Travelling to the Holy Land in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: a Study in the History of Everyday Life

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Travelling to the Holy Land
in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries:
a Study in the History of Everyday Life
Svetlana I. Luchitskaya
To begin with, I will try to give a general, broad-based definition of travelling.
I understand travelling as moving long distances in a geographical space
to destinations (countries, settlements, locations, etc.) which are unexplored by
the travellers or poorly known to them. Travelling is a phenomenon outside the
everyday, it is meant to interrupt the daily life, cross cultural boundaries, go beyond
the traveller’s own experiences and confront the other and foreign.
Motives for travelling can be different – informative, scientific, pious,
practical. One can talk about a research or military campaign, religious mission,
trade travel, as well as a journey with educational or recreational purposes. The
duration of travel may vary but it always necessarily implies a return. According
to François Hartog, the author of a study on Odysseus’ canonical journey, it is
impossible to separate journey and return.1
In the Middle Ages, journeys were undertaken with very different purposes,
including trade, military enterprises and inspection of possessions. Nevertheless,
pilgrimages to Christian shrines were the most popular and venerable
type of travelling. There, any movement in geographical space had moral and
religious implications. Accordingly, travelling was regarded as moving around
the “map” of moral and religious coordinates.2 Therefore, in case of visiting sacred
sites, travelling could lead to increasing the traveller’s piety, while in case
of visiting non-Christian lands it could become a morally and religiously dubious
enterprise and be regarded in a way as an anti-pilgrimage.
Only in the course of time, the symbolic understanding of space disappeared
and became substituted by the conception of neutralized geographical
1 François Hartog, Memories of Odysseus: Frontier Tales from Ancient Greece (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2001).
2 See, for example, Yuri M. Lotman, “O Poniatii Geograficheskogo Prostranstva v Russkih
Srednevekovyh Tekstah,” [On the notion of geographic space in Russian medieval texts], in
Semiosfera. Kultura i Vzryv. Vnutri mysliashih mirov. Statii. Issledovaniya. Zametki (Saint
Petersburg: Isskustvo Spb, 2000), 297-303.
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space. Travelling in the late Middle Ages was not any more defined by spiritual
but pragmatic values, as well as striving for world exploration and aspirations
for new knowledge and experiences.3
I will focus on the history of the crusades, particularly on travels to the
Holy Land in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In my opinion, this very epoch
fully revealed the notion of homo viator.4 In the age of the crusades, all the Latin
West was enthralled with the idea of travelling. The stable medieval society
developed a significant sense of mobility and large numbers of people extended
the borders of their familiar world by exploring previously unknown space.
Which challenges and obstacles lay in wait on their way? What material
difficulties did they encounter in their travels? How did they perceive space and
what technologies did they use to explore it? These are the questions that this
paper intends to study.
For the study of these problems I will use accounts of pilgrimages to the
Holy Land from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, such as the itineraries of
Saewulf, Theodoricus, Turnhout and John of Würzburg, among others.5 This
type of sources is primarily centred on maritime travels to the Holy Land and
mostly gives information regarding the names of Greek islands and towns of the
Near East, as well as the Palestinian centres of pilgrimages such as Jerusalem,
Bethlehem and Nazareth, along with the descriptions of the Christian shrines.6
Unfortunately, there are very few published travel accounts which offer direct
information on travels to the Holy Land undertaken either by single pilgrims or
pilgrim groups. However, routes of mass pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and
particularly itineraries of military pilgrimages are very well described in the famous
chronicles of the crusades.7 They certainly cannot be regarded as proper
3 See Svetlana I. Luchitskaya, “Puteshestvie,” [Traveling] in Slovar srednevekovoi kultury
[Lexicon of Medieval Culture], ed. Aron Y. Gurevich (Moscow: Rospen, 2003), 397-400.
4 See on this idea Gerhart B. Ladner, “Homo Viator. Medieval Ideas on Alienation and Order,”
Speculum 42/2 (1969): 33-260.
5 See Peregrinationes Tres: Saewulf, John of Würzburg, Theodoricus, ed. R.B.C Huygens,
Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis 139 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1994); Titus Tobler
(ed.), Descriptiones Terrae Sanctae ex Seculo VIII, IX, XII et XV (Leipzig: JC Hinrichs’sche
Buchhandlung, 1874).
6 See, for example, “Innominatus,” in Descriptiones Terrae Sanctae, ed. Tobler, 192-223.
Scarce references to pilgrims in medieval narrative sources are collected in F. Micheau,
“Les Itineraries Maritimes et Continentaux des Pèlerinages vers Jerusalem,” in Occident et
Orient au Xème Siècle, Actes du IX Congrès de la Société des Historiens Médiévistes de
l’Enseignement Supériuer Public, Dijon, 2-4 Juin 1978 (Paris: Publications de l’Université
de Dijon, 1979), 79-104.
7 On pilgrimages during this time see Edmond-René Labande, “Recherches sur les Pèlerins
dans l’Europe des XI-XIII ss.,” Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévales 1(Poitiers: Université de
Poitiers, 1957) : 7-36 and Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévales 3(Poitiers: Université de Poitiers,
1962) : 339-349. Aryeh Graboïs insisted on differentiating between pilgrimages and
crusades and researched whether crusades impeded or contributed to the development of
pilgrimages. See: Aryeh Graboïs, Le Pèlerine Occidental en Terre Sainte au Moyen Âge
(Brussels: De Boeck, 1998). On pilgrimages to the Holy Land in the time of the crusades,
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travel accounts, but have a large amount of valuable information about how medieval
people transcended space on their way to the Holy Sepulcher.8 Hervé
Martin wrote that the chroniclers are more subjected to stereotypes as compared
to travellers who left vivid and accurate accounts of countries they passed
through.9 However, it is the border position between two different genres –
chronicles and travel accounts, which makes the chronicles of the crusades,
especially the ones which were written by eyewitnesses, so special.10
Another type of sources valuable for the chosen subject is represented by
the directoria or passagia describing the crossing of the Mediterranean Sea. In
this instance, we shall turn to Pseudo-Brocardus,11 who travelled through Asia
and Africa and presented a project for a crusade to Philip the Fair in 1332,
entitled Directorium ad Passagium Faciendum.
When reconstructing the everyday life of crusaders in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries with the help of chronicles and travel accounts we will keep
in mind that these descriptions reflect certain socio-cultural perceptions. Writers
saw and documented the information suggested by their culture. Therefore, I
will not talk as much about realities of the travellers’ everyday lives as about the
perception of these realities by medieval people.12
Let us turn to the accounts of chroniclers and pilgrims. With their help we
are able to reconstruct to a certain extent the vicissitudes of a pilgrimage, espesee
Reinhold Röhricht, Die Deutschen im Heiligen Land: Chronologisches Verzeichnis
derjenigen Deutschen, welche als Jerusalem Pilger und Kreuzfahrer sicher nachzuweisen
oder wahrscheinlich anzusehen sind (ca. 650-1291) (Innsbruck: Wagner’schen Universitäts-
Buchhandlung, 1894). This edition presents all German pilgrimages from the seventh to the
thirteenth century, with a particular attention given to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Paul Riant made a similar list of Scandinavian pilgrims in his Expeditions et Pèlerinages
des Scandinaves en Terre Sainte au Temps des Croisades (Paris: Laine et Harvard, 1865).
8 Michail A. Zaborov defined the genre of these chronicles as sources combining travel notes,
epistolary materials and documents. See Michail A. Zaborov, Vvedenie v Istoriografiu
Krestovyh Pohodov (Latinskaya Chronografia XI-XIII vv.) [Introduction to the Historiography
of the Crusades (Latin Chronicles, XI-XIII centuries)] (Moscow: Nauka, 1966), 271.
9 Martin Hervé, Mentalités Médiévales, XIe-XVe siècle (Paris: PUF, 1996).
10 It seems that the authors themselves found it difficult to define the genre of their works and
hesitated between itinerarium and profectio. See Peter Tudebode, Historia de Hierosolymitano
itinere, tr. John Hugh Hill and Laurita L. Hill (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical
Society, 1974); Odo of Deuil, De Profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, tr. Virginia
Gingerick Berry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948).
11 Pseudo-Brocardus was almost certainly William Adam. See [Pseudo-]Brocardus, “Directorium
ad passagium faciendum,” in Recueil des Historiens des Croisades. Documents Arméniens
(Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1906), vol. 2, CLIV-CLVI.
12 Dmitry E. Charitonovich chose a similar approach in his “Mundus Novus. Pervozdannaya
Priroda Glazami Cheloveka Epohi Vozrogdeniya,” [Mundus Novus. Primeval nature
through the eyes of a Renaissance man] in Priroda v kulture Vozrozhdeniya (Moscow:
Nauka, 1992), 107-121.
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cially the Balkan part of the journey.13 Pilgrims travelled along the Danube
passing the countries of Central Europe until Constantinople and from there
continued their route to Antioch and Jerusalem. They perceived a travel to the
Holy Land as long, hard and dangerous. Fulcher of Chartres writes that
from Rome, from Apulia, from Hungary or Dalmatia, some, unwilling to
undergo the hardships, had returned to their homes. In many places finally
thousands had been killed, and some of the sick who went on with us
died. You could see many graves along the roads and in the fields where
our pilgrims had been publicly buried.”14
Raymond d’Aguilers talks about numerous difficulties along the way (multam
difficultatem itineris), which the travellers considered in a careful way.15 Medieval
authors associated the difficulties of the road with unfavourable climatic and
natural conditions. The winter of the First Crusade (1096-97) was especially
cold. According to Raymond d’Aguilers, the crusaders entered Dalmatia after
having overcome the difficulties along the way associated mostly with winter.16
During the journey, the crusaders were surrounded by an unfamiliar
environment, suffered from cold and heat and experienced the influence of
unusual atmospheric pressures. Many of these phenomena remained in their
memory forever. Reconstructing the details of the pilgrimage across Hungary
from chronicles and oral accounts, William of Tyre wrote:
This country … abounded in rivers and streams, and was almost wholly
marshland. Each day, there arose from this source so much dampness and
thick mist that the air became almost stifling.”17
Rains and mists on the road lurked around every bend and brought the travellers
to panicking. During the forty-day journey through Dalmatia on the First Crusade,
“the air was full of mist, and the continual shadows were so thick that they
13 The journey from Western Europe to Constantinople is in the focus of most chronicles.
Therefore, I will concentrate on this route.
