Early Travels in Palestine: Comprising the Narratives of Arculf, Willibald, Bernard, Sæwulf, Sigurd, Benjamin of Tudela, Sir John Maundeville, de la Brocquière, and Maundrell
History
Early Travels in Palestine: Comprising the Narratives of Arculf, Willibald, Bernard, Sæwulf, Sigurd, Benjamin of Tudela, Sir John Maundeville, de la Brocquière, and Maundrell
Middle East -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800; Palestine -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
Our notices of the medieval travellers would properly conclude here. A
new era was opening upon the west as well as upon the east, and the last
breath of the spirit of the crusades died, as the system which had
nourished it sunk before the great religious Reformation of the
sixteenth century. Instead of monks and soldiers, Europe, more
enlightened, began soon afterwards to send merchants, and consuls, and
ambassadors. A clearer and more satisfactory light was now thrown on the
geography of the Holy Land. The English traveller in Palestine of most
authority in the seventeenth century was Sandys, who, however, often
erred on the side of credulity. Before the end of the century came the
well known HENRY MAUNDRELL, who, on account of the brevity of his
narrative and the extreme accuracy of his descriptions, has been
selected to conclude the present volume. We know little more of
Maundrell than that he was a fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, which he
left to take the appointment of chaplain to the English factory at
Aleppo. It is not within our province to notice the works of subsequent
travellers.
It will be necessary to make some statement to our readers of the manner
in which the present volume has been edited, and of the sources from
which the different works it contains have been derived.
The travels of bishop Arculf, (as compiled by Adamnan,) as well as those
of Bernard the Wise, and the life of Willibald, were printed in the Acta
Sanctorum Ordinis S. Benedicti, Sæc. III., Part II., in 1672. A previous
edition of Arculf had been published in a small quarto volume,
Ingoldstadt, 1619, which also contained the abridgment by Bede. The
latter, under the title of _Libellus de Locis Sanctis_, is included in
the different editions of Bede's works, and will be found in the recent
edition by Dr. Giles, accompanied with an English translation. Another
edition of the narrative of Bernard was published from a manuscript in
the Cottonian Library in the British Museum by M. Francisque Michel, in
the Memoirs of the Society of Geography at Paris. M. Michel's text is in
many respects inferior to that of Mabillon, but it contains the
concluding paragraphs relating to the state of society in Egypt, Italy,
and France, which were wanting in the manuscript from which Mabillon
printed. But the new editor, M. Michel, has fallen into a very grave
error; for the treatise of Bede, _De Locis Sanctis_, following in the
Cottonian manuscript the tract of Bernard, he has mistaken them for one
continued treatise, and printed them as such, accusing Mabillon of
having printed only one half of his author. The narrative of Sæwulf, the
only manuscript of which is preserved in the library of Corpus Christi
College, Cambridge, was published in the collection of the French
Geographical Society by M. D'Avezac, from a transcript furnished by the
editor of the present volume. M. D'Avezac has executed his task of
editing with remarkable care and discrimination, but I fear that the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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