Travel Sickness

Nadine Kuipers, University of Groningen.
Nadine Kuipers, University of Groningen.

Blog-post author, Nadine Kuipers, University of Groningen, NL.

 

 

Finding relief of sickness can be a compelling motivation for undertaking a pilgrimage. Millions of Catholics find their way to healing waters of Lourdes each year, while Sufi Muslims visit dargahs in hopes that they will be cured of mental afflictions. In twelfth- and thirteenth-century Britain, pilgrims would drink to their health with the diluted ‘blood’ of St Thomas Becket, which could be bought in a vial at his shrine in Canterbury. 

Image 1. Geoffrey Chaucer’s Physician on his way to Canterbury, from the Ellesmere Manuscript [Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org]
Image 1. Geoffrey Chaucer’s Physician on his way to Canterbury, from the Ellesmere Manuscript [Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org]
Yet, on the other side of the same coin, a pilgrimage could also take a serious toll on one’s physical constitution. Whereas inland trips to nearby shrines and sanctuaries were relatively safe, the danger of contracting a serious illness on a long-distance pilgrimage was all too real. In his 1565 travelogue, Adriaen de Vlaming describes how one of his companions died in Bethlehem and notes that “many more, who were also ill, should have stayed at home”.[1] Arent Willems, in 1525, mourns the loss of two fellow pilgrims, who died shortly upon arrival in Jaffa without ever setting a foot ashore.[2] Recent archaeological findings, moreover, suggest that a medieval English pilgrim contracted a foreign strain of leprosy in the Holy Land and died of the complications back at home.

Medieval people were certainly concerned with their own health and wellbeing, as the abundance of medical recipes in household manuscripts attests. It thus seems likely that pilgrims would take medical precautions to reduce the risks of falling ill en route to Jerusalem. However, we know little about the possibility that pilgrims took medical texts with them or whether medical information was brought back from the East. A recipe for a “drink of Antioch”, which can be found in several medieval manuscripts, might either be a relic of the crusades or a feigned remedy that invokes the authority of Eastern medicine. Moreover, as Anthony Bale explains in this recent blog post about a medical miscellany containing a pilgrimage itinerary, it is near impossible to ascertain whether its owner actually travelled to the Holy Land.

Image 2. A medieval pharmacy depicted in the Tacuinum sanitatis, an illustrated herbal based on the "Taqwīm as‑siḥḥah" of Ibn Butlan. [Source: www.wikidoc.org]
Image 2. A medieval pharmacy depicted in the Tacuinum sanitatis, an illustrated herbal based on the “Taqwīm as‑siḥḥah” of Ibn Butlan. [Source: www.wikidoc.org]
Several pilgrimage accounts do offer some insight into health and safety precautions that were taken before going east. William Wey (1456), for example, suggests purchasing medications and a chamber pot in Venice in case one would become too sick to climb to the upper galley of the ship. A contemporary account, now at the Wellcome Library (MS 8004), lists good resting places, spas, and churches with healing relics that can be visited along the way. Joos van Ghistele (1481-1485) is adamant that pilgrims must pack purgatives and dried rhubarb root before going on board, and restock their medical kit at foreign markets. Venice was the best place for this: Jan Aerts (1481) advises to buy medicinal spices and laxatives there, as well as a panacaea made from diluted violet syrup. In his 1520 account, Geert Kuynretorff urges his reader to visit a professional physician before leaving the Venetian harbour. The pilgrim must ask this doctor to prescribe medication against fever, diarrhoea, and indigestion, and Kuynretorff provides a number of recipes that can be taken to the apothecary.[3]

Some high-profile travellers did not wish to take any chances and had their personal medics write instructions for them. King Philip VI of France, for instance, ordered a health regimen that was particularly tailored to him visiting the Holy Land as a ‘senior’ man (aged forty-two) in 1335. The Italian physician and inventor Guido da Vigevano, who is perhaps best known for designing the first prototype of the automobile, compiled the work which now known as the Liber conservationis sanitatis senis. The first half of the Liber follows the ancient doctrine of dietetics and concerns finding the right balance between food and drink, sleep and wakefulness, motion and rest, replenishing and emptying. The second half of Vigevano’s tract describes the influence of the air, accidents or ‘moods’ of the soul, prevention of afflictions of the eyes, ears, teeth, and memory. Lastly, Da Vigevano addresses the harmful liquids and food that are to be avoided during travel. Despite this well-researched medical advice, no records attest that the king ever made the journey. The tract survives in two manuscripts. The first, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Lat. 11015 contains another of Vigevano’s works about warfare in Outremer and can thus be placed in a crusader context.[4] The second, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 1251, is a collection of medical writings and includes other gerontological works, suggesting that the compiler was mainly interested in medicine. It is thus unclear whether Da Vigevano’s tract was ever read in preparation for an actual pilgrimage.

