The Medieval Traveller

This translation originally published: Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 1989.

Over the course of the Middle Ages, the economies of Europe, Asia, and northern Africa became more closely integrated, fostering the international and intercontinental journeys of merchants, pilgrims, diplomats, missionaries, and adventurers. During a time in history when travel was often difficult, expensive, and fraught with danger, these wayfarers composed accounts of their experiences in unprecedented numbers and transformed traditional conceptions of human mobility. Exploring this phenomenon, The Medieval Invention of Travel draws on an impressive array of sources to develop original readings of canonical figures such as Marco Polo, John Mandeville, and Petrarch, as well as a host of lesser-known travel writers. As Shayne Aaron Legassie demonstrates, the Middle Ages inherited a Greco-Roman model of heroic travel, which viewed the ideal journey as a triumph over temptation and bodily travail. Medieval travel writers revolutionized this ancient paradigm by incorporating practices of reading and writing into the ascetic regime of the heroic voyager, fashioning a bold new conception of travel that would endure into modern times. Engaging methods and insights from a range of disciplines, The Medieval Invention of Travel offers a comprehensive account of how medieval travel writers and their audiences reshaped the intellectual and material culture of Europe for centuries to come.

Drawing on medieval sources from western Europe, the Byzantine Empire, and the Muslim world, this book will fascinate anyone interested in the history of travel and aspects of cultural interaction with the other.

Adventure, religion, politics, amusement - this is the story of how and why the upper-class travelled in the medieval world.

This carefully complied work marks an important contribution to the history of Medieval travel. It will appeal to the scholar and to the general reader. It covers such areas as the conception of the world in the Middle Ages, Christian pilgrimages, the Vikings, Arab travellers, traveller’s tales of the East and Prester John.

This sixth volume in the AVISTA series considers medieval travel from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, placing the physical practice of transportation in the larger context of medieval thought about the world and its meaning. The papers included cover vehicle design and logistical management, the practicalities of how travellers oriented themselves, and the symbolism of the landscapes and maps created in the Middle Ages.

As a companion to his previous volume Night in the Middles Ages, Jean Verdon offers insight into the pitfalls and perils of travelling during medieval times. Travel in the Middle Ages is filled with the stories and adventures of those who hazarded hostile landscapes, elements, and people - out of want or necessity - to get from place to place. Verdon contends that a journey in the current sense, suggesting both the movement of a person who travels to a fairly distant place and philosophical ideas of distraction and flight from self, did not exist in the Middle Ages. Indeed, he says, nothing either in the means of communication or in the landscape encouraged travel. And yet, Verdon points out, the world of the Middle Ages was one of unceasing movement.

A captivating journey of the expansive world of medieval travel, from London to Constantinople to the court of China and beyond. Europeans of the Middle Ages were the first to use travel guides to orient their wanderings, as they moved through a world punctuated with miraculous wonders and beguiling encounters. In this vivid and alluring history, medievalist Anthony Bale invites readers on an odyssey across the medieval world, recounting the advice that circulated among those venturing to the road for pilgrimage, trade, diplomacy, and war. Journeying alongside scholars, spies, and saints, from Western Europe to the Far East, the Antipodes and the ends of the earth, Bale provides indispensable information on the exchange rate between Bohemian ducats and Venetian groats, medieval cures for seasickness, and how to avoid extortionist tour guides and singing sirens. He takes us from the streets of Rome, more ruin than tourist spot, and tours of the Khan’s court in Beijing to Mamluk-controlled Jerusalem, where we ride asses across the holy terrain, and bustling bazaars of Tabriz. We also learn of rumored fantastical places, like ones where lambs grow on trees and giant canes grow fruit made of gems. And we are offered a glimpse of what non-European travelers thought of the West on their own travels. Using previously untranslated contemporaneous documents from a colorful range of travelers, and from as far and wide as Turkey, Iceland, North Africa, and Russia, A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages is a witty and unforgettable exploration of how Europeans understood—and often misunderstood—the larger world.