land outside of Jerusalem, let us add what the Bordeaux pilgrim saw there. He tells us something rather curious in this respect. Thus, he visited a place called Sychar, from which a Samaritan woman came out to the well dug by Jacob, who met Christ and had a well-known conversation with Him. Here this traveler was shown trees - plane trees, which were planted by Jacob. On the way from Jerusalem to the east to the Mount of Olives, the valley of Jehoshaphat opens, where the vineyards were located; here they also showed the stone where Judas Iscariot betrayed the Lord. Not far from here was a palm tree, the branches of which were plucked by children and spread along the road that Jesus was going to Jerusalem. And not far from this place, at the distance of a thrown stone, there were two monuments of amazing beauty; in one - it was a monolith, a single stone - was the tomb of the prophet Isaiah, and in the other - Ezekiah, king of Judah. On the way from Jerusalem to Jericho, a sycamore tree was preserved, which Zacchaeus climbed to see the Lord. The traveler saw the spring of the prophet Elisha. About this spring he heard the following legend: before the time of Elisha, a woman who drank water from this spring became barren; but when Elisha came to him, stopped over him, poured salt into him, and said, "This saith the Lord, I have made these waters whole; after this, if any woman drinks water from here, she will bear children." Near the spring there was a clay vessel of the same prophet Elisha. Here, above this spring, the house of the harlot Rahab, known in the history of the Israelite conquest of the Promised Land, was shown. The pilgrim of whom we are speaking also surveyed the Dead Sea; the water in it, according to him, is very bitter, so that there can be no fish in it at all, no boats sail on it, and if anyone decides to sail on this sea, the water itself pushes him out*.

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