Image 3. 'A snake attack'. British Library, Harley MS 3244, f.59v [Source: www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/]
Image 3. ‘A snake attack’. British Library, Harley MS 3244, f.59v [Source: www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/]
Another medical tract that was likewise made at the behest of a rich patron is Qustā Ibn-Lūqā’s treatise for the pilgrimage to Mecca, written for a secretary of the caliph. Like Da Vigevano’s regimen, this treatise is informed by the works of Galen, Avicenna, and Hippocrates, but it also contains advice that is specific to the Middle-Eastern climate, fauna, and landscape. Ibn-Lūqā (820-912), a Christian scholar from Baalbek, pays particular attention to the sourcing of water, improving the quality of contaminated water, and quenching one’s thirst in the absence of drinking water. Furthermore, the scholar discusses the prevention of parasites such as roundworms, a prophylactic against snakes, and the treatment of snakebites and the stings of other vermin. Moreover, he writes about curing eye- and earaches caused by fluctuating temperatures and the dusty desert wind. Most of these ailments can be prevented by a turban, if worn correctly. Yet, in case one suffers from earache caused by the heat, dripping one of various substances into the ear will prove effective: lukewarm egg-white or lamb-gall mixed with rose oil, for instance, or olive oil in which earthworms or molluscs in their shells have been cooked (though honey and almond-oil will work equally well). One chapter from Ibn-Lūqā’s regimen will have sounded more appealing to pilgrims regardless of their destination: different kinds of foot massage (except hard rubbing, which is only good for thick-skinned or idle people who have eaten too much) he argues, are “useful for someone who has been walking much or standing still frequently”.[5]

References

[1] Ben Wasser, Dit is de pelgrimage van het Heilig Land en daaromtrent, (Hilversum: Verloren, 2014), 112.

[2] Wasser, 62.

[3] Wasser, 45.

[4] Marilyn Nicoud, Les Régimes de Santé au Moyen Âge: Naissance et Diffusion d’une Écriture (Rome: Publications de l’École Française de Rome, 2007), 226.

[5] Qustā Ibn-Lūqā’s Medical Regime for the Pilgrims to Mecca, ed. And trans. Gerrit Bos (Brill: Leiden, 1992), 39.

Santa Maria di Foro Cassio: a recently recovered pilgrims’ place on the last stretch of the Via Francigena

Dr Daniela Giosuè
Dr Daniela Giosuè

Blog-post author Daniela Giosuè, Researcher of English Language and Translation, Università degli Studi della Tuscia, Viterbo, DISUCOM
@danielagiosue

Much of the information in this blog-post comes from an article on the church of Santa Maria di Foro Cassio published in 2008 by palaeographer Carlo Tedeschi and art historian Simone Piazza (see Piazza, Tedeschi 2008). The article contains an extensive and, for the time being, updated bibliography on the church (omissions, if any, are entirely my own) to which reference is made for any further details. It also proved to be an effective contribution to a years-long sensitisation campaign aimed at saving from utter ruin what at that time Carlo Tedeschi rightly termed «the poor remains of […] one of the noblest monuments in Tuscia» (28).

As a result of the campaign, which put an end to several decades of complete abandonment, the structure has recently been secured and the roof and the frescoes restored. These interventions will hopefully help safeguard what remains of the wonderful frescoes dated between the 11th and the 12th centuries described in the article [see images 19 to 20 and 21 to 31 below] (29-33, passim). Other frescoes, mainly dated to a later period and up to the 15th century, and still extant before the restoration, went in the meantime completely lost.

I am much indebted to Carlo Tedeschi for most of the photos and for many clarifications on the state of the art in the studies on the monument.

For those who can read Italian or are interested in the bibliography, the article is available here.

Dating back to the 2nd century BC, the origins of the Roman settlement of Forum Cassii are probably contemporary with the construction of the consular road Cassia. Lying between Viterbo and Vetralla, at about 44 miles northwest of Rome and 0.6 miles from the current route of the road Cassia (SR2 on the map below; image 4), the area on which it stood still retains its name, in Italian Foro Cassio.

Image 4. Aerial view of the area and its surroundings. Source: http://omnesviae.org
Image 4. Aerial view of the area and its surroundings -Source: http://omnesviae.org

While the site originally owed its importance to its being a station on the old Roman road, after the foundation of the early medieval church of Santa Maria di Foro Cassio, the only monument which is still extant, it continued to maintain a key role as pilgrimage station on the Via Francigena throughout the High Middle Ages.

Here are an aerial view and some photos of the exterior of the church after the restoration:

Of the Roman forum, of which – according to contemporary sources – many vestiges were still visible until the 17th century (Serafini 1648: 44-47), nothing remains on the surface.

As well as in many other parts of the surroundings, slabs of the ancient road Cassia can still be seen or found a little under the ground. For more in this regard, see the results of a survey carried out in 2003 by the British School at Rome, available here.

The relevance of Forum Cassii in the course of many centuries is attested by the fact that it is mentioned in four very famous ancient itineraries, namely the Antonine Itinerary (2nd-3rd c. AD) (see Parthey, Pinder 1848: 137), the Peutinger Table (4th-5th c. AD) [here & here],  the Ravenna Cosmography (7th c. AD) (see Parthey, Pinder 1860: 285, 488), and the year 990 Itinerary of Archbishop Sigeric (see Ortenberg 1990) contained in BL MS Cotton Tiberius B V/1, ff. 23v–24r, available here.

It appears respectively as Foro Cassi in the first two texts, as Foro Casi in the third, and as Furcari in the fourth.

A bull issued by pope Leo IV (847-855) on 22nd February 852, in which Forum Cassii is mentioned as massa (great land property), testifies its continuing economic importance during the early medieval period.

Its subsequent history after the foundation of the church, reconstructed with extreme difficulty through rare documents, confirms the function of Forum Cassii as economic stronghold of the Roman Tuscia until the modern age (Piazza, Tedeschi 2008: 28).

The below fresco from the left absidiole, showing Saint Benedict of Nursia (c. 480 – c. 547) on the right (35-37), suggests that for a time the site was run by Benedictine monks.

Although it is well known that in the modern age the church belonged to the Knights of Malta, who held the property until 1807, there is in this respect a question of great interest which is still unresolved; it concerns the lack of authentic evidence for the donations of Forum Cassii to the Knights Hospitallers (28).

