Inglis&Christmon Worthless Stories of Pilgrims-Art-historical Imagination Of15th-C Travelers2Jerusal

“THE WORTHLESS STORIES OF PILGRIMS”?
THE ART HISTORICAL

IMAGINATION OF FIFTEENTH-CENTURY TRAVELERS TO JERUSALEM
Erik Inglis with Elise Christmon*
Abstract: This study analyzes what fifteenth century pilgrims from northern Europe wrote about the art and
architecture they encountered while on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Although these pilgrims did not have the
discipline of art history, they nonetheless had a strong art historical imagination that conditioned their re-
ception of old art and architecture. Their attempts at dating objects demonstrate a pre-modern periodization
in which important rulers or dynasties matter most, and the terms medieval and Renaissance are unknown.
They expected striking objects to have significant histories, studied those objects appearance for clues to
those histories, and read a city’s buildings as a trustworthy barometer of its vitality. Lacking our hierarchy
of fine and applied arts, they were open to appreciate a wide range of objects, which they frequently praise
in terms of their workmanship.
Keywords: pilgrimage, Jerusalem, Venice, Sicily, Felix Fabri, Nompar de Caumont, memory, ekphrasis,
historical imagination.
Writing in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century about the equestrian statue of
Marcus Aurelius on the Capitoline in Rome, Master Gregorius noted that the figure
had been identified in various ways: “There is ... [a] bronze statue in front of the papal
palace: an immense horse, with a rider whom the pilgrims call Theodoric, although the
Roman people say he is Constantine, and the cardinals and clerks of the Roman curia
call him Marcus or Quintus Quirinus ... Just as this admirable work has been assigned
different names, so too have a variety of reasons been proposed for its manufacture. I
shall give a wide berth to the worthless stories of the pilgrims and the Romans in this
regard, and shall record what I’ve been told by the elders, the cardinals, and the men
of greatest learning.”Alas, Gregorius offered an additional pair which was even more
wrong-headed.1 While his trust in his wise men was unwarranted, modern art histori-
ans have generally shared his disdain for what medieval travelers have to say about the
art and architecture they saw.
We have neglected these reports because we have most often looked to them for in-
formation on the original meaning of the work they mention. From this perspective,
travelers’ reports aren’t all that interesting. Either, like those of Master Gregorius,
they’re wrong, and thus unable to tell us about the work’s original meaning. Or, be-
cause they’re correct, and only confirm what we already know, they don’t shed new
*
Art Department, Oberlin College, 91 N. Main St., Oberlin, OH 44074. We thank the three anonymous
reviewers for their very useful suggestions and corrections, and Oberlin College’s Office of Sponsored
Programs for a grant which made Elise Christmon’s contribution possible. Unless otherwise indicated
translations are our own; we thank Matthew Senior for help with translations from the French.
1
According to Gregorius, those who identify the rider as Quintus Quirinus explain that he was a ruler of
Rome’s republic who, by casting himself and his horse into a “a great chasm ... spewing sulphurous fire and
foul air,” sealed it off, saving Rome. Those who identified the rider as Marcus explain that he was a soldier
who saved Rome from the dwarf-sorcerer-king of the Miseni, shown trampled beneath the horse’s hooves;
Master Gregorius, The Marvels of Rome, trans. John Osborne (Toronto 1987) 19–22. For a recent look at
Gregorius, see C. David Benson, “The Dead and the Living: Some Medieval Descriptions of the Ruins and
Relics of Rome Known to the English” Urban Space in the Middle Ages and the early modern age, ed. A.
Classen (Berlin 2009) 147–182, esp. 150–151, 156–157. Gregorius’s views were broadly transmitted in the
later Middle Ages. Borrowing directly from Gregorius, Ranulph Higden (d. 1364) contrasts the views of
pilgrims and the vulgus with those of the curia in his widely-disseminated Polychronicon; Polychronicon
Ranulphi Higden monachi cestrensis, Rerum Britannicarum medii aevi scriptores, ed. Churchill Babington
(London 1865) 1.228–233. Babington also counted more than thirty editions of Gregorius’s text from the
15th c., ibid. 1.xxix–xxx.
Viator 44 No. 3 (2013) 257–328. 10.1484/J.VIATOR.1.103486
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258 ERIK INGLIS WITH ELISE CHRISTMON
light on a work. Take for example another old equestrian statue, that of Justinian,
which stood in front of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. The traveler Wilhelm von
Boldensele saw this statue in the fourteenth century, and correctly identified it as Jus-
tinian, also noting that Justinian was the patron of the Hagia Sophia.2 Since we know
this to be true from other and earlier sources, Boldensele doesn’t teach us anything
about the statue, and we ignore him.
