The anonymous pilgrim of Piacenza, sometimes simply called the Piacenza Pilgrim, was a sixth-century Christian pilgrim from Piacenza in northern Italy who travelled to the Holy Land at the height of Byzantinerule in the 570s and wrote a narrative of his pilgrimage. This anonymous pilgrim was erroneously identified as Antoninus of Piacenza or Antoninus Martyr out of confusion with Saint Antoninus of Piacenza, who died in 303 and is venerated as a martyr. The Piacenza pilgrim's description of sites and traditions are sometimes inaccurate, as he tends to confuse places from the same area, or such which are in Egypt. The travel descriptions of the Piacenza pilgrim are still valued by researchers because they sometimes contain information about local customs and traditions not mentioned in any other text. The pilgrim's itinerary documents the extent of the sixth-century trade catering to the pious pilgrims in the Holy Land: "We went to Cana, where our Lord was present at the marriage feast," Antoninus reports, "and we reclined on the very couch." Inspired by such a vivid figuration of Biblical truth, Antoninus indulged the classic tourists' act: "and there, unworthy as I was, I wrote the names of my parents". Antoninus' descriptions of the chalice of onyx that was venerated in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and of the Holy Lance in the Basilica of Mount Zion are early attestations of the cultus of these two relics. Of the historical Piacenza pilgrim, F. Bechtel reported in The Catholic Encyclopedia.
"In manuscripts he is sometimes styled Antoninus the Martyr, through ignorant confusion of the writer with the martyr St. Antoninus who is venerated at Piacenza. He is the last writer who saw Palestine before the Moslem conquest. Although he covered in his travels nearly the same extensive territory as the Spanish nun, his work contains but few details not found in other writers; it is, moreover, marred by gross errors and by fabulous tales which betray the most naive credulity."
