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Pilgrimage of Etheria
Egeria, tr. McClure and Feltoe, 1919
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2. The Present Edition and its Editors
That part of the text, which relates to Jerusalem, had been translated for the English version (2nd edition) of Duchesne’s Origines du culte Chrétien, which Mrs. McClure published in 1904. For it she was “mainly indebted,” as she tells us, to her “brother the Rev. George Herbert, who had the advantage of many criticisms and suggestions from so eminent a scholar as the late Canon Chas. Evans, formerly Headmaster of King Edward’s School, Birmingham.” Mr. Herbert also translated the rest of the text which now appears with the same assistance. Moreover, he read through K. Meister’s book on the subject and made a careful résumé of his conclusions for her, of which use has been freely made in this Introduction. Most of the footnotes were added to the text by Mrs. McClure herself, a few by the present writer. But, though the results of their joint labours had been set up in print for some time and she had spent a good deal of time in further research and thought over them with a view to writing the Introduction, she had to lay the work aside while she was completing the fifth edition of Christian Worship and seeing it through the press. This she had hardly done, when she was called away, just as she was intending to resume her work on the Pilgrimage of Etheria last summer (1918). There are many reasons why we mourn her loss, and surely among them we must reckon this, that we are not now permitted to share with her the joy of seeing the fruits of her long study brought to completion. She left very few materials for the Introduction behind among her papers, and though the present writer has in all cases done his best to utilize what there was and to reproduce what he thought to be in her mind on various points, yet he has had very largely to start de novo in drawing up the introductory sections, and to treat the text more or less independently. He must be forgiven, therefore, if he has failed sometimes to do justice to her ideas and to the researches on which she had so long been engaged, and if there is a certain amount of confusion in arrangement and of discrepancy between her part of the volume and his.
Mrs. McClure had frequently discussed points with friends of considerable expert knowledge like Archbishop Bernard, Monseigneur Duchesne, Professor Flinders Petrie, and others, and sometimes mentions them by name in her notes as having told her this or that. The first named of these had written a short “Foreword” to the volume in September 1916, but he has requested the present writer to withdraw it as being no longer suitable to its purpose, and to use the additional facts that he there gave in his own Introduction. This he has been very glad to do, and begs to acknowledge his indebtedness to his Grace for them, as well as to others who have contributed to the production of the book in its present form, and in particular to the Rev. A. D. Rigby, who has read through the proofs and made several valuable suggestions, which he has been able to adopt,