Several modern authors, the first of whom was Paolocci, mention three pontifical diplomas by which the church and its lands would have been donated to the Hospitallers (Paolocci 1907: 67). The first diploma would have been issued by Pope Innocent II in 1130, the second by Celestine II in 1144, the third by Eugene III in 1145. The donation would later have been confirmed by Pope Anastasius IV (1153-1154).

The documents cited by Paolocci are unfortunately not published in major collections of papal privileges (Piazza, Tedeschi 2008: 28, n. 7). For this reason, investigation into these sources has not yet been taken further, but it would definitely be worth other attempts.

As the church used to be the property of the Knights Hospitallers, it must have had, as a rule, a hospice for pilgrims built alongside. A will dated 29 December 1276, which is one of the few documents available for the High Middle Ages, proves that a leper hospital was also annexed to it (Egidi 1906: 236; Piazza, Tedeschi 2008: 28).

Another interesting element highlighted by Carlo Tedeschi is the inscription visible under the striking crucifixion scene on the counterfacade of the church, on the right of the door, reading as follows:

[- – -]s orate p(ro) nobis.

Image 21. Santa Maria di Foro Cassio, counterfacade, particular © 2009 Carlo Tedeschi
Image 21. Santa Maria di Foro Cassio, counterfacade, particular © 2009 Carlo Tedeschi

He states that it is the final part of a common and widely attested formula of apostrophe to the reader which is found in various contexts, including monuments connected with the practice of pilgrimage, and assumes that the complete formula might have read as:

Vos qui transitis / intratis / legitis orate pro nobis

According to the scholar’s epigraphic analysis, the inscription may be assigned to a period between the end of the 10th and the first decades of the 12th centuries (34).

The restoration brought to light new portions of the inscription and fresco, on which studies are still underway.

For the more curious, here are some videos of the church before the restoration:

 

References

  • Egidi, Pietro (1906) ‘L’archivio della Cattedrale di Viterbo’, Bullettino dell’Istituto storico italiano 27: 7-382.
  • Ortenberg, Veronica (1990) ‘Archbishop Sigeric’s Journey to Rome in 990’, Anglo-Saxon England 19: 197–246.
  • Paolocci, Francesco (1907) Raccolta di notizie e documenti relativi alla storia di Vetralla, Vetralla: Gerardi-Zeppa.
  • Parthey, Gustav and Pinder, Moritz, eds. (1848) Itinerarium Antonini Augusti et Hierosolymitanum, Berlin: Nicolai.
  • Parthey, Gustav and Pinder, Moritz, eds. (1860) Ravennatis Anonymi Cosmographia, Berlin: Nicolai.
  • Piazza, Simone and Tedeschi, Carlo (2008) ‘Le più antiche pitture di S. Maria di Foro Cassio a Vetralla (XI-XII secolo). Nuove indagini in vista della campagna di restauro’, Informazioni 20: 27-39.
  • Serafini, Luigi (1648) Su Vetralla antica cognominata il Foro di Cassio, Viterbo: Mariano Diotallevi.

Travelers’ Texts: pilgrims and their textual accessories

Professor George Greenia
Professor George Greenia

Blog-post author, George Greenia, Professor Emeritus, College of William & Mary, US

Medieval pilgrim badges were among the most common souvenirs brought home from visits to European shrine sites. They were worn at eye level on hats and shoulder capes, sewn into prayer books, and adorned pilgrim bodies laid in their graves.  Today’s trekkers to Santiago mark their backpacks with the traditional scallop shell and purchase endless variations of that icon emblazoned on kitchen tiles, refrigerator magnets, jewelry and even their hiking socks.  Insignia are public announcements, billboards for piety or bragging read at a glance.

Other historic pilgrim accessories appeal to literacy at least as a cultic gesture. Many short texts were never read at all.  They simply served as visual scripts for their bearers’ good intentions.  Pilgrims – or any travelers wishing to make their journey sacred – could take along some­thing written even if only as an amulet.  Here are a small selection of such objects from various historical moments and contexts.

The Orthodox Crescent arcs from northern Egypt to Finland with numerous shrine sites along that vast geographical span. They are normally work­ing monasteries with Mount Athos island in Greece the best known clus­ter of religious communi­ties in one of the most spectacular settings.  Monastics them­selves often become pilgrims who jour­ney to venerate the icons and sacred images that compete for honor with bodily relics and tombs.  Professed religious often carry por­ta­ble devo­tional objects with them, some­times just for the imagery and some­times with textual reminders of the prayers they may recite along the way.  Some artifacts that include writing with their imagery help prompt live storytelling of miraculous events or episodes from scripture.

This small metal box has a short chain, so the case could hang on a vendor’s rack, the traveler’s kit, or be left as a votive offering at a shrine site. A sliding metal tab along the top seals an inner compartment which could contain a personal relic, blessed oils preserved in wax, or a small packet of written material.  The writing on the outside of this case simply names the saints on either side.

The palm-size metal triptych is also scaled for private devotions on a home altar or espe­cially for travelers because of its minimal weight and because it folds up so readily to protect the devotional surface. The wri­ting is limited to the names of the figures or the scenes depicting the life and miracles of St. Nicholas.

This small vessel is a pilgrim’s flask destined to contain water, oil or sand from a sacred site. St. Menas flanked by camels was the icon for the saint’s shrine west of Alexandria where pilgrims took oil from the sanctuary lamps to carry home with them.  Flasks were formed from clay disks pressed into molds to capture images and script.  These disks were sealed together and loop handles pasted on.  The interior volume is irrelevant.  Just possessing some of the material substance gathered at the shrine site was enough for travelers and proof of the completion of their mis­sion.  Those on a quest are the first beneficiaries of the power of their souvenirs but they function as a boon for their home communities as well.  The first image shows a well preserved, museum-quality St. Menas flask but thousands more survive as travel-fatigued items in private collections, as in the second image.

