Adventurous, Dangerous And Revolting: Seeing ‘The World Through Medieval Eyes’
(REVIEW) In the late 15th century, Martin Behaim, a German cloth merchant, traveler and navigator from Nuremberg, commissioned one of the earliest known examples of a globe.
A wealthy man from a family of well-to-do merchants, Behaim made his own fortune by importing high-end textiles — silks, damasks, tapestries and other finely woven materials from China, Persia and the Middle East. So his decision to finance the crafting of a compact, novel business tool that literally put into perspective the geographic sources of his commercial interests was a practical one.
But the 21-inch in diameter, papier-mache and gypsum globe, depicting the world as Western Europe knew it on the eve of Christopher Columbus’ 1492 voyage, also served a devotional purpose. Its standard, medieval division of our planet into three distinct sections — Africa, Asia and Europe — reflected the Biblical understanding of how the continents were populated via the three sons of Noah (Genesis 9).
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Known in German as the “Erdaapfel,” or “Earthapple,” the globe further represented “God’s bounty in His perfect creation, reflecting a world traversed with routes that travelers — including Behaim himself — had taken, and all the territories travellers could expect to find beyond the seas.” So writes medieval studies professor Anthony Bale of the University of London’s Birbeck College in this interesting and informative examination of long-distance travel in his book, “A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages: The World Through Medieval Eyes.”
Adventurous, dangerous, fabulous, redemptive and revolting: Medieval travel was all of this and more, as Bale describes, drawing upon a host of period narratives to paint a vivid picture of the experience during an era dominated in the West by pilgrimage. The reasons that pilgrims embarked for places like Canterbury, Santiago de Compostela, Rome and Jerusalem (the holiest and most desirable of all) were manifold. Some journeyed voluntarily, driven by a passionate desire to visit the shrines of saints or Biblical sites, “imbued with a charismatic holiness.” Some sought medical cures. Others fulfilled a penance. Still others, like spiritual ambassadors, engaged in pilgrimage on behalf of their communities. As Bale observed, “A pilgrimage, if done properly, was far from a holiday but rather an act of self-punishment and self-reform.”
The childless, English noblewoman Beatrice Lutttrell traveled to Rome in 1350, praying her pilgrimage would give her the grace to conceive. Adalbrecht, a heavy-drinking, wife-beating weaponsmith from Danzig (Gdańsk) journeyed to Aachen Cathedral’s shrine of the Virgin Mary — said to house her cloak and work miracles — to beg forgiveness for his brutish behavior.
Embarking “on the voyage of a lifetime” in 1440, English monk Thomas Dane hoped to visit many of Christianity’s top pilgrimage destinations: York (tomb of St. William), Canterbury (sacred shrine of St. Thomas Becket), Rome and Jerusalem, where the humble clergyman “looked forward to treading in Christ’s footsteps.” His one extravagance (like many travelers wishing to insure a trouble-free journey) was to invest in a reliable pair of new shoes.
If these individuals shared anything in common, aside from a desire for spiritual transformation, it was exposure to the many pitfalls and hassles familiar to modern travelers: flea-infested beds, sea sickness, huckster tour guides, pickpockets and thieves. Yet there were tips on how to navigate perils. Guidebooks featured helpful phrases (“Good morning,” “What are you saying?” and “Where is the tavern?”) in languages as diverse as Greek, Albanian and Arabic. London physician John of Gaddesden, in his 1314 handbook on how to stay healthy abroad, warned against drinking the water (sound familiar?), opting instead for “rose sugar, violet sugar, or waterlilly syrup” to ward off thirst.
Still, there were also shocking disappointments, that are painfully poignant to read today. Writing in 1356, Sir John Mandeville (the Rick Steves of his day) reported that the port of Gaza was “exceptionally pretty and full of people.” In the wake of Crusader attacks decades later, travelers “commented on Gaza’s desolation, a landscape of ‘ruined uninhabited houses’” where Mamluks — a militant Muslim dynasty — “imprisoned unwitting visitors.”
Not all medieval travel, however, was quite so daunting. Of the various European gateways to the Middle East, Venice was one of the busiest, with efficient systems in place to keep pilgrimage traffic flowing. Lodgings were subject to government inspection, and travelers could file complaints with the Venetian senate in cases of “rip-offs, disputes and disappointments [which] were all bad for the republic’s trade in travel.”
Like Dubai, Dallas or Charlotte, Venice was also a hub for business travelers (like Martin Behaim), and Bale devotes a good portion of the book to the more worldly motivation for travel: making money. From Venice “merchants could take boats to all ports of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea” thereby connecting with the Silk Road. This ancient route was actually not a single road “but rather a collective noun for the east-west routes, by land and sea, across Eurasia, from Egypt to China, to Turkey to India.”
While Marco Polo may be the Silk Road’s most famous European traveler, Bale offers the insights of lesser known medieval businessmen who made the journey. Florence’s Francesco Balducci Pegolotti’s 1340 “Practica della mercatura” (“The Practice of Commerce”) — “a direct forerunner of a modern business travel manual” — offered advice to European merchants doing business in the East. Ming Dynasty travel diarist Ma Huan, a Muslim, mixed finance with faith during a pilgrimage to Mecca in the early 15th century, filing a report on shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz for his traveling companion and boss, Zheng He, a high-ranking Ming official.
By including these sorts of narratives, Bale provides readers with a well-rounded, not to mention colorful, overview of how church and state journeyed side by side during this era, “when the notion of travelling the world was fundamental” to one’s faith and fiscal ambitions.
Tom Verde is a freelance journalist, specializing in religion, culture and history.