14 Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem (1095-1127), tr. Frances R.
Ryan, ed. Harold S. Fink (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1973), book I, part X,
chapter 5, 81-2.
15 Raimundus de Aguilers, “Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem,” in Recueil des
Histoires des Croisades (RHC) (Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1866), vol. 3, 35: multam difficultatem
itineris in ea regione perpessi. William of Tyre recalled the difficulties of the
journey under the conduct of the count of Toulouse many years later: Guillaume de Tyr,
Chronique, ed. R.B.C. Huygens, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis 63 (Turnhout:
Brepols, 1986), book XI, chapter XVII: Comes Tolosanus et episcopus Podiensis cum
suis agminibus per Dalmatiam properant, multam difficultatem itineris in ea regione
perpessunt.
16 Raimundus de Aguilers, “Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem,” 235: Illi igitur
Sclavoniam ingressi; multa dispendia itineris passi sunt, maxime propter hyemem que tunc
erat.
17 William of Tyre, A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, tr. Emily A. Babcock and A.C.
Krey (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), book II, chapter XVII, 141.
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were almost palpable.”18 An eyewitness of the campaign, Raymond d’Aguilers
tells that the mists were so thick that the crusaders could touch them and shove
them in front of them with their bodies.19 We do not know to what extent these
accounts corresponded to reality. However, it is clear that the crusaders perceived
nature and climate of the unfamiliar countries in a subjective way and
often with fear.
On the road, pilgrims were often overtaken by rains, which had tendencies
to turn sometimes into serious calamities. Odo of Deuil, the author of an account
about the Second Crusade, tells a remarkable story about German knights who,
after having accomplished a long journey from Bulgaria to Thrace, decided to
spend a night in the town of Sestos located on the shore of the Dardanelles in
order to sail over to the opposite shore in the morning. Their plans were ruined
by a heavy night shower: strong water currents washed down their tents and belongings,
and carried a thousand people to the water.20
The speed of movement clearly depended on road and transport conditions,
which are largely spoken about in the crusaders’ chronicles. The issue of
transport is one of the main problems faced by the travellers according to
chronicles and pilgrims’ accounts. There were just a few good roads, and even
less good bridges. The crusaders lacked boats and vessels when crossing rivers.
Navigation was poorly developed even at larger rivers and the knights of Christ
constantly had to innovate ways to cross the water currents. Thus, during the
First Crusade the army of Godfrey of Bouillon crossed the River Drava in Hungary
on self-crafted rafts from willow bars.21 In a similar way, a part of the
crusaders crossed the River Sava on three wooden barges found at the shore,
others again had to craft the rafts from willow branches.22
18 Ibid., 140-1.
19 Raimundus de Aguilers, “Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem,” 236: Quadraginta
etenim fere dies in Sclavonia fuimus, in quibus tantum spissitudinem nebularum passi sumus,
ut palpare et per motum removere eas a nobis aliquatenus possemus. Inter haec
comes assidue in postremis pugnans, semper populum defendens erat; nunquam prior, sed
simper ultimus hospitabatur.
20 Odilo Dogilensis, “De Profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem,” in Patrologiae Cursus Completus.
Series Latina, vol. 185, chapter III, col. 1218: Dum igitur ibidem fixis tentoriis pernoctaret,
erupit pluvia super eos quidem sicut audivimus modica, sed in montibus tanta inundatio,
ut eos potius raperet quam aspergeret. Torrens enim tumidus, et rapidus tentoria
sibi obvia, et quidquid continebant involvens et rapiens, in mare vicinum praecipitavit ipsoum
multa millia submersit… Imperator autem et superestes multitude, non sine dolore
quidem, sed tamen velut sine damno tantum malum per ferentes, consergunt, et quasi audaciores
redditu pro eventu Constantinopolim veniunt …
21 Albertus Aquensis, “Historia Hierosolymitana,” in RHC 4, book II, chapter VI, 303: Dux et
populus regnum Hungariae pertransiens, Drowa fluvium pervenerunt: ubi congerie lignorum
composita, et plurima viminum copulatione facta, eundem fluvium trajecerunt.
22 Ibid.: Non amplius enim quam tres naves illic repertae sunt, cum quibus mille equites loricati
ad praeoccupandum littus transmissi sunt. Cetera multitudo, copulatione lignorum et
viminum, fluminis alveum superaverunt.
27
After passing through the Balkans and Bulgaria to Greece, the crusaders
faced the same difficulties while crossing the mountain rivers. They often perceived
road difficulties in a symbolic way – as punishment for wrongdoings.
Thus, Odo of Deuil writes that on the way from Philadelphia to Demetria the
knights had to ford an impetuous mountainous stream a number of times, which
even with an insignificant rain had a tendency to broaden to such an extent that
“no one could have advanced or retired, but each would have had to await the
end of his life, grieving for his sins where he was.”23 According to Odo the
knights often encountered mountainous streams which, if filled with rain or
snow, “possessed swift current which neither horse not infantry could swim
through.”24
During the Second Crusade, many bridges were built in Hungary at the
initiative of the German emperor, however, even after that the crusaders often
had to ford the rivers, including the River Drava.25 While fording the river the
knights did not notice that one of the banks of Drava was shallow and another
one steep, and they had to pay a large price for their imprudence: most of them
drowned. The more prudent crusaders from the army of Louis VII, the King of
France, who followed the German knights, crossed the river on their small boats,
but had great difficulties while transporting the horses across the dangerous
river.26
The crusaders also could become victims of their own avarice. This happened
with the French knights during the Second Crusade. They crossed the Danube
near Regensburg with the help of a bridge and found a large number of
vessels on the other side of the river. The knights used them as means of transport
to reach Bulgaria and charged them with their belongings. But some
knights, according to Odo of Deuil, loaded the vessels with two and four-horse
carriages, hoping to compensate for the losses and fill them up with goods in
Bulgaria. However, their hopes were not fulfilled and the carriages only made
the travel inconvenient, blocked the route, often caused forced breaks and aggravated
the existing confusion; and, as Odo finishes the story, everyone complained
about the slow progress.27
23 Odo of Deuil, De Profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, book VI, 106-7.
24 Ibid.,107.
25 Ibid., book II, 33: “…although there are many rivers in Germany, he found new bridges
constructed over them without any expense or exertion on his part.”
26 Odilo Dogilensis, De Profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, col. 1213: In medio sui fluvium
habet Droam, qui stanni more unam ripam proclivem habet, et alteram arduam, unde
modica pluvial effluit, Audivimus eum multos Alemannorum, qui nos praecesserant, subito
inundasse; nos autem ubi castra eorum fuerant, vix potuimus transvadere.
27 Odo of Deuil. De Profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, book II, 25: “At this city [Regensburg]
all crossed the Danube on a very fine bridge and found an ample fleet, which conveyed
our baggage and many of the people as far as Bulgaria. Some even placed two- and
four-horse carts on shipboard in order to compensate in the wastelands of Bulgaria for the
losses which they had already endured, but both previously and afterwards the carts afforded
more hope than usefulness.”
28
The chroniclers highlight the lack of provisions among other difficulties.
Hunger constantly haunted the crusaders and they used all means to procure
food, including looting and marauding. Chroniclers speak openly about it in
their works. According to Odo of Deuil, the author of an account on the crusade
of Louis VII, the king was followed by “many divisions who gained plenty for
themselves, either from the market, whenever that was possible, or from plunder,
because they had the power to do that.”28 Hunger and confrontation with the
local population were one of the reasons for human losses in the crusaders’
army. It was these two factors which Raymond d’Aguilers had in mind when he
wrote: “We passed through Sclavonia without losses from starvation or open
conflict largely through God’s mercy, the hard work of the Count and the counsel
of Adhémar.”29
Chroniclers of the crusades did not conceal that the advance of crusaders
in Central Europe and the Balkans occasionally brought calamities to the local
population. In 1096, the knights of Walter Sans Avoir plundered Bulgarians
which caused a conflict. As a result of this conflict, Bulgarians locked away 140
crusaders in a church and set in on fire, while others managed to escape.30
French and German knights lead by Peter the Hermit in the Paupers’ Crusade
followed the army of Walter Sans Avoir, wanted to revenge the killed crusaders
and massacred local Hungarians. Crusaders killed Bulgarians and Hungarians,
their brothers in faith, because they perceived them as pagans and enemies.
Teutonic knights who followed the army of Peter the Hermit drunkenly killed
the local population and pillaged their houses just after they provided them with
food provisions.31 Chroniclers considered the conflicts with the local population
as not only considerably hindering the movement of the crusaders but also as
cutting off the following knights from the trodden routes. Even Guillaume de
Tire who was always loyal to the crusaders had to admit:
the shortest way was found by those who went though Hungary, and this
was entirely closed because of the insolence and outrageous excesses
which those pilgrims who had gone on ahead so often and undeservedly
perpetrated upon the inhabitants of that region.32
28 Ibid., book III, 44.
29 Raymond d’Aguilers, Historia Francorum Qui Ceperunt Iherusalem, ed. John H. Hill and
Laurita L. Hill (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1968), 17.
30 Guillaume de Tyr, Chronique, lib. I, cap. XVIII: … centum quadraginta ex eis…in oratorio
quodam, quo se gratia consequendae salutis contulerant, igni supposito, combussemnt,
reliquis in fiigam adactis … The number 140 is certainly very approximated.
31 Ibid., cap. XXVII: … quidam sacerdos, Godescalcus nomine, natione Theutonicus …
Hungariae fines … ingressus est … ad inferendas enormes indigenis se contulerunt injurias
; ita ut praedas exercerent, venalia foris illata oublicis violenter diriperent, et tragem
comitterent in populo, neglectis legibus hospitalitatis …
32 William of Tyre. A history of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, book I, chapter 30, 115.
29
It was already Godfrey of Bouillon who had learned the lesson and accepted the
terms proposed by Coloman, King of Hungary, upon entering his domains and
left his brother Baldwin behind for pawns.