The Christian West and Orthodox East in general have rates of lay literacy higher than in the Middle East, especially in liturgical languages. They also boast a vast range of iconography in the plas­tic arts. Medi­eval scrip­toria flourished in admini­strative centers, both lay and ecclesias­tical, in­creasingly around universities and for a growing late-medieval lay market as well.  Their pilgrim sojourners came from every social class lay and professed, and they collected souvenirs such as ampules of water and oil, pilgrim badges, carvings and icons.

Ethiopian prayer scroll, late 19th cent., goat skin, 8 cm wide by up to a meter in length, prepared for named woman Wälättä Maryam: http://dynamicafrica.tumblr.com
Ethiopian prayer scroll, late 19th cent., goat skin, 8 cm wide by up to a meter in length, prepared for named woman Wälättä Maryam: http://dynamicafrica.tumblr.com

Ethiopian travelers represent a distinct class of pilgrim. Like their Orthodox coun­terparts, they retain a unique liturgical language, in this case written in Ge’ez, the ritual idiom of Christian Ethiopia much like Old Church Slavonic or antique forms of Greek for portions of the East, or Latin for the Christian West.  Mastery of Ge’ez remains confined to a literate priestly elite.  Ethiopian reli­gious books don’t just contain sacred texts, they are sacred objects in themselves, and their images are strikingly apotro­paic: they produce and induce the spiritual realities they illustrate.  The portraits of Christ, Mary and the saints and especially the endlessly repeated angels’ eyes make those forces effective in the real world.

Within the Ethiopian catchment regions, religious books are routinely hand crafted by individual monks, not the output of organ­ized shops. Individual monks pro­duced written texts as a sacred craft, rarely as an industry increasingly dominated by laymen as in the West.  Their books commonly stay in the possession of monks who use them for daily prayer and carry them on their errands and journeys.  With literacy more confined to a monastic caste in Ethiopia and work­ing with a smaller repertoire of iconography, devotional objects on goatskins and as worked brass are scaled down in size.

Lay people tend to collect “prayer scrolls” carried as amulets. Many of these scrolls are talismans whose prayers address specific needs and protect against disease.  The person who commissioned the manuscript is as often as not a named woman and the prayers she requested include petitions concerning feminine ailments or to ward off dangers like the evil eye, or a prayer for catching demons in Solomon’s Net.  These women wanted written prayers even though they could not read them and wore them under their clothing and in contact with their flesh.

Unfairly called “magic scrolls,” they are simply invo­ca­tions to God and the saints for shelter from harm. The illustration shows a scroll containing the following prayers: “(1) Prayer of Susenyos, (2) Prayer for the “expulsion” of disease and the demon Shotalay”, (3) prayer against the evil eye, (4) prayer against rheumatism and sciatica, (5) prayers against haemorrhage, (5) another prayer against demon Shotalay, (6) prayer against Zar Wellaj.” (Reed, 2011)

Some scrolls were sewn tight in leather pouches, never to be opened again. The fact that no one would ever read these prayers aloud did not trouble their owners who themselves became “mobile shrines” as they carried sacred objects about on their persons.  The texts on these inaccessible strips of animal hide were placed in the sight of God alone and entrusted to His readership.  These believers converted their textual accessories into moveable shrines and made of themselves pilgrims in a self-referential way, carrying the sacred forward to sanctify all the places they visited and worked, accompanied by the transcendent inscribed on parchment scrolls nestled next to their skin.

Yemeni devotional case for prayers or sura of the Qur’an. Mid-20th cent., copper and silver alloy with paste glass “rubies,” 7.5 cm wide x 11 cm tall with bells, metal chain approx. 30 cm in length, photo © George Greenia.
Yemeni devotional case for prayers or sura of the Qur’an. Mid-20th cent., copper and silver alloy with paste glass “rubies,” 7.5 cm wide x 11 cm tall with bells, metal chain approx. 30 cm in length, photo © George Greenia.

Finally, an example from Yemen. This rectangular case is similar to the first object but comes from the Islamic tradition.  It bears passing resemblance to the Jewish mezuzah which is affixed to the doorpost of a home and never travels at all.  Composed of a handcrafted alloy of silver and copper set with glass “rubies,” this Yemeni case’s bells suggest movement, either processional or on pilgrimage.  It too is outfitted with a chain for personal wear or placement in a devotional setting.  Although now completely sealed, the box has a hollow interior for a short passage from the Qur’an.

Reference

What Real Clerical Spell Scrolls Look Like. Ge’ez and Amharic Examples‘ by R. D Reed, in Cyclopeatron. Friday  17 June 2011. Web resource, accessed 17 May 2017.

Pilgrims versus Venetians

Laura Grazia Di Stefano
Laura Grazia Di Stefano

Blog-post author Laura Grazia Di Stefano, University of Nottingham, UK

Pilgrims vs Venetians: a history of hidden truths. The inspections of the galleys and the “visits” to the Arsenal.

Since the thirteenth century, each pilgrim who departed from Venice towards the Holy Land was involved in that social and economic process seen by Venetians as the “normal administration” of business. The transportation of pilgrims, initially treated as an occasional form of income linked to Mediterranean trade, became a permanent activity after its official regulation by the Doge Jacopo Tiepolo in 1233. From that moment onwards, the Venetian government needed to organize pilgrims’ arrivals and departures according to official laws as well as to handle unexpected problems such as the curiosity of pilgrims not only towards the “religious side” of Venice, but also towards its naval industry.

