Not a week passes, it seems, without an update on the refurbishment, rediscovery, or outright invention of a new pilgrimage route somewhere in Europe. A few days ago, National Geographic profiled one of the newest ones, the “Via Magna Francigena, the great road of the Frankish knights,” between Palermo and Agrigento, in Sicily.
Photo Credit: National Geographic
Sicily - the ball-shaped island lying just offshore the toe of Italy’s boot - has seen Christian activity since the Roman times, but the Via Francigena dates to only about 1000 years ago. As the Roman empire in the West was collapsing, Sicily was conquered first by Vandals and then by Ostrogoths. The great Eastern Roman, i.e. Byzantine, Emperor Justinian launched a campaign to retake Italy from the barbarians. He first targeted Sicily in 535, and by 554 had defeated the last of the Ostrogoth attempts to hold or retake it.
The island remained under Byzantine rule until a rebel Byzantine commander fled to North Africa and convinced an army of Arab warriors to invade Sicily in 826. The ensuing Muslim conquest of Sicily continued for over a century until the last Byzantine stronghold fell in 965.
Seventy years later, in 1038, the Byzantines attempted to retake the island using Norman (i.e. Viking) and Frankish mercenaries known as the Varangian Guard.
A side note we can’t resist: the Varangian Guard was established in 988 by the Viking ruler Vladimir I, who converted Kievan Rus to Christianity. He sent 6000 soldiers to Constantinople as part of a military assistance treaty, and the Varangian Guard became the Byzantine emperor’s personal bodyguards for several centuries. This is noteworthy simply because the echoes of that time period are still reverberating today: both Russia and Ukraine claim Vladimir of Kiev as a founder, and Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin used the myth of Vladimir of Kiev’s founding of “one people” as part of his pretext for the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
Another side note: the leader of the Varangian Guard’s invasion of Sicily in 1038 was Harold Hardrada, whose invasion of England in 1066, despite his death at Stamford Bridge, so weakened the English army that it allowed William the Conqueror to defeat the English at the Battle of Hastings a few weeks later. Queen Elizabeth II is his descendant.
Anyways, back to Sicily. The initial Byzantine invasion of 1038 failed, but the Norman mercenaries who had participated never forgot the riches of the island, and in 1061 a new Norman contingent invaded, and completed their conquest of the island by 1091, just four short years before the Norman-dominated secular powers of Western Europe undertook the First Crusade with the blessing of the Pope and the approval of the ailing Byzantine empire.
The Via Francigena - “the road that comes from France” - had been established in 990 as a pilgrim path from France to Rome, but with Jerusalem now accessible to pilgrims, dozens of trails spread south from Rome to the various ports where travelers could embark for the Holy Land. In Sicily, this meant travel by land from the northern capital of Palermo to the southern port of Agrigento.
Long story short - it is these old routes that have been reconstituted in the last few months into the Via Magna Francigena pilgrimage trail.
Photo Credit: VisitSicily.info
National Geographic’s profile noted that it was “A monumental project to revive the route, involving 80 local authorities and six Catholic dioceses, came to fruition in 2017.”
The site’s official website features this beautiful video:
The route’s official website recommends breaking the trip into nine stages. Accomodations are provided by volunteers who sign up with the “Welcome Network of the Via Francigena in Sicily”
We look forward to seeing the success of this new pilgrim route. Buon cammino a tutti!