Almost every chronicle is full of stories about crusaders overcoming difficulties
in search for provisions. These descriptions follow a fixed pattern which
did not change in course of time and had almost the same style and content.
Thus, those descriptions which fall out of the traditional genre, may offer the
travellers’ personal opinions about the events. One of such examples is the account
of Albert of Aachen on an accident in Bithynia. According to the chronicler,
the crusaders set a camp not far from Heraclea with splendid scenery. Godfrey
of Bouillon and his companions equipped with bows, quivers and swords
went to hunt to a forest abundant with wild animals.33 In the forest, the duke saw
a huge bear attacking a pilgrim who happened to be there by accident. The
chronicler figuratively describes the scene: Godfrey approached on horse in order
to extract the victim from the bear’s claws.34 He buffeted the bear with his
sword, but the enraged wounded animal flung the knight down from his horse.
Godfrey immediately stood up and accidentally wounded his leg with the sword,
still fighting.35 A knight rushed to the duke to help him and ran with his sword
through the bear, while Godfrey of Bouillon fell to the ground. Knights carefully
carried him to the camp, where the best doctors treated his wounds and divided
the bear’s skin between themselves.36
Descriptions of the landscape surrounding the crusaders are marked by
stereotypes: forests, mountains, deserts and rivers are mentioned most often
among the difficulties faced by the travellers. One can even speak about a
certain rhetoric used by the chroniclers in their accounts. On the way, they
constantly meet abandoned places (loca deserta), dense forests (sylvae condensae)
and steep mountains (montes abrupta). The notion of a desert is a very important
topos. It was associated with an uninhabited space, unmarked by
civilization; the desert had both geographic and symbolic meaning. As it is
known, also forests and mountains could be treated as deserts in the Middle
Ages.37 All chroniclers stress the desertedness and desolation of the crusaders’
33 Albertus Aquensis, Historia Hierosolymitana, lib. II, cap. 4, 341: …aptam et voluptuosam
regionem considerantes et venationibus fecundissimam, quam nobilitas delectari et
exercari gaudet. …sumpto arcu et pharetra, gladiis accincti, saltus montanis contiguos
ingrediuntur, si forte obveniret quod configere et persequi catulorum sagacitate valerent …
34 Ibid.: Dux vero… educto raptim gladio… misello homini advolat, eripere a dentibus et imguibus
lanionis amxiatum festinate…
35 Ibid.: Dux… in momento resurgit in pedibus, gladiumque… propriis cruribus implicitum
celeriter in ejusdem ferae jugulum rapines et capulo retinens, suras et nervos proprii cruris
gravi incisione truncavit…
36 Ibid.: Dux primum, vulneris dolore… coepit corde deficere… Quem principles… ad castra…
detulerunt, medicos pertitssimos ad sanandum et adhibientes… feram verointer se dividentes
…
37 Jacques Le Goff, “Le désert-forêt dans l’Occident Médiéval” in L’Imaginaire Médiéval
(Paris: Gallimard, 1985), 59-76.
30
route through the Balkans. Fulcher of Chartres writes: “We proceeded over the
land of the Bulgars, over mountain precipices [the italics are mine – S.L.] and
rather deserted places.”38 Raymond d’Aguilers notes in his account on the
march across Dalmatia: “Truly Sclavonia is a forsaken land, both inaccessible
and mountainous, where for three weeks we saw neither wild beasts nor birds.”39
When describing the march of the German knight Gottschalk through Hungary,
William of Tyre stresses the desertedness, inaccessibility and remoteness of this
region from any society and civilization and emphasizes the following landscape
characteristics:
… the kingdom of Hungary is difficult to access, for it is swampy in many
places and is also encircled by big rivers. Thus, except in certain places –
and those extremely narrow, it affords travellers neither access to, nor exit
from, the realm.40
All these descriptions are meant to show the contrast between nature and culture.
Mountains are another important topos of the Holy Land pilgrimage accounts.
It is used for describing the expeditions in the Balkans as well as in Asia
Minor. It is difficult to separate culturally and naturally dictated elements in
such descriptions. Peter Tudebode and an Anonymous left vivid accounts of the
crusaders’ march across the Anti-Taurus mountains. After passing Cocson, the
knights approached the “devil’s mountain”, which was so high and narrow that
it was impossible to follow a narrow path along it. According to the chroniclers,
the horses rolled head over heels and the baggage animals slithered one after another.
41 Upon observing these difficulties, the crusaders fell into despair and became
very sad, according to the observations of Peter Tudebode. The knights
had to bargain away their coats of mail, helmets and bucklers in order to discharge
themselves from additional burden.42 According to the chroniclers, the
38 Edward Peters, The First Crusade, book I, chapter VIII, part 6, 61.
39 Raymond d’Aguilers, Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem, 16.
40 William of Tyre. A history of Deeds Done beyond the Sea, book I, chapter 18, 97.
41 Petrus Tudebode, Historia de Hierosolymitano itinere, ed. John Hugh Hill and Laurita L.
Hill (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1977), 62-3: Ipse vero statim apprehendi
Rusam civitatem et plurima castra. Los autem qui remansimus exeuntes intravimus in diabolicam
montaneam, quae tam nimis erat alta atque angusta, quod nullus nostrorum
audebat per tramitem ejus aut per semitam quae in monte patebat ante alium praeire. Illic
praecipitabant sese equi, et unus saumerius praecipitabat alium. Milites ergo stabant undique
tristes. See also: The Deeds of the Franks and the Other Pilgrims to Jerusalem, ed. and
tr. Rosalind Hill (London: Nelson, 1962), 27.
42 Petrus Tudebode, Historia de Hierosolymitano itinere, 62: Plaudebant minibus prae nimia
tristitia atque dolore, dubitantes quod facere debuissent de semetipsis: de suis armis, vendentes
suos clypeos et loricas nimis optimas, et galeas solummodo per tres aut quinque denarios
sive per id quod plus potuerunt habere.
31
crusaders felt relieved only when they exited the cursed mountain and approached
the town of Maras.43
A subjective perception of nature is common among the crusaders. Thus,
Odo of Deuil informs that on an expedition through South Bavaria he felt that
the area was heavy, stern and exceptionally mountainous. Once they entered
Dacia, he thought that Bavaria was a plain in comparison with Dacia.44 In reality,
the Romanian Carpathians are not steeper than the Bavarian Alps, but the
focus of the crusaders’ perception significantly shifted. Sometimes, the mountains
represented the difficulties of the road. Fulcher of Chartres writes that the
pilgrims had to realize the difficulties of the road once they saw peaks covered
with clouds which they yet had to cross.45
Mountains are terra incognita for the crusaders, an unknown land evoking
fear. Accounts of Odo of Deuil reveal this perception. During a march across
Greece on the way to Demetria, the crusaders had to cross mountains covered
with cliffs which were so impenetrable and steep that, when trying to do so, they
alternately came close to the “stars and hell”.46 Odo of Deuil writes about the
passage across the mountainous chains not far from the town of Laodicea in
Asia Minor:
The mountain was steep and rocky, and we had to climb along the ridge
so lofty that its summit seemed to touch heaven and the stream in the
hollow valley below to descend into hell.47
He draws a picture of people and baggage animals falling in the depth of a steep:
Dislodged rocks also caused destruction. Thus, when the men had scattered
far and wide in order to seek out paths, all feared that they would
misstep or that others [in falling] would strike them violently.48
Descriptions of mountains, deserts, forests and rivers in the crusaders’ chronicles
are full of alterations between geographic reality and its symbolic meaning,
between real and imagined. The crusaders perceived even a simple act of river
crossing as a miracle, because they saw the world as a manifestation of dangerous
external forces. In a similar fashion, Odo of Deuil writes about a march
across Thrace on the way to Pergamon, when the crusaders crossed three rivers
in a row, which was immediately followed by a strong rain causing floods and
43 Ibid.: Exeuntes igitur de execrata montanea pervenimus ad quamdam civitatem quae vocatur
Marasim.
44 Odilo Dogilensis, De profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, lib. II, col. 1213: …rivis tamen
abundant, et fontibus et pratis. Cum transierem regionem istam, aspera mihi montibus
videbatur, nunc autem planam judico respecti Romaniae.
45 Fulcheri Carnotensis historia Hierosolymitana, ed. Heinrich Hagenmeyer (Heidelberg: C.
Winter, 1913), lib. I, cap. VIII, 173: Viderunt cacuminal lontium perque transitura errant
nubibus fere inserta.
46 Odilo Dogilensis, De profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, lib.VI, col. 1235: Deviavit enim
in quaedam concava, offendensque montium scopulos, dum eos circuit vel ascendit, non accedit
quo volebat, sed alternis vicibus inferno et sideribus propinquabat …
47 Odo of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem. book VII, 117.
48 Ibid., 116.
32
making the crossing almost impossible: “Therefore it was considered miraculous
that, contrary to the ordinary course of events, the rains and the winter had
spared us.”49
During the march across Bulgaria the crusaders had to cross the stormy
River Vardar, which the locals called “Daemon’s River”, according to the
chroniclers. The crusaders’ accounts testify that this river evoked great fear.50
The infantry soldiers attempted to wade the river, but already the first ones were
swept away by a strong current and drowned. If the knights had not helped with
providing their horses, this fate would have also come to the rest of the crusaders.
There was no end of “pious tears” after this incident, the chronicler tells,51
and the travellers plunged in devout reflections. Travelling to the Holy Land, the
pilgrims overcame the fearful unknown space and conceptualized the route in
the framework of their system of values.
With the gradual exploration of new territories the travellers began to perceive
space as physically given and to measure it, for the first time already during
the First Crusade. As it was common in the Middle Ages, the crusaders
measured space in time categories. Thus, Raymond d’Aguilers and William of
Tyre established that it takes forty days to cross Dalmatia and reach the Albanian
town of Durrazo via Shkodër.52 Fulcher of Chartres wrote in his chronicle
that it took four days to reach Philippopolis from Thessaloniki.53 Sometimes, the
chroniclers tried to measure the territories of the Balkan states. William of Tyre,
for instance, informed his readers that Bulgaria occupied a huge territory from
Constantinople to the Adriatic, which is thirty days of travel long and a little
more than ten days wide.54 Odo of Deuil talked about the territories’ dimensions
49 Ibid., book VI, 106.
50 Radulfus Cadomensis, “Gesta Tancredi in Expeditione Hiyerosolymitana” in RHC, vol. 3
(Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1866), cap. IV, 607: Ad flumen quod Bardai dicitur perducitur
… obsistebat eorum transitu fluvius rapax … plurimos terrebat.