Art historians have used pilgrims’ accounts on the rare occasions when pilgrims
give us information unavailable elsewhere. Thus, Jeffrey Chipps Smith devoted an
article to George Lengherand’s account of his 1486 visit to the Chartreuse de Champ-
mol largely because the text offers new details about the site.3 Smith’s chief interest is
in the Chartreuse, not the author who reports on it; he says little about Lengherand
himself beyond noting “his sense of excitement about the church’s splendor.”4 Simi-
larly, scholars of the Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago have spilled a lot of ink on its inter-
pretation of the woman shown on the south portal who holds a skull in her lap, some
accepting the Guide’s identification of her as an adulterous woman required to kiss her
dead lover’s head, others rejecting it (rather as Gregorius dismissed his pilgrim’ sto-
ries).5 This discussion is necessarily inconclusive, because the Guide cannot answer
the question of what the portal’s designers meant their sculpture to mean; it can only
tell us what one viewer thought it meant.6
Thus, mining these texts successfully requires a shift in perspective, asking not
about the object or building discussed, but instead about the discussant. Over the last
twenty years reception history has become a vital current in medieval art history; if in
1991 Walter Cahn noted that it was still a very new approach, by 2010 it was im-
portant enough to receive an essay by Madeline Caviness in Conrad Ruldolph’s Com-
panion to Medieval Art.7 However, these examples also demonstrate why reception
historians have paid comparatively little attention to pilgrims’ reports. For these re-
ception historians still prioritize origins: they study the contemporary reception of a
building or object in the immediate wake of its production. Thus, Caviness begins her
summary by saying that the art historical study of reception is about “how medieval
2
Wilhelm von Boldensele, “Pilgerfahrt im Jahre 1333,” in Ferdinand Khull, Zweier deutscher Or-
densleute Pilgerfahrten nach Jerusalem (Graz 1895) 8–9.
3
“Lengherand’s text gives new information about the tomb of Philippe le Bon and Isabelle de Portugal,
the ducal portraits in the monks’ choir, and Beaumetz’s altarpieces in the oratory. In other cases, he corrobo-
rates what little knowledge scholars have gleaned from other sources or permits a more accurate location of
specific paintings and sculptures”; Jeffrey Chipps Smith, “The Chartreuse de Champmol in 1486: the earli-
est visitor’s account,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 99 (1985) 5. Lengherand’s account is published in Voyage de
Georges Lengherand, ed. Godefroy Ménilglaise (Mons 1861).
4
Smith, “Chartreuse de Champmol” (n. 3 above) 5.
5
See P. Gerson, A. Shaver-Crandell, and A. Stones, The Pilgrim’s Guide: A Critical Edition, 2 vols.
(London 1998) 2.207 n. 86; Serafín Moralejo, “The Codex Calixtinus as an Art–Historical Source,” The
Codex Calixtinus and the Shrine of St. James, ed. J. Williams and A. Stones (Tübingen 1992) 217–218. See
Claudia Rückert, “A Reconsideration of the Woman with the Skull on the Puerta de la Platerías of Santiago
de Compostela Cathedral,” Gesta 51.2 (2012) 129–146.
6
Moralejo, “Codex Calixtinus” (n. 5 above), is particularly emphatic that the Guide be used as evidence
of received meaning, which may differ from original meaning.
7
Walter Cahn, “Romanesque Sculpture and the Spectator,” The Romanesque frieze and its spectator:
the Lincoln Symposium papers, ed. Deborah Kahn (London and New York 1992) 44–60, 194–96; Madeline
Harrison Caviness, “Reception of Images by Medieval Viewers,” A Companion to Medieval Art: Rom-
anesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. Conrad Rudolph (Malden 2006) 65–85.
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“THE WORTHLESS STORIES OF PILGRIMS”? 259
objects functioned for their first users, and how they looked to their first viewers.”8
Cahn says the Pilgrim’s Guide is particularly valuable because it was written “not
much more than three decades after the execution of the work.”9 Most pilgrims’ re-
ports, on the other hand, are significantly later than the buildings and objects they dis-
cuss.
Shifting our focus from the object viewed near the moment of its origin to the
viewer of the object at any point in time opens up the travelers reports’ as a terrain of
great interest, where both errors and accuracy are revealing. This has been done for the
medieval reception of ancient art, where the temporal distance offers an advantage
rather than a weakness. In particular, errors like Gregorius’s appear to confirm our
periodization, the distinction we make between antiquity and the Middle Ages.10
Scholars have also attended to the Western reception of Byzantine art during the Mid-
dle Ages, finding that it confirms the distinctions we make between Byzantine and
European art.11In contrast, very few scholars have attended to the western medieval
reception of western medieval art, implicitly accepting the Middle Ages as a single
period in which viewers do not vary with the progress of time. Scholars appear to as-
sume that, unlike an ancient Roman statue or a Byzantine icon, an object from around
800 was understood in identical fashion from the moment of its making to the end of
the Middle Ages.
Late medieval pilgrims’ accounts contradict this understanding. For, in addition to
responding to ancient and Byzantine art, many late medieval pilgrims reported in
equally engaged and imaginative ways to the medieval art they saw—and sometimes
misunderstood. For example, the well-travelled German Arnold von Harff stopped in
Toulouse on his way to Santiago in 1496–1497. At the church of St. Sernin, he was
shown a variety of very old works in the treasury. These included a great cameo and a
very old book “that was entirely written in gold letters.”12 Both these works have been
identified. The cameo was the gemma Augustea now in Vienna, which had reached
Toulouse by 1246, and remained there until it was appropriated by François I in the
sixteenth century; the old book was almost certainly the Godescalc Gospels, made for
Charlemagne in the late eighth century, and in Toulouse by the twelfth century (fig.
1).13
8
Caviness, “Reception of Images” (n. 7 above) 65.
9
Cahn, “Romanesque Sculpture” (n. 7 above) 8. Similarly, Karen Rose Mathews’s account of the recep-
tion of Compostela’s sculpture focuses on how contemporary residents of Compostela may have understood
the cathedral’s sculptures in ways that differed from those of the clergy who commissioned it; “Reading
Romanesque sculpture: the iconography and reception of the south portal sculpture at Santiago de Compo-
stela,” Gesta 39 (2000) 3–12.
10
E. R. Curtius, “Misunderstandings of Antiquity in the Middle Ages,” European Literature and the
Latin Middle Ages, trans. W. Trask (Princeton 1973) 405–407.
