“Egeria’s Itinerarium is a unique document from the time of the early church” (p. 1): it is one of the few women’s writings from antiquity, and it is one of the first pilgrimage narratives.
The Introduction presents Egeria’s Itinerarium in Anni Maria Laato’s interpretation: the text—a pilgrimage diary intended to be read by other people who remained at home—connects two different worlds, East and West, and different ways of being Christian at the end of IV century. Previous studies of Egeria’s work focused on various features and topics of the text, for example late Latin language, the Holy Land’s topography, Eastern liturgy and ecclesiastical life, and the practice of pilgrimage (especially for women). The goal of this Element (Laato’s book belongs to Cambridge University Press Elements in Early Christian Literature series) is instead to analyze what and how Egeria shared with her Western readers, “her friends at home, that is, some kind of community of Christian women” (p. 2). The method used is close reading (according to Barry Brummet’s definition), and the vantage point is lived religion in antiquity, closely related to and inseparable from theology.
Section 2, Egeria the Travel Writer in Context, focuses on Egeria herself and on her knowledge of Greek and Christian theology: the correct understanding of what she reports about the liturgy and ecclesiastical life that she participates in during her pilgrimage, depends on this. After brief discussion about the manuscript tradition, Egeria’s style, and the issue of literary genre, Laato questions both the identity of Egeria and of her work’s recipients—mainly based on previous studies—and her linguistic skills. About her Latin, Laato affirms that “[i]t was fluent, the vulgar Latin of her time” and “[t]he syntax is rather simple, and her text does contain some misspellings and errors in grammar and syntax” (p. 15). It seems incorrect to identify as misspellings and errors what are rather characteristics of the history of each language. Vulgarisms capture a specific moment (non necessarily of the author, perhaps of the scribe). As for Greek, Laato proposes a good number of examples that demonstrate Egeria’s knowledge, mainly against Blake Leyerle’s argument that Egeria did not have Greek. What is particularly interesting is that Laato interprets Egeria’s focus on what she saw in the places she visited, instead of what she heard in Greek homilies, as due not to unfamiliarity with Greek, but rather to real interests of the pilgrim, that is to say lived religion, i.e. primarily liturgy.
Section 3, Egeria’s Routes, Places She Visited and People She Encountered, explains the stops along her journey and the roles of the people with whom she traveled, in whose communities she was hosted, or whom she encountered (clergy, ascetics, ordinary Christians…). The writer, as Laato correctly states, belongs to three different groups of people: her sisters at home in the West (that is to say her addressees), the pilgrims who travel with her, and finally the community in Jerusalem. Silence about people outside these three groups is a sign, in Laato’s analysis, not of Egeria’s ignorance but of her lack of interest.
Section 4, Communicating Sense Perception and Emotions, shows how Egeria cares about reporting lived experiences directly and in terms of sense and emotions, without necessarily giving them spiritual meanings. Laato quotes several examples of Egeria’s attention to material elements of her travels: music, songs, smells, biblical readings, and tours of holy places. Maybe it was her real interest to report the differences between West and East, omitting the similarities she found, for example in celebration of Eucharist. Laato’s interpretation of Egeria’s goal in describing her visits to biblical sites is quite reasonable: she visits the Holy Land “in order to understand and memorize the Scriptural events better” (p. 43). So Egeria’s diary appears rightly to be something like an Illustrated Bible in that it is not focused on the spiritual sense perceptions. The comparison with Paula of Bethlehem, frequently proposed by Laato, leaves the reader in doubt whether Egeria is only interested in different things or rather is incapable of particularly profound reflections. The scholar suggests it depends on Egeria’s conscious choice.
The first part of section 5, Egeria as Mediator of Theological and Biblical Traditions, scrutinizes Egeria’s choice of what to tell and why: Egeria does not say anything about dogmatic issues, theological disputes, or different interpretations of Holy Scripture. Laato compares Egeria with her contemporary, Paula of Bethlehem, to prove that a woman at that time could speak about theology. With regard to Sacrae Scripturae, Laato affirms that Egeria’s interest was not to give precise indications of the readings heard, but to show where the readings are made. She, as a pilgrim, listened to the Holy Scripture in the correct places. The absence of exegetical interpretations and precise references to biblical texts is interpreted as a characteristic of a literary genre (travel diary) that goes beyond such contents. The second part of this section is perhaps the most innovative of Laato’s work and it requires careful evaluation. The scholar tries to demonstrate that Egeria has her own theological ideas, even though she doesn’t formulate them explicitly, as one would expect: “one must be careful not to read too much into the omission” (p. 51). Laato identifies other ways that Egeria addresses theological matters (such as commenting on liturgical practices, describing lived religious experiences, and reporting received teachings) and her viewpoints on Christology and the Trinity (for example, employing the terminology in use about the triune God, expressing clearly the divinity of Christ, speaking about the Holy Spirit albeit only in Pentecostal contexts, and naming the three Persons of the Trinity, but without using the precise term Trinitas).
Section 6 Conclusions: Egeria, a Travel Writer with an Eye for the Ordinary reiterates Laato’s thesis that Egeria, like a reporter, wrote her pilgrimage diary with its recipients in mind: “Egeria was conscious of her task as a communicator” (p. 66). Therefore she narrated and described select experiences and details of what she saw and lived in way that is understandable to a Western reader, comparing rather than criticizing and without mentioning any spiritual sense of her experiences. In the conclusion Laato reiterates her thesis about Egeria’s theological, linguistic, and biblical knowledge expressed on the previous pages and deduced from interpretations of Itinerarium’s omissions. The last pages of this pleasant essay relocate Egeria’s work in the correct place of the Christian literary scene, without making it what it really is not.