51 Guillaume de Tyr, Chronique, lib. II, cap. XIII: Daemonis ad fluvium rapidum tune venimus
omnes, qui ab incolis loci si vocatur et merito. Vidimus enim in illo quamplures de plebem
cum vadare pedetentium sperabant, torrentis impetus, quod nullus cernentium juvare
poterat, mersu repentino perere; quia de re multas ibi lachrymas pietate dimisimus; et, nisi
equites cum equis dexterariis opem peditibus ferrent, multitude maxima simili modo ibi vitam
finivisset. ” See also Fulcheri Carnotensis Historia Hierosolymitana, lib. I, cap. VIII,
172.
52 Raimundus de Aguilers, Historia Francorum, 236: Ob illam reor causam voluit Deus
exercitum suum transire per Sclavoniam … apud Scodram venimus; cum eo comes fraternitatem
confirmavit, et multa ei tribuit, ut exercitus secure emere et quarere necessaria posset
… Venimus Dirachium …
53 Fulcheri Carnotensis Historia Hierosolymitana, lib. I, cap. VIII, 172. It is interesting that
the Russian traveler Hegumen Daniil measured the distance between towns and islands. See
Puteshestvie igumena Daniila po Svyatoi zemle v nachale XII v. (1113-1115) [The travel of
Hegumen Daniil to the Holy Land in the beginning of the twelfth century (1113-1115)]
(Saint Petersburg: A. S. Norov, 1861), 5.
54 Guillaume de Tyr, Chronique, lib. II, cap. IV: Inter quas Bulgarorum gens inculta, a tractu
Septentrionali egressa, a Danubio usque ad Urbem regiam, et itemm ad eodem flumine ad
33
and distances, most often compared to other chroniclers. In his account he
stressed that the German towns of Metz, Worms and Würzburg were only three
days of travel away from each other, that it took five days to reach Neuburg at
the Danube from Passau, and one more day from Passau to Hungary.55 In his description
of the march across Greece he notes that Phillipopolis and Adrianopolis
were only four days of travel away from each other and that it took five days
to reach Constantinople from Adrianopolis.56 Odo of Deuil recognizes the
importance of this information and its significance for future pilgrims:
In this account, – m- tells the chronicler his readers, – the description of
virtuous deeds furnishes the reader a good example, the names of towns
indicate the route of the journey, the nature of the localities depicted
suggests the caution which should be observed in provisioning. For never
will there fail to be pilgrims to the Holy Sepulcher; and they will, I hope,
be the more cautious because of our experiences.57
It is possible that the chroniclers paid attention to geographic details for the sake
of future travellers. In the accounts one finds descriptions of cities and countries,
58 notes on climate, landscape and weather, which sometimes had a very
utilitarian purpose. The travellers were often indifferent to those aspects which
lay beyond their immediate interests and everyday problems. Thus, Peter
mare Adriaticum, universas occupaverat regions, ita ut confuses provinciamm nominibus et
terminis… totus iste tractus qui in longitudine habere dicitur iter dierum triginta in latitudine
vero decem amplius.
55 Odilo Dogilensis, De profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, lib. II, col. 1212: Igitur Metis,
Vormatia, Wirzeburgis, Ratispona, Patavia cvitates opulentissimae tribus dietis a se nvicem
distant. A postremo nominata quinque dietae sunt usque ad Novam urbem; ad hac, una
usque ad portas Hungariae.
56 Ibid.: Haec ad quintam dietam, primam sed modicum, ex hoc parte Graeciae civitatem Nit
ostendit. Nit. Histenit, Philippopolis, Andrianopolis civitates sunt, quatuor dietis ab
invicem dessidentes, et ab ultima usque Constantinopolim sunt quinque. Based on materials
available in the chronicles we can calculate that it took almost five months for Godfrey of
Bouillon to reach Constantinople from the Moselle (from August – December, 1096) and
for Louis VII from Metz (from June – October, 1147), and that Frederick Barbarossa spent
almost ten months from May 1189 until March 1190 travelling from Regensburg to the
Dardanelles.
57 Odo of Deuil. De profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, book II, 29, 31.
58 Thus, when telling about the journey across the Balkans, Peter Tudebode did not forget to
mention Adrianople, an important transit point on the crusaders’ route to Byzantium, as
well as other towns in Thrace and Macedonia such as Kastoria and Pelagonia, where
crusaders usually made stops: Petri Tudebode historia de Hierosolymitano itinere, 16:
Deinde vero descenderunt in vallem de Adrianopolim, illicqie applicuerunt expectantes
gentem suam, donec omnes aequaliter transfretatu fuissent. Tunc exeuntes, inde venerunt
… de villa in villam, de castelo in castellum, et de civitate in civitatem, quoadusque
pervenerunt in Castoriam … egressique de Castoria, intraverunt in Pelagoniam in qua erat
quoddam haereticorum castrum. The Anonymous also mentions these towns. See Gesta
Francorum, 8. Fulcher of Chartres mentions such towns of Thrace and Macedonia, as
Bitola, Christoupolis (modern Kavala), Thessaloniki, Iraklia, etc. See Fulcheri Carnotensis
historia Hierosolymitana, lib. I, cap. VIII, 174-5.
34
Tudebode started his account of an expedition across Bulgaria by mentioning
that the crusaders found there provisions for the army, a large amount of grain
and wine.59 Odo of Deuil and other chroniclers also had paid attention to these
details.60 At the same time, chroniclers mentioned names of towns and settlements,
described their locations and drew vivid pictures of changing sceneries:
lakes of Hungary, hills of Bulgaria, cliffs and mountains of Asia Minor, and at
the same time shared their impressions of what they had seen. The authors of the
chronicles of the First Crusade left only schematic descriptions of cities and
countries. For example, William of Tyre described Hungary as a country,
“swampy in many places” and “encircled by great rivers.”61 Concerning Dacia,
he noted that it is divided in two parts – coastal and Mediterranean, with the
capital in Stralitsa.62 Raymond d’Aguilers and William of Tyre left detailed
descriptions of Dalmatia, and the latter stated that its vast territory stretched
between Hungary and the Adriatic Sea.63
Undoubtedly, the chronicles contain generally very fragmentary and monotonous
information on the peoples of the Balkans. However, the chroniclers
dramatically changed their tone when they talked about Byzantium. For example,
Fulcher of Chartres devoted a eulogy to the Byzantine capital in his work:
Oh what a noble and beautiful city is Constantinople! How many
monasteries and palaces it contains, constructed with wonderful skill! … It
would be tedious to enumerate the wealth that is there of every kind, of
gold, of silver, or robes of many kinds, and of holy relics.”64
Beyond all doubts, it is Odo of Deuil who was most prone to geography among
all the chroniclers. His account starts with the description of Germany with its
rich towns on the River Rhine65 and Bavaria full of rivers, streams and
meadows,66 than he passes on to Hungary with its full-flowing River Danube.67
For Odo, Hungary was the country of lakes and streams. According to him, the
Drava divided it in two parts, with one of its parts bordering Bulgaria and a clear
river and with its other part surrounded by polluted waters.68 In his works one
59 Petri Tudebode historia de Hierosolymitano itinere, 16: Omnes igitur transfretaverunt et
applicuerunt n Bulgariae partibus. Illicque invenerunt nimiam abundaniam frumenti et vini
et alimenti corporis … .
60 See Odilo Dogilensis, De profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, lib. III, col. 1215.
61 William of Tyre. A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, book I, chapter 18, 97.
62 Ibid.; Raimundus de Aguilers, Historia Francorum, 235.
63 Gillaume de Tyr, Chronique, lib. I, cap. XVII: Est autem Dalmatia longe patens region inter
Hungariam et Adriaticum mare sita.
64 Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem, book I, part IX, chapter 1,
79.
65 Odilo Odolgensis, De profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, lib. II, col. 1211.
66 Ibid., col. 1213: … rivis tamen abundant, et fontibus et pratis.
67 Ibid.: … Caetera omnis aqua terrae hujus, lacus sunt te paludes te fontes … excepto Danubio
qui … multarum regionum … navigio invehit.
68 Ibid.: Hungaria ex hac parte aque lutosa cingitur, ex alia vero a Bogaria amne lucido separator.
In medio sui fluvium habet Droam …
35
finds no less vivid descriptions of Bulgaria with its forests and pastures, plains
covered with hills and irrigated by many clean streams. Odo of Deuil stressed
that the soil in Bulgaria was extremely productive and suitable for cultivating
grains and grapes, as well as other farming cultures.69 At the same time, he left a
number of realistic details about the territory which lies between Western Bulgaria
and Greece. In his words, it is a dives et fecunda planities, omnibus bonis
rebundantia which lies in a valley surrounded by mountains.70 On the whole, in
the words of Odo of Deuil, this land is an “exceedingly beautiful and rich territory
which stretches without interruption all the way to Constantinople.”71 Just
like the chroniclers of the First Crusade Odo of Deuil admired Constantinople
with its churches, the palace of Vlacherna, the Hagia Sofia and the relics and
called the city “the pride of the Greeks.”72 It is worth noting that the chroniclers
managed to combine such an exalted attitude towards the Greek capital with an
openly hostile attitude towards the Greeks.73
Geography was not the only matter in the center of the chroniclers’ attention
which focused on the climate, landscape and nature of different lands, as
well as cities and their sights. They also paid great attention to ethnography: the
crusaders’ chronicles are probably the first sources in Western medieval historiography
to give accounts of the living and customs of the Central European local
population. What mechanisms did the chroniclers use in order to construct
the image of the Other in their descriptions of the Balkan peoples? The accounts
reveal a usually pragmatic attitude of the crusaders towards other peoples and
are based on the contraposition of two notions – “civilization” and “barbarism”.
