This chapter explores the general approaches to early Christian pilgrimage in the 4th and 5th centuries CE. While historians have generally taken the evidence to indicate a monolithic and united early Christian tradition (a reading of pilgrimage that flies in the face, not only of contemporary anthropological doubts about consensus among pilgrim, but also of the abundant fourth and fifth century evidence for religious and theological dispute), it is argued that The Holy Land was in fact a hotbed of theological dispute and accusations of heresy in this period, and the visiting pilgrims, coming from a very wide range of countries, and representing numerous Christianities, scarcely support the scholarly model of a harmonious ideal of pilgrimage practice in the most archetypal of Christian holy spots.
