This pathbreaking book established late antique pilgrimage and its artifacts as an important topic of study. There were few phenomena in the history of Byzantium which mobilized more people, wealth, and artistic creativity than did pilgrimage. The story of the early Byzantine pilgrim survives in travelogues and guide books, in historical texts and theological tracts, in scores of popular legends generated by miracle-working saints, and, most palpably, in hundreds of surviving pilgrim “souvenirs” and huge, abandoned shrines at the holy sites.

A revised edition, published in 2010, significantly expands the narrative by situating the miraculous world of the early Byzantine pilgrim within the context of late antique magic and pre-Christian healing shrines, and by considering the trajectory of pilgrimage after the Arab conquest of the seventh century.