ABSTRACT
During the 12th century the three most important sites in the Holy Land were in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth. While these sites were controlled by the Crusaders (c. 1099– 1187), the numbers of pilgrims from the West increased, and the churches at each of the sites were gradually renovated and decorated. While they were cathedral churches for their respective Latin bishop, archbishop, or patriarch, nonetheless their greatest function was as centres of Christian pilgrimage.
The artistic patronage of these pilgrims to the Holy Land in the 12th century provides ample evidence for the diversity of European visitors to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. In this regard, I propose that it was the church at Bethlehem that included the largest programme of pilgrim-sponsored art from the 12th century. Pilgrims to Bethlehem engaged local painters to provide icons that would commemorate their patron saints, linking the holy place of the birth of Christ with their European homeland. These large icons, which decorate columns of the nave and aisles of the Church of the Nativity, include a surprisingly diverse array of saintly figures that include cult images of the Virgin and Child, along with the images of apostles, bishops, deacons, ascetics, soldier-saints, holy kings and important female saints. On rare occasions the images of the pilgrims who may have commissioned the column paintings were also represented. Furthermore, in one independent instance there is a small devotional icon which links patron saints associated with the three great Christian pilgrimage sites at the time — Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago de Compostela — ordered by an anonymous pilgrim who appears to have visited all three sites.