The culture of the crusaders is presented as the only possible one, being confronted
by the “non-culture” of the Balkan peoples with their brutish customs,
barbarous language and unfamiliarity with achievements of civilization. However,
the Franks as well as the chroniclers who described their crusades completely
ignored the fact that the local population of Bulgaria, Hungary and Dalmatia
had been converted to Christianity before the First Crusade. For instance,
69 Ibid.: Bolgaria … pratum est nemorosum, vel nemus pabulosum. Bonis abundat quae sonte
nascuntur. Non plana jacet, nec montibus asperatur, sed inter colles vineis et segetibus habiles,
rivis et fontibus lucidissimus irrigatur …
70 Ibid.: Nit, Histernit, Philippopolis, Adrianopolis civitates sunt … Quae interjacent plana
sunt, villis et castellis, omnibusque bonis rebundantia. Dextra laevaque montes sunt, tam
prope ut viedantur, et tam longa ut lata, dives et jucunda planities includatur …
71 Odo of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, book III, 41.
72 Odilo Odolgensis, De profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, lib. V, col. 1221: Constantinopolus
Graecorum gloria, fama dive et rebus itior, ad formam vel navalis i trigonum
ducitur. In interiori angulo Sanctam Sophiam habet, et palatium Constantini, in quo capella
est quae sacrosanctis reliquiis honoratur … Ibi palatium, quod dicitur Blachern fundatur
quidemin humili … Exterior pulchritudo fere incomparabilis est, interior vero quidem in illa
dixero superabit.
73 See Alexander A. Vasilyev, Vizantiya i Krestonostsy: Epoha Komninov (1081-1185) i
Angelov (1185-1204) [Byzantium and the crusaders: the epoch of Komnenos (1081-1185)
and Angelos (1185-1204)] (Petrograd: Academia, 1923).
36
Raymond d’Aguilers talked about the “robbers’ customs” of the Dalmatians by
which he meant their unwillingness to trade with the crusaders and provide them
with supplies, as well as their general hostile attitude towards the crusaders:
“The barbarous and ignorant natives would neither trade with us nor provide
guides, but fled from their villages and strongholds and, as though they had been
badly injured by our infirm strugglers, slew these poor souls – the debilitated,
the old women and men, the poor and the sick – as if they were slaughtering
cattle.”74 According to Raymond d’Aguilers, the knights found it difficult to
chase unarmed bandits (latrones inermes) who knew the landscape well and
found hide in high mountains and dense forests (per abrupta montium et condensa
sylvarum). Nevertheless, the pious Raymond of Toulouse managed to
catch six “barbarians” and acted in a fashion in which a true “civilized” man
ought to interact with “barbarians”: some lost their eyes and some their arms
and legs.75
William of Tyre perceives the Dalmatians as uniquely barbarous. According
to him, this land is inhabited by a ferocious people who procure livelihood
by means of puffing and killing. Special environmental conditions with
abundance of mountains, forests, rivers and pastures prevent the local population
from farming which contributes to their barbarous mode of living.76 As a matter
of fact, they speak a barbarous language, namely a Slavic dialect. At the same
time, the population of Dalmatia ranges on the scale of barbarity: thus, those
who inhabit the sea shore differ from the others in language and customs as they
speak Latin.77 For William of Tyre the knowledge of Latin is a certain criterion
which allows distinguishing “barbarians” from more “civilized” peoples.
While describing the Balkan peoples as crude barbarians, William of Tyre
makes an exception for Coloman, the king of Hungary, because he benevolently
received the crusaders. The chronicler explains the human attitude of the Hungarian
king towards the crusaders by his high moral qualities and refers to Coloman
as to vir christianissimus.78
74 Raymond d’Aguilers, Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem, 16.
75 Raimundus d’Aguilers, Historia Francorum, 235: … ex eis usque ad sex capuit. Quumque
propter hoc Sclavi vehementius imminerunt, et comes sequi exercitum compelletur, erui
oculoss aliorum, et aliorum pedes abscidi jussit, et nasum et manus aliorum praecepit …
76 Guillaume de Tyr, Chronique, lib. II, cap. XIV: Dalmatia … montibus et sylvis, magnis
quoque fluminibus pasuis etiam longe lateque diffusas occupata penitus …
77 Ibid.: Dalmatia … populo ferocissimo, rapinis et caedibus assueto inhabitata; nontibus et
sylvis, magnis quoque fluminibus, pascuis etiam longe lateque diffusas occupata penitus,
ita ut raram habeat agrorum culturam; exceptis paucis, qui in oris maritimis habitant, qui,
ab aliis et moribus et lingua dissimiles, latinum habent idioma; reliquis sclavonico sermone
utentibus et habitu barbarorum.
78 Ibid., lib. I, cap. XVII: … vir christianissimus, rex Calemannus qui, cognito praedicti Galteri
adventu, et de ejus edoctus proposito, piam illius commendans intentionem, cum benigne
admisit, et, transito suis expeditionibus per Hungariam ioncesso, publicorum commerciorum
gratiam non negavit.
37
If the descriptions of the Balkan peoples are based on the contraposition
of the notions of “barbarism” and “civilization”, the narratives about the Greeks,
a highly civilized people in the crusaders’ eyes, are hardly different from the accounts
about the “barbarians”.79 The chroniclers’ attitude towards the local
population of Greece is also first of all utilitarian. Odo of Deuil blames the
Greeks for their reluctance to trade with the knights and to procure them with
provisions as well as their tendency to raise prices on products. In his opinion,
the Greeks robbed crusaders who were impoverished by such a long journey
(pauperes in tam longe itinere) by taking all their gold, silver, armours and garments.
80 Odo of Deuil was even more shocked by the fact that some Greek cities
did not let the crusaders in and preferred to send baskets with provisions
down the city walls.81 Odo characterizes the behaviour of the Greeks and their
attitude towards the crusaders as guileful (Graecorum fraudes)82 and considers it
important to recount the misfortunes of the crusaders (nostra infortunia) so that
the future generations would know about the cunning dodges of the Greeks
(Grecorum dolorosa facinore).83
The main criteria for the distinction between the Greeks and Latins are
the language and customs (lingua et mores) – the same factors as used in descriptions
of the “barbarians”, the local population of Dalmatia and Bulgaria.
Odo of Deuil recounts a dramatic experience of German knights in Greece.
Once drinking at a tavern in the outskirts of Phillipopolis, they were approached
by a buffoon (joculator) who did not speak their language (qui licet eorum linguam
ingnoraret). After a number of drinks (post longam ingurgitationem), he
took a trained snake from his bosom, put it on a glass and began to show tricks
in front of the knights, whose language and customs he did not know (inter eos
quorum mores et linguam nesciebat).84 The intercultural “dialogue” ended tragically:
the Germans, taking the tricks for witchcraft, attacked the Greek and tore
79 This is true for the attitude of the crusaders to the Greeks in general and not to the Byzantine
emperor. The Anonymous and Raoul of Caen are famous for their negative characteristics
of the Byzantine emperor. See Radulfus Cadomensis, Gesta Tancredi in expeditione
Hierosolymitana, 609-613; Gesta Francorum, 30-40.
80 Odilo Dogilensis, De profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, lib. VI, col. 1234: … de navibus
escas ad suum libitum charas vendebant, et pauperes in tam longo itinere auro et argento,
armis et vesibus spoliabant …
81 Ibid., lib. III, col. 1215: Graeci autem suas civitates et castellan observabant, et per murum
funibus venalia submittebant, sed nostrae multitudini non sufficiebat victus tali mora ministramus.
82 Ibid., lib. VI, col. 1234.
83 Ibid., col. 1232: … et ut sciant posteri Graecorum dolosa facinora, nostra infortunia prosequemur.
84 Ibid., lib. III, col. 1216: Ubi cum tabernis insedissent Alemanni, malo auspicio adfuit
joculator, qui licet eorum linguam ignoraret, tamen sedit, symbolum dedit, bibit, et post
longam ingurgitationem, serpentem quem praecantatum in sinu habebat extrahit, et scypho
terrae imposito superponit, et sic inter eos quorum mores et linguam nesciebant, caeteris
lusibus, joculatoriis sese frangit.
38
him into pieces. Blaming the rest for the deeds of one, they announced that the
Byzantines had attempted to poison them.85 A growing unrest spread from the
suburbs to the city and the governor of Philipopolis hurried to the scene in order
to solve the conflict, unarmed and accompanied only by his retinue. Flushed
with wine and rage, the Germans attacked them with anger, thinking that they
wanted to revenge the murder of a member of their community. The Greeks
hastily retreated and later came back armed with bowls and cleared the outskirts
of the drunken knights.86
In one way or another, the crusaders inevitably came in contact with the
local population and had encounters with different peoples, representatives of
other cultures and beliefs which remained in their memory, as the crusaders’
chronicles show. In general, we can say that the crusades expanded the intellectual
horizon of medieval people with constant migrations and movements in
space which changed the system of medieval ideas. Undoubtedly, the stable medieval
world received even greater mobility with the discovery of a sea route to
the Holy Land.
Therefore, let us turn to the accounts of the sea journeys. An approximate
sea route was known already to the first pilgrims to Palestine. Before 1000,
pilgrims usually used to embark on a journey to the Holy Land from South
Italian sea ports (Salerno, Taranto, Amalfi and Bari). In 1100-1200, pilgrims left
for Palestine from the ports of Messina, Marseille, Brindisi and Barletta and
crossed the Dardanelles on Byzantine vessels. Another route led through the
channel of Otranto which connects the Ionic and Adriatic seas. The crusaders
crossed the channel on vessels hired from Norman Sicilians and preceded to
Egypt and Syria afterwards.87 In 1241, King Louis IX built the port of Aigues-
Mort which became the main transit point for the sea voyages to the Holy Land.