11
Good examples include Barbara Zeitler, “Cross–Cultural Interpretations of Imagery in the Middle
Ages,” Art Bulletin 76 (1994) 680–694; Holger A. Klein, “Eastern Objects and Western Desires: Relics and
Reliquaries between Byzantium and the West,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 58 (2004) 283–314; Maryan W.
Ainsworth, “À la façon grèce”: The Encounters of Northern Renaissance Artists with Byzantine Icons,”
Byzantium Faith and Power (1261–1557), ed. Helen C. Evans (New York, 2004) 545–571.
12
“dat gantz mit gulden litteren geschreuen was”; Pilgerfahrt des Ritters Arnold von Harff, ed. E. von
Groote (Cologne 1860) 223.
13
Ibid. For the suggestion that this book was the Godescalc Gospels, see Percy Ernst Schramm, Floren-
tine Mütherich, Denkmale der deutschen Könige und Kaiser (Munich 1962) no. 8, 116.
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Von Harff reports that both objects had impressive provenances. The gem was as-
sociated with Charlemagne: von Harff describes it as “a very beautiful stone called
Camaziel, which Emperor Charles is supposed to have worn on his chest.”14 The
cameo’s mistaken association with Charlemagne suggests the emperor’s historical
importance in southern France.15 However, despite this, the book that had actually
belonged to Charlemagne was assigned a different origin, as von Harff was told that it
had been written by the evangelist St. John “with his own hand.”16 Like the attempted
identifications of the Aurelius statue, the attribution of the Gospels is wrong—and
ignores evidence in the book, which opens with a poem naming Godescalc as its scribe
and Charlemagne as its patron.
More important than their mistakes, though, was the fact that all these objects had
piqued their viewers’ historical imagination. And that is what requires underlining—
that medieval viewers had art historical imaginations. They attended to the old arti-
facts around them, were aware of their age and beauty, and attempted to understand
their history. The mistaken attributions tell us a great deal about the objects’ later au-
dience. Impressed with the great beauty and apparent age of the gem and the book,
they devised provenances that would do them justice. Faced with a secular object de-
picting an enthroned ruler, the greatest association they could come up with was
Charlemagne. Faced with an aged gospel book, the best origin they could come up
with was an actual evangelist.17 We should not categorize these misdatings as exam-
ples of medieval ahistoricism to be contrasted with Renaissance historicism. Instead,
we can compare the audience’s approach to the way Italian humanists approached
similar books, for the humanists based their revival of ancient scripts on the medieval
scripts derived from Carolingian minuscule.18 Faced with a Carolingian book, provin-
14
“eynen gar schonen steyn Camaziel genant, den keyser Karll vur sijnre brost gedragen sulde hauen”;
Pilgerfahrt des Ritters Arnold von Harff (n. 12 above) 223. The claim that Charlemagne wore the cameo on
his person was also made about a Byzantine steatite icon formerly at Aachen and now in Cleveland, though
the earliest documentation for the icon’s use is from the 17th c.; see Sacred Gifts and Worldly Treasures:
Medieval Masterworks from the Cleveland Museum of Art, ed. Holger A. Klein (Cleveland 2007) 77.
15
For Charlemagne’s regional importance, see Amy Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past (Ithaca
1995).
16
“mit sijner eygener hant”; Pilgerfahrt des Ritters Arnold von Harff (n. 12 above) 223. The identifica-
tion is similar to that made with the famous Marian images in Rome attributed to St. Luke, also popular
sights among pilgrims. For example, Lengherand was proud to have seen a pair on his journey, acclaiming
them as the first two paintings of the Virgin Mary, and even specifying that the one in the church of Santa
Maria in Ara Coeli was painted first, the one in Santa Maria Scala Coeli second; Voyage de Georges
Lengherand (n. 3 above) 61, 72. When he saw the hand of St. Luke in Nicosia he noted that it had painted
three images of Mary (109). See also Jean Richard, “Un but de pèlerinage: Notre–Dame de Nicosie,” British
School at Athens Studies, MOSAIC: Festschrift for A. H. S. Megaw 8 (2001) 135–138.
17
The attribution to John, rather than one of the other three evangelists, may result from his prominence
in the book’s illustrations; Jeffrey F. Hamburger, St. John the Divine: The Deified Evangelist in Medieval
Art and Theology (Berkeley 2002) 49–50. St. Sernin’s canons were not alone in this approach to old books;
according to his inventories, Charles V owned an old gospel book similarly written on colored vellum which
was believed to have been written by St. John. This book has been tentatively linked to the Ottonian Sainte-
Chapelle Gospels, BnF, MS lat. 8851, Le trésor de la Sainte–Chapelle (Paris 2001) 220.
18
“It was to late twelfth-century examples of Caroline minuscule ... that the humanists looked for their
models of the past”; Michelle Brown, A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600 (To-
ronto 1990) 126. See also Christopher S. Wood, Forgery, Replica, Fiction: Temporalities of German Re-
naissance Art (Chicago 2008) 190–191; Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood, Anachronic Renais-
sance (New York 2010) 144–145. The Godescalc Gospels’ actual history was recovered by the early 19th c.
In 1811, the book’s custodians in Toulouse, knowing that the book had celebrated the baptism of Charle-
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cial canons, medieval travelers and learned humanists were equally subject to being
misled by its classical allure.
