Antoninus of Piacenza (pilgrim)

The Piacenza Pilgrim or the Anonymous Pilgrim of Piacenza, was a sixth-century Christian pilgrim from Piacenza in northern Italy who traveled to the Holy Land at the height of Byzantine rule in the 570s and wrote a narrative of his pilgrimage. This anonymous pilgrim was erroneously identified as "Antoninus of Piacenza". and is often confused with Saint Antoninus of Piacenza, who is venerated as a martyr of 303 AD. Nor is he related to the imperial formal document called the Antonine Itinerary.

Of Antoninus, the historical pilgrim, F. Bechtel reported in The Catholic Encyclopedia (1910).

"In manuscripts he is sometimes styled Antoninus the Martyr, through ignorant confusion of the writer with the martyr St. Antoninus who is venerated at Piacenza. He is the last writer who saw Palestine before the Moslem conquest. Although he covered in his travels nearly the same extensive territory as the Spanish nun, his work contains but few details not found in other writers; it is, moreover, marred by gross errors and by fabulous tales which betray the most naive credulity."

The itinerary of Antoninus is valued by the historian as documenting the extent of the sixth-century trade catering to the pious pilgrims in the Holy Land: "We went to Cana, where our Lord was present at the marriage feast," Antoninus reports, "and we reclined on the very couch." Inspired by such a vivid figuration of Biblical truth, Antoninus indulged the classic tourists' act: "and there, unworthy as I was, I wrote the names of my parents".

Antoninus' description of the chalice of onyx that was venerated in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and of the Holy Lance in the Basilica of Mount Zion form early attestations of the cultus of these two relics.

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