Spiritual paths or pilgrimage routes trend is strongly becoming popular in the recent decades, especially for those who set out on a journey to seek the meaning of their life, but also for sense of adventure and test their abilities in front of danger o simply for those who want to explore different and unknown lands and cultures.
Actually, it’s not something entirely new, as in the early Middle Ages around the 10th century AD, many pilgrims traveled to go and visit religious sites and sanctuaries in exchange for the remission of sin. The chosen locations were often places of worship that preserved relics of saints, they were considered God’s intermediates, therefore it was emerging the curiosity to go and see personally or the need of protection or to receive some miracles or as pure devotion.
Along the not safe streets of Europe a traffic of wanderers started going towards various cities, that’s why itineraries and stopovers were created on the way with churches, hospitals, taverns and hostels.
The main pilgrimage sites were in Rome, for people attracted from the tombs of Saint Peter and Paul, in Santiago de Compostela in Spain, where the grave of Saint James is situated, and in Jerusalem in Israel, discovering places where Jesus Christ lived.
The Francigena Route is part of a number of trails that connected european countries (France and England first of all) to Rome, and from here proceeded to the Holy Land, getting through the South of Italy. It was known as Via Romea, directed to Rome indeed, or Via Francisca, that is to say the french road that reached the “Caput Mundi”, it is said that the Francigena Route was born from an idea of a Canterbury bishop in the 900s AD, who used that path to arrive to the present italian capital.
In Southern Italy and in Puglia in particular, the Francigena Route, or the Francigena Routes, retraced the major roads already available in the Roman times: the Appia Road realized in the 300 BC, that joined Rome to Taranto and then to Brindisi, and the Traiana Road, wanted by the Roman emperor Traiano in the 2nd century AD for a faster communication between the “Eternal City” and Brindisi, passing by the Apulian coastal towns.
The memories of a french wayfarer coming back from Jerusalem confirmed the itinerary along the Traiana Road as early as in the 300s AD travelling towards Rome.
The most famous destinations in Puglia were the Sanctuary of Saint Michael the Archangel on the Gargano, in which the Archangel Michael appeared several times starting from the 5th century AD, according to the tradition, and on the grotto the sanctuary was erected then; the Basilica of Saint Nicholas in Bari, that hosts the remains of the body of the beloved bishop of Myra, which were stolen from some sailors from Bari during a planned expedition. And more the Sanctuary “De Finibus Terrae”, located at the tip of the italian peninsula, symbolically identified as “the ends of the earth”.
Significant stops along the way to the East were also Siponto, located at the foot of Monte Sant’Angelo (and the Sanctuary of Saint Michael Archangel), Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher in Barletta, a city where a large presence of Knights Hospitaller guaranteed the hospitality, Trani with the Cathedral dedicated to Saint Nicholas Pellegrino and his relics are stored over there.
Going down to Brindisi, the final destination before boarding, the journey continued to Polignano via the Roman bridge, Monopoli where they could stay at the Gerosolimitano hospital next to the Saint John church in the historical centre or at the Saint Stephen Castle, from which it was also possible to embark.
Then it was Egnatia, ancient Roman city and harbour which still preserves an important paved section of the Traiana Road, Brindisi with the Church of San Giovanni al Sepolcro inspired by the Rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem so that the pilgrims back from the Holy Land could remind their spiritual experience, and finally Otranto, another crucial Apulian gateway, with the cathedral symbol of coexistence of many different cultures.
viaggieitinerari... in Puglia by Valeria Dicarlo 