A pilgrimage is a journey made to a particular place for spiritual or religious reasons – to visit a holy person or to commemorate a special event that took place there.
Hīkoi tapu are common to many religions. For Christians they are opportunities to seek guidance for direction in life, to thank Te Atua for blessings received and to ask for his help. Some people make pilgrimages as penance for their sins.
The earliest Christian pilgrimages were to places associated with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and to the tombs of well-known martyrs, such as Saint Peter. By the Middle Ages, Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago de Compostella in Spain, where Saint James was supposed to be buried, had become the most popular pilgrimage destinations. But because travel to these places was dangerous, expensive, and for most people impossible, many pilgrims were content to visit shrines closer to home.
People often made h-ikoi tapu to honour the relics of saints. By visiting a shrine where parts of the body or objects belonging to a particular saint were kept, pilgrims hoped to win the saint’s favour. Relics were thought to have the power to cure illness and to speed the process of getting to heaven.
In the Middle Ages pilgrimages were made up of people from all levels of society. These included the poor and the sick, the wealthy and the educated – even kings and queens.