The letter was an honored form of literary expression throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages. Carefully composed epistles of the ecclesiastic and educated man of the world were looked upon as more than mere media for the conveying of information. Not infrequently they were highly polished specimens of stylistic art, worthy of finding a permanent place in literature. From our point of view, they are of interest for the personal accounts of journeys which they sometimes contain.[520] Guy of Bazoches, for instance, who was precentor of the church of St. Stephen at Châlons, gave a brilliant description of his experiences and of what he saw on the Crusade of 1190 in a series of letters to his nephew and to others.[521] Conrad of Querfurt, bishop of more than one see in Germany during the last years of the twelfth century, wrote enthusiastically of his wanderings through Italy in a letter preserved for us in Arnold of Lübeck’s _Chronica Slavorum_.[522] A thorough study of the epistolography of the Crusading age would surely reveal a wealth of geographical lore. JEWISH TRAVELERS The Jews of the Middle Ages often journeyed farther afield than their Christian contemporaries. Their travels, for the most part in the interests of commerce, though in some instances in the nature of pilgrimages to Jerusalem, a city holy to Jew and Christian alike,[523] were facilitated by the presence of Hebrew communities in nearly all the cities of Europe and Western Asia. Strongly imbued with the racial consciousness of a vigorous and often oppressed people, the members of these communities did all in their power to receive the travelers and speed them on their way. The books composed by such Jewish wanderers as Benjamin of Tudela and Petachia of Ratisbon have been preserved and are invaluable as geographical records. It should be remembered, however, that they were written by men of a despised race and in a tongue unknown to the Christians of the West and that the geographical lore which may have been widespread among the more intelligent Hebrews never became an integral part of the geographical knowledge of Christendom. Hence in the pages which follow and which deal primarily with the geographical knowledge of Western Christendom but relatively little space can be devoted to Jewish geography. A few words, nevertheless, must be said of Benjamin and of Petachia. _Benjamin of Tudela_