Female Pilgrims

Following up on Desert Fathers and Mothers and Julia Bolton Holloway's magnificent site you won't want to miss her webpage on female pilgrims. Its on  http://www.umilta.net/egeria.html#Egeria . Egeria is a Spanish Nun who traveled to Bethlehem within a year of St. Jerome and Paula and her detailed reports on Church liturgical life show us a much more well developed liturgical life then we tend to think of this early in the church. Paula who later set up convents in a kind of "women's study group " with Jerome in Rome and when her husband died she took her daughter with her to Bethlehem and toured many of the sites of the desert fathers. Paula came from a wealthy Roman family and the expectation was that she would remarry and keep her wealth in the hands of the noble Roman circles. Paula had other ideas . We know about Paula from the letters written by Jerome to her daughter. You can find Jerome's extent letters on http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.toc.html .  This is the Christian Classics Ethereal Library . Bookmark this link because it has anything you ever wanted to know about the Fathers up to modern day Spiritual writers . If there is some long lost , hard to find Spiritual Classic you want to find the chances of you finding it here are quite high. They are adding books all the time . So put on your pilgrim shoes and take up your search staff because this site is a one of those pearls of great price that is actually free on the net.