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Pilgrimage of Etheria

Egeria, tr. McClure and Feltoe, 1919

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1. The Narrative and its Authorship

THIS book was discovered by Signor Gamurrini in a MS. of the eleventh century at Arezzo, and he published it first in 1887 and again, in a correcter edition, in 1888. Three years later an English translation with text and notes, by Dr. J. H. Bernard, and an appendix on the topography by Sir C. W. Wilson, appeared under the auspices of the Palestine Pilgrims Text Society. In 1895 Dom Cabrol issued a treatise of some importance entitled Les Églises de Jérusalem. Then came M. Paul Geyer’s edition in 1898 in vol. xxxix. of the Vienna Corpus Script. Eccl Lat., who still further emended and elucidated the text. Up till that time Signor Gamurrini’s conjecture that the authoress was Silvia of Aquitaine, sister of the Emperor Theodosius’s minister Rufinus had been considered plausible, but had not been either corroborated or disproved.¹ But in 1903 Dom Férotin (Revue des questions historiques, vol. lxxiv.) sought to identify her with the virgin named Etheria, mentioned by Valerius in a letter to the religious brethren of the Vierzo in N.-W. Spain, and his arguments have met with very general acceptance. In 1909, however, a detailed and determined attack upon his views was made by Karl Meister in the Rheinisches Museum, so far as the date and nationality of the pilgrim are concerned; but his arguments were in Monseigneur Duchesne’s opinion² successfully met and answered by the Abbé Deconinck (Revue Biblique, 1910) and others. No one probably now adheres to the theory that Silvia was the pilgrim. Meister himself agrees with the other scholars already mentioned who have identified her with the abbess named Etheria,³ to whom Valerius refers; he only disputes her date and nationality.

Dom Férotin’s theory, amounting almost to a certainty, was that she was a fellow-countrywoman of Valerius, who had visited the East towards the end of the fourth century, i. e. in the reign of Theodosius († 395). Valerius himself lived in the second half of the seventh century, and is chiefly known as the biographer of his contemporary S. Fructuosus, bishop of Braga. He was abbat of the monasterium Rufianense, near Astorga, in the mountainous district of Gallaecia, now called the Vierzo. In the letter mentioned above he speaks of Etheria as extremo occidui maris Oceani littore exorta (sprung from the farthest shore of the western sea, the Ocean), chap. iv, while a doubtful phrase, where the true reading is uncertain, in chap. i., seems, nevertheless, almost necessarily to connect Etheria with the extremitas huius occiduae plagae (the farthest part of this western coast). If huius occurred in the first of these two expressions, the inference that she was from Gallaecia would be certain: as it is, the phrases are so similar that very little doubt can be entertained that she was.⁴

Meister, however, maintains that they do not of necessity indicate this district, and that, inter alia, as her language exhibits no trace of the Spanish dialect, but distinct traces of that of Gallia Narbonensis, and as she refers to the river Rhone (on p. 31) as if it were familiar both to herself and her readers,⁵ she came from S.-E. Gaul,⁶ and that her monastery was perhaps at Marseilles or Arles, where there were wellknown religious houses in the sixth century, to which he assigns her pilgrimage, viz. in the first half of the reign of Justinian († 565).

A considerable portion of Meister’s argument rests upon the language used by Etheria. He goes into minute details over her usages, and the upshot of his examination is that she was not unlearned, but was familiar with the Scriptures, to the language of which her own is similar, her phrases being often suggested by, or formed from, the same: this seems to him to point to a later date and a different nationality⁷ than the one we have accepted. We, too, do not think she was for her time and country badly educated and unlearned nor unfamiliar with the Scriptures: no one could think that. But, making all possible allowances for the inaccuracies of the scribe⁸ to whom we owe our knowledge of her narrative — and they are probably serious and frequent — yet the fact remains that she wrote a very slipshod Latin: her deficiencies cannot all be due to the carelessness or ignorance of the copyist. And this is the more surprising because, though she does not appear to have picked up any Syriac or other native tongue in her journeys, yet she is by no means without knowledge of Greek: for she uses quite a large number of Greek words and phrases⁹ and transliterates them as a rule with accuracy. (See list on p. xlviii f.) Besides that she displays great intelligence and exercises great powers of observation and appreciation of what she sees and hears wherever she goes. And this makes her narrative always lively and entertaining in spite of the defects in her style and occasional obscurity of meaning.

