ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the evidence for pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Rome and Compostela. It then discusses the role pilgrimage came to play in narratives of lay conversion. By 900 pilgrimages to distant shrines, such as Jerusalem, the site of Christ's Passion and Resurrection, or Rome, the home of the popes and the site of the martyrdom and burial of two of Christ's apostles, SS Peter and Paul, had become a well-established feature of Christian piety. On 15 July 1099, an army of Latin Christians captured Jerusalem which had been under Moslem control since 638. The experience of the First Crusade itself was so adverse that the crusaders believed, and the Church came to preach, that participation in the crusade could lead to absolution of all sins and that the end object of the crusade was Latin control of the Holy Land where Christ had lived and died and been resurrected.
