ABSTRACT
A generation after Egeria had come and gone, prestigious women continued to flock to Palestine to honor their chosen saints and to build martyria, churches, and monasteries. Before the advent of Athenaïs/Aelia Eudocia, Pulcheria was a forceful personage at court with access to the imperial treasury, which she poured into the building of churches and helping to further the imperial patronage of monasteries. Under Atticus’s tutelage, and Pulcheria’s influence, a convent routine became instituted in the imperial palace that maintained a daily schedule of extravagant piety. Instead of adopting an ascetic life like some of the women pilgrims, instead of hobnobbing with deaconesses and virgins, Eudocia kept a high imperial estate and made her friends among male clerics with poetic leanings. Classically trained and devoutly Christian, Eudocia poured her Athenian eloquence into Christian poetry. Eudocia’s father-in-law had outlawed paganism, and monks went around looting pagan temples in the east.
