A History of Sinai

by Lina Eckenstein

THE PILGRIMS OF THE MIDDLE AGES I.

A KEEN interest in the Near East was aroused in Europe by the Crusades. At their conclusion travellers of every kind, more especially pilgrims and merchants, started for Palestine and Sinai, eager to visit the holy places, and to see some of the marvels of which the Crusaders had brought back accounts to their homes. The movement was for a time hindered by the difficulties which were raised by the Sultan, who suspected a further alliance between the “Franks” and the Tartars. But the princes of Europe interfered on behalf of the pilgrims, and Sultan Melik el Nasir, who ruled with some interruptions from 1293 to 1341, was a man of wider outlook, who entered into diplomatic relations with the Pope, the king of Aragon, and the king of France. He did his utmost to protect the pilgrims. Crowds of them now started for the Holy Land, a certain number extending their voyage to the shrine of St. Katherine in Sinai, a visit to which formed part of the so-called Long Pilgrimage.

The flow of pilgrims was naturally influenced by the social and political events of the day. Of those who took the Long Pilgrimage, six,[264] between the years 1331 and 1346, wrote an account of their journey, and made mention of Sinai. After this there was a break, no doubt attributable to the Black Death which swept across Europe in 1348-49, and to the war which Peter, king of Cyprus, waged on Egypt, which led to the sack of Alexandria in 1365. Towards the close of the century pilgrims again became numerous, and six further accounts between the years 1384 and 1397 describe a visit to St. Katherine.[265] Again, during the first half of the fifteenth century visitors to St. Katherine were relatively few, whereas large parties of pilgrims sought the convent between 1460 and 1497, several members of the same party sometimes writing a description of their journey.

The pilgrims, for the most part, sailed from a port in Italy, more especially from Genoa or Venice, in galleys, which were timed to meet the caravans which brought the produce of the East to Alexandria and Jaffa. From Alexandria they went to Babylon (Cairo), where they procured a firmân from the Sultan which established their peaceful intentions in the eyes of the Bedawyn (Baldensel, p. 343; Frescobaldo, 1384, p. 99, etc.). Or they went to Jaffa and Jerusalem where those who wished to extend their pilgrimage to Sinai proceeded on mule-back to Gaza, where camels were chartered for crossing the desert. Travel was facilitated at the time by the permanent foothold which the Franciscans, following in the wake of St. Francis himself (1226), had secured at Jerusalem and at Gaza, and by the establishment, in various cities, of consuls whose chief duty it was to befriend and protect the pilgrims. The cities of Florence, Venice, Genoa, and the Catalans each had a consul in Alexandria in 1384 (Frescobaldo, p. 72). Venice had a consul in Jaffa in 1413, and one in Jerusalem in 1415.[266] There was a house or hostel set apart for the use of pilgrims in Cairo in 1384 (Sigoli, p. 16), where food was given to poor pilgrims who were on their way to St. Katherine (Martone, p. 596).

Among the earlier accounts was that of the friar Antoninus of Cremona, who set out from Cairo to Sinai with seven Latin pilgrims in 1331, going on to Jerusalem by way of Gaza. The wish to visit the shrine of St. Katherine was aroused in him by paintings, representing her story, which were a gift to his city by a merchant of Piacenza (p. 170). Again, there was the Italian notary, Jacopo of Verona, who, after a stay in the Holy Land in 1335, proceeded to Gaza, which he left on August 28, arriving at the convent on September 10. Jacopo mentioned as stopping places between Gaza and the convent, Nocale (Kala’at en Nakhl) “in our language called Phurfur” (? bran), and Colebmaleo. At Nocale at the Fountain of the Sultan (Puteus Soldani) he met over twelve thousand pilgrims with six thousand camels, who were on their way back from Mecca, and who moved in bands according to the countries to which they belonged, an arrangement which greatly impressed Jacopo (p. 228). At the Puteus Soldani the Seigneur d’Anglure who was on his way from Gaza to the convent in October of 1395, met ten thousand Moslim pilgrims (p. 45).

Another pilgrim, Wilhelm de Baldensel, in the summer of 1336, rode on horseback from Cairo to the convent in ten days, much to the surprise of the monks. From here he went on to Jerusalem (p. 344). Again, Ludolf of Sudheim, during the thirteen years which he spent travelling in the East visited the convent some time between 1336 and 1341, and Sir John Maundeville was there some time in the course of his twenty-five years of travel. These pilgrims, like Thietmar, in 1216 found the relics of St. Katherine enshrined in a marble chest or sarcophagus which stood in the convent church, and were allowed to see them after they had been the usual round of the sights (Ludolf, p. 840).

The relics of St. Katherine consisted of the head and some of the limbs. Jacopo stated that, besides these, the monks had bones stored away in another chest or arca (p. 230). Maundeville writes he saw “the head of St. Katherine rolled in a bleeding cloth, and many other holy and venerable relics, which I looked at carefully and often with unworthy eyes” (p. 60). Wilhelm de Baldensel first noted a silver scoop or spoon which was used for taking up the drops of oil which exuded “not from the sarcophagus, but from the bones” (p. 344), and which was given in small glass phials to the pilgrims (Jacopo, p. 230). This use of a scoop shows that the oil flowed less plentifully than at the time when the chest that contained the bones stood on the height, where it was “drawn off” by Simeon.

The view was now held that the body of the saint was originally laid by the angels, “not on the Mount of the Law, but on the Mount of St. Katherine,” as we learn from Antoninus. Here the impress made by the body on the stone was shown, which induced the pilgrims to make the ascent of the Gebel Katrîn. The impress of the body was seen also by Rudolf von Fraymansperg, who visited Sinai in 1346 (p. 359), by Simone Sigoli in 1384 (p. 84), and by others. According to different accounts, the body lay exposed on the height two or three or four or five hundred years before it was brought to the convent.

Other legends are related by the pilgrims. Antoninus stated that about a hundred “ravens” were fed every day at the convent kitchen in memory of Elijah, who was fed by ravens (p. 167). Sir John Maundeville improved on this statement by relating that “all ravens, choughs and crows of the district flew once a year in pilgrimage to the convent bearing a branch of bay or olive” (p. 59). In connection with these legends, both the story of Elijah, and the “ravens” that flocked to the convent, it is well to bear in mind that the words for raven and Arab sound alike in Arabic.