Medieval Travel Guides
Wish to go travelling medieval style? Here
is a list of books, which will tell you all
about how people in the Middle Ages went
about it
What time of the year should you venture out? Which mounts should you choose? Or should you go by the
sea? Where to cross rivers? What inns were safe? Where to find food? Anyone living in the Middle Ages
had to have a good working knowledge of what was both reasonable and feasible. At a time when people
had to move around in order to trade, to learn, to fight – or just to connect, practical knowledge about
landscapes, food, hostile strangers and friendly hospices might often mean the difference between life
and dead.
Here is a list of books, which will introduce you to the field in general. Further literature may be found in
the generous bibliographies, they are all fitted with.
The Medieval Traveller
By Norbert Ohler and Caroline Hillier
Boydell Press 1989 (2010)
ISBN-10: 0851154905
ISBN-13: 978-0851154909
This is a thorough interpretation of evidence from various medieval sources suggesting that travel in the
Middle Ages was far more extensive and commonplace than would be expected. It covers the travellers
and their routes, and emphasizes their importance to the exchange of ideas and the spread of civilization.
The deterrents to, and dangers of, travelling are recreated as is the general uncertainty about maps and
routes. Yet the author reveals that many diverse groups of people did set out on major journeys, and that
the routes and tracks which they used have formed the basis of the modern European road network.
Travel In The Middle Ages
by Jean Verdon
University of Notre Dame Press 2003
ISBN-10: 0268042225
ISBN-13: 978-0268042226
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. While most
journeys involved very short distances (home to market or village to village), longer trips were not
uncommon in the Middle Ages. Clergy were frequently called upon to act as ambassadors, messengers,
and overseers to the various monasteries and churches within their jurisdiction. Merchants, agents of the
king, and pilgrims were also frequently required to travel. While sharing the fascinating stories of these
ordinary wayfarers, Verdon also relates colorful tales of the journeys of notable historical figures such as
Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus. Part I of Travel in the Middle Ages addresses the means by which
people traveled. This section contains vivid descriptions of modes of conveyance, road systems, sea lanes,
tolls, taxes, and even pirates. Knowing the risks involved, why did people brave the uncertainty of travel?
Part II of the book addresses this question by identifying five main motivational categories of medieval
travel. Part III deals with travel myths, monsters, and fictitious journeys of medieval fantasy writers.
Verdon concludes with a pithy critique of travel in the modern world. Appearing for the first time in an
English translation, Travel in the Middle Ages will delight anyone with an interest in medieval culture or
travel books.
The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors
to the Fourteenth Century
By Ian Mortimer
Touchstone 2008 (2011)
ISBN-10: 1439112908
ISBN-13: 978-1439112908
If the past is a foreign country, this is your guidebook. A time machine has just transported you back into
the fourteenth century. Where do you check in? What do you see? How do you dress? How do you earn a
living and how much are you paid? What sort of food will you be offered by a peasant or a monk or a lord?
And more important, where will you stay? The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England is not your
typical look at a historical period. This radical new approach shows us that the past is not just something
to be studied; it is also something to be lived. Through the use of daily chronicles, letters, household
accounts, and poems of the day, Mortimer transports you back in time, providing answers to questions
typically ignored by traditional historians. You will learn how to greet people on the street, what to use as
toilet paper, why a physician might want to taste your blood, and how to know whether you are coming
down with leprosy. The result is the most astonishing social history book you’re ever likely to read:
revolutionary in its concept, informative and entertaining in its detail, and startling for its portrayal of
humanity in an age of violence, exuberance, and fear.
Medieval Travellers: The Rich and the Restless
By Margaret Wade Labarge
Phoenix (1982) 2005
ISBN-10: 0753820412
ISBN-13: 978-0753820414
Adventure, religion, politics, amusement: they’re all here in abundance, in this vivid account of the upperclass men and women who journeyed the world in medieval days. With information culled from personal
writings, chroniclers’ notices, and varied financial reports, it presents a surprising and fascinating
portrait of the age–including a vision of touring so lavish and comfortable that it puts contemporary
travel to shame. And, contrary to expectations, even in those plane-free days, some people covered
thousands of miles a year. Among the medieval globetrotters: Sir Thomas Becket; Mary, the daughter of
Edward I and a most restless nun; and Bertandon de la Broquiere, the Burgunidan squire who disguised
himself as a Turk to join a caravan returning from Mecca.
