Where the Middle Ages Begin
The legend of Prester John is one of the most fascinating and powerful myths of all time. To say that Medieval Europeans knew little about the world outside of their native continent is truly an understatement. It was an age in which much was assumed rather than ascertained about the exotic lands beyond.
Leading history travel website Historvius.com has launched a new social-travel game allowing people to truly become King of the Castle or even Emperor of the Colosseum. Users can rule historic sites they’ve visited, earn points, titles and badges, share with their friends and build their very own virtual empire while they travel.
A thorough new study of Chinese sources by University of Tübingen Sinologist Hans Ulrich Vogel dispels claims that Venice’s most famous traveler never truly went as far as China.
During this pivotal century and within the special microcosm of Rome, Jews and Christians experienced unusually robust cultural and social interactions, especially as the Jews increasingly aligned themselves with the protective power of the papacy.
Odorico da Pordenone was a Franciscan Friar who, in the wake of the thirteenth-century expansion of the Mongolian empire, travelled to the court of the Great Khan at Khanbalik (modern Beijing).
The Viking Age lasted roughly from the eighth century to the eleventh, with the Viking attacks on Europe beginning around 750 AD. The Scandinavians were excellent sailors, and they had impressive ships and navigational skills that carried them as far as North America (‘Vinland’) long before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.
But whatever Ohthere and his English hosts exchanged in the way of news and information, the re- corded account keeps closely within ränge of its objective: a geography of unknown and little known areas of Scandinavia and their inhabitants.
Very little is known about the actual life of Leo Africanus, in spite of his well established posthumous fame. He did not leave many marks in contemporary documents.
In this paper I have analyzed biographical information concerning Andalusi scholars who traveled to the East as a part of their academic training, focusing on the ages at which they undertook their journeys, which closely relates to their ages at the beginning of their studies.
The legend of Prester John and his magnificent kingdom has captivated scholarly and lay audiences from the twelfth-century through the twenty-first.
Modern historiography has not fully appreciated the ecological complexity of the Silk Roads. As a result, it has failed to understand their antiquity, or to grasp their full importance in Eurasian history.
It is very difficult to estimate the exact scope of Polish pilgrimages to Santiago de
Compostela in the Middle Ages on the basis of preserved historical sources. The presence of pilgrims from Poland was mentioned in the Pilgrim Records of the Middle Ages found in the archive of the Kingdom of Aragon in Barcelona…
Much scholarship has been devoted to researching and documenting the significance and metaphysical qualities of the ringing of the bells within Christian culture. Specific efforts have been made to capture bells from defeated cathedrals as symbols of victory throughout history.
What did medieval saga-writers think about the Viking travellers who sailed west across the ocean without knowing the way to the lands they sought, or even whether or not these lands existed?
Tourism has a long history that in the Western culture dates back to ancient Rome and Greece. In imperial China, tourism has a tradition independent of Europe, and is defined in the present study as “the travel culture of landscape appreciation”.
Barcelona’s medieval district is rightly considered one of the best preserved in Europe. There is literally a story on every street, and around every corner a legend.
The author describes how he visited Bergen, Stockholm, Riga, Danzig, Lübeck and Copenhagen before moving on to England and Iceland. His account is clearly the result of first hand observation, rather than classical mimesis, and it includes a number of verifiable details such as distances, climate and the diet of the locals.
Benjamin of Tudela, Spanish explorer Shalev, Zur (Department of General History, Department of Land of Israel Studies, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel) Mediterranean Historical Review, Vol. 25, No. 1, June (2010) Abstract The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, written in the late twelfth century, has long been recognized as a unique source for both Jewish and […]
Novgorodian Travelers to the Mediterranean World in the Middle Ages Matsuki, Eizo Studies in the Mediterranean World Past and Present (1988) Abstract “Novgorod the Great,” a unique republic city state in the 12th-15th centuries, was situated at the Northwest corner of the Russian plain, not far from the Baltic Sea. It was on the northern […]
By Zoe Brooks, Czech Tours I have my perfect job. It combines two of my loves – history especially medieval history and the Czech Republic. Having successfully taken a party of 30 archaeology enthusiasts around some of the sites and sights of South Bohemia, I set up Czech Tours Ltd to offer off-the-shelf and custom-made historical […]
There have been many studies on the impact of the Portuguese discoveries on Europe, and as a result, new perspectives and approaches to the subject have opened up.
This study will analyse rituals on the Via Tiburtina, and their impact on the bid for power in late antique Rome.
Sir John Mandeville and the Rhizomatic Travel Book By Galia Halpern Paper given at Forum on Forms of Seeing Symposium, New York University (2011) Introduction: There exists today in the British Library a manuscript (Additional Ms. 24189) comprised of twenty-eight full-page illustrations depicting scenes from from Sir John Mandeville’s infamous ‘first-hand’ account of the many […]
Looking East and West : the reception and dissemination of the Topographia Hibernica and the Itinerarium ad partes Orientales in England [1185-c.1500] David, Sumithra J. PhD Thesis, University of St. Andrews, 4th March (2008) Abstract In this study the manuscript transmission, dissemination and reception of Gerald of Wales’ Topographia Hibernica (TH) and William of Rubruck’s Itinerarium […]
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