This imagination requires emphasis because the historical sensibility of medieval
viewers has been little acknowledged. Thus, Mary Carruthers writes, “few features of
medieval scholarship are so distinctive as an utter indifference to the pastness of the
past, to its uniqueness and its integrity ... Ordinarily, medieval scholars show no ap-
parent interest in archaeology or historical philology.” Carruthers acknowledges that
“medieval scholars realized that languages and societies had changed over time ... [and
that] the division of ‘modern’ from ‘ancient’ was first formulated at the beginning of
the Middle Ages.” But, she continues, “it simply does not seem to have been thought
to be of paramount importance ... The sole relic of the ancients with which medieval
scholars rigorously concerned themselves was written texts...[even though] other arti-
facts of antiquity [were] still readily visible.”19
In a series of recent works Christopher S. Wood and Alexander Nagel have added
greater nuance and sophistication to our understanding of pre-modern approaches to
an artifact’s historicity.20 Wood and Nagel complicate our understanding of the
development of art historical thinking by noting the coexistence of opposing attitudes
in the fifteenth century. On the one hand, there is the birth of our modern discipline’s
historicist attitude, dominated by an archeological concern with an artifact’s material
origins. They explain that this attitude is performative and author-centered, concerned
to understand an artifact by linking to it a specific maker in a specific time and place.
On the other hand, they argue, most pre-modern viewers were unconcerned with the
historicity of the artifacts around them because they operated within a subsititutional
paradigm. Under this paradigm, buildings and images were understood as iterations
that faithfully transmitted a type. The transmitted mattered more than the transmitter.
“Under this conception of the temporal life of artifacts, which we will call the princi-
ple of substitution, modern copies of painted icons were understood as effective surro-
gates for lost originals, and new buildings were understood as reinstantiations, through
typological association, of prior structures. The literal circumstances and the historical
moment of an artifact’s material execution were not routinely taken as components of
its meaning or function; such facts about an artifact were seen as accidental rather than
as constitutive features.”21
In a self-reinforcing circle, the substitutionalist paradigm eliminated the need to ask
about an artifact’s actual origins, and prevented the development of a discipline which
would gather the data necessary to determine those origins through research. Thus,
according to Wood, “the built and shaped environment looked very different to fif-
magne’s son, offered it as an apposite gift to Napoleon when his son was baptized in 1811; Paul A. Under-
wood, “The Fountain of Life in Manuscripts of the Gospels,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 5 (1950) 67.
19
The Book of Memory A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge 1990) 193–194.
20
Christopher S. Wood and Alexander Nagel, “Toward a New Model of Renaissance Anachronism,” Art
Bulletin 87 (2005) 403–415. The same issue published two helpful replies: Michael Cole, “Nihil sub Sole
Novum,” 421–424, and Charles Dempsey, “‘Historia’ and Anachronism in Renaissance Art,” 416–421,
together with Nagel and Wood, “The Authors Reply,” 429–432. The next significant publication was Wood,
Forgery, Replica, Fiction (n. 18 above). In 2010 Nagel and Wood published Anachronic Renaissance (n. 18
above).
21
Nagel and Wood, “New Model of Renaissance Anachronism” (n. 20 above) 405.
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teenth- and sixteenth-century eyes than it does to modern travelers with their topo-
graphic handbooks backed by whole libraries of art historical scholarship. Even the
most sophisticated observers saw buildings and statues and wall paintings collapsed
upon one another in severe temporal compression ... What would it have meant, at the
time, to assign a ‘date’ to a building? A building was precisely a point where history
caved in upon itself, where recorded event, personality, and sacred precinct were all
folded one upon the other.”22 Further, “immobile” artifacts, “like a tomb or a build-
ing,” seemed timeless. “Questions about ... their historicity ... were simply not
asked.”23
In building their case Wood and Nagel draw some evidence from travel accounts,
most notably those of Bernard Breydenbach, his artist-companion Ernst Reuwich, and
Felix Fabri. However, hundreds of these reports survive, and their extended examina-
tion offers a way to engage and test Wood and Nagel’s work. Our paper concentrates
on later medieval material, from the 1330s to the 1510s. We deal with male pilgrims to
the Holy Land, travelling from a number of locations north of the Alps: Aquitaine, the
Ile-de-France, Normandy, and Ulm, in southern Germany.24 The paper has four sec-
tions. First, we will present an overview of the sorts of remarks pilgrims make about
the artifacts that we call art and architecture: what they say, how they say it and, to the
degree that it can be determined, what sparks their comments in the first place. Sec-
ond, we will look at what travelers said about Venice. Here we have enough reports to
have something of a critical mass, and we can see in particular how the travelers
transmitted knowledge generated by natives. Then we turn to two travelers in the Holy
Land, both clerics writing in Latin. These allow us to see how travelers engaged local
narratives with their own intelligence. Finally, we will look at a single lay traveler,
Nompar de Caumont, an aristocrat composing in the vernacular and a great example of
aesthetic and historic curiosity. Taken together, these accounts—like those dismissed
so pompously be Gregorius—allow us to see that some late medieval viewers, in some
circumstances, were keenly aware of and interested in the pastness of the past, asked
questions about the facture of old artifacts, and used the answers to enhance their ap-
preciative understanding of art and architecture.
1. “MANNERS OF THE COUNTRY”: ART AND ARCHITECTURE IN PILGRIMS’ RECORDS

To begin with it must be acknowledged that while we have lots of pilgrims’ reports,
few of them contain extensive detailed accounts like that which Lengherand gives of
the Chartreuse. This is not surprising: whether journeying to a local shrine or distant
Jerusalem, the pilgrim’s announced goal was contact with a sacred reality that would
transcend the mundane world of physical appearances. The pilgrim’s disregard of the
built environment started early; already around 400, Jerome’s account of the pilgrim-
22
Wood, Forgery, replica, fiction (n. 18 above) 42.
23
Ibid. 245.
