We aren't sure of her name. We know what hour she reached the top of Sinai

When

to 381

Distance on the map

2,100 kmat least, through the places named, of which 2,100 km dashed

By way of

Constantinople, Chalcedon, Tarsus, Antioch, Jerusalem

Dashed: the whole way. Its text is lost. Two points are certain, because she mentions them on the way back: at Tarsus she “had already been, on my way to Jerusalem”, and the shrine of Saint Euphemia at Chalcedon “was already known to me from a former time”. The line enters the map from the west, where she came from, without saying by which road.

She does not say where she set out from. A monk from Galicia, Valerius of Bierzo, who read her letter three centuries later, calls her “sprung from the farthest shore of the western sea, the Ocean”, which for him meant Galicia. Karl Meister argued in 1909, from her language and from the way she compares the Euphrates with the Rhône, as if the sisters knew it, that she came from southern Gaul. Both readings still stand.

Of the road to Jerusalem nothing survives. What we know comes from the return: she had been at Tarsus, had passed through Chalcedon, where she knew the shrine of Saint Euphemia, and had travelled the great road of Asia Minor through Cappadocia, Galatia and Bithynia, which she calls “already known to me” when she takes it the second time. Her English editors of 1919 supposed she came out from the west by land, like the anonymous Bordeaux pilgrim fifty years earlier, across northern Italy and the Balkans. It is a supposition.

She travelled with a party: she writes “we” almost as often as “I”. Bishops come out to meet her, monks receive her in their cells, soldiers escort her through unsafe districts. On Nebo she rides part of the way on a donkey; on Sinai, she says, the ascent was “impossible in the saddle”. Valerius calls her “most blessed nun”; the thirteenth-century catalogues of the abbey of Saint-Martial at Limoges call her an abbess.

In Jerusalem she stayed three full years, as she says herself when she leaves. On the map her arrival is put in 381, by Devos's reckoning. What she did in those years, apart from the journeys below, is in the second half of the letter: she followed the services of the city, festival by festival, and noted their hours.

When

December 383

Distance on the map

850 kmat least, through the places named, of which 400 km dashed

By way of

Pelusium, Clysma (Suez), Faran, Mount Sinai, The Bush (St Catherine's)

Dashed: the road to Clysma, that is Suez, which falls in the lost part of the text. The line starts from Jerusalem; her editors of 1919 thought it more likely that she came to Sinai from Egypt, where she had been at Alexandria and in the Thebaid. From Clysma to the mountain the line is solid, because on the way back she says she went “by the same route and the same stations by which we had come out”.

The surviving text opens here, with a valley “infinitely great, quite flat and extraordinarily beautiful”, and Sinai across it. The guides tell her the custom is to pray at the spot from which the mountain is first seen. They reached its foot late on the Saturday, at a monastery, and on Sunday morning began the climb.

The mountains, she writes, are not climbed “gently by a spiral track, as we say snail-shell wise”: you go straight up, “as if up a wall”. She went on foot, since it could not be done in the saddle, and did not feel the toil: “I realized that the desire which I had was being fulfilled.” At the fourth hour they reached the summit, where there was a church “not great in size, for the place itself is not very great”, and an old priest, a monk from early life, came out of his cell to meet them. The passage from the book of Moses was read, the oblation made, they communicated, and the priests gave them eulogiae, fruit from the gardens at the foot of the mountain.

From the top they were shown Egypt, Palestine, the Red Sea and the sea that leads to Alexandria. Her editors of 1919 note drily that none of this can be seen from Jebel Musa: “like so many tourists she was misinformed.” They came down by Horeb, to Elijah's cave, and at about the tenth hour reached the head of the valley and the bush, “which same bush is alive to this day and throws out shoots”. It stands in a garden with good water, in front of a church. Next morning they asked for the oblation to be made there.

The way back took longer than the climb. At Faran, thirty-five miles from the mountain, they rested two days. Then the road dropped to the sea and kept to the shore, “at one time the waves touch the feet of the animals, while at another the course is through the desert, a hundred, two hundred, and sometimes even more than five hundred paces from the sea”, with no road at all. The people of Faran set up signs and travel by night with their camels, more quickly and safely than others do where there is a clear road. At Clysma they stopped again, “because we had travelled hard along the sandy way of the desert”.

When

January 384

Distance on the map

1,020 kmat least, through the places named, of which 530 km dashed

By way of

Pithom, Hero, Rameses, “the city of Arabia”, Tathnis, Pelusium, Jerusalem, Alexandria

Dashed: an earlier stay in Alexandria and the Thebaid, which she mentions three times, “when I was in Egypt for the first time”, without a word about it. The line stops at Alexandria: she names the Thebaid but no place in it.