Medieval European Pilgrimage, C.700 – C.1500
by Diana Webb
Series: European Culture and Society
Palgrave 2002
ISBN-10: 0333762592
ISBN-13: 978-0333762592
Pilgrimage has existed on many different levels from its first inception. Journeys to holy places and
shrines were undertaken by young and old, men and women, voluntarily and as penance, along routes of
different length and duration, and for a range of different reasons – reverence, to seek cures and healing,
for special devotional experience, as thanks or as a punishment, for example. Designed with students in
mind, Diana Webb explores this variability in what is essentially an introduction to the history of
European Christian pilgrimage.
Art and Architecture of Late Medieval Pilgrimage in Northern Europe and
the British Isles 1-2
Edited by Sarah Blick and Rita Tekippe
Brill Academic Pub 2005
ISBN-10: 9004123326
ISBN-13: 978-9004123328
This collection includes essays on the visual experience and material culture at medieval pilgrimage
shrines of northern Europe and the British Isles, particularly the art and architecture created to intensify
spiritual experience for visitors. These studies focus on regional pilgrimage centers which flourished from
the 12th-16th centuries, addressing various aspects of visual imagery and architectural space which
inspired devotees to value cults of enshrined saints and to venerate them in memory from afar. Subjects
include pilgrim dress, jeweled and painted reliquaries, labyrinths, elaborate processions, printed texts of
the saint’s life, shrines, sculpture and other architectural decoration, and pilgrim souvenirs. Profusely
illustrated with 350 photographs, this work will interest scholars and students of art history, history,
religious studies, and popular culture.
Travel and Trade in the Middle Ages
By Paul B. Newman
McFarland 2011
ISBN-10: 0786445351
ISBN-13: 978-0786445356
Transportation and trade in the Middle Ages were more developed and varied than is commonly thought.
This book examines why medieval Europeans traveled—from making pilgrimages to engaging in
international trade—and surveys in detail how they traveled, both by land and water. Travel and trade
were inextricably linked to transportation, and over time an infrastructure of roads, bridges, and
accommodations grew across Europe, enabling people and goods to move around the continent and
beyond. Also explored are the hardships faced by medieval travelers, including storms at sea, avalanches
in the Alps, the presence of pirates and robbers, and the fundamental problems of finding a meal and
shelter.
TRAVEL ACCOUNTS – A SELECTION
The Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago de Compostela CoverThe Pilgrim’s Guide
to Santiago de Compostela
By William Melczer (Editor)
Italica Press; illustrated edition 2008
ISBN-10: 0934977259
ISBN-13: 978-0934977258
“The Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago de Compostela” presents the first complete English translation of Book
Five of the Liber Sancti Jacobi or Codex Calixtinus. This twelfth-century guidebook traces the route from
southern France to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. The medieval Christian world knew
three major pilgrimage sites – Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago de Compostela. Between the eleventh and
thirteenth centuries Santiago de Compostela was by far the most popular. Pilgrimage to Compostela was
a once-in-a-lifetime human adventure. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims came year after year through
France and across the Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela near the Atlantic shores of Galicia. In his
study of the road to Santiago, Professor William Melczer discusses Relics and Pilgrimage The Origin of
the Cult of St. James Myth and Historical Reality The Iter Sancti Jacobi The Liber Sancti Jacobi
Pilgrimage without Ideology The Iconography of St. James. This book also includes extensive
commentaries and notes that highlight historical, geographical, art-historical, hagiographic, and general
cultural matters along the route traced by the Guide. Illustrated, introduction, gazetteer, hagiographical
register, bibliography, index.
