There is nothing more emblematic of the illuminating, excruciating and sometimes very weird tales told in this book than a collection of medieval pilgrim badges. Fashioned out of cheap metal, these were sold to pilgrims and displayed with pride in remembrance of saints’ shrines visited over a lifetime. Many were styled as objects that symbolised the saint or holy place.
But alongside items such as the scallop shell sported by visitors to Santiago de Compostela, one finds a brace of penises off to sea in a ship, or a walking vulva sporting a jaunty hat and pilgrim’s staff. While some historians speculate that these seemingly profane badges marked requests for saintly help with fertility, others contend they were deliberately vulgar, cheap and cheerful souvenirs aimed squarely at the tourist market. While their meanings might remain obscure, these odd little artefacts highlight the blurred lines between tourism, trade and pilgrimage in the medieval era, lines that we cross and re-cross throughout the course of this wonderful book.
Anthony Bale, a professor of medieval studies at Birkbeck, University of London, focuses on the period circa 1300-1500, when a culture of travel became popularised across Europe. He draws on a rich store of medieval travelogues and maps to recreate in all their wonder, tedium and despair the journeys undertaken by people of all backgrounds and social classes.
Naturally, with the market came those who profited from it, and so a whole economy of guides, transport providers, purveyors of food and lodging, and souvenir-sellers emerged across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and as far afield as China. By 1350, “journeys had the trappings and infrastructure of what we might now call mass tourism or even package tours”.
Far from believing the world was flat, medieval people knew the Earth was roughly spherical. They had mapped the continents of Asia, Africa and Europe and speculated that other continents existed beyond these. Medieval authors described Arctic and Antarctic zones, and even posited the existence of the Antipodes. A chart of currencies in use in medieval Europe starts by advising that before setting out a traveller should get a letter of credit at Medici’s Bank in London, and that one could also change money at the bank in Bruges. This is but one sign that already a globalised capitalist economy was in its embryonic phase, for better or for worse.
It is oddly comforting to find Bale’s medieval travellers shared many of the same experiences as the modern holidaymaker, from the thrill of seeing the pyramids of Egypt – already a major attraction by the 14th century – to the perils of bad food, pickpockets, dodgy tour operators and endless delays. The 21st-century tourist can all too easily empathise with the Milanese statesman Santo Brasca, who observed of his 1480 journey to the Holy Land that one should always travel with two bags: “one full of money and the other full of patience”.
Yet as Bale shows, medieval people were also unalterably different from us in their motivations and responses to travel. The most fundamental purpose of travel in the Middle Ages was pilgrimage, an ambulant performance of piety and penitence that motivated people to embark on months- or years-long journeys, mostly on foot or by sea. A circuit beginning in England might take in shrines at Walsingham and Canterbury before continuing to Aachen, Rome, Venice and Constantinople. But the ultimate goal of a medieval Christian’s life was to visit Jerusalem, which was depicted on maps as the centre of their world.
Pilgrimage and trade were not the only reasons for travel, though. We meet Henry Bolingbroke, the future King Henry IV, who was one of many young English noblemen who went for a stint in the Baltic Crusades. These were as much a kind of summer camp for English and French knights as they were a manifestation of religious war. Henry travelled with what amounted to a fully staffed mobile palace, with all its luxuries and accoutrements, even a new feather bed. (Don’t we all wish we could take our own bed on holiday?) And like the modern tourist who carries an extra suitcase for their anticipated holiday shopping, Henry took a quantity of empty bags and jars so he could bring exotic spices and other souvenirs home.
There are poignant glimpses into more ordinary lives, too. One elderly woman ponders taking a kitten or puppy on her travels, perhaps to stave off loneliness and pass the time during the boring bits. Elsewhere, Bale tells the charming story of the monk Felix Fabri, returning home in 1484 from many rough years on the road to be joyfully greeted as a long-lost friend by his community’s usually belligerent dog.
This book is enormous fun, like a long OE taken without any firm itinerary. It also introduces the general reader to a subject of vital importance at a moment when we’re re-examining journeys of “discovery” and relationships between European explorers and indigenous populations. Public discourse usually focuses on the period from the 1700s onwards, but the ventures of men like Abel Tasman and Captain Cook form part of a longer backstory of travel motivated by the twin aims of spreading the Christian message and trade. These were key ideas that shaped the world view of medieval Europeans, and to understand them is to gain insight into the cultural context that enabled and helped to justify European missions of conversion and colonisation. Greed and glory were vital, but to overlook the medieval mindset surrounding travel is to miss crucial facets of a complex history.
At a more personal level, Bale invites us to explore the philosophical question of what it means to travel. One of his sources is the wildly popular (by medieval standards) Mandeville’s Travels. This purported to be Sir John Mandeville’s account of journeys to Ethiopia, India and beyond, and it is full of descriptions of strange things, such as dog-headed men and sciapods. Yet Mandeville’s Travels was written in a monastic library in Europe; its author never set foot on the road. This begs the question: is travel imagined any less real than travel experienced in the flesh? After all, “‘Travel’ is the story we tell when we come home, not just the actual experience of moving inelegantly, painfully and grimily across the planet surface.”
A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages by Anthony Bale (Viking, $55 hb, ebook audiobook) is out now.
Amanda McVitty is a professional historian and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She specialises in the cultural and political history of Europe, c1000-1550.