Venice, Porta Magna or Land Door of the Arsenal.
Fig. 1 – Venice, Porta Magna or Land Door of the Arsenal. © 2017 Laura Grazia Di Stefano.

Because of the length of the journey and the dangers of the sea-crossing from Venice, pilgrims often raised concerns about the construction of the galleys, their safety and the sailing experience of the crew, asking to check the means of transport with their own eyes. For that reason, the Venetian government formalised a double inspection of the galleys intended for the Holy Land. Indeed, by the end of the fourteenth century pilgrims were authorised by the Venetian senate to inspect the allocated pilgrims’ galleys and choose the one they retained as “trustable” not only according to the physical appearance of the vessel, but also to the condition of travel offered by the Venetian patron (e.g. route followed, number of meals on board etc.). Prior to this inspection, officials of the Venetian government checked that each galley was bona et sufficientia pro peregrinis. Nevertheless, the legislation does not specify whether the Arsenal was considered as the location where the inspections were to be carried out and, in this regard, no information is given about the authorisation of pilgrims to visit the Arsenal either as part of a touristic visit, or as part of the galleys’ inspection process. However, some of the most famous fifteenth-century pilgrims such as William Wey, Bernard von Breydenbach and Pietro Casola stated they were able to visit the Arsenal. In fact, this was only partially true. Indeed, while the entire Venetian lagoon ran into open waters, the Venetian Arsenal was the only part of the city protected by walls and military personnel.

Fig. 2 – Venice, Guard Towers of the Arsenal Sea Door.
Fig. 2 – Venice, Guard Towers of the Arsenal Sea Door. © 2017 Laura Grazia Di Stefano.

During the Middle Ages, it was considered the heart of the Venetian military industry and commercial sea power; guided visits within were usually strictly forbidden, and granted, with permission, only to illustrious and trustworthy personages. Furthermore, due to a huge expansion of the Arsenal in the late fifteenth century, Venetians became even more protective of their “construction secrets” and the government did not trust even its own merchants and craftsmen. As proof of this distrust, at the end of fifteenth century the Senate enacted different laws to avoid the construction of “foreign Arsenals” even in places under the same Venetian control such as Candia or Cyprus. The legislation was addressed to those families of merchant and Arsenal workers who went in terre et luoghi alieni per guadagnare […] a grandissimo danno della signoria nostra (in foreign places to make money to the detriment of Venice). The punishment for revealing the Arsenal’s secrets or for construction of vessels out of Venice was banishment from the city and a fine of 500 ducats. Therefore, due to these restrictions, visits to the Arsenal were rare for common pilgrims who were likely authorised to explore only the zone just beyond the Arsenal’ s monumental “land door” that operated the passage of people and vessels since the mid-fifteenth century (Fig. 1).

Fig. 3 - Venice, Arsenal military area.
Fig. 3 – Venice, Arsenal military area. © 2017 Laura Grazia Di Stefano.

It is likely that the Venetians, in order to satisfy the curiosity and needs of pilgrims, organised the inspections of the galleys as well as “visits” to certain more accessible areas of the Arsenal. For instance, the English pilgrim William Wey wrote, “In the city they have a large area where they build the galleys to defend our Faith. I saw eighty galleys there, either completed or still under construction. Below that place, they have huge buildings for stores of all types. These are full of the various kind of equipment needed to defend our Faith”. William Wey’s description gives the idea of a panoramic tour of the Arsenal rather than a detailed visit of the various pavilions. Similarly, Pietro Casola, who gave a more precise description of his visit, described seeing in the Arsenal “three large sheds […] where the galleys are placed all together” and “a great crowd of masters and workmen who do nothing but build galleys or other ships of every kind”.

Venice, Arsenal military area.
Fig. 4 – Venice, Arsenal military area. © 2017 Laura Grazia Di Stefano.

Vague descriptions of the Arsenal in such fifteenth-century narratives confirm that what pilgrims described as “visits” were actually basic tours of the “less military” Arsenal’s areas, probably the ones with the production warehouses and disposition of the galleys scheduled for departures. This emerges clearly from the description made by Breydenbach, who states that he experienced in the Arsenal “the power and circumspection of Venice” conveying to his readers that despite being allowed to witness a measure of its inner working, Venetians were too prudent to reveal their military secrets to foreigners such himself. Indeed, until now, the Arsenal’s military zone remains a separate, inaccessibile and patrolled area despite its proximity to the public area (Fig. 3-4).

References

  1. Venice, Marciana Library, Statuta Domino Jacobus Teupolus 1233, Codice Membranaceo cxxx, Classe V, c.37
  2. Venice, Archivio di Stato, Ufficiali al Cattaver, Busta 2, Volume C, Pro Tholomagys et Peregrinis, folio lxxv
  3. Venice, Archivio di Stato, Archivio proprio di Giacomo Contarini, Folder 22, Leggi vecchie circa la fabbrica delle navi, Doc. 2
  4. Von Breydenbach Bernard, Peregrinationes. Un viaggiatore del quattrocento a Gerusalemme e in Egitto (Roma, 1999)
  5. Casoni Giovanni, Breve storia dell’Arsenale (Venezia, 1847)
  6. Davey Francis, The itineraries of William Wey (Oxford, 2010)
  7. Davis Robert C., Shipbuilders of the Venetian Arsenal: Workers and Workplace in the Preindustrial City (Baltimore, 2009)
  8. Lane Frederic C., Venetian Ships and Shipbuilders of the Renaissance (London, 1992)
  9. Sanudo Marino, Venice, Cità Excelentissima. Selections from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo (Baltimore, 2008)
  10. Newett Mary Margaret, Canon Pietro Casola’s Pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the year 1494, (Manchester, 1907)
  11. Sacerdoti Adolfo, R. Predelli, Gli statuti marittimi veneziani fino al 1255 (Venezia, 1903)

 

Jerusalem 1000-1400: every people under heaven

Dr Merav Mack

Blog-post author, Dr Merav Mack, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, IL.

