Tradition

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Christianity Routes gathers ten pilgrim roads spanning a medieval network across Spain and a twentieth century African gathering that draws more pilgrims than any of them.

Five belong to the network converging on the tomb of James the Great at Santiago de Compostela. The Camino de Santiago names the system itself, unified by the destination and the credencial, the pilgrim's passport stamped along the way; the cathedral's own count rose from under a thousand compostelas a year in the early 1980s to above four hundred thousand in the 2020s. The Camino Frances, from Saint Jean Pied de Port over the Pyrenees, is the busiest by a wide margin and the road usually meant by the bare name. The Camino Portugues runs north from Lisbon or, for most walkers, from Porto. The Camino del Norte follows the Basque and Cantabrian coast and is markedly harder than the French road. The Camino Primitivo, from Oviedo, is called the original way because Alfonso II is said to have walked it to the newly declared tomb in the ninth century.

The Via Francigena runs the far longer road from Canterbury to Rome, its stages fixed by a numbered list Archbishop Sigeric wrote down after his own 990 journey. The Pilgrims' Way to Canterbury and St Cuthbert's Way are shorter English routes, to Becket's shrine and to Lindisfarne, the latter finishing with a tidal sand crossing walkable only between tides. The Seven Pilgrim Churches of Rome, a one day circuit given its settled form by Filippo Neri in the 1550s, produced the sacred music that gave the word oratorio its name.

The Zion Christian Church Pilgrimage to Moria, the annual Easter gathering of Southern Africa's largest African Initiated Church, draws well over a million pilgrims each year.