“Like a faithful daughter she cherishes and nourishes in herself the remnants of Holy Jerusalem, her mother”: Acre as a Center for Church Practices in the 12th and 13th Centuries

Abstract

In the history of Acre, located on the Syrian coast, the 12th and 13th centu­ries were of particular importance. Under the rule of the Crusaders, the city experienced a period of rapid demographic, economic, cultural, and religious growth. As the main port of the Kingdom of Jerusalem—and in the 13th cen­tury its capital as well—it was an important stop on the route of Latin pil­grims. Nevertheless, it was mentioned extremely rarely in the pilgrimage writ­ings of that period, where information about the sites of worship in the city is scarce. This problem was noticed by Aryeh Graboïs and David Jacoby, but their attempts to explain this state of affairs need to be partly reexamined. The most important reason for the “silence of pilgrimage sources” about the city and its religious life seems to be the marginal presence of Acre in the pages of the Bible and its negligible place in the history of salvation.