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II 
PILGRIMAGES AND PILGRIM 
SHRINES IN PALESTINE 
AND SYRIA AFTER 1095 
 The flow of pilgrims to the shrines of the Near East long pre ceded and
has long survived the era of the crusades; even today that flow has not ceased,
as individuals and groups have followed one another throughout the centuries
to the Holy Land. One means of transportation gave place to another; walking
and riding horseback overland were abandoned for the quicker and safer passage
by Venetian or Genoese galley; sail and oar were superseded by steam and
electricity; and the ocean liner is now in its turn losing out to the jet
airplane. But much has not changed, at least not beyond recognition. 
 Crusade and pilgrimage are quite different. Neither one begat the other,
though at times the purpose of one blended with that of the other: a man
who took the cross in order to deliver the sacred shrines from the "infidel"
might also have it in mind to visit and pray at them for the good of his
soul. But pilgrims had been going to Palestine long before Urban II proclaimed
the holy war at Clermont in 1095, 1 and they continue to go today. Western
crusading is dead; western pilgrimage is still alive. 
 These two manifestations of medieval Christianity were grouped together
for the first time in Urban's speech. The pope twice used the term peregrinari,
making clear that he looked upon the movement to which he was summoning the
warriors of the west as an "armed pilgrimage." The ensuing First Crusade,
which captured Jerusalem in 1099, set the background and to some extent deter
mined the day-by-day procedure of subsequent pilgrimages, even those undertaken
when the holy places were again under Moslem 
 1. For pilgrimages to Palestine before 1095 see the account by Sir Steven
Runciman in volume I of this work, pp. 68-78. 
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