From the port of Aigues-Mort the crusaders crossed the Mediterranean Sea. In
the fourteenth century, Pseudo-Brocardus tried to summarize the experience of
medieval travellers and wrote that pilgrims most often embarked on the sea
journeys from the ports of Aigues-Mort, Nice and Marseille. With time, the sea
route to Palestine prevailed due to the crusades. It is no coincidence that me-
85 Ibid.: Scelusque unius omnibus imputant, dicentes quod eos occidere Graeci veneno volebant
…
86 Ibid.: Turbatur urbs tumultu suburbii, et dux cum turba suorum ut sedaret turbam foris
inermis sed festinus egreditur. Turbatus autem a vino et furore oculus Alemannorum non
arma videt, sed cursum. Unde causa pacis accurrentibus occurrunt irati, putantes a se homicidii
vindictam exigi. Illi autem fugientes in urbem recepti sunt …
87 See Michel Balard, “Les Transports des Occidentaux vers les Colonies du Levant au
Moyen âge,” in Maritime Aspects of Navigation, ed. Klaus Friedland, Quellen und
Darstellungen zur Hansischen Geschichte, Neue Folge XXXIV (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag,
1991), 4-5; Jean Richard, “Le Transport d’Outremer des Croisés et des Pèlerins (XII-XV
siècles),” in Orient et Occident au Moyen Âge: Contacts et Relations (XII-XV siècles) (London:
Variorum Reprints, 1976), 27-30.
39
dieval sources referred to the crusades as to passagium ultramarinum or
passagium magnum, and underlined the maritime character of these journeys.
Only a few were brave enough to overcome the fears of unexpected
storms, the unreliability of transportation means and other dangers awaiting the
pilgrims. In fact, sea travels were mated with exceptional risks. Moreover, the
sea expeditions were extremely long and their duration depended on many different
factors such as climate, necessary stops in major ports, and seasons (particularly
in regard to winter breaks). William of Rubruck wrote to Saint Louis
(1226-1270), “There is no need to subject yourself to dangers of the sea and rely
on the mercy of sailors,”88 The perception of the marine elements was symbolical,
which divided them into good and bad elements. This perception was common
not only among the sailors and coastal population who encountered the sea
on a regular basis, but also among those who did not have any experience in
dealing with the sea. Thus, a maritime historian, Michel Mollat du Jourdain,
writes that for medieval people the sea was the source of life as well as the vale
of death.89 Sea travels were associated with a number of superstitious fears.
These journeys seemed to be so dangerous that they were sometimes perceived
as penitential pilgrimages (causa poenitentiae), as they were often waged by
people burdened by sins. Before setting their foot on board, the pilgrims spent
long hours praying, confessed their sins and gave religious oaths. Jean de Joinville,
the biographer of Saint Louis, who took part in the Seventh Crusade, wrote
that only the bravest ones could subject themselves to the dangers of the sea if
not only for deadly sins, because you never knew whether you would find yourself
on the bottom of the sea the next morning.90
Pseudo-Brocardus told his readers that the French and Germans had the
biggest difficulties during sea journeys and enumerated in detail all the difficulties
posed by maritime expeditions: sea waves and storms which made people
feel more dead than alive; rapid weather changes; stench of the sea; tasteless and
coarse food, sometimes even smelly and spoiled; congestion and other inconveniences
which provoked various diseases. The presence of horses, who also
suffered from the sea stench and weather changes, aggravated the bad smell on
ships.91 Yet the main trouble, according to Pseudo-Brocardus, were incredible
88 Michel Mollat du Jourdain, “Problèmes navals de l’histoire de croisade,” Cahiers de
Civilisation Mediévale 10/3-4 (1967): 360.
89 Idem, Europa und das Meer (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1993), 240.
90 Jean de Sire de Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, ed. Nancy De Wailly (Paris: Didot,
1874), 127: “…cil est bien fol hardis, qui se ose mettre en tel peril atout autrui chedel ou en
pechée mortel; car l’on se dort le soir là où on ne sait se l’on se traouvera ou font de la mer
au matin …” In the Middle Ages the fear to die in the sea was aggravated by a widespread
belief that the drowned will not be able to come to the Last Judgment, as their bodies
cannot be found in the depths of the sea. See Mollat du Jourdain, Europa und das Meer,
244.
91 [Pseudo-]Brocardus, Directorium ad passagium faciendum, vol. 2, 411-412: Habet enim
difficultatem quantum ad (omnes) homines et specialiter quantum ad Gallicos et
Teotonicos, qui in mari non fuerint assueti; ad motum enim maris et agitaciones varias et
40
and unpredictable storms which caused body weaknesses and made pilgrims either
prolong their journeys or return home halfway.92 All the sea travellers
dreamt only about a safe journey and if they managed to reach their destination
in good health, they perceived it as a miracle. Thus, the Anglo-Saxon pilgrim
Saewulf, who did not have to experience a shipwreck during the journey, wrote:
“I beg you my dearest friends to applaud with your hands high up; exclaim with
me your joy to God because he had mercy on me during my journey. Blessed be
his name, now and forever!”93 Jacques de Vitry, another famous pilgrim of the
thirteenth century, participant of the Fifth Crusade, also reached the Holy Land
by ship. Before setting his foot on ship he wrote to his friends: “Alive and safe, I
have set my foot on ship together with my companions and luggage. As to you,
constantly pray for me and my friends so that God brings us to the port of
Acre.”94
What was the everyday life of pilgrims on sea journeys like, which preparations
had they to complete before leaving? The future passenger had to reserve
a place on a ship in advance, sign an agreement with a ship-owner in Marseille,
Bari or other transit points95 and then provide himself with the provision necessary
for the journey.96 Places on the ship differed in comfort depending on the
status and wealth of journeymen. A so-called “paradise” and two topsides, so
called “castelli”, located usually at the stern and bow of a ship, were the most
prestigious types of cabins available. The rest of the cabins, between the stern
and mast, were reserved for less demanding passengers. The luggage was stored
in the underwater part of a ship (cumbae pereginorum). Usually, pilgrims took
all necessary food on board starting with flour and finishing with malmsey, but
they also sometimes used galley services.97
procellas nimium affliguntur et efficiuntur sepius sine sensu, ita quod frequenter judicaro
possunt mortui plusquam vivi. Preter hoc subita mutacio aeris, fetor maris, cibaria insipid
atque grossa, aque fetide et corrupte, pressura hominum, stricture loci, suricies leci et
cetera (talia multa nimis) …
92 Ibid., 412: Sunt eciam aliquando tempestates incredibiles, insperate, ex quibus sequitur
debilitas corporum, defeccio virium, depericio virtutum, fractio animorum, propter que ab
impedimento tam sancta vie proposito plurimi retardantur vel a jam incepto foristam revocantur.
93 Peregrinationes Tres: Saewulf, John of Würzburg, Theodoricus, ed. R.B.C Huygens, 61-62:
Modo vos obsecro, omnes amici mei dilectissimi, expansis in altum manibus plaudite, iubilate
Deo una mecum in voce exultationis, quia fecit mecum in omni itinere meo misericordiam
qui potens est : sit nomen eius benedictum ex hoc nunc et usque in saecula …
94 Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, ed. R.B.C. Huygens (Leiden: Brill, 1960), 78: Navem autem
sanus et incolumis cum sociis meis et rebus meis salvis ingressus sum ; vos autem instanter
orate pro me et pro meis, ut deus perducat nos ad portum Acconensis civitatis.
95 Details of interactions between passengers and boat owners in Marseille can be found in
Louis Blancard, Documents inédits sur le commerce de Marseille au Moyen âge (Paris:
Barlatier-Feissat, Père et fils, 1884).
96 Balard, “Les Transports des Occidentaux ;” Richard, “Le Transport d’Outremer.”
97 Richard, “Le Transport d’Outremer.”
41
In order to understand how pilgrims traveled across the sea one has to address
witness accounts. Fortunately for historians, we have at our disposal the
letters of Bishop Jacques de Vitry sharing his experience as a journeyman. In
1217, he arrived in the port of Genoa, famous for its well-built ships of high
quality. These vessels were able to sustain even winter and allowed passengers
to proceed in their travels without seasonal breaks and make use of conservation
qualities of the winter months in regard to their provisions. Jacques de Vitry
rented a ship in Genoa for four thousand livres. With this money the bishop purchased
five places for himself and his companions:
1/4 of the topside (castellum) where I will eat, study my books and retreat
in the afternoon, in case of no storm; one more room, where I will sleep at
night together with my companions, another room where I will store my
clothes and weekly food supplies, and one more room for servants, who
will cook for me. I have also rented another space where I will place my
horses. In the lower part of the ship I will keep wine, meat and other kinds
of food, which will be enough for me for three months.98
It is interesting, that apart from cabins for himself and his travel companions and
a room for provisions and belongings, Jacques de Vitry also rented a room for
his horses. As a general rule, medieval ships provided rooms for horses, as the
travellers usually took them on the journeys hoping to use them as means of
transportation later. The most common type of sea transport, the “huissier”, had
a special room with an opening door where the horses were placed. Jean de Joinville
recounted the procedure of placing horses on a ship in his memoirs. The
first day on board, all the horses were placed inside the “hussier” under closed
doors.99 After the horses were loaded, the ship could start the journey. This moment
was also captured in the works of Joinville:
…our master mariner called to his sailors, who were in the prow of the
ship, and said: ‘Is your work made ready?’ And they answered: ‘Aye, Sir;
let the clerks and the priests come forward.’ As they had come, he cried to
them, ‘Sing, in the name of God!’ And they sang with one voice Veni
Creator Spiritus. And he cried to his mariners, ‘Set sail, in the name of
God!’ And so they did. And in a little while the wind took the sail, and
carried us away from sight of land, so that we saw naught but sky and
98 Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, 77-78: Quinque loca michi et meis comparavi, scilicet quartam
partem castelli superioris, in qua manducarem et in libris meis studerem et de die, nisi cum
tempestas esset in mari, manarem; conduxi unam cameram, in qua cum sociis meis de nocte
dormirem, conduxi aliam cameram, in qua vestimenta mea reponerem et victualia michi per
septimanam necessaria collocarem, conduxi aliam cameram, in qua servi mei iacerent et
cibum michi prepararent, conduxi locum alium, in quo equi mei, quod trasire feci, reponerentur.
