Keywords
pilgrimage
time
temporality
Egeria's Itinerarium
liturgy
biblical past
late antiquity
How to Cite
Abstract
Focusing on the late fourth-century travel account produced by a woman known today as Egeria, this article asks how her somatic, interpersonal, and sensory experiences and feelings shaped her understanding of time, or temporality. The various ways she experiences time in both parts of her diary are considered: her descriptions of travels to holy places and people in Palestine, Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia, followed by a detailed description of Jerusalem’s Lenten, Holy Week, and Easter rites. Taken together, the two parts of Egeria’s travel diary reveal diverse ways of measuring and feeling time. It is argued that her feelings – frustrations, excitement, joys, and sorrows – shape her experiences of the biblical past, whether through its availability or grief at its loss. The itinerarium and liturgy provide many ways to engage biblical time, whether topographically, liturgically, or calendrically.
References
Attridge, Harold William. “Giving Voice to Jesus: Use of the Psalms in the New Testament.” Psalms in Community: Jewish and Christian Textual, Liturgical, and Artistic Traditions. Ed. Margot Fassler and Harold William Attridge. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003. 101–12.
Baldovin, John F. 1991. The Urban Character of Christian Worship: The Origins, Development, and Meaning
of Stational Liturgy. Rome: Pont. Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1987. Orientalia Christiana Analecta 228.
Barnett, Joshua. Mourning in the Anthropocene: Ecological Grief and Earthly Coexistence. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2022.
Bastiaensen, Antonius Adrianus Robertus. Observations sur le vocabulaire liturgique dans l’itinéraire d’Égérie. Nijmegen and Utrecht: Dekker & Van de Vegt, 1962.
Bender, John and David Edward Wellbery, eds. Chronotypes: The Construction of Time. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991.
Birth, Kevin Keith. Time Blind: Problems in Perceiving Other Temporalities. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
Blackman, Deane Richard and George Gavin Betts, eds. Concordantia in Itinerarium Egeriae / A Concordance to the Itinerarium Egeriae. Hildesheim: Olms-Weidman, 1989.
Bowman, Glenn. “‘Mapping History’s Redemption’: Eschatology and Topography in the Itinerarium Burdigalense.” Jerusalem: Its Sanctity and Centrality to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Ed. Lee Israel Levine. New York: Continuum, 1999. 163–87.
Campbell, Mary B. The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Cassibry, Kimberly. Destinations in Mind: Portraying Places on the Roman Empire’s Souvenirs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.
Coogan, Jeremiah. “Mapping the Fourfold Gospel: Textual Geography in the Eusebian Apparatus.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 25 (2017): 337–57.
Darbo-Peschanski, Catherine. “Temporalisations: fondements, descriptions, usages.” Constructions de temps dans le monde grec ancien. Ed. Catherine Darbo-Peschanski. Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2000. 11–32.
Day, Juliette J. “Ritualizing Time.” The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Ritual. Ed. Risto Uro, Juliette J. Day, Rikard Roitto, and Richard E. DeMaris. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. 554–69.
Devos, Paul. “La date du voyage d’Égérie.” Analecta Bollandiana 85 (1967): 165–94.
Devos, Paul. “Egeriana.” Analecta Bollandiana 105 (1987): 159–66; 109 (1991): 363–81; 112 (1994): 241–54.
Dietz, Maribel. Wandering Monks, Virgins, and Pilgrims: Ascetic Travel in the Mediterranean World, A.D. 300–800. State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005.
Dinshaw, Carolyn. How Soon Is Now? Medieval Texts, Amateur Readers, and the Queerness of Time. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2012.
Dinshaw, Carolyn. “Temporalities.” Middle English. Ed. Paul Strohm. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. 107–23. Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature.
Douglass, Laurie. “A New Look at the Itinerarium Burdigalense.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 4 (1999): 313–34.
[Egeria], Itinerarium Egeriae. Eds. Ezio Franceschini and Robert Weber. Turnhout: Brepols, 1965. Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 175. 27–103.
Elias, Amy J. and Joel Burges. Time: A Vocabulary of the Present. New York: New York University Press, 2016.
Elm, Susanna. “Perceptions of Jerusalem Pilgrimage as Reflected in Two Early Sources on Female Pilgrimage (3rd and 4th centuries, A.D.” Studia Patristica 20 (1987): 219–23.
Elsner, Jaś. “The Itinerarium Burdigalense: Politics and Salvation in the Geography of Constantine’s Empire.” Journal of Roman Studies 90 (2000): 181–95.
