Itinerarium Egeriae: A Retrospective Look and Preliminary Study of a New Approach to the Issue of Authorship-provenance

Abstract

One of the most controversial questions with respect to the Itinerarium Egeriae is its author's provenance, and whether this can be determined on linguistic grounds. The purpose of this paper is twofold: 1) to provide a central synopsis and account of previous relevant work that has been conducted on the manuscript; and 2) address one of the most contested and controversial questions with respect to whether its origin can be determined on linguistic grounds. In this paper, I revisit this conundrum by addressing two major flaws I find in the methodology employed to date: 1) the Romanisms sought after are for the most part only either hispanisms or gallicisms; and 2) the scrutiny of the data is not rigorous enough, since these are usually selected merely on the basis of lexical resemblance with modern reflexes, disregarding the fact that many of these may not even qualify as regionalisms in the first place. I resolve this problem by following Adams's (2007) shrinkage theory, where the only plausible regionalisms are innovations, namely those terms that can only be found in texts later than the Classical period; but I disagree with his view on Egeria's provenance as the problem would remain inconclusive, and I demonstrate that there is compelling evidence for an Iberian origin.