24
The focus on male pilgrims is inescapable; of the 375 late medieval travel reports cataloged by
Digiberichte, Margery of Kempe’s is the only one known to have been written by a woman; 354 have
known male authors, and 20 are anonymous. On the experience of female pilgrims, see Leigh Ann Craig,
Wandering Women and Holy Matrons: women as pilgrims in the later Middle Ages (Leiden 2009); eadem,
“Stronger than Men and Braver than Knights: Women and the Pilgrimages to Jerusalem and Rome in the
Later Middle Ages,” Journal of Medieval History 29 (Summer, 2003) 153–175.
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age of blessed Paula suggests that a site’s sacred power can eclipse both architecture
and time. Paula sees not the church of the Nativity, but, “by the eyes of faith, ... the
Infant Lord ... wailing in the manger.”25 Visiting the same site more than one thousand
years later, Felix Fabri imitated Paula:
We entered it into the cave or crypt of Christ’s nativity, where we prostrated ourselves a sec-
ond time, and kissed the holy places—the place of the nativity, the manger, and the place
where the Virgin sat when she received the offerings of the three kings. While we were
standing amid these holy places there came into my mind the rapturous vision beheld by the
most blessed Paula the pilgrim in this place; for she declared in the hearing of St. Jerome that
she saw the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, wailing in the manger, the shepherd’s com-
ing and praising God, the Magi worshipping, and the star shining above. Moreover, she be-
held the Virgin with both her eyes continually suckling the child.26
In addition to demonstrating how a pilgrim’s response might be mediated by earlier

writings, Fabri’s account demonstrates how medieval pilgrims attempted to see be-
yond the present and into sacred history.27 Reading Margery Kempe, then, we can
expect no mention of the famous sights she saw in her travels; one can imagine her
scorn for a pilgrim in Rome who bothered to look at much less write about statues of
dead pagans.28
Additionally, our understanding of what travelers saw and thought is only indirect,
based as it is on what they saw fit to record. The French anonymous of 1480 writes
that he spent “eight days in Rome visiting the churches and other beautiful places” but
provides no details about what he saw or thought.29 Felix Fabri provided a very thor-
ough account of the relics his party visited daily during his month in Venice, but he
explicitly omits his party’s more secular activities: “I have written down only the holy
and honorable wanderings which we made in the city of Venice. As for such as were
undertaken out of curiosity, or worse motives, I pass them by albeit they were made
also.”30 What’s more, we cannot expect their reports to convey everything they
thought. Even professional art historians find it challenging to communicate in writing
everything we think about a specific work of art. If this is true of us, who make a liv-
ing matching words to art, it must be still more the case among a group of amateur
25
St. Jerome, The Pilgrimage of Holy Paula, trans. Aubrey Stewart (London 1885) 7.
26
Felix Fabri, The Wanderings of Felix Fabri, trans. Aubrey Stewart (London 1892–1897) 1.2, 567–
568.
27
Wood writes that “travel was directed by the very authoritative reports it was meant to test, and
perceptions and descriptions were heavily preformed.” Wood, Forgery, Replica, Fiction (n. 18 above) 175.
28
“Margery described her visions ... as she visited the holy places, and these received much more atten-
tion than did the sites themselves”; Kristine T. Utterback, “The Vision Becomes Reality: Medieval Women
Pilgrims to the Holy Land,” Pilgrims and travelers to the Holy Land, ed. Bryan F. Le Beau and Menachem
Mor (Omaha 1996) 168. “Much of the recent literature concerning Margery has centered on her ability to
transcend time and place by the force of her visionary experiences”; Virginia Chieffo Raguin, “Real and
imaged bodies in architectural space: the setting for Margery Kempe’s book,” Women’s space: Patronage,
Place, and Gender in the Medieval Church, ed. Virginia Chieffo Raguin and Sarah Stanbury (Albany 2005)
105. Raguin’s study demonstrates that Kempe’s avoidance of physical description does not mean she was
unaffected by the buildings and images she experienced. For a complementary approach, see Sarah Stan-
bury, “Margery Kempe and the arts of self–patronage,” ibid. 75–104.
29
“Nous fusmes huyt jours à Romme à visiter les eglises et aultres beaulx lieux”; Le Voyage de la
saincte cyté de Hierusalem, ed. Charles Schefer (Paris 1882, repr. Amsterdam 1970) 117.
30
Fabri, Wanderings (n. 26 above) 1.1, 110.
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writers working without many models.31 The pilgrims themselves were aware of this
difficulty; indeed, admitting their inability to record completely what they saw was a
trope. Jacques Le Saige wrote the Florence’s baptistry was too richly decorated to
write about: “There are so many rich works in the church that there is no need to write
more of them, because there would be too much to say.”32 In Venice, George
Lengherand leavened his lengthy descriptions with a confession: “I certainly do not
have it in me to explain the riches of figures or works, nor to describe the materials of
the columns, stones or pavements; I pass it by.”33 Similarly, Louis de Rochechouart
said that it was easier to see a building than to write or hear about it. “If I wanted to
give a description of it, I would waste time, because in this thing the eyes are more
credible than ears or writing. But I will briefly say what I can.” Rochechouart also
worked around the failure of words by having an architect draw what he could not
completely describe.34 The drawing does not survive in the extant manuscript of his
text, the loss a reminder that many interesting and complex reactions would have gone
unrecorded.
We draw two consequences from the partial and incomplete nature of these reports.