Falcasantos, Rebecca Stephens. “Christian Religious Symbolism and Pilgrimage.” Routledge Handbook on Jerusalem. Ed. Sulaymān ʻAlī Murad, Naomi Koltun-Fromm, and Bedross Der Matossian. Milton Park, Abingdon: Routledge, 2019. 290–300.
Falcasantos, Rebecca Stephens. “Wandering Wombs, Inspired Intellects: Christian Religious Travel in Late Antiquity.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 25 (2017): 89–117.
Frank, Georgia. The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
Frank, Georgia. “Pilgrimage.” Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies. Ed. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David Hunter. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. 826–43.
Goldhill, Simon. The Christian Invention of Time: Temporality and the Literature of Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
Gribetz, Sarit Kattan and Lynn Kaye. “The Temporal Turn in Ancient Judaism and Jewish Studies.” Currents in Biblical Research 17 (2019): 332–95.
Gribetz, Sarit Kattan and Lynn Kaye, eds. Time: A Multidisciplinary Introduction (forthcoming, De Gruyter, 2023).
Hartog, François. Chronos: l’Occident aux prises avec le Temps. Paris: Flammarion, 2020. English translation by Samuel Ross Gilbert, Chronos: The West Confronts Time. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022.
Herman, David. “Limits of Order: Toward a Theory of Polychronic Narration.” Narrative 6 (1998): 72–95.
Hunt, Edward David. Holy Land Pilgrimage in the Later Roman Empire AD 312–460. Oxford: Clarendon, 1982.
Hunt, Edward David. “The Itinerary of Egeria: Reliving the Bible in Fourth-Century Palestine.” Studies in Church History 36 (2000): 34–54.
Jacobs, Andrew S. Remains of the Jews: The Holy Land and Christian Empire in Late Antiquity. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004.
Janeras, Sebastià. “Bibliografia egeriana recent.” Revista Catalana de Teologia 28 (2003): 231–40, 507–10.
Janeras, Sebastià. “Contributo alla bibliografia Egeriana.” Atti del convegno internazionale sulla Peregrinatio Egeriae: nel centenario della pubblicazione del Codex Aretinus 405 (già Aretinus VI, 3): Arezzo, 23–25 ottobre 1987. Arezzo: Accademia Petrarca di lettere, arti e scienze, 1990. 355–66.
Johnson, Scott Fitzgerald. Literary Territories: Cartographical Thinking in Late Antiquity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Kolb, Anne. “The Romans and the World’s Measure.” Brill’s Companion to Ancient Geography. Ed. Serena Bianchetti, Michele Cataudella, and Hans-Joachim Gehrke. Leiden: Brill, 2016. 223–38.
Kötting, B. Peregrinatio religiosa: Wallfahrt und Pilgerwesen in Antike und alter Kirche. Münster: Verlag Regensberg, 1950. Forschungen zur Volkskunde 33/35.
Krueger, Derek. “Liturgical Time and Holy Land Reliquaries in Early Byzantium.” Saints and Sacred Matter: The Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond. Ed. Cynthia Hahn and Holger A. Klein. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2015. 111–31.
Laato, Anni Maria. 2014. “What Makes the Holy Land Holy?” Holy Places and Cult. Ed. Erkki Koskenniemi and J. Cornelis de Vos. Turku, Finland: Åbo Akademi University, 2014. 169–99.
Leyerle, Blake. “Landscape as Cartography in Early Christian Pilgrimage Narratives.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64 (1996): 119–43.
Leyerle, Blake. “Lot’s Wife on the Border.” Harvard Theological Review 107 (2014): 59–80.
Leyerle, Blake. “The Voices of Others in Egeria’s Pilgrim Narrative.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 29 (2021): 553–78.
Lowenthal, David. The Past Is a Foreign Country – Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Maraval, Pierre, ed. and trans. Égérie, Journal de Voyage. Paris: Cerf, 1982. Sources Chrétiennes 296.
Maraval, Pierre, ed. and trans. Lieux saints et pèlerinages d’Orient: Histoire et géographie des origins à la conquête arabe. 2nd edition. Paris: Cerf, 2004 [1st ed. 1985].
Marshall, Nadine, William Neil Adger, Claudia Benham, Katrina Brown, Matthew I. Curnock, Georgina G. Gurney, Paul Marshall, Petina L. Pert, and Lauric Thiault. “Reef Grief: Investigating the Relationships between Place Meanings and Place Change on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia.” Sustainability Science 14 (2019): 579–87.
McGowan, Anne and Paul F. Bradshaw. The Pilgrimage of Egeria: A New Translation of the Itinerarium Egeriae with Introduction and Commentary. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press Academic, 2018.
