Impelled by God: Female Pilgrimage to the Holy Land in Late Antiquity, by Dr. Jennifer Tobin, University of Illinois at Chicago

About This Event

When Constantine the Great sent his mother Helena to the Holy Land to identify and develop Christian religious sites, he unwittingly set in action a movement among religious women throughout the Roman Empire. Emulating the queen mother, their goal was to explore their religion by visiting places mentioned in scripture. Perhaps the best known of these adventurers is Egeria, who in the late 4th century CE spent three years journeying through what is now Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Israel, Turkey and the Palestinian Territories. She recounted her experiences in a series of letters that still survive today. This presentation explores the world Egeria and her fellow travelers moved through on their spiritual journey. It also compares and contrasts their experiences with those encountered during a modern excursion, undertaken in 2009, to the cities, shrines and sites they visited.