She already knew the land of Goshen, but wanted to see in order “all the places which the children of Israel touched” from Rameses to the Red Sea. From Clysma there are four stations through the desert, each with a garrison, and the soldiers “escorted us from fort to fort”, as Roman discipline required. From Migdol, a fort, she was shown Epauleum across the way, then, on either side of the road, Baal-zephon, Etham, Succoth, Pithom, which “is now a fort”, and Hero, a large village with a church, martyr-memorials and cells, at the sixteenth milestone from the land of Goshen, on an arm of the Nile.

Of Rameses “not a single habitation” was left, only ruins “just as they fell”, one great stone carved with two huge statues, which she was told were Moses and Aaron, and an old, small sycamore “planted by the patriarchs”, from which the sick plucked twigs. The bishop of the city of Arabia, an elderly man, a monk brought up from childhood in a cell, “very learned in the Scriptures”, told her its Greek name, “the tree of truth”. The editors of 1919 set beside this passage a photograph of a red granite group published by Flinders Petrie in 1906, found at Tell er-Retabeh, Rameses II with the god Atum, guessing that these were the statues she saw. It is their guess, and they do not settle where Rameses was: their introduction puts it at Saft el-Henneh, some 30 km away.

She reached the city of Arabia on the very eve of the Epiphany, “by a very happy chance”, and the bishop, whom she knew from the Thebaid, kept her two days for the services. From here she sent the soldiers back: the public road from the Thebaid to Pelusium passed that way, and in Egypt there was “no need to trouble the soldiers further”. For two days she went through Goshen, “among vines that yield wine and vines that yield balsam, among orchards, highly cultivated fields and very pleasant gardens”, along the Nile, and writes that she had never seen a more beautiful country.

By way of Tathnis, the city “where holy Moses was born”, she came down to Pelusium, and from there, through the stations she knew, entered Palestine and returned to “Aelia, that is Jerusalem”. The city's Roman name, given by Hadrian, is one of the signs the editors took as evidence of an early date.

When

early 384

Distance on the map

110 kmat least, through the places named

By way of

Jerusalem, Jericho, Livias, the spring of Moses, Mount Nebo

She wanted to see the mountain from which Moses looked at Canaan and on which he died. She left Jerusalem with a priest, deacons and monks, crossed the Jordan “where the children of Israel had crossed” and came to Livias, in the plain where, she was told, the foundations of their camp can still be seen. There she read from Deuteronomy and the song of Moses, then prayer, then onward.

Her rule of the road is spelled out here: at every place she wished to see, first prayer, then the reading from the book, then one psalm suited to the place, then prayer again. “At God's bidding we always kept to this custom, whenever we were able to come to the places we desired.”

The priest of Livias offered a detour of about six miles to see the water Moses drew from the rock. Between a little church and the cells of monks, “whom they call here ascetics”, a stream ran out of the rock, “very beautiful and limpid, and excellent to the taste”. From there, with those monks who could manage the labour, they went up Nebo: most of the way on donkeys, one steeper stretch on foot.

On the summit stood a church “of no great size”, and inside it, where the pulpit was, a slightly raised place the size of a tomb. The monks told her that the angels laid Moses there: “as it was shown to us by our ancestors who dwelt here, so do we show it to you.” From the church door she was shown the Jordan running into the Dead Sea, Jericho, Livias, “the greatest part of Palestine” and the place of Lot's wife. The pillar itself could not be seen, “I cannot therefore deceive you in this”: the bishop of Segor told them the water had covered it some years before.

When

early 384

Distance on the map

330 kmat least, through the places named, of which 140 km dashed

By way of

Jerusalem, Jericho, Sedima (Salem), Thesbe, the brook Cherith, Carneas

Dashed: after the brook Cherith a leaf is missing from the manuscript, and the text resumes at Carneas. The road between them is a guess; the way back, “through each of the stations through which we had passed”, is drawn back along the same line.

The idea came from the monks who used to come to Jerusalem from Ausitis, the land of Job, and told her about their country. It was eight stations to Carneas. On the way, on the bank of the Jordan, in a valley full of vines, trees and water, she saw a large village with a mound in the middle, “shaped as large tombs are”, and a church on top. She asked what it was. It was Salem, the city of Melchizedek, which “now, through the corruption of the language, the village is called Sedima”.

The priest of the place, an elderly man well taught in the Scriptures, showed her the foundations around the mound, “those of the palace of king Melchizedek”: anyone who digs there still finds “little fragments of silver and bronze”. She remembers that John baptized at Aenon near Salim and asks how far it is. “Two hundred paces off, and, if you wish, I will now lead you there on foot.” In the middle of an orchard was a spring with a pool in front of it; the garden, she was told, is called “the garden of Saint John”, and the village's baptisms are still done there at Easter.

Further up the Jordan valley they came on Thesbe, the city of Elijah the Tishbite, with his cave, and on a wide valley opening to the left, with a great torrent, where a monk had made himself a cell. “Then I, as I am very inquisitive, began to ask what was this valley.” It was the brook Cherith, where the raven brought Elijah food. Then, on the left, “whence on the opposite side we saw parts of Phoenicia, there suddenly appeared a great and high mountain which extended in length”, and here the text breaks off: a leaf is missing from the manuscript.

