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Her enthusiasm fired the imagination of Christendom, and spurred the interest of Europeans who over the following centuries, despite the influx of the barbarian hordes and the dangers of long travel through a crumbling empire, continued to retrace her footsteps. The memory of the sites she uncovered and defined remained in the hearts of the Crusaders: one of the first actions of Godfrey when he took control of Jerusalem at the end of the first Crusade was to begin a new priestly order to guard the Holy Sepulchre that Helena had identified. The building of a new basilica on her chosen site began apace, and was completed by 1149.
Thus, in the footsteps of the Empress came the first flood of pilgrims, which has continued ever since, despite fluctuations caused by war and invasions.
Amongst the first notable pilgrims was the redoubtable St Jerome (d.420) who was accompanied in his pilgrimage to the holy sites by two female acolytes, the widow Paula and her daughter the young girl Eustochia. They built a convent at Bethlehem to house female pilgrims, but so great was the demand that three extra ones had to be built almost immediately. Other female pilgrims worked at providing hospitals to tend to the needs of their fellow women voyagers.
Another significant memorial of the first pilgrims was the Peregrinatio Silviae, written by the nun Etheria in the fifth century. Her work describes an elaborate system of pilgrimage sites patrolled by organized police, and administered by priest guides.13
All this was to reach a hiatus with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire during the fifth to eighth centuries.
But with the beginnings of a new civilization in Europe, the northerners once more turned their eyes towards Jerusalem, and in the eleventh century came to fruition that great stirring eventually known as the Crusades.
This book examines the lives of some women and their interplay with these events, particularly during the 100 years of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
1. W. S. Merwin (trans.), Poem of the Cid New American Library, New York, 1962, pages xxvi - xxviii.
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