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 ITINERARIUM

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ITINERARIUM

writer who saw Palestine before the Moslem conquest. Although he covered in his travels nearly the same ex- tensive territory as the Spanish nun, his work contains l>ut. few details not found in other writers; it is, more- over, marred l)y gross errors and by fabulous tales which betray the most naive credulity. A century later (c. 070) the French bishop Arcvilf was wrecked on the western coast of Britain after visiting the Holy Land. To this accident we owe St. Adamnan's "De locis Sanctis libri tres". Having been hospitably re- ceived by St. Adamnan, then abljot of the famous Monastery of lona, .\rculf described to him his voyage and drew for him the plans of some of the churches of Jerusalem. Adamnan wrote down the narrative on tablets of wax, and later edited it in three books, add- ing, however, matter derived from other sources. The work is important, as it contains the first description of Jerusalem after the changes wrought by the Persian conquest under Chosroes (614), and the Arab occupa- tion under Omar (637). It was long accepted as the authority on Palestine. Venerable Bede's "De Locis Sanctis" is mainly taken from Adamnan's work. St. Willibald, nephew of St. Boniface and Bishop of Eich- statt, had travelled in his youth for eight years (721- 729), three of which he spent in the Holy Land. In his later days he related his life and travels to the nuns of the monastery of Heidenheini. Two reports of his story have come down to us. The first, " Hodoepo- ricon Sancti Willibaldi ", was -nTitten (c. 785) by a relative of the saint, a nun of the monastery, from notes which she took while he was speaking. The other, " Itinerarium Sancti Willibaldi ", was probably composed from memory, after Willibald 's death, by one of the two deacons who accompanied him in his visits to the monastery. Though better in style, it is less reliable than the first and contains details which the writer obtained elsewhere. The last itinerarium of any consequence before the Crusades is that of the French monk Bernard, who with two of his fellow- religious visited Egypt and Palestine (S6S-9). He is the first to make mention of the holy fire which is now such a conspicuous feature in the Greek celeliration of Holy Saturday in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. Of the unimportant works of the next two centuries, the relation of Ingulf, Abbot of Croydon, may be men- tioned, because it shows to what dangers pilgrims were exposed at that time. Of the seven thousand persons with whom he started on his pilgrimage (1064) more than three thousand perished.

With the beginning of the Crusades the works on Palestine become very numerous, and after the loss of the country by the Latins they increase rather than diminish. Those which relate to the events of the crusading period do not concern us here. They may be found in such collections as Bongars, "Gesta Dei per Francos" (Hanau, 1611), "Recueildes historiens des croisades " (Paris, 1844-86), and " Publications de la Soci^tS de I 'Orient Latin, S(5rie Historique " (Geneva, 1877-85). Of the others, a long list of which is given by Tobler and Rohricht, only the more important can be noticed. The first of these is the relation of the Russian abbot {hegurnetms) Daniel, the earliest extant record of a Russian pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He came there shortly after the Christian occupation (c. 1106), and visited most of the holy places and sanctu- aries, with a monk of the monastery of St. Sabas as guide. His description of what he himself saw is generally accurate, and he gives a fair picture of the country a few years after it was taken Ijy the Crusa- ders. The Russian text with a French translation was published by Noroff (St. Petersburg, 1864); an English translation is given in " Palestine Pilgrims' Texts". The best medieval work on Palestine is be- yond doubt the " Descriptio Terrae Sanctae" of Bur- chanl (also wrongly called Brocard, Bocard, etc.) de Monte Sion, a German Dominican, who spent ten years in the country (c. 1274-84). Burchard is an ob-

server with something like the modern spirit of exact- ness, and is as careful in relating as he is exact in ob- serving, distinguishing fact from mere conjecture, and what he has himself seen from what he takes on the authority of others. However, being the child of an uncritical age, he records many a legend. To the de- scription of the land he adds a description of its fauna and flora, and a disquisition on the various religions professed by its inhabitants. The work was very popular in the Middle Ages, and because of its great value has often been printed. Burchard de Monte Sion must not be confounded with Burchard of Stras- burg, a pilgrim of the twelfth century (1175), a frag- ment of whose itinerarium is extant.

Another Dominican, the Florentine Ricoldo da Monte di Croce, deserves to be noticed, less for the account of his visit to the Holy Places (1288-9) than for the interesting relation of his mission to Bagdad, where the Dominicans were then labouring for the conversion of the Tatars. His work consists of two parts: the first is the journal of his pilgi'image through Palestine, in which the exercises of piety of the band of pilgrims with which he was associated and his own personal emotions occupy a large place; the secontl contains a description of his adventures on his journey to Persia, and of the manners, customs, and religion of the Tatars. It is owing to this second part that the work was soon translated into Italian and French. The Latin text of the " Itinerarium " was first published by Laurent in his " Peregrinatores medii aevi quatuor " (Leipzig, 1864; 2nd ed., 1873). For an extensive notice of Ricoldo, see "Rev. Bibl.", II (1893), pp. 44, 182, 584. " De Itinere Terrae Sancta; " by Ludolph, pastor of Suchem in the Diocese of Paderborn, is considered the best relation of the fourteenth century. The author spent five years in Palestine (1336-41). John Poloner — by some said to be a German, by others a Pole — is, as far as we know, the first pilgrim who drew a map (now unfortunately lost) of the Holy Land. His " Peregrinatio ad Terram Sanctam" (1422) is in many places copied from Burchard de Monte Sion. The best work of the fifteenth century is the voluminous "Evagatorium in Terra; Sancts, Arabiae et Egypti peregrinationem " of the Dominican Felix Faber, or Fabri. The author, who was twice in the East (1480 and 1483), is somewhat credulous, but reliable in what he himself observed. For travels to the Far East during medieval times, see Odoric op

PORDENONE, BlESSED; RdBRUK, WlLLIAM OP; POLO,

Marco.

Texts. — Library of the Palestine Pilgrims^ Text Society (London, 1S97); Geyer, Itinera Hierosolymiiana saeculi IV— VIII in Corpus Scrip. Eccles. Latin., XXXVIII (Vienna, 1898) ; Publications de la Societe de VOrient Latin. Serie Gcograph. (Geneva, 1880-5); Itinerarium Burdig. in P. Z,., VIII, 783 sqq.; Ep. ad Eustoch., ibid., XXII, 878 sqq.; Itiner. Antonini, ibid., LXXII, 890 sqq.; Ad.\mnan, De situ Terra: Sanctw, ibid., LXXXVIII, 779 sqq.; Itiner. Bemardi. ibid., CXXI, 569 sqq.; Hodeeporicon S. Willibaldi in Ada SS., July. II, 501. See Tob- ler, Bibliographia geographica PalcEstinm (Leipzig, 1867); Roh- richt, Bibliotkeca geogr. Palcestinas (Berlin, 1890).

F. Bechtel.

Itinerarium, a form of prayer used by monks and clerics before setting out on a journey, and for that reason usually printed at the end of the Breviary, where it can be conveniently found when required. Most probably the use of such prayers originated in monastic observance. The early rules of the Fathers of the Desert — St. Anthony and St. Pachomius — as well as that of St. Basil, legislate minutely as to the behaviour of monks when travelling, and impose various restrictions and duties upon them. St. Bene- dict, whose rule, more than any other, has exerted so wide an influence over all ecclesiastical customs, monastic and otherwise, in the Western Church, laid down (chap. Ixvii) that when any of the brethren were to be sent on a journey, they should, before setting out, commend themselves to the prayers of the abbot and community, by whom they were to