Some reflections following a visit  in December 2016 to the exhibition “Jerusalem 1000-1400: Every People Under Heaven” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA (26 September 2016– 8 January 2017).

Exhibition poster

“What is Jerusalem? Or where is Jerusalem?” are the opening words of art critic Jason Farago when reviewing the exhibition: “The real city and its eternal image bleed into each other he explains. Suitably, he entitled his article Jerusalem Rebuilt in New York’s Green and Pleasant Land.

The exhibition is overwhelming in its scale and achievement, a project that takes place once in a life time. Over a period of several years the curators painstakingly selected and assembled in New York a great number of items, borrowed from all Jerusalem’s communities, and thus telling a story of cultural richness; a history of multiple narratives, told from as many angles as possible.

Gallery: Exhibition entrance
Gallery: Exhibition entrance

When I entered the exhibition hall I found the iconic images of Jerusalem displayed all around. Photographs of the Dome of the Rock projected on great screens. There were no modern maps to guide the visitors to the city or its various parts. I couldn’t help thinking that this was intentional as the subject of the exhibition was not just the physical city but its image.

The thousand-year-old question resurfaces; what matters more, Earthly Jerusalem or Heavenly Jerusalem. The eschatological city of the end of days and the temporal city are blurred in the Jerusalem Exhibition. While the city is represented with numerous archaeological artefacts, books, maps and images, many are fantastic and have little to do with the real city.

As I walked through the exhibition I wondered how many thousands of people made their pilgrimage to Jerusalem through the Met in New York City. Complementing our discussions in London I thought that a visit to the museum’s exhibition is a little bit like the medieval, arm-chair pilgrimage.

Gallery: The Pulse of Trade and Tourism
Gallery: The Pulse of Trade and Tourism

The first room of the exhibition was dedicated almost exactly to our subject, the travellers to Jerusalem: “The Pulse of Trade and Tourism”. The focus of the room instead of crusade, repentance, pilgrimage or devotion was merchants’ travels, their monies, commodities and souvenirs, as well as a few maps and charts. A recently discovered hoard of golden coins from Caesarea stood right the entrance.

Matthew Paris, Marino Sanudo and William of Tyre are the three wonderful manuscripts selected for this room, as well as a traveller map in Arabic, with no distinction between real travellers and armchair ones (e.g. Matthew Paris). In another room I found the beautiful bird’s eye-view of Jerusalem by Bernhard von Breydenbach (The Metropolitan Museum, 19.49.3), next to a Muslim pilgrimage certificate from the year 1433, combining Persian inscriptions and iconographical representation of the holy sites. A beautiful pictorial circular maps of Jerusalem was included – this copy from the Hague manuscript of the Gesta Francorum is probably the most famous among them.

Exhibition catalogue
Exhibition catalogue

In the catalogue (but sadly not at the exhibition) was the image from Liber peregrinationis by Riccoldo da Monte Croce (BNF MS Fr. 2810) of pilgrims at the (imagined) Holy Sepulchre.

The catalogue’s articles, like the exhibition, focused primarily on souvenirs and relics, tourist experience and the material aspect of their journey – specifically on items the travellers brought back home. The question of what knowledge pilgrims brought with them (in the form of books, drawings or maps), what libraries they encountered along the way and what they acquired in the East remain for us to explore.

Gallery: Diversity of the People
Gallery: Diversity of the People

The second hall focused on The Diversity of Peoples and included a large number of manuscripts, “a little unusual for a Met exhibition”, remarked one critic. Visitors queued to look and study the manuscripts carefully. I found this room particularly inspiring.

The emphasis of this hall (and the exhibition as a whole) is the richness of Jerusalem’s population, its languages and traditions. Here I found manuscripts that learned travellers could have found in medieval Jerusalem at one point or another (if allowed into the monasteries were they were kept, and if indeed they possessed knowledge of the locally spoken and written languages).

Karaites and Rabbinical Jewish manuscripts, Samaritan, Georgian, Syriac, Greek and Arabic, alongside manuscripts in Ge’ez and Armenian. Copies of the Gospels and the Qur’an were included as well as non-religious texts.

Let me conclude by listing these items, which may be of particular interest to visitors to this blog.

Eastern Christian communities
  • Armenian Gospel copied by Nerses the abbot in 1321 in Jerusalem (Library of Congress).
  • Georgian Menologion – written by the founder of the Holy Cross George Prokhorus 1038-1040 at the monastery of the Holy Cross. Before founding the monastery he was a monk at the Great Laura of Mar Saba. (Bodleian Library).
  • Four Gospels from Mar Saba (Princeton).
  • Syriac Breviary from St Mary Magdalene & St Simon the Pharisee, 1138 Jerusalem.
  • Armenian canon tables written after 1187 with a scribe’s note of his sadness of the fall of J-m to Saladin and prayer for its recovery. (Walters Art Museum).
Latin and mixed communities
  • Missal of the Holy Sepulchre ca. 1135-1140 (BNF, Paris), with a mixture of Latin and Armenian pagination, demonstrating cooperation between a Frankish calligrapher and an Armenian-speaking illuminator.
  • Melisende’s Psalter (BL Egerton MS 1139).
Karaite and Rabbinical manuscripts in Jerusalem before the crusades

After the bloody conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 Jewish survivors were ransomed and exiled to Ascalon then Cairo (Fustat). Manuscripts were ransomed too, including the famous Aleppo Codex.

