The Holy Land in Old Russian Culture

Abstract

After the Muslim conquest of Palestine there was a comparative lull in Holy Land pilgrimage until a revival in the more settled conditions of the tenth century. The first half of the eleventh century saw a marked increase in the number of pilgrims, most notably but not exclusively from the West, as well as the restoration of the Church of the Anastasis by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine IX. This context explains the enthusiasm with which in the same century the Christians of Russia, within decades of their adoption of the faith, took up Holy Land pilgrimage with all the enthusiasm of recent converts.