Nellie Bly, Alexandra Davis-Néel, Florence Baker, Isabel Godin des Odonais, Isabelle Eberhardt… It is not the first time that we have recounted here the adventures of women travelers and explorers, but until now they all had the common link of having lived in the Contemporary Age . Today we have as protagonist another that is located much further back in time, Antiquity, and traveled much of the known world then, the one that was under the orbit of the Roman Empire: Egeria, a Hispanic from Gallaecia.
Also known as Ætheria, among other nominal variants, the scarcity of sources makes it difficult to go into biographical details without falling into speculation. In fact, there is only one document that tells us about her and it is not even original: the copy of a letter in which she herself recounts, to a small circle of women, the pilgrimage she made to the Holy Land in the last quarter of the century. IV AD, a date that makes the narration the oldest of a trip in the Christian sphere.
The problem is that it lacks a signature, title or date, and it is not even preserved in its entirety but rather in a fragmented way. The beginning and the end have been lost, while the central part survived thanks to being copied in the Codex Aretinus by a monk from Montecasino in the 11th century. It was not until 1884 that the Italian archaeologist and bibliophile Gian Francesco Gamurrini, an expert on Etruscan civilization, found it in the Biblioteca Della Confraternità dei Laici, in his native Arezzo. It was a codex on parchment in thirty-seven folios, written in vulgar Latin, in the typical Beneventan script of its medieval time.
It was structured in two parts. The first contained a famous treatise on hymns and mysteries written by Saint Hilary of Poitiers, bishop of that city and Doctor of the Church, nicknamed Malleus Arianorum (“Hammer of Arians”) and often compared to Athanasius of Alexandria. The second, incomplete, which had been taken to the monastery of Santa Maria in Arezzo by the abbot of the aforementioned monastery of Montecasino between 1599 and 1602, when they transferred it (and from there it went to the Biblioteca Della Confraternità dei Laici in 1801, after Napoleon closed the Arezzan monastery), narrated a journey through the Holy Land.
We talked before about the problem of not subsisting beginning or end and it is that this complicated the chronological dating and the identification of the author. Gamurrini attributed the letter to Silvia of Aquitaine, a saint who lived between the 4th and 5th centuries, famous for two reasons: being the sister of Rufino, praetorian prefect of Theodosius and Arcadius (the Eastern Roman emperors), and having traveled through Constantinople , Egypt and Jerusalem when he was already over sixty years old, which, together with his ascetic customs, earned him canonization. This is how the monk Palladius of Galatia told it in his Lausian historyin which he explains how Christian monasticism began on Egyptian soil.
The attribution was accepted until 1903, the year in which the French Hispanic scholar Marius Férotin (who was also a Benedictine monk established in the Santo Domingo de Silos monastery fleeing the anticlericalism that was convulsing his country) refuted Gamurrini’s work with the publication of an article in Journal of Historical Issuesin which the title changed Peregrinatio Silviae by exchanging the authorship to give it to Egeria. For this, it was based on a letter written by the monk San Valerio del Bierzo, a cenobitic saint from the 7th century (disciple of the Visigothic bishop of Braga, San Fructuoso), who provided hitherto unknown data on the trip in question, such as the date (between 381 and 384 AD), the starting point, stages, duration, etc. He even imitated Egeria’s style.
Manuscript of the Journey of Egeria preserved in the Biblioteca Comunale de Arezzo | photo Lameiro in Wikimedia Commons
In 1909, Férotin’s theory was questioned by the German Karl Meister, basing himself on philological arguments to argue that the French had confused Gallaecia with Gaul, the latter being where the author of the story would originate -in contrast to the opinion of the another that the trip only began there – and also with a later chronology. Irish Anglican clergyman John Henry Bernard subscribed to the latter, emphasizing that two Jerusalem churches mentioned in the works breviarium Y Peregrinatio TheodosiiSaint Peter in the House of Caiaphas and Saint Sophia in the Praetorium, both dated around the year 530, do not appear in Egeria’s account.
In any case, the letter from San Valerio served to make the name of the Hispanic woman appear for the first time, whom she identifies as a nun for addressing several “sores” (sisters, in Latin: «My venerable ladies, my sisters, owners of my soul, my light…»), although historians point out that in the 4th century it was customary to call members of the Christian community that way and it seems unlikely that a nun would have had so much freedom to move. The pilgrimage that she made, by the way, does not have to be linked to a formal religious one, since then it had become fashionable to make this type of journey of faith; let us remember, for example, the one made by Helena de Constantinople, mother of the Emperor Constantine, in search of relics (the fruit of which she brought back those of the True Cross, the Magi or the Apostle Matthias).
