Apr 7, 2007
How do we know about the early rituals of Easter?
For Christians celebrating Holy Week—the eight-day period preceding Easter—it's hard to imagine Palm Sunday without a procession of palms or Good Friday without the adoration of the cross. Given the sacrosanct nature of worship services this time of year, it is worth remembering that, far from being handed down directly from God, much of the Easter and Holy Week liturgies come to us by way of a little-known, naturally inquisitive fourth–century Spanish nun named Egeria.
Egeria was one of a handful of upper-class Roman female converts whose support was critical for the blossoming of early Christianity, though their names lack household acclaim. Her "postcards"—sent to her fellow sisters in northwestern Spain from a three-year pilgrimage through modern-day Egypt, Israel, Palestine, and Syria—offer detailed descriptions of biblical sites, monastic communities, and worship practice in late fourth-century antiquity. Her travel diaries also served as primary source material for the modern Holy Week liturgies and evoke the image of an unusual candidate for sainthood: an adventurous woman of means whose curiosity matched her piety.
Of all the early church matriarchs, Egeria is among the more enigmatic. Since a 19th-century scholar discovered the 22-page fragment of her travel narrative on the shelves of the Brotherhood of Arezzo in 1887, church historians have been arguing about her identity. A variation of Egeria's name first appeared in a letter from a seventh-century Spanish monk praising the intrepid spirituality of "Aetheria," a consecrated virgin or nun who had many years earlier written about her extensive pilgrimage from the farthest western shores of Spain all the way to the eastern part of the Roman Empire....
Egeria was one of a handful of upper-class Roman female converts whose support was critical for the blossoming of early Christianity, though their names lack household acclaim. Her "postcards"—sent to her fellow sisters in northwestern Spain from a three-year pilgrimage through modern-day Egypt, Israel, Palestine, and Syria—offer detailed descriptions of biblical sites, monastic communities, and worship practice in late fourth-century antiquity. Her travel diaries also served as primary source material for the modern Holy Week liturgies and evoke the image of an unusual candidate for sainthood: an adventurous woman of means whose curiosity matched her piety.
Of all the early church matriarchs, Egeria is among the more enigmatic. Since a 19th-century scholar discovered the 22-page fragment of her travel narrative on the shelves of the Brotherhood of Arezzo in 1887, church historians have been arguing about her identity. A variation of Egeria's name first appeared in a letter from a seventh-century Spanish monk praising the intrepid spirituality of "Aetheria," a consecrated virgin or nun who had many years earlier written about her extensive pilgrimage from the farthest western shores of Spain all the way to the eastern part of the Roman Empire....