The thoughts and feelings excited by a visit to Palestine, find apt expression in the words of two authors, widely separated from each other in time and in character. The first is a crusader, Sir John Mandeville, deeply imbued with the credulity and superstition of the Middle Ages. Writing more than five centuries ago, he says in the Prologue to his ‘Voiage et Travaille’: “Forasmuch as the land beyond the sea, that is to say, the Holy Land, which men call the land of promise or of behest, passing all other lands, is the most worthy land, most excellent, and lady and sovereign of all other lands, and is blessed and hallowed with the precious body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ; in which land it pleased him to take flesh and blood of the Virgin Mary, to environ that Holy Land with his blessed feet; and there he would, of his blessedness, shadow him in the said blessed and glorious Virgin Mary, and become man and work many miracles, and preach and teach the faith and the law of Christian men unto his children; and there it pleased him to suffer many reprovings and scorns for us; and he that was king of heaven, of air, of earth, of sea, and of all things that are contained in them, would only be called king of that land, when he said ‘Rex sum Judeorum,’ that is to say, I am king of the Jews; and that land he chose before all other lands, as the best and most worthy land, and the most virtuous land of all the world.... See, now, how dearly he bought man, that he made after his own image, and how dearly he redeemed us for the great love that he had to us, and we never deserved it of him; for more precious goods or greater ransom might he not put for us, than his blessed body, his precious blood, and his holy life, which he enthralled for us; and he offered all for us, that never did sin. Oh! dear God! what love had he to us his subjects, when he that never trespassed, would for trespassers suffer death! Right well ought we to love and worship, to dread and serve such a Lord, and to worship and praise such a Holy Land, that brought forth such fruit, through which every man is saved, unless it be his own fault. Well may that land be called delectable and a fruitful land, that was made moist with the precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ; which is the same land that our Lord promised us in heritage.”[278]