When it resumes, a monk and ascetic had come down to Carneas to tell the bishop and clergy to dig where it had been shown him. They found a cave, followed it for about a hundred paces, and “suddenly, as they dug, a stone tomb came to light” with the name Job carved on its lid. The church built over it, “by some tribune”, was unfinished. Next morning the bishop made the oblation at her request and they set out back to Jerusalem.

When

April 384

Distance on the map

1,280 kmat least, through the places named, of which 630 km dashed

By way of

Jerusalem, Antioch, Hierapolis, the Euphrates crossing, Batanis, Edessa, Charrae (Harran), Jacob's well

Dashed: from Jerusalem to Antioch, a road she mentions only in passing, “my way lying through Antioch”. From Antioch on, the line is solid there and back, because she says at the end that she returned “by the route and by the stations through which we had come from Antioch”.

After three full years in Jerusalem “my mind was to return to my country”, but first she wanted to see the monks of Mesopotamia and the shrine of the apostle Thomas at Edessa, which is, she writes, at the twenty-fifth station from Jerusalem. From Antioch she went through Hierapolis, “very beautiful and rich”, and at the fifteenth milestone reached the Euphrates. The river “is huge and, as it were, terrible, for it flows down with a current like the river Rhone, only the Euphrates is still greater”. She crossed in large ships, after waiting more than half a day.

At Edessa she went straight to the church and shrine of Thomas, “very great, very beautiful and of new construction”. The bishop, “both monk and confessor”, said to her: “As I see, daughter, that for the sake of devotion you have undertaken so great a labour in coming to these places from far-distant lands.” He took her to the palace of King Abgar, to his marble statue “having a sheen as if made of pearl”, and to the pools “full of fish such as I never saw before, of so great size, so bright and of so good a flavour”. The city, she writes, has no water at all but what comes out of the palace, “like a great silver river”.

The bishop told her the city's legend: King Abgar had written to Jesus, and Jesus had answered by a courier, Ananias, promising that no enemy would enter the city. When the Persians besieged it and cut off its water, the springs burst out in the palace and the Persians' water dried up. At the gate the bishop read her the letters and gave her copies. “For although I have copies at home, yet it seemed to me more pleasant to receive them from him, lest perhaps something less might have reached us at home, and indeed that which I received here is fuller.” She promises the sisters they will read them.

She reached Carrhae, Abraham's Haran, “on the day before the martyr's feast of saint Helpidius, which is on the twenty-third of April”, the day on which all the monks of Mesopotamia, even the hermits, come down into the city. She saw the men she had thought she would never see; the second night they went back to the desert. In the city she found scarcely a Christian, “all are heathen”. She asked the bishop where Ur of the Chaldees was: at the tenth station, towards Persia, “but there is now no access for Romans, for the Persians hold the whole country”. She settled for the well at which Jacob watered Rachel's flock, six miles away, where the stone he rolled aside still lies.

When

after April 384

Distance on the map

1,470 kmat least, through the places named, of which 1,060 km dashed

By way of

Antioch, Tarsus, Pompeiopolis, Corycus, Seleucia (St Thecla), Mansocrenae, Chalcedon, Constantinople, Ephesus (planned)

Dashed: from Mansocrenae to Chalcedon, where she names only the provinces, “Cappadocia, Galatia, and Bithynia”; the line follows the Roman road through Tyana, Ancyra and Nicomedia. Dashed too is the road to Ephesus, which she was only planning when she closed the letter.

At Antioch she stayed a week while the things needed for the journey were prepared. At Tarsus she had been before, but the shrine of Saint Thecla was three stations away, in Isauria, and “it was very pleasant for me to go there, especially as it was so very near at hand”. The road kept to the coast, through Pompeiopolis and Corycus, to Seleucia.

The shrine is on a low hill, about fifteen hundred paces from the city, among “numberless cells of men and of women”, guarded by a high wall against the Isaurians, “who are very malicious and who frequently commit acts of robbery”. There she found Marthana, a deaconess she had known in Jerusalem, who was ruling the cells of the apotactitae and virgins: “how can I describe the extent of her joy or of mine?” The whole of the acts of Saint Thecla was read, and after two days she went back to Tarsus.

From Tarsus, after three days, she climbed to Mansocrenae under Mount Taurus, then took the road “already known to me” through Cappadocia, Galatia and Bithynia to Chalcedon, where she stopped for the shrine of Saint Euphemia. Next day she crossed the sea to Constantinople and went through all the churches, “that of the Apostles and all the martyr-memorials, of which there are very many”.

From there she sends the letter. She already has another plan, Ephesus, for the shrine of the apostle John, and promises the sisters that if she is still “in the body” she will tell them the rest in person or in another letter. Whether she got home, we do not know. Valerius, who read her whole text, does not say.