Abstract

When Gamurrini first published the Peregrinatio ad loca sancta, the narrative by an abbess of a pilgrimage undertaken to the Holy Land in the last quarter of the fourth century, he identified the authoress with Silvia, the sister of Arcadius' minister Rufinus. Heraeus, however, in his edition lends the weight of his authority to the view that the work was written by a certain Aetheria, and in his preface gives solid reasons for his preference. He also states that a thirteenth-century catalogue of the Limoges Cathedral Library mentions the book under the title Itinevarium Egenae abbatissae, but he regards the form Egeria as a mere corruption.