The Itinerary of Egeria: Reliving the Bible in Fourth-Century Palestine

In a letter of exhortation on the ascetic life addressed to monks of the Bierzo region in north-western Spain in the late seventh century, the local spiritual leader Valerius invoked the saintly example of a ‘fragile woman’. Her name was Egeria, who, at the time when ‘the luminous shining light of our holy religion was finally kindled after long delay in this region of the west’, had fearlessly embarked on a monumental journey encompassing the ‘whole world’. The object of Egeria’s God-inspired Wanderlust had been the biblical holy places of Old and New Testaments, as well as the monastic heartland of Egypt, through all of which Valerius found in her a model of tireless zeal and thanksgiving to parade before his correspondents. It was especially her intrepid ascent to the summits of holy mountains which characterized this exceptional woman as a paragon of spiritual endeavour, and Valerius’ monks were to be encouraged, if not to climb every mountain, at least to reach their own heights of discipline and self-denial, to ‘blush’ at the fortitude of one who ‘transformed the weakness of her sex into an iron strength’.