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In the fourth century, a Spanish monastic named Egeria made an arduous pilgrimage to the Holy Land and left behind a diary that is the chief source of what historians know about early Christianity in the Middle East. The monk Valerius praised Sister Egeria’s fortitude: “Nothing could hold her back, whether it was the labor of traveling the whole world, the perils of seas and rivers, the dread crags and fearsome mountains, or the savage menace of heathen tribes, until, with God’s help and her own unconquerable bravery, she fulfilled all her faithful desires.”