EGERIA. - Latin nun (E. is the best-attested form of the name; Etheria is the rival form), known until now only from a letter of Valerius, abbot of St. Peter in Montes (Galicia) in the 7th century (PL 87, 421; better L. Garcia, La lettre de Valérius aux moines du Vierze sur la bienheureuse Aetheria, in Anal. Boll., 29
[1910], pp. 377 ff.). Since 1903 (D. Férotin, Le véritable auteur de la « Peregrinatio Silvia », la vierge espagnole Ethéria, in Rev. des quest. hist., 38 [1903], pp. 367-97), she has been recognized as the author of a Peregrinatio ad loca sancta, which Fr. G. Gamurrini published in 1887 from a codex of Arezzo, written at Montecassino in the 11th century, mutilated at the beginning and at the end, the only copy that has come down to us (besides a few meager extracts) of the precious little book.
In the part of it that remains to us, E. narrates in the form of a letter to her fellow nuns the pious excursions which, making Jerusalem her center, she undertook in order to visit Mount Sinai, Egypt, Arabia or Transjordan and lastly, on the way back by way of Constantinople, Mesopotamia, drawn by biblical memories, by the memorials of the martyrs, by the spectacle of fervent monasteries both male and female. Finally, as in a separate appendix, she gives a detailed description of the sacred ceremonies with which at Jerusalem the feasts of the Christian year were celebrated, especially of Holy Week and Easter.
One easily understands how precious this writing is for scholars of biblical geography and of the history of the liturgy. For the knowledge, in particular, of the liturgy of Jerusalem it has an incomparable, almost unique value. But it is no less important for philology, because it is written with a gentle abandon in a language close to the everyday speech of conversation, in which the features of the new Romance vernaculars already shine through. Constructions such as sobbaro sera (III, 2), traversare habebamus (II, 1), mansi loco ("ri-
...masi with "XXIII, 7), in ante ibant (VII, 3), a piziano ("from early childhood": IX, 2).
Where was she born, and when was the gentle writer in Palestine? These are questions that fascinate and divide scholars. Once the hypothesis of the first editor, Gamurrini, that the author was an Aquitanian Silesia, had been discarded along with Férotin, it is today held by most to be a Spanish woman. In fact, the oldest testimonies come to us from Spain. But the language of E., which, although with some Spanish coloring, more often borders on the vernaculars of France and Italy, and the comparison of the Euphrates with the Rhone (XVII, 2), would tip the balance toward southern Gaul (K. Meister and others). As for the time, Gamurrini places the Peregrinatio between 385 and 388, and found many adherents. Others placed it ten, twenty, about thirty years later. Much lower did K. Meister descend, placing it between 533 and 539, followed predominantly by philologists. But the end of the 4th century suits better the joyful and calm tone of the writing, in which there is no hint of the disturbances brought by the barbarian invasions in the West. - See plate IX.
Bibliography5 works
Alberto Vaccari