In reality, what Egeria’s journey perhaps demonstrates is his affiliation to a middle or upper class, with the financial capacity to meet the consequent expenses and access to a course publicus (a safe-conduct with the right to accommodation and food). In fact, there were other travelers from Late Antiquity (criticized in a paternalistic tone by men, that is, Saint Jerome or Bishop Gregory of Nyssa), such as the aforementioned Silvia of Aquitaine, Paula of Rome, Melania the biggest or Melanie the Young (who was also Hispanic), and all belonged to the aristocracy, regardless of whether they led a more or less austere life according to their beliefs.
Because the itinerary narrated by Egeria was not exactly a weekend getaway. What has been given in the headline Itinerarium Egeriae (either Peregrinatio Aetheriae either Itinerarium ad Loca Sanctaamong other combinations) begins by recounting the imminent ascent to Mount Sinai, after having visited sacred places of the Bible such as Galilee -it was lodged for a season next to Lake Tiberias-, Bethlehem, Hebron, Samaria, Jericho, Nazareth and Capernaum; also, of course, Jerusalem, where a season was established. He also met other anecdotal sites, such as the one where Eliezer met Rebekah, the burial of Haran (Abraham’s brother), Mount Nebo (where Moses died, according to tradition) and Job’s tomb, located in present-day Jordan. and Syria respectively. At the same time, he comments on local traditions such as the multiplication of loaves and fishes.
Before all that, she would have started the pilgrimage from southern Gaul (Bordeaux, Arles… it is true that she only mentions the Rhône, which she compares to the Euphrates, which is why Meister considered it Gallic), going on to the Italian peninsula (Milan and Aquileia) to cross the Adriatic, disembark in Sirmium (the current Serbian town of Sremska Mitrovica) and reach Constantinople in 381 AD. From there it would pass to the Holy Land and, after this, the following year, to Egypt: Alexandria, Thebes, the Red Sea and the Sinai Peninsula. After a two-year period in those latitudes, he decided to return and did so first through Mesopotamia, along the Euphrates River, his next stops being in Asia Minor: Antioch, Tarsus, Edessa, Bithynia and Seleucia Isauriae (current Turkish Silifke), in the latter because there there was the sanctuary of Santa Tecla, highly venerated by women.
Given that, as we said, the beginning and the end were lost, the information must be complemented with that provided by the Liberation from locis sanctis Peter’s work the deacon (the Benedictine librarian of Montecasino). Finally Egeria arrived in Constantinople, where she considered a new trip to Ephesus. There begins a second part of the story, which is very different: a description of the liturgical rites of the East, monastic life and the ecclesiastical calendar in the Holy Land of that time -probably coinciding with the episcopal stage of Cyril of Jerusalem-, in which was not yet celebrated Christmas. A proof of both her religiousness and her curious spirit; she admitted it herself“eager to know everything”), although that meant believing everything his guides told him, no matter how crazy it was (for example, they showed him some alleged correspondence by letter between King Abgar of Edessa and Jesus Christ!).
We said before Itinerarium Egeriae is written, logically, in Latin; the vulgar, the language spoken in the empire, lacking the artistic pretensions of the classic, cultured. A philological analysis reveals juicy information about its evolution since that Antiquity, in which it is equated to a proto-Romance from which the Romance languages will emerge. Something opposed to that comfortable position that, according to some hypothesis, could be even higher, above the nobility (if the theory is accepted -another- that she was related to the empress Elia Flacila, consort of Theodosius the big one, both from a Hispano-Roman family). Others, with enough imagination, suppose her to be the sister of Gala Placidia, daughter of Teodosio, or of another Gala, the wife of Prisciliano.
It is impossible to know, as we also do not know the date and place of his death, although everything seems to indicate that he died without being able to see Gallaecia again. His last written words seem to imply that she was suffering from an illness and felt close to death:
“From this place, my mistresses and light of my life, while I was writing this to your charity, I already had the intention of going in the name of Christ our God to Ephesus, in Asia, to pray at the tomb of the holy and blessed apostle John. If after this I will be alive, and if in addition I will be able to visit other places, I will refer it to your charity; or I myself present, if God deigns to grant it to me, or I will certainly communicate it to you in writing, if something else comes to mind. In the meantime, my ladies and light of my life, please remember me, whether I am alive or whether I am dead».
Sources
Ether, Itinerary | Rosa Maria Cid Lopez, Egeria, pilgrim and adventurer. Story of a trip to the Holy Land in the fourth century (in Arenal. Women’s History Magazine) | ML Herbert McClure Y Charles Lett Feltoe The pilgrimage of Etheria | Cristina Morato, Intrepid and adventurous travelers | Wikipedia