  • A page from the Aleppo Codex.
  • Daniel al-Qumisi, Commentary on Psalms (late 9th, early 10th century). JTS New York. Cat. 36a, p. 94. Hebrew.
  • Abraham al-Basir – Responsa, 11th century. Arabic. JTS (MS 3448).
  • Yefet ben ‘Ali translation and commentary (10th century). A prolific writer, translator (Hebrew to Arabic) and biblical commentator, his manuscripts were copied numerous times.
Jewish travelers in the Middle Ages
  • Maimonides Plan of the Temple (Bodleian, MS Poc. 295).
  • Letter requesting funds to ransom captives (JTS MS 8254).
  • Yehuda Halevi (JTS).
Muslim manuscripts
  • Al-Ghazali’s Ihya (Revival of the Islamic Sciences) from the museum of Islamic art in Doha (this copy was not copied in Jm). Cat. No. 43, p. 100.
  • Al-Busiri’s Qasidat al-Burda (Ode to the Mantle) copied in Jerusalem by a Persian calligrapher Muhammad al-Fruzabadi al-Shirazi in 1361. He lived and taught in Jeruusalem between 1358 and 1368. (NLI Yah. Ar. 784).
  • A few copies of the Qur’an were included in the exhibition. One by Muhammad ibn al-Bulaybil al-Hijazi was copied in Jerusalem in 1390 (British Library).
  • Nur al-Din’s qur’an: a beautiful copy whose pages can found in various museums. The Met had 2 pages from Dallas (Dallas Museum of Art – ex. Keir collection VII 3 and 4).
Exhibition video introduction

Pilgrims as readers & writers: some reflections

Professor George Greenia
Professor George Greenia

Blog-post author, Professor George Greenia, College of Wiliam & Mary, Virginia, USA.

Professor Anthony Bale shared a strong vision for our joint project on Medieval Pilgrims Libraries when we met in London December 9-10, 2016. We’re all grateful for his leadership and helpful push in new directions and especially for bringing together researchers from such diverse fields. Here are some reflections based on our initial conversations.

Professor Anthony Bale
Professor Anthony Bale

Many medieval pilgrims belonged to lively lectoral communities. They carried their libra­ries with them on their way to Jeru­sa­lem, Rome or Santiago even when there were no books at hand. Memories of books read before leaving home were fond­ly rehearsed aloud among bands of sacred sojourn­ers, texts that scripted the ex­per­i­ence even while walking and sailing to distant shores. Some deliberately bade farewell to their books for a while as a personal discipline or as part of the acetic rigor of the trip, somewhat like foregoing bathing or haircuts. At op­portune stops along the way they may have read or listened to the recitations of unfamiliar writings, pur­chased souvenir texts, or either made or commissioned copies of admired works to take home. Not a few pilgrims eventually com­posed their own travelogues as itiner­aries, diaries and guidebooks for subse­quent travelers.

English: A Naval Battle; Antwerp, after 1464, from the Roman de Gillion de Trazegnies, fol. 21. Lieven van Lathem (1430–1493), Getty Center
English: A Naval Battle; Antwerp, after 1464, from the Roman de Gillion de Trazegnies, fol. 21. Lieven van Lathem (1430–1493), Getty Center

Complementing those who enjoyed full agency as readers – the ones who were personally literate – almost all pilgrims participated in ever rotating com­mun­ities of secondary literacy. Many who could not read for themselves because of lack of education or failing eyesight listened to texts being read aloud and partici­pat­ed in their interpretation.[1] Throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages almost all reading was done aloud and routinely by young adults whose eyes were better suited for the task. Pilgrims probably carried few books with them and in any case one literate reader among any given travelers’ band would be enough.

Most importantly there was the internal library shared equally among the literate and illiterate, the vast oral stream they all grew up with. Medieval sojourners carried a rich imaginary of their journey spun out of their memory hoard[2] stocked by prior reading plus all their accustomed folk genres as they moved through their newly fluid discursive landscape. Some of their more pious texts they accessed “from within”: a common stock of Latin prayers and rituals, hym­no­dy in Latin reliably re-encountered at hosting institutions, and verna­cular devotional songs learned by heart back home and happily belted out along the trail or on arrival.[3] To lift their spirits and antici­pate possible spiritual adven­tures there was the reverent recounting of hagiography and miracle stories associated with the shrine sites they visited.

'The Author Hears the Story of Gillion de Trazegnies' by Lieven van Lathem and David Aubert, after 1464. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
‘The Author Hears the Story of Gillion de Trazegnies’ by Lieven van Lathem and David Aubert, after 1464. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

On the secular side were ballads and ordinary walking songs, and epic stories in prose or verse.[4] Some medieval travelers had their recollections of itineraries or topo­graphical plans, but even without them all had mental maps that constituted a “consensus cartography” that fused sites and anticipated encounters. When their accounts of physical geography seem defective, they are probably reporting a traveler’s topography of significance and holiness.

Much of their remaining common oral culture was plainly utilitarian: medical knowledge and techniques (as distinct from miraculous cures), guessti­mates of diverse monetary ex­change, knowledge of equivalents for local weights and measures, calcula­tion of dis­tan­ces, seasons, climate, and folk tales and games to pass the time.[5] Any of these could end up in written records but the bulk of it churned through the living oral stream, the cultural “soup” everyone swims in without recog­nizing one’s conceptual environment always known from within.