First, even if we were to read every account ever written, we would know only the
minimum, not the maximum, of their authors’ interest in art and architecture. Second,
these gaps make us hesitant to use the reports as evidence of changes in how people
experienced art and architecture while on pilgrimage. While some historians have at-
tempted to trace a development over time from “devotion to curiosity,” the evidence
might as easily indicate a growing willingness to write about experiences that earlier
travelers had shared but not recorded.35 Given the complexity of even one century and
the partial nature of the reports, our account is strictly synchronic in its attention and
intention.
31
For the challenge of writing without the support of an established genre, see Nicole Chareyron, Pil-
grims to Jerusalem in the Middle Ages, trans. W. Donald Wilson (New York 2005) 27; Arnold Esch, “An-
schauung und Begriff. Die Bewältigung fremder Wirklichkeit durch den Vergleich in Reiseberichten des
späten Mittelalters,” Historische Zeitschrift 253 (1991) 308; Lindy Grant, “Naming of Parts: Describing
Architecture in the High Middle Ages,” Architecture and Language: Constructing Identity in European Ar-
chitecture, c. 1000–c. 1650, ed. Georgia Clarke and Paul Crossley (Cambridge 2000) 51; Paul Frankl, The
Gothic: Literary Sources and Interpretations through Eight Centuries (Princeton 1960) 109–110.
32
“Il y a tant de richesse d’ouvraiges en ladite église que n’est besoin d’en plus escripre, car y aroit trop
à faire”; Voyage de Jacques Le Saige, ed. H.-R. Duthilloeul (Douai 1851) 20.
33
“Qu’il soit en moy de mettre la ricesse des personnages, ouvrages, ne de quoy les coullombes, pierres
ne pavemens sont, certes non; si m’en déporte”; Voyage de Georges Lengherand (n. 3 above) 35.
34
“Cujus si descripcionem dicere voluero, inaniter tempora teram, quoniam hac in re magis credendum
est oculis quam auribus aut scriptis. Dicam tamen succinte que potero”; C. Couderc, “Journal de voyage à
Jérusalem de Louis de Rochechouart, évêque de Saintes (1461),” Revue de l’orient latin 1 (1893) 252–253.
Rochechouart’s text is published in French trans. by Béatrice Dansette, Croisades et Pèlerinages récits,
chroniques et voyages en Terre Sainte XIIe–XVIe siècle, ed. Danielle Régner-Bohler (Paris 1997) 1124–
1167, at 1149–1151.
35
For the idea of a progressive secularization of travel writing, see Élisabeth Crouzet–Pavan, “Récits,
images et mythes: Venise dans l’iter hierosolomytain (XIVe–XVe siècles),” Mélanges de l’École française
de Rome, Moyen–Age, Temps modernes 96 (1984) 507–508; Margaret Wade Labarge, “Medieval travel and
travellers: the voyage from pietas to curiositas,” in eadem, A Medieval Miscellany (Ottawa 1997) 167–185;
Colin Morris, The Sepulchre of Christ and the Medieval West From the beginning to 1600 (Oxford 2005)
who credits some 15th-c. pilgrims with “a spirit of criticism for which it is difficult to find earlier prece-
dent” (326). However, Morris (327) also notes a similar spirit “even in 1326.” For a caution against this
developmental view see F. Thomas Noonan, The Road to Jerusalem: Pilgrimage and Travel in the Age of
Discovery (Philadelphia 2007) 278 n. 30.
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Lengherand’s work gives us a good introduction, for in addition to his remarks

about the Chartreuse de Champmol discussed by Smith, the pilgrim also makes inter-
esting comments about things he saw in Brescia, Rome, Loreto, Padua, and Venice.
Lengherand sprinkles his text with laconic mentions of beautiful cities and buildings
and strong walls and towers: Lausanne “is a beautiful town,” and Aizey-le-Duc (now
Aisey-sur-Seine) features a “beautiful castle” on the river, complete with a “beautiful
park.”36 These sorts of remarks are quite common, the boilerplate of a pilgrim’s
description.37 Thus, travelling home from his first, failed attempt to reach Jerusalem in
1424, Coppart de Velleine of Tournai wrote that Ferrara was a “beautiful city” and
Siena had a “beautiful fountain.”38 Blunt terms broadly applied, “beautiful” and
“strong” offer little leverage for interpretation, other than proof that modern tourists
are not alone in failing to find words adequate to pleasing sights. Still, the very regu-
larity of such unsatisfying terms suggests that authors felt a duty to report and evaluate
what they saw.
And these simple terms can also suggest finer judgments, even if the criteria for
those judgments is unclear. Jacques Le Saige praised Siena cathedral’s interior in par-
ticular: it is a “beautiful church, with the finest interior I have ever seen.”39 In Flor-
ence, however, he preferred the Duomo’s exterior: “it is a triumph to see it from out-
side, because it is more beautiful than” the interior.40 These terms were also deployed
to conjure something larger. Take, for example, Lengherand’s report on Brescia,
where he spent a night on his way to Jerusalem. After finding an inn, he writes,
We found everything in the city to be pleasing, and it is surely a beautiful, good, strong and
big city; there are important and notable people, lords, merchants and others. In the town
plaza, that it is to say at the market, there are buildings where the lords and notable people go
to promenade, decorated very richly with all colors; and there are great beginnings in the city
to make other very sumptuous buildings. We went to see the town hall which is a great thing;
we also saw its bell-tower which is very powerful, and there is a very beautiful clock; there
was another very beautiful one at the market, with several figures and other rich decorations
all around. We also went to see the building where the judges of the city meet, in which there
is a beautiful site and beautiful galleries. We also saw the house of the late lord Bartolomeo
Colleoni which is the most beautiful and the richest house that I saw in the city, whether the
house of a lord, burger, or merchant. And we saw besides so many other beautiful houses
that it was a very beautiful thing; and all these houses are full of merchandise or artisans.
