SOURCE: Moriarty, Rachel. “‘Secular Men and Women’: Egeria's Lay Congregation in Jerusalem.” In The Holy Land, Holy Lands, and Christian History, edited by R. N. Swanson, pp. 55-66. Suffolk, England: The Boydell Press, 2000.

In the following essay, Moriarty concentrates on what the Itinerarium Egeriae records of the Christian liturgy and congregation in fourth-century Jerusalem.

Egeria's account of her journey to the holy places has been an invaluable source for study of many aspects of fourth-century Christianity, from liturgy and topography to clerical practice. Dr David Hunt … discusses the part played by monks in Egeria's ‘scriptural vision’.¹ This paper looks at her account of worship in Jerusalem, and particularly at those worshippers who were neither ordained clergy nor committed to life as monks or nuns, whom we can call the ‘laity’.² Egeria herself distinguishes between these groups, and is concerned to differentiate the parts played by each in worship...