Stress has been laid, and not without reason, on the indications of Etheria’s social importance which her story affords.¹⁰ Wherever she went, she was well received and entertained by bishops, clergy and monks, who spared no pains in acting as ciceroni to her. She was provided with escorts of Roman soldiers when passing through a disturbed and dangerous district between Sinai and Egypt (p. 14), but dispensed with their services when it was no longer necessary to trouble them (p. 17). Though she often uses the first person singular as the head of the pilgrimage, yet she no less often speaks of “we” and “us” in a way which serves to show that she travelled with a certain retinue of her own; while, in the journey to Mount Sinai, she was also accompanied by certain holy guides (deductores), and again when she went to Mount Nebo. The cost of this expedition from West to East and back again, which occupied several years,¹¹ must have been great, however abundant the hospitality was which she met with. In the return from Mount Sinai to Clysma (Suez) she mentions the “animals” she used: these were apparently not camels, for she immediately speaks of them by name as used by the natives of Paran; but for the first part of the ascent of Mount Nebo (east of Jordan) she was able to use asellus (an ass or mule), whereas she had to walk all the way up Mount Sinai, not even a sella (litter) being possible because of its great steepness. If she had been an ordinary pilgrim in those days she would have been content to go on foot the whole way.¹² Such considerations again were amongst those which led earlier editors to identify our pilgrim, as has been said above, with either Galla Placidia or with Silvia of Aquitaine. But though there is a certain amount in Silvia’s case that fits in with what is here contained, yet the terms in which the Lausiac History of Palladius¹³ speaks of her in connexion with her journey from Jerusalem to Egypt show that she was an ascetic of the most severe type in her practices, and that our pilgrim never shows herself to have been, however much she respects and admires asceticism in those she meets or visits.

Three other matters remain to be considered which bear upon the date of the narrative besides being of general interest: —

(a) Etheria speaks of the three bishops whom she came across in Mesopotamia (at Bathnae, Edessa and Haran) as conspicuous for their holiness, “being both monk and confessor” in each case. She does not apply this word “confessor” to any other of the bishops, although she has several times noted that they were or had been monks formerly, while the still vigorous old priest whom she saw on Mount Sinai had been “both a monk from an early age and, as they say here, an ascete.”¹⁴ According to Monseigneur Duchesne, “we know that” the three bishops who are called confessors “were victims of the persecution under Valens” (A.D. 367-378), (p. 547). We can hardly be said to “know” this, but only that this is more likely that they were, other things being considered, than that they were those whom the Emperor Anastasius, favouring the Monophysites, drove out in the early years of the sixth century (as Meister maintains). Is it, however, altogether certain that “confessor” in these three cases means more than a stricter ascete than an ordinary monachus? Duchesne himself recognizes that this is a frequent meaning of the title in those days (see Christian Worship, pp. 142, 173, 284 and 420; and Batiffol, Hist. du Brév. Rom., p. 57). Still Eulogius, bishop of Edessa († 388), seems to have suffered persecution, and this would no doubt fit in with our date for the pilgrimage.

(b) Etheria quotes the bishop of Haran’s statement to her that at that time the Persians held the district of Nisibis and Ur, and the Romans had no place there (p. 39). As the Emperor Jovian had yielded the district to King Sapor in 363, that seems to be the explanation of the statement.¹⁵ On the other hand, in the years 540-545 the Romans (under Belisarius) regained their supremacy in the East, so that Meister allows that the pilgrimage must have taken place before then. For that reason, among others, he assigns it to 534, or thereabouts.

(c) Dr. Bernard has drawn our attention to another point in favour of the earlier date, which Meister seems to have overlooked. It is this. When we come to the pilgrimages which are admittedly of the sixth century, e.g. the so-called Breviarium, and the pilgrimage of Theodosius (both of which may be dated about 530), we find among the churches in Jerusalem visited by pilgrims “S. Peter in the house of Caiaphas,” and “S. Sophia in the Praetorium.” Etheria knows nothing of these; she names only the Martyrium, the Anastasis, and the Church of Sion, and as her description of the holy city is rich in detail, it may be reasonably concluded that these were the only churches which she saw, and that her visit was prior to the erection of those named by Theodosius. Meister uses a similar argument to prove that the pilgrimage must be prior to the building by Justinian of the Church of S. Mary Deipara in 543 (as it certainly was); but his reasoning is equally conclusive to establish its priority to the Breviarium and the Peregrinatio Theodosii.

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