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![Plate with animals of the Holy Land by Erhard Reuwich in Bernhard von Breydenbach's Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam (Mainz, 1486). BSB München: 2 Inc.c.a. 1725, fol. 131v. urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb00051697-6. © [BSB München]. Reproduced by permission of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München.](profile/Marianne-Ritsema-Van-Eck/publication/322280139/figure/fig1/AS:579628330651648@1515205571616/Plate-with-animals-of-the-Holy-Land-by-Erhard-Reuwich-in-Bernhard-von-Breydenbachs.png)
Plate with animals of the Holy Land by Erhard Reuwich in Bernhard von Breydenbach's Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam (Mainz, 1486). BSB München: 2 Inc.c.a. 1725, fol. 131v. urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb00051697-6. © [BSB München]. Reproduced by permission of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München.
Source publication
The late medieval illustrated Jerusalem travelogue by the Franciscan friar Paul Walther von Guglingen has heretofore received scant scholarly attention, perhaps owing to the unusual nature of some of its images. Guglingen charts decidedly Islamic spaces with his maps and plan, instead of the conventional sacred shrines of Christianity; these topogr...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... approach to the flora and fauna of the Levant is remarkable within the genre of illustrated Jerusalem travelogues. This becomes clear, for example, when we compare it to the presentation of the plate with animals of the Holy Land by Reuwich in Breydenbach's influential Peregrinatio (Figure 1). 29 The caption of the plate invokes what Elizabeth Ross calls the conceit of the artist-viewer: "These animals are truthfully [veraciter] depicted as we saw them in the Holy Land." 30 However, the majority of them, including a unicorn, go back to medieval stock images, rather than eyewitness observation. ...
Context 2
... again, the author chose to represent Islamic monuments primarily. It is a remarkable map of Cairo and its surroundings, which charts the itinerary of Guglingen and his companions around the city on 14 October 1483 ( Figure 10). This almost full-page map measures 215 mm x 190 mm, and is oriented with south at the top, which may be a result of the company's approach to the city from the north. ...
Context 3
... his approach is unconventional, Guglingen is not the only Jerusalem pilgrim to include a reasonably elaborate visual perspective on Cairo in his account: the famous view on the Holy Land in Breydenbach's Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam by Erhard Reuwich also includes Cairo, the balsam garden, and Babylon fortress on the right-hand-side wing of the fold-out Holy Land map (Figure 11). 137 The illustrated manuscripts of the pilgrimage account of Niccolò da Poggibonsi, a Franciscan friar travelling around a century and a half earlier, also include an elaborate view of the city of Cairo (Figure 12), as do later printed editions, which are often anonymized or misattributed to Fra Noé Bianchi. ...
Context 4
... his approach is unconventional, Guglingen is not the only Jerusalem pilgrim to include a reasonably elaborate visual perspective on Cairo in his account: the famous view on the Holy Land in Breydenbach's Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam by Erhard Reuwich also includes Cairo, the balsam garden, and Babylon fortress on the right-hand-side wing of the fold-out Holy Land map (Figure 11). 137 The illustrated manuscripts of the pilgrimage account of Niccolò da Poggibonsi, a Franciscan friar travelling around a century and a half earlier, also include an elaborate view of the city of Cairo (Figure 12), as do later printed editions, which are often anonymized or misattributed to Fra Noé Bianchi. 138 In both cases, the city is visualized as an agglomeration of buildings and architectural elements, only some of which are particular to Cairo itself. ...
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Citations
Recent scholarship has challenged the still-powerful claim that long-distance pilgrimage and the journey to Jerusalem dramatically declined in number and significance in the sixteenth century. This article seeks to explore the different ways in which pilgrimage was embedded in the culture of the period. We interpret pilgrimage as a field of shared cross-confessional practices, representational conventions, and contestation. The paper presents a series of interlinked case studies, based on printed sources, correspondence, family archives, and material evidence. Together they demonstrate that early modern pilgrimage perpetuated medieval practices and yet was in constant dialogue with contemporary, post-Reformation religious and intellectual trends.
A shared biblical past has long imbued the Holy Land with special authority as well as a mythic character that has made the region not only the spiritual home for Muslims, Christians, and Jews, but also a source of a living sacred history that informs contemporary realities and religious identities. This book explores the Holy Land as a critical site in which early modern Catholics sought spiritual and political legitimacy during a period of profound and disruptive change. The Ottoman conquest of the region, the division of the Western Church, Catholic reform, the integration of the Mediterranean into global trading networks, and the emergence of new imperial rivalries transformed the Custody of the Holy Land, the venerable Catholic institution that had overseen Western pilgrimage since 1342, into a site of intense intra-Christian conflict by 1517. This contestation underscored the Holy Land's importance as a frontier and center of an embattled Catholic tradition.