In vero navis vinum meum et biscoctum et carnes et alia fere ad tres menses victui
meo sufficientia collocari feci …
99 Jean de Sire de Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, 71: Le jour que nous entrâmes dans nos
vaisseaux, l’on fit ouvrir la porte de vaisseau, et l’on mit dedans tous nos chevaux que nous
devions mener outre-mer, et puis l’on reforma la porte et on la lucha bien …
42
water; and each day the wind carried us farther away from the country
where we had been born.100
Historians wanting to know details of the everyday life of sea travellers will find
themselves limited by scarce source information. The sources contain only little
material about their sea travels, hardships which awaited them and what they
had to overcome on the journeys. Albert of Aachen mentions in his work a sea
expedition organized by the brother of Magnus, king of Norway, who left his
country with an army of ten thousand men on 40 ships and spent two years
furrowing the sea.101 But we do not know any details of this two-year wandering
across the sea and the difficulties they had to face during the journey. The
chronicler gives only one particular piece of information. According to him,
Magnus made a stop at Ascalon expecting the local population to enter with him
in a battle. When they exhibited no desire to fight the Scandinavian ruler, the
bellicose Magnus was forced to proceed to Jaffa and from there to Jerusalem.102
Despite the general lack of information, sometimes it is possible to reconstruct
certain critical moments of dangerous sea journeys on the basis of the pilgrims’
notes. Let us turn again to the letters of Jacques de Vitry. As mentioned
before, in 1217 he boarded a ship in Genoa and left for Syria. Very soon the
travellers had to confront a very serious, terrifying danger103: two ships collided
and the vessel of Jacques de Vitry and his companions nearly crashed on the
cliffs. The travellers experienced a terrible shock: “A great cry arose,” the
bishop wrote in one of his letters, “and in both ships people were heard weeping
with tears and confessing their sins.”104 Pilgrims took off their clothes, attached
all valuable possessions, gold and silver, to their bodies and set off to swim in
the direction of a vessel which they considered stronger.105 Fortunately, all went
well, and the ship of the bishop and his fellow travellers in collision with
another vessel strongly lurched leftward and managed to pass around the rock on
the right. The second ship which seemed to be threatened with an imminent risk
of crashing on neighbouring cliffs escaped unharmed “through God’s grace”.106
100 Jean de Joinville, The History of St. Louis, tr. and ed. Natalis de Willy (London: Oxford
University Press, 1938), bok II, chapter XXVIII, 38.
101 Albertus Aquensis, Historia Hierosolymitana, 675: Interea frater Regis de Norwegiae,
Magnus nomine, in plurimo apparatus, in multa armature, in manu robusta, in buzis
sexaginta, in decem milibus virorum pugnatorum, per biennium in circuitu spaciosi maris
a regno suo enavigans.
102 Ibid.
103 Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, 80: … magnum et valde metuendum periculum.
104 Ibid., 81: Tunc clamor magnus factus est omnium, et lacrime plorantium et pecata sua
confitentium in utraque navi audiebantur.
105 Ibid.: Ex una autem navi mutuo persiliebant in aliam, secundum quod unus nave, alteram
credeat fortiorem et alius aliam; alii vestimenta sua depontebat et quod habebant in auro
et argento, si forte natando evadere possent, sibi alligabant.
106 Ibid., 80: Ex violentia autem collisionis navis nostra, ad sinistram partem aliquantulum
obliquata, ad exteram partem saxum reliquit, navis vero reliqua cum iam vicine scopulo
43
Encounters with danger left medieval travellers in strong commotion of
spirits: they repented their sins and prayed to God to save them. Having endured
the calamities, the ship of Jacques de Vitry made a necessary stop at one of the
Greek islands. All pilgrims lacking provisions were disembarked; the pious
bishop offered a prayer for their well-being and for escaping mortal danger, and
the ship set off.107 However, the adventures of Jacques de Vitry did not end
there; another ordeal was to take place. God sent them the strongest storm:108 in
the bishop’s words, the waves were so strong that the fore part of the ship “was
one moment lifted up towards the stars, another sinking into the depths.”109 The
storm continued for two days and two nights and many could not withstand the
windflaws, while others could not drink or eat out of fear;110 no one dared to
kindle lights on the ship.111 Pilgrims began considering means of procuring
drinking water if the situation was not likely to change. In order to save the water
supplies, the travellers spread canvases under the rain, which saturated them
with water and used them to quench thirst.112 The situation made a painful
impression on the travellers; many of those who “mired in sins”, according to
Jacques de Vitry, came to him for confession in tears.113 Merchants and nobles
came to the bishop to take the cross from his hands and cried out to God to send
them fair weather and wind.114 Indeed, several days later the sea calmed down,
the travellers reached Sicily, then sailed to Crete and finally arrived at Acre.
The ships often suffered a wreck in the Mediterranean because of frequent
weather changes. Some storms etched in the memory of travelers. Storm
accounts can be found in the travel notes of Saewulf. His pilgrimage followed
the route from the town of Monopoli near Bari to Jaffa and then to Jerusalem
and is described in details in his account. Saewulf wrote that after the ship had
left the port of Monopoli on July 13, 1102, the disaster time (hora aegyptiaca)
confringenda et submergenda foret, submissis veilis et projectis anchoris substitit et quasi
miraculose per gratiam Dei evasit illesa.
107 Ibid., 81: Dominus autem navis nostre volebat omnes paupers de navi nostril eicere et in
insula reliquere eo, quod victualium sufficientiam non habebat, ego vero valde supplicabam
et quod adhuc misericordiam dei expectaret et paupers mortis periculo non
exponeret.
108 Ibid.: dominus immisit nobis subto tempestatem validam.
109 Ibid.: Prora autem navis nostre nunc attollebatur ad sidera, nunc in abissum mergebatur.
110 Ibid., 82: Hec autem tempestas per duos dies et duas noctes continue duravit ita, quod quidam
ex nostris, dum ventorum impetum vix possent sustinere, quidam autem per timore
mortis non manducabant nec bibebant.
111 Ibid.: … nullus enim in navi nostra audebatur ignem accendere.
112 Ibid.: Quoniam vero timebamus ne aqua nobis deficeret, linteamina nostra ad pluviam extendebamus
ita, quod duplex commodum reportabamus: dum linteamina lostra ablueremus
et aquam ablutionis biberemus.
113 Ibid.: … multi enim cum lacrimis ad confessionem venerunt, ui per multis annos in peccatis
permanserant.
114 Ibid.: Meractores autem et potentes signum cruces de manu mea receperunt, quibus ad
Dominum clamantibus immisit nobis dominus aeris serenitatem et venti commodum …
44
began. No sooner than they had left the coast, the ship suffered a wreck on the
third mile and was drifted to the coast of Brindisi.115 After embarking from
Brindisi, the travellers soon again had to live out a day of misfortunes (dies aegyptiaca),
when a storm suddenly attacked the ship and only thanks to the help
of divine providence they reached one of the Greek islands.116 They visited a
number of Greek islands, including Patmos and Rhodes, and arrived at Cyprus.
When they were leaving the port of Cyprus, a strong storm began and for a week
they could not leave the harbour; the contrary wind carried their ship back to
Cyprus and for seven days and nights they were in such danger that they almost
lost all hope.117 The whole week the pilgrims prayed and called upon God’s
mercy, and naturally only because of that they survived in the end. Early in the
morning, they experienced immense happiness when seeing the port of Jaffa after
all despair they had to come through.118 When the ship of Saewulf was already
close to the shore, he received a sign from heaven. A voice instructed him
to come out to the shore that night so that a storm would not take place.119 Giving
heed to the voice of God, Saewulf rented a small boat and hurried to step
ashore. When the travellers were stepping ashore, waves spread on the sea surface,
grew higher and turned in a strong storm.120 Luckily by that time they already
had managed to reach the shore safely. They spent the night in the town
and recuperated. When they woke up, they heard sounds coming from the sea
and people’s outcries. The travelers went to look at the sea and saw waves
“higher than mountains” and a lamentable picture of numerous bodies of
drowned men and women, lying on the shore, while the surface of the sea was
covered with ship wreckages.121 Saewulf writes that “one could not hear anything
except for the sea roaring and ships cracking. These sounds shouted down
even the outcries of the people and clamors of the crowd.”122 Bigger vessels
managed to stand out with the help of anchors and ropes, but they were con-
115 Peregrinationes Tres, 59: III Idus Iulii, hora egyptiaca sicut nobis postmodum evenit: nisi
divina nos defenderet clementia, omnes summersi essemus.
116 Ibid., 59: Postea vero invimus Brandic ibique iterum die aegyptiaca.
117 Ibid., 61: … sed septem noctes tanta tempestate et periculo fuimus devicti, quod fere omni
spe evadendi private essemus.
118 Ibid.: Mane quoque surgente sole apparuit etiam litus de potu Ioppen coram oculis nostris,
et quia tanta turbatio periculi nos in desolatione contristavit, gaudium improvisum et desperatum
laetitiam in nobis centuplicavit.
119 Ibid., 62: Nam eadem die qua appulimus quidam dixit michi, ut credo defice: ‘Domine, hodie
litus ascende, ne forte, hac nocte vel diluculo tempestate supervenientes, cras
ascendere non possis.
120 Ibid.: Me autem ascendente mare turbabur, crevit commotion et facta est tempestatas valida.
121 Ibid., 61: Dum enim illuc pervenimus, vidimus tempestatem altitudinem superexcellere
montium, corpora quidem innumerabilia hominum utriusque sexus summersorum in litore
miserrime iacentia aspeximus.
122 Ibid.: Sed qui preter rugitum maris et fragorem navium quicquam audire potuit? Clamorem
etenim populi sonitumque omnium turbare excessit.
