JUST IN time for Holy Week and Easter, a brand new translation of Egeria, Journey to the Holy Land crosses our desk. The translator is Paul Bradshaw, the Preston-born Anglican scholar whose work transformed our understanding of how the liturgy developed in the first four centuries, and it is beautifully produced, with the Latin and English on facing pages, always an incitement to high-brow spats.

We know relatively little of Egeria, beyond that she was (very probably) Spanish, certainly Christian, and definitely a woman of great wealth and even greater imperial connections. She was also a fantastic noticer. She recounts her travels, probably in the late fourth century, around the Holy Land, including visits to Mount Sinai, Mount Nebo, Syria, and finally Jerusalem, where she records the daily liturgical life of the Christian community with a gimlet eye. She gives us meticulous eye-witness accounts of the Palm Sunday, Holy Week and Easter liturgies, as well as descriptions of Christian initiation.