There are many churches of which the majority are all round and vaulted in stone above, so
that they seem like towers. There is also a castle in the town situated on a height and, looking
at it from outside, it seems quite beautiful. And there are already sheep shorn in the market
for the year; and many trees are already in flower, such as plums, peaches, cherries and oth-
ers. And there is in this market a great quantity of olive trees, with which one makes olive
36
Voyage de Georges Lengherand (n. 3 above) 9, 5.
37
Chareyron, Pilgrims to Jerusalem (n. 31 above), is very good on the standardized and common ele-
ments of pilgrim literature. See also Crouzet–Pavan, “Venise dans l’iter hierosolomytain (XIVe–XVe siè-
cles)” (n. 35 above) 497–498.
38
Les Voyages d’un tournaisien du XVe siècle, ed. Armand d’Herbomez (Tournai 1907) 14.
39
“une belle église la plus esquise par dedens que nay point encore veu”; Voyage de Jacques Le Saige
(n. 32 above) 19.
40
“C’est ung triumpe de le veir par dehors, car elle est plus belle que dedans”; ibid. 20.
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oil, and their leaves are green in all weather [and are] like a willow[‘s leaves], a little nar-
rower, whiter and thicker.41
In contrast with his discussion of the Chartreuse, Lengherand here balances his de-
scription with evocation. And although his language is not sophisticated, he is able to
convey the visual pleasures of walking about a rich and thriving town. There are
beautiful buildings everywhere, with new ones being built and one off on a hill which
pleases even from a distance. Faced with this architectural plenty he implicitly recog-
nizes a contest and explicitly names a winner—the house of Bartolomeo Colleoni
(dead for eleven years when Lengherand visited).
He also does include some descriptive elements, when he describes the majority of
the churches as round, vaulted, and tower-like, terms applicable to Brescia’s Duomo
vecchio, though it is not named specifically (fig. 2). These comments were probably
sparked by the difference between Brescia’s domical vaults and those that Lengherand
was accustomed to at home, north of the Alps.42 This suggestion is supported by the
fact that Lengherand says nothing about the structure of the Chartreuse in Dijon,
whose architectural style was more familiar to him. Similarly, travelling in 1518
Jacques Le Saige noted that the campanile of Florence’s cathedral was separate from
the church, an aspect he probably deemed noteworthy because it differed from north-
ern practice.43 He makes an explicit contrast when discussing the paintings he saw in
Greece: “We went to see the churches, of which there are many; and they are poorly
decorated. We saw a good number of paintings of Our Lady in the Greek manner; but
there were no crucifixes or saints carved or painted in our manner in these churches.”44
41
“Nous trouvàmes parmi la ville tout à notre plaisir; et certes c’est une belle, bonne, forte, et grande
ville; y a de grans et notables personnages, de seigneurs, marchans, et aultres. Sur la plache d’icelle ville,
comme l’on diroit sur le marchié, il y a édiffices où les s[ei]g[neu]rs et notables gens se vont pourmener,
garnis de paintures de touttes coulleurs fort riches; et y a grand commenchement pour y fair par la ville
aultres bien sumptueulx édiffices. Allàmes veoir le pallais de ladicte ville qui est grand chose; aussy veymes
le beffroy d’icelle qui est fort puissant, et y a ung très bel cadran; encoires en y a il ung trop plus beau sur le
marchié, et pluiseurs personnages et aultres richesses de paremens allentour. Allàmes encoires veoir la
maison où les s[ei]g[neu]rs de la justice d’icelle ville se tiennent, en laquelle y a très beau lieu et de belles
galleries.Veismes pareillement l’ostel de feu messire Bertelmi Couillon que est le plus beau et le plus riches
ostel que j’ay veu en ladicte ville pour ostel de s[ei]g[neu]r, bourgeois, ou marchans. Et sy veymes au sur-
plus tant d’aultres beaux ostelz que c’est très belle chose; et si sont touttes les maisons playnnes de
marchandises ou de gens de mestiers. Il y a beaucoup d’églises dont la pluspart sont touttes rondes et vol-
sées par dessus de pierres, tellment que ce semblent tours. Il y a aussy un chastel an ladicte ville sur ung
hault, lequel à le veoir par dehors semble bien beau.Et sont desja les bresbis tondues en ceste marche pour
ceste année; aussy plusieurs arbres y sont desja an fleurs comme pronniers, peschiers, cherisiers et aultres.
Et y a en ceste marche grand plenté d’oliviers dont l’on fait l’uile d’ollive, et sont vers en tout temps les
feulles comme de saulch sallenghes, ung peu plus estroictes, plus blanches et plus espesses.” Voyage de
Georges Lengherand (n. 3 above) 27–28.
42
Traveling in the opposite direction, the Florentine ambassadors who visited France in 1461 reported
that Jacques Coeur’s famous house was made “in a different manner than our practice”; “Il viaggio deglie
ambasciatori fiorentini al re di Francia nel MCCCCLXI descritto da Giovanni di Francesco di Neri Cecchi,
loro cancelliere,” Archivio storico italiano I (1865) 20–21.
43
Voyage de Jacques Le Saige (n. 32 above) 19.