45
stantly jolted by waves. But before too long, anchors broke, ropes ruptured and
the ships were lifted by the power of the waves, drifted ashore or on the rocks,
where hitting one another they flew into pieces and their remains were carried
away by the storm.123 Saewulf watched people stricken by fear drowning in the
sea and people trying to grasp ship masts and being killed by their blows. It was
the day, when thirty ships sunk and thousand people died: “No one has ever seen
a larger disaster in one day. Who would be so cruel and have a heart of flint as
not to cry seeing all this?”124
In 1100–1200, medieval people extensively mastered their sea travel skills
and learned how to avoid obstacles and disasters. The sea route to the Holy Land
became popular not only with powerful European sovereigns, including Richard
the Lionheart, Sigurd, and Frederick Barbarossa, who were in possession of
personal fleets, but also with less important pilgrims who required services of
local ports. The Templars played an important role in the sea communication:
hospitia owned by the order awaited pilgrims in Bari, Brindisi, Marseille and
other towns to accommodate the travelers before embarking on a passagium.125
From these towns the Templars took pilgrim and military groups as well as
single travellers to the shores of Syria and Egypt. In the thirteenth century,
pilgrims still preferred the sea route to the Holy Land: Burchard, William of
Tripoli, Wilbrand of Oldenburg and other pilgrims who left accounts of their
journeys, reached the shores of Palestine on ships.126 Eventually attained good
orientation in the ocean allowed shortening the duration of the journey and by
the end of the eleventh century it took only from 15 up to 25 days to sail from
Marseille or Brindisi to Acre.127 On April 10, 1189, Richard the Lionheart left
Messina and only on June 8 arrived at Acre. In 1248 it took 23 days for King
Louis IX to reach Limassol from Aigues-Mort.128 Sea travels became more and
more popular with time and the chroniclers had the full right to call the Mediterranean
Sea Mare nostrum.129 Evidently the acquired empirical experience helped
123 Ibid., 63: Non diu illud aspeximus antequam violentis undarum vel fluctuum anchorae
lapserunt, funes vero rumpebantur, naves autem, severitate undarum laxatae, omni spe
evadendi erepta nunc in altum elevatae, nunc in ima detrusae paulatim de profunditate
tandem in arenam vel in scopulos proiciebantur; ibi vero de latere in latus miserrime collidebantur,
ibi minutatim a tempestate dilacerabantur.
124 Ibid.: …qualis oculus intuentium tam durus atque lapideus a fletu se posset retinere?
125 Balard, “Les Transports des Occidentaux,” 27-39.
126 Peregrinatores medii aevi quatuor: Burchardus de Monte Sion, Ricoldus de Monte Crucis,
Odiricus de Foei Julii, Wildebrandus de Oldenburg, ed. Johann Christian Moritz Laurent
(Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1864). These accounts have almost no information about the journey,
but instead contain detailed descriptions of shrines.
127 Charles-Emmanuel Dufourcq, “L’impossibIe voyage en Terre Sainte” in Les Croisades
(Paris: Le Seuil, 1988), 23.
128 Mollat du Jourdain, Europa und das Meer, 351.
129 Fulcheri Carnotensis Historia Hierosolymitana, lib. III, cap. LIX, 812.
46
people to overcome their superstitious fears connected with the sea.130 And yet
…
Let us turn to the work of Abbot Rothelin who described the history of the
Holy Land from 1229 until 1261.131 The chapter “On Dangers and Storms at
Sea” tells in detail about the dangers of sea travel. It tells that the most dangerous
menace awaiting sea travellers are the sirens. These chimerical creatures lull
the sailors to sleep, attack the ships, tear them to pieces and drag them down under
water. The work of Abbot Rothelin instructs sea travellers to stop up their
ears, arm themselves and shoot at them with handbows and crossbows while
they are still far away. When they come nearer and climb aboard the ship, the
sailors should strike them with knives and axes, with swords and other weapons.
132 Abbot Rothelin warns sea travellers about another peril of the sea, that is,
Charybdis:
No boat or any other earthly thing can go near it without being instantly
pulled to it, swallowed up and overwhelmed, sucked down into the abyss
with the waters of the night.133
But these are not all the dangers of the sea awaiting sailors. There is another
danger: the great high rocks which appear above the water and in some places
there are many which do not appear at all. When strong winds drive a ship towards
them, it is in great danger of being shattered and sunk. Sometimes it happens
that the prow of the leading ship dashes against a hidden rock and the others
hold back and sail across the sea. That is how ships are sometimes lost.134
However this is still not the entire list of sea hazards. There are great
mountains and adamant rocks in the sea; some of them can be seen and some of
them lie deep underneath the water. They magnetize ships by holding to the
bolts and iron nails in the vessels and make the ships immovable. Rothelin
repeats his refrain, “Ships are lost this way.”135 The author admonishes sailors to
be wise and cautious in contact with these dangers. As one sees, the everyday
experience of sea travel did not manage to disperse numerous myths and superstitions
associated with the sea.
* * *
The everyday life of travellers is truly an inexhaustible subject. In this essay,
I have presented only a selection of details regarding material difficulties
130 See on fears and superstitions related to the sea: Mollat du Jourdain, Europa und das Meer,
240-50.
131 Janet Shirley, Crusaders’ Syria in Thirteenth Century. The Rothelin Continuation of the
Historia of William of Tyre with part of the Eccles or Acre text (Aldershot: Ashgate
Publishing Company, 1999).
132 Ibid., 70.
133 Ibid.
134 Ibid.
135 Ibid., 70-1.
47
mated with travels to the Holy Land. I attempted to study methods which medieval
travellers used in exploring the space, the state of off-shore communications,
and the means of transportation. The research leads to the conclusion that
the space was perceived by pilgrims and crusaders not only as a given geographical
one, but also as a spiritual matter. Medieval people received their encounters
with unknown space with fear and flurry: mountains, forests, strong
currents and especially the sea, the most unpredictable matter among them, were
perceived by travlelers with superstitious fears.
Nevertheless, expeditions to the Holy Land in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries gave impetus to the exploration of space and facilitated the accumulation
of knowledge of big distances, which undoubtedly were of great value to
new generations of travellers. Sea and overland expeditions to Christian shrines
had largely extended the geographic horizons of medieval society and their
knowledge about the world. The Fifth Crusade was to become a new impetus to
the development of travelling. Europeans launched expeditions to Central Asia
and Far East in search of the kingdom of John the Presbyter and encountered yet
new countries and peoples.136 These new contacts significantly broadened the
borders of the insular medieval world. These were not anymore pious or practical
pursuits which defined these travels. Travellers began to be motivated by the
strife for knowledge, that is, curiositas, as it was known among medieval
people. Apparently this shift signalized the birth of a true phenomenon of
travelling. Jacques de Vitry reflected on this change in his Historia
Hierosolymitana, when he wrote that some people travelled to the Holy Land
not out of piety or devotion, but entirely out of mere curiosity and love for
novelty, wanting nothing more than to see unknown lands and learn more about
all the “absurd and fulsome stories they had heard about the East.”137 To
conclude, it seems that without the everyday experience of travelling acquired
by pilgrims in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the medieval world would
have come to the understanding of travelling and its objectives much later.
136 See Leonardo Olschki, Marco Polo’s Asia; An Introduction To His ‘Description of the
World’ Called ‘Il Milione’ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960); Jean Richard,
“L’Extrême Orient Légendaire au Moyen âge: Roi David et Prêtre Jean,” Annales
d’Ethiophie 2 (1957): 225-244.
137 Jacques de Vitry, “Historia Hierosolymitana,” in Gesta Dei per Francos, ed. J. Bongars
(Hannover, 1611), cap. LXXXII, 1097.
MEDIEVAL TRAVEL IN RUSSIAN RESEARCH
MEDIUM AEVUM QUOTIDIANUM
SONDERBAND XXVII
MEDIEVAL TRAVEL
IN RUSSIAN RESEARCH
Edited by
Svetlana I. Luchitskaya and Gerhard Jaritz
Translated from Russian by
Irina Savinetskaya
Krems 2011
GEDRUCKT MIT UNTERSTÜTZUNG
DER ABTEILUNG KULTUR UND WISSENSCHAFT DES AMTES DER
NIEDERÖSTERREICHISCHEN LANDESREGIERUNG
Alle Rechte vorbehalten
– ISBN 978-3-901094-29-6
– ISSN 1029-0737
Herausgeber: Medium Aevum Quotidianum. Gesellschaft zur Erforschung der materiellen
Kultur des Mittelalters, Körnermarkt 13, A–3500 Krems, Österreich. Für den Inhalt verantwortlich
zeichnen die Autoren, ohne deren ausdrückliche Zustimmung jeglicher Nachdruck,
auch in Auszügen, nicht gestattet ist.
Druck: KOPITU Ges. m. b. H., Wiedner Hauptstraße 8-10, A–1050 Wien.
Table of Contents
Preface …….……..…………………………………….…………………….… 6
Fedor D. Prokofiev, Peregrinatio in the Ocean:
Allegory and Reality in the Navigatio Sancti Brendan ….…………….… 7
Svetlana I. Luchitskaya, Travelling to the Holy Land
in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries:
a Study into the History of Everyday Life ….……..……………………. 22
Olga I. Togoeva, Travel as Mission in the Epic of Joan of Arc …..………..… 48
List of Contributors ……………………………………………………………69
6
Preface
The present special volume of Medium Aevum Quotidianum is another result of
the cooperation with the editors of the Russian journal Одиссей: человек в
истории. It is the third time that we got the chance to offer translations of
contributions published in Одиссей which deal with aspects of daily life and
material culture of the Middle Ages.1 We are happy to make again some results
of Russian research available to a broader, international audience this way.
This time, we publish three studies selected from the 2009 volume of the
Russian journal that concentrated on the main topic ‘Travel as a Cultural and
Historical Phenomenon’ (‘Путешествие как историко-культурный фено-
мен’).2 The contributions deal with travelling in different parts of the Middle
Ages. Fedor D. Prokofiev analyses reality and allegory in the eighth-/ninthcentury
Navigatio Sancti Brendani. Svetlana I. Luchitskaya studies the daily life
of crusaders and pilgrims travelling to the Holy Land, mainly in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. Olga I. Togoeva deals with the role that travel plays in the
sources about the life of Joan of Arc. The articles offer new results in a field of
medieval studies that has found particular interest in Medieval Studies during
recent years.
Gerhard Jaritz
1 See Gerhard Jaritz, Svetlana I. Luchitskaya and Judith Rasson, eds., Images in Medieval and
Early Modern Culture (Approaches in Russian Historical Research), Medium Aevum
Quotidianum, Sonderband XIII (Krems, 2003); Grigorii V. Bondarenko, Some Specific
Features of the Perception of Early Medieval Irish Feasts , Medium Aevum Quotidianum 54
(2006), 7-19; Vladimir Ia. Petrukhin, The “Feast” in Medieval Russia, ibidem, 20-28.
2 Moscow: Nauka, 2010.