»Eager to Go to the Desert«: Ambiguous Views on Ascetic Women’s Holy Travels in Late Antiquity. Medieval Worlds|Urban Agencies: Reframing Anatolian and Caucasian Cities (13th-14th Centuries) & Movement and Mobility in the Medieval Mediterranean: Changing Perspectives from Late Antiquity to the Long-Twelfth Century, II - Volume 14. 2021 medieval worlds Volume 14. 2021|

Starting with the fourth century, when religious travels to the Holy Land had gained popularity, Greek and Latin male Christian writers expressed their views on pilgrimages by women. While some of them advised their spiritual daughters to focus rather on the internal spiritual journey towards the Jerusalem of the heart, others acknowledged the merits of physical presence in holy places. The aim of this paper is to contextualize these views in order to explain why they varied