135 Representations of travel motivation itineraries, or that the audience would have clearly picked up on that. Certainly there are places that both Gregory and Paul are said to have visited, such as Ephesus, Thessaloniki, Corinth and Rome, but one would imagine that these places are in fact visited by many travellers throughout ancient and medieval periods by virtue of them all being easily reachable cities with ports and due to their cultural and economic importance.440 These qualities may of course also explain why Paul is said to have visited or travelled through these places, but as the port cities were important before and after Paul’s visit, I find it hard to imagine that visiting these cities by itself would immediately recall Paul’s travels.441 Apart from the similarities between the itineraries of Gregory and Paul, there are also differences. After Corinth, Paul goes (back) to Ephesus, then Caesarea, and Jerusalem, whereas Gregory travels westwards to southern Italy and Rome (and never sets a foot in Jerusalem, in the narrative). Paul is said to make further travels in the Mediterranean and so does Gregory, but their further itineraries do not match either. Paul travelled again through Asia Minor and Greece and went back to Jerusalem (before going to Rome, via Caesarea, for his eventual trial), while Gregory goes from southern Italy to Thessaloniki and makes a final journey at the end of his life to Constantinople. Perhaps extensive Mediterranean travel in general might have recalled Paul’s travels in the minds of (some of) the audiences of hagiography, including the Life of Gregory, but Ignatius hardly emphasised such a possible connection, neither through an explicit reference nor by means of an unambiguous correspondence of their itineraries. Therefore, in my view, Ignatius does not clearly use a strategy of modelling Gregory onto Paul in his toolbox for emphasising Gregory’s sainthood. In contrast to that, he does present Abram as a biblical model for the saint. We already discussed that the motivation for journey 6 may be seen as the impetus for the many journeys of Gregory that follow in the narrative. This is because the narrative stresses leaving his current place but the destination is not specified, because the reference to Abram brings to mind the wandering of the Israelites in their long search for Canaan and thus brings to mind a long journey to a final destination, and because no specific travel motivation is given for many journeys that follow. Journey 6 leads Gregory from his cave to a monastery in Ephesus: he leaves the cave and goes towards ‘Asia’ and stops at the monastery. This place is indeed not presented as the final destination, but a necessary stop in between: because it is winter, Gregory could not travel further. Then as soon as it became spring, Gregory continues to travel. For many of the next journeys – that is, journeys 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 17, 19, 20 and 22 – the motivation to go to a particular destination is not explicitly mentioned, which strengthens the idea that these journeys are still part of Gregory’s 440 As Veikou pointed out, the ports of Thessaloniki, Corinth and Ephesus, among others, were situated in a strategic location, not only because of their connection to sea routes, but also because they connect to inland and river routes. These factors contributed to the (economic and cultural) development of these cities. This strategic location also contributed to their function as important nodes in a network or Mediterranean travel routes, making these cities more likely candidates as destinations and stops in between for all kinds of travellers, including missionaries such as Paul and monks such as Gregory. Veikou (2015), p. 43. 441 For a map with known sites of Byzantine ports, including Thessaloniki, Corinth and Ephesus, see e.g., fig. 6 in Ibid., p. 47. 3
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