Itinerary (The Pilgrimage of Egeria)

Egeriac. AD 381–384

A Christian woman’s first-hand account of her journey to Sinai, Egypt, Palestine and Mesopotamia in the late fourth century, written for her community at home. It describes the holy places as pilgrims of her day were shown them.

Egeria, called Etheria or Silvia in older books, came from the Latin West, probably from Spain or Gaul, and wrote for a circle of women whom she addresses as her sisters. Her account survives, incomplete, in a single manuscript of the eleventh century that was found at Arezzo and first published in 1887. The text does not date itself. The years 381–384 for her stay in the East were worked out by Paul Devos, “La date du voyage d’Égérie”, Analecta Bollandiana 85 (1967), pp. 165–194, and are now generally accepted.

She reports what she saw and what the local monks and clergy told her: the church on the summit of Mount Sinai, the place of the burning bush, the church on Mount Nebo, and the liturgy of Jerusalem through the year. She is a witness to the places as they were identified in her own day, many centuries after the Old Testament events they commemorate. Her account shows how old those identifications are; it cannot show that they are correct.

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