Mehl, Scott. “The Long Sleep of Belatedness: Nonsynchronism and Modernity in Maruoka Kyūka’s ‘Rippu ban unkuru’ (1886) and Tawfīq Al-Hakīm’s Ahl Al-Kahf (1933).” Japanese Studies 39 (2019): 27–41.
Moriarty, Rachel. “‘Secular Men and Women’: Egeria’s Lay Congregation in Jerusalem.” Studies in Church History 36 (2000): 55–66.
Palmer, Andrew. “Egeria the Voyager, or The Technology of Remote Sensing in Late Antiquity.” Travel Fact and Travel Fiction: Studies on Fiction, Literary Tradition, Scholarly Discovery, and Observation in Travel Writing. Ed. Zweder von Martels. Leiden: Brill, 1994. 39–53.
Pernau, Margrit. Emotions and Temporalities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
Pietersma, Albert and Benjamin G. Wright, trans. A New English Translation of the Septuagint. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Purves, Alex C. Space and Time in Ancient Greek Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Renoux, Athanase, ed. and trans. Le Codex arménien, Jérusalem 121. Turnhout: Brepols, 1969–71. Patrologia Orientalis 35–36.
Rijksbaron, Albert. “Deixis in Teichoscopy as a Marker of Emotional Urgency.” Emotions and Narrative in Ancient Literature and Beyond: Studies in Honour of Irene de Jong. Ed. Mathieu de Bakker, Baukje van den Berg, and Jacqueline Klooster. Leiden: Brill, 2022. 197–213.
Rood, Tim, Carol Atack, and Tom Phillips. Anachronism and Antiquity. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.
Shoemaker, Stephen. “Sing, O Daughter(s) of Zion.” Melania: Early Christianity through the Life of One Family. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019. 222–40.
Sivan, Hagith. “Holy Land Pilgrimage and Western Audiences: Some Reflections on Egeria and Her Circle.” Classical Quarterly 38 (1988): 528–35.
Sivan, Hagith. “Who Was Egeria? Piety and Pilgrimage in the Age of Gratian.” Harvard Theological Review 81 (1988): 59–72.
Smith, Jonathan Zittell. To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Smith, Julie Ann. “Sacred Journeying: Women’s Correspondence and Pilgrimage in the Fourth and Eighth Centuries.” Pilgrimage Explored. Ed. Jane Stopford. Woodbridge, UK: York Medieval Press, 1999. 41–56.
Spitzer, Leo. “The Epic Style of the Pilgrim Aetheria.” Comparative Literature 1 (1949): 225–58.
Stafford, Grace. “Evidence for Female Pilgrims at Abu Mina.” Transmitting and Circulating the Late Antique and Byzantine Worlds. Ed. Mirela Ivanova and Hugh Jeffery. Leiden: Brill, 2020. 11–43.
Starowieyski, Marek. “Bibliografia Egeriana.” Augustinianum 19 (1979): 297–318.
Stökl Ben Ezra, Daniel. “Seasoning the Bible and Biblifying Time through Fixed Liturgical Reading Systems (Lectionaries).” The Construction of Time in Antiquity. Ed. Jonathan Ben-Dov and Lutz Doering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. 227–47.
Sweeney, Christopher. “Grief and the Cross: Popular Devotion and Passion Piety from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages.” PhD Dissertation, Fordham University, 2020.
Sweeney, Christopher. “‘The Wailing of the People’: The Lay Invention of Passion Piety in Late Antique Jerusalem.” Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies 2 (2019): 129–48.
Talbot, Alice-Mary. “Female Pilgrimage in Late Antiquity and the Byzantine Era.” Acta Byzantina Fennica 1 (2002): 73–88.
Väänänen, Veikko. “The Itinerarium Egeriae: A Linguistic Study.” Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae / Suomalaisen Tiedeakatemian Toimituksia, Series B 230 (1987): 1–165.
Vidal-Naquet, Pierre. “Essai sur quelques aspects de l’expérience temporelle des Grecs.” Revue de l’histoire des religions (1960): 55–80, reprinted in Le Chasseur noir: formes de pensée et formes de société dans le monde grec. Paris: Maspero, 1981. 69–83. English translation by Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, The Black Hunter: Forms of Thought and Forms of Society in the Greek World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986. 39–60.
Walker, Peter W. L. Holy City, Holy Places? Christian Attitudes to Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the Fourth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Wilkinson, John, ed. and trans. Egeria’s Travels to the Holy Land. Revised edition. Jerusalem: Ariel Publishing House / Warminster, UK: Aris & Phillips, 1981
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright (c) 2023 Georgia Frank