Touring in 1600: A Study in the Development of Travel as a Means of Education — John Shaqi
Touring in 1600: A Study in the Development of Travel as a Means of EducationBates, E. S. (Ernest Stuart)
History
Touring in 1600: A Study in the Development of Travel as a Means of Education
Bates, E. S. (Ernest Stuart)
Europe -- Description and travel; Europe -- Social life and customs; Travel -- History
The qualifications for a first-rate guide, then and now, differ in one
respect only,—that a "religious test" should be applied was taken for
granted on both sides. In fact, in Scotland in 1609 an edict was issued
forbidding young noblemen to leave the country without a Protestant
tutor: the reason being that the great danger of a tour abroad lay in
a possible change in the youngster's religion, or inclinations towards
tolerance developing, with the result that his political career on his
return might be dangerous to his country and himself through his being
more than the just one step ahead of his fellow-countrymen which is
necessary to political salvation.
The prevailing state of mind may be illustrated by one or two
anecdotes. The following one Lauder tells of himself is characteristic
of his kind. He had entered a church where all were on their knees: "a
woman observing that I neither had gone to the font for holy water,
neither kneeled, in a great heat of zeal she told me 'ne venez icy
pour prophaner ce sainct lieu.' I suddenly replied: 'Vous estez bien
devotieuse, madame, mais peut estre vostre ignorance prophane ce sainct
lieu d'avantage que ma présence.'" William Lithgow is proud to say
he quarrelled with companions simply because they were Papists, and
had often seized opportunities to tear in pieces the rich garments
on images rather than "with indifferent forbearance wink at the
wickedness of idolaters." And an Englishman of good education and
breeding and character, says that being at Malaga cathedral during High
Mass "so long as we were bare-headed and behaved ourselves civilly
and gravely, we might walk up and down and see everything without the
least molestation." One extreme was naturally accompanied by another
extreme. Sometimes the tourist's return never took place. This was the
more likely when the Papacy was in a militant mood, at which times the
Inquisition developed a taste for tutors; whose arrest served a double
purpose, a hot antagonist was secured, unimportant enough to create
no serious trouble, and the young nobleman was left undefended on his
sectarian side, probably a vulnerable one. One case of many is that of
John Mole,[21] who died in the prison of the Inquisition at Rome in
1638 at the age of eighty, after thirty years' imprisonment; his ward,
Lord Roos, having been credited with no particular desire to get him
out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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