The accounts that most attract our attention now – what pilgrims who made it home again wrote down and left unsystematically among family papers and local archives – are their own compositions in the form of itineraries and daybooks. Most are middle brow, repetitive in their sequence of places and sights, and doggedly anonymous.[6] This is probably not because generally poor writers took up the task. It would have been hard to actually compose anything serious while traveling in the Middle Ages. Toting reliable supplies of ink, quills and parchment or paper – much less wax tablets – is pretty much ruled out by the tiny satchels shown in most con­tem­porary painting and sculpture.

Medieval travel accounts were likely put together after a return to a writerly environment and perhaps before the pilgrim company disbanded. For pilgrims returning from Jerusalem, the logic site would be on disembarking at Venice. A troop which had shared the journey could share the reminiscing and the most able scribe among them could stitch together what each individual agreed was true. That would help explain the depersonalized and often pedestrian accounts that come down to us. The stationers’ shops in Venice could also supply enough raw mater­ials to make multiple copies for as many of the companions who wanted a set of reliable notes to embellish orally for family, friends and fellow parishioners. Pro­ducing a “corporate report” from a whole group of travelers usually makes for dull reading but would lend a certain weight and credence to the nar­ra­tive.

Bands returning from Jerusalem en­joyed the advan­tage of a fairly stable party from start to finish, or at least from depar­ture from Venice until their return there. Venice would have also marked a psychological “homecoming” even if individuals had started out from more distant parts of Christen­dom, and no other pilgrim node along the thousands of sacred routes in medi­eval Europe provided the same urban nexus of launch point, site of return and time to linger. There are points of convergence along the trails to Santiago (Ostabat and St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port on the eastern slopes of French Pyrenees) and to Rome (certain Alpine passes on the descent into Italy) but none in an urban center that invited poten­tial writers to linger and compose. Of course, Rome was the most heavenly and best provisioned writers’ environment of all, but writers in residence on the Tiber did not routinely overlap with visiting pilgrims and they produce different sorts of works.

All these factors would have favored greater numbers of travelogues about the Holy Land, somewhat less so for Rome and relatively few for Santiago and other pilgrim shrines, and extant archival witnesses seem to corroborate this scenario.


Recommended Bibliography

  • Herbers, Klaus. “Peregrinaciones a Roma, Santiago y Jerusalén.” El mundo de las peregrinaciones. Roma, Santiago, Jerusalén. Ed. Paolo Caucci von Sauken. Barcelona/Madrid, 1999. 103-34. Subsec­tion on “Relatos de los peregrinos en el medievo tardío,” 128-34]
  • Herbers, Klaus, y Robert Plötz. Caminaron a Santiago. Relatos de peregrinaciones al »fin del mundo«. Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia, 1998.
  • Howard, Donald R. Writers and Pilgrims. Medieval Pilgrimage Narratives and Their Posterity. Ber­keley: U of California Press, 1980.
  • Plötz, Robert. “Santiago de Compostela en la literatura odepórica.” Santiago de Compos­tela: ciudad y peregrino. Actas del V Congreso Internacional de Estudios Xacobeos. Eds. María A, Antón Vilasánchez; José Luis Tato Castiñeira. Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia, 2000. 33-99. [on mapmaking and the concept of space]
  • Reynolds, Roger E. “A Precious Ancient Souvenir Given to the First Pilgrim to Santiago de Compostela.” Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art & Architecture 4.3 (Spring, 2014): 1-30.
  • Stones, Alison. “Medieval Pilgrimage Writing and its Manuscript Sources.” Encyclopedia of Medieval Pil­grim­age, ed. L.J. Taylor, et al. Leiden: Brill, 395-413. [see bibliography 411-12 for list of travel nar­ra­tives]
  • Stones, Alison, & Jeanne Krochalis. “Qui a lu le Guide du pèlerin ?” Pèlerinages et croisades. Ed. L. Pressouyre. Paris: CTHS, 1995. 11-36.

Notes

  1. Linguistic anthropologists working in Chiapas, Mexico have observed how leaders of base Christian communities (comunidades de base) could be illiterate yet function as the most insightful and trusted commentators of scriptural and inspirational texts. (As reported by Vincent Barletta, now at Stanford, from field work in the 1990s during doctoral studies at UCLA. Personal communication.)
  2.  The phrase was coined by Mary Carruthers in her classic The Book of Memory. A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1990).
  3. The “Pilgrims Guide” in the Codex Calixtinus describes how various nationalities, clustered together in their respective corners of the tribune level of the cathedral in Santiago, would loudly compete as they sang hymns in their native tongues.
  4. The earliest and one of the most intriguing prose epics about the adventures of Charlemagne and Roland in Spain is consecrated in the “Historia Turpini” of the Codex Calixtinus, the twelfth-century master com­pi­la­tion on the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. The connection to Charlemagne’s supposed devotion to St. James and the saint’s instructions to have the French secure the pilgrimage route against the Muslim foe is tenuous in the narrative, entirely fictional in terms of history.
  5. Folk tales contain many stories about the intervention of saints on behalf of their devotees. A version of hopscotch became the pilgrim game of Juego de la Oca or Goose’s Game, a modern version of which has been laid in the paving outside the church of Santiago the Elder in Logroño along the main route to Compostela.
  6. Anxiously sincere personal narratives of travel along the Camino de Santiago have repopulated this genre in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, most of them just as artless as their medieval forerunners if more heartfelt.