A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages: The World Through Medieval Eyes

Europeans of the Middle Ages were the first to use travel guides to orient their wanderings through a world punctuated with miraculous wonders and long-lost landmarks. Medievalist Anthony Bale gives us a vivid and alluring on-the-ground and ship’s view, recounting the advice that circulated among those venturing to the road for pilgrimage, trade, diplomacy, and war. He takes us on the streets of Rome, more ruin than tourist spot, and by ass to those of Jerusalem under Mamluk control. We learn of believed-in--but fantastical--places, like one where lambs grow on trees. Throughout, we experience ships stuck in doldrums, lurking bandits, and wondrous monuments. Using previously untranslated contemporaneous documents from places disparate as Turkey, Iceland, North Africa, and Russia, Bale serves as our guide into how medieval Europeans understood--and often misunderstood--the larger world.