Jewish Travellers in the Middle Ages: 19 Firsthand Accounts
by Elkan Nathan Adler
Dover Publications 2011- Reprint of the George Routledge & Sons, Ltd.,
London, 1930 edition
ISBN-10: 048625397X
ISBN-13: 978-0486253978
Rich in human experience and historic detail, these fascinating accounts portray the activities of Jewish
scholars, merchants, pilgrims, ambassadors, and other wanderers. Nineteen engaging narratives, some of
them 12 centuries old, offer rare perspectives on the unfolding drama of life in medieval Europe, the
Near East, and Africa.
Eastward Bound: Travel and Travellers, 1050-1550
By Rosamund Allen
Manchester University Press, 2004
ISBN: 978-0-7190-6691-7
Eastward Bound looks at travel and travelers in the medieval period. An international range of
distinguished contributors offer discussions on a wide range of themes, from the experiences of
Crusaders on campaign, to the lives of pilgrims, missionaries and traders in the Middle East. It examines
their modes of travel, equipment and methods of navigation, and considers their expectations and
experiences en route. The contributions also look at the variety of motives–public and private–behind the
decision to travel eastwards. Other essays discuss the attitudes of Middle-Eastern rulers to their visitors.
In so doing they provide a valuable perspective and insight into the behavior of the Europeans and nonEuropeans alike.
Cosmopolitanism and the Middle Ages
by John M. Ganim and Shayne Aaron Legassie
Series: The New Middle Ages
Palgrave Macmillan 2013
ISBN-10: 0230337570
ISBN-13: 978-0230337572
Is it possible to be a citizen of the world? Cosmopolitan thought has been at the center of recent debates
surrounding human rights, legal obligations, international relations and political responsibility. Most of
these debates trace their origins to the Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century or to the teaching of
Greek and Roman philosophers. This collection of essays uncovers a wide array of medieval writings on
cosmopolitan ethics and politics, writings generally ignored or glossed over in contemporary discourse.
Medieval literary fictions and travel accounts provide us with rich contextualizations of the complexities
and contradictions of cosmopolitan thought.
The World of Travellers: Exploration and Imagination: Germania Latina
VII
by Kees Dekker (Editor), T. Hofstra (Editor), K.E. Olsen (Editor)
Series: Mediaevalia Groningana New Series (Book 15)
Peeters Publishers 2009
ISBN-10: 9042921986
ISBN-13: 978-9042921986
Travel has always been a favourite human concern. Throughout the centuries, fascination with the
unfamiliar or even unknown has turned many people into geographers, explorers, and writers of travel
fiction. In the early Middle Ages, a great variety of travel accounts were accordingly appropriated,
translated, recontextualised, and ultimately found their way into the literary production of Germanic
Europe. The interest in distant countries and peoples was complemented by spiritual concerns, such as
one finds in the accounts of early pilgrims to the Holy Land. The key words in the title of this book,
‘exploration and imagination’, imply that travel meant more than visiting foreign places and peoples. As
with modern fantasy and science fiction literature, travel could also stimulate the imagination, especially
in cases when perilous physical journeys were enhanced by imagined travel. Such accounts were rich in
descriptions of the physical world, but they lent themselves equally to the relation of spiritual journeys.
As a result, modern out-of-body experience finds its medieval counterpart in the journeyings and
adventures of the human soul within a metaphysical and eschatological perspective. Finally, imagery
travel may also be purely intellectual. The articles in this volume address the categories of travel outlined
above in the light of the interface between the Latin and Germanic traditions.
CATALOGUES:
Il Medioevo in viaggio.
Catalogo della mostra.
By B. Paolozzi Strozzi, I. Ciseri and B. Chiesi
Collana: Cataloghi arte
Giunti 2015
ISBN-10: 8809808975
ISBN-13: 978-8809808973
Voyager au Moyen Age : Musée de Cluny – Musée national du Moyen
Age
By Anaïs Alchus, Marc Bormand, Benedetta Chiesi and Michel Huynh
Collection : RMN EXPOSITION
RMN 2014
ISBN-10: 2711861953
ISBN-13: 978-2711861958