44
“Nous allasmes veoir les eglises dont il y en y a pluseurs; et sont pauvrement aornée. On y voit assez
de tableaux de nostre dame painte a la manière de Gresse; maid de crucifix ne de saincts eslevés ou paint a
la manière de nou, il n’est point dedens lessdites eglises”; ibid. 74. Le Saige’s remark is like a European
reply to the famous statement by Gregory Melissenos in Florence: “When I enter a Latin church, I do not
revere any of the [images of] saints because I do not recognize them. At the most I may recognize Christ,
but I do not revere Him either, since I do not know in what terms He is inscribed”; quoted in Zeitler,
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Lengherand’s account of Brescia also yokes the city’s architecture to its markets:
both present diverting sights and both index its wealth. This mixture of comments on
buildings and sheep is quite typical of pilgrims’ reports, which aimed to sum up a
place in its entirety. Le Saige makes this goal clear when he records his interrogation
of a local during a stop in Milan while returning from the Holy Land. He writes: “after
dinner we four went to see the castle of Milan, and when we were near we asked for
the captain, if he pleased, who came to see us because he was told that we were pil-
grims on the holy voyage, and we asked about the manners of the country [manieres
du païs]. And then he had us shown all over the castle and you can be sure that it was
a great thing.”45 Le Saige’s phrase “manieres du païs” captures perfectly the content of
pilgrims’ reports, where art and architecture play a role alongside the food, clothing
and landscape. For example, in addition to his admiration for buildings like the castle
in Milan, Le Saige also records that he had to stifle his laughter at the sight a Savoyard
putting mustard on cheese, and many a pilgrim criticized the bad wines they drank
away from home.46 The genre’s blend of topics, in which diet, industry and architec-
ture appear together, also relates them to a long tradition of city descriptions in classi-
cal and medieval writing.47 These accounts often link a city’s appearance with the
dignity of its residents, the energy of its economy and the distinctive products of its
artisans and/or farmers. Their attention to varied stimuli has more in common with
that of a visitor to a world’s fair than to an art museum, and this variety may have pre-
vented some art historians from recognizing their art historical content.
In addition to urban summaries, Lengherand also wrote much more focused discus-
sions. In Rome he sees the Marcus Aurelius statue; rather than falling into the mis-
takes bemoaned and committed by Master Gregorius, he is careful to say he is not sure
of the statue’s significance: “And we saw in the courtyard of this church an unarmed,
bareheaded figure on horseback, the horse quite large; I don’t really know what pur-
pose it served, except that it was said to me that in times past there had been a leader
of men of war for the Romans, and for reward requested of the Romans for whom he
had done great service, that their pleasure would be to make [the statue] after his
death, as a memorial: which the Romans did, and you should understand that it is only
a mule, not a horse.”48 Thus, Lengherand reports his informant interpreted the statue
“Cross–Cultural Interpretations of Imagery” (n. 11 above) 680. Le Saige associates a foreign style with a
foreign language, noting in his next sentences: “A priest taught school all in Greek, I believed I would go
read some word, but I would not have known a single letter. I have never been so astonished as by the sight
of their writing. They have no idea what Latin is.” (“Ung prestre y tenoit escole tout en grecq, je cuiday aller
lire quelque mot, mais je neusse sceu congnoistre une seulle lettre. Jamais ne fus plus esbahis de veoir leur
escripture. Ils ne savent que c’est de latin.”) We thank Robert Glass for help with this translation.
45
“Lapres disner allasmes nous quatre pour veoir le chasteau de Mellan [Milan], dont quant fusmes pres
on alla demander au capitaine sil luy plaisoit, dont nous vint veoir ad cause quon luy avoit dict que
estiesmes pellerins du sainct voyaige, et nous demanda des manieres du païs. Et puis nous fit convoier tout
par tout ledict chasteau et soies sceur que cest grant chose”; Voyage de Jacques Le Saige (n. 32 above) 177–
178
46
Ibid. 184; Voyage de la saincte cyté de Hierusalem (n. 29 above) 50–51, 56.
47
On this literature see J. K. Hyde, “Medieval Descriptions of Cities,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Li-
brary 48 (1966) 308–340; Erik Inglis, “Gothic Architecture and a Scholastic: Jean de Jandun’s Tractatus de
laudibus Parisius (1323),” Gesta 42 (2003) 63–85; Benson, “Medieval Descriptions of the Ruins and Relics
of Rome” (n. 1 above) 147, 153–154.
48
“Et sy vis en la court d’icelle église ung personnage à cheval non armé et à teste nue, le cheval bien
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not (necessarily) as an imperial portrait, but along the lines of contemporary equestrian
portraits of condottieri, like Uccello’s portrait of Hawkwood in Florence, or Dona-
tello’s monument to Erasmo Narni, commissioned by the city of Padua and better
known by Narni’s nickname, Gattamelata (Speckled Cat).
Lengherand also saw the Gattamelata, which he took for a representation of Ante-
nor, Padua’s legendary founder (fig. 3). “There is a big copper horse and mounted
above an armored man named Antenor who was ruler of Padua, with a large baton in
his hand, the horse having a gilded head, and at the front the horse placed its foot on a
cannonball, the horse the best made that I have ever seen.”49 While Lengherand ad-
mires how well the horse was made, he says nothing about an individual artist, an
omission typical of pilgrims’ accounts. This omission is the rule: pilgrims’ reports
almost never mention an artist’s name unless they are dealing with a saint like Luke or
Eloy (the one exception we know is Louis de Rochechouart’s account of the mosaics
in Bethlehem’s church of the Nativity, discussed below). Part of this must have to do
with the audience Lengherand anticipated; his readers might have wanted to know that
Padua had a well-made statue by a good artist, but the artist’s name would not have
added to its meaning. Even though Lengherand does not name Donatello, it is tempt-
ing to suggest that his admiration for the skillful making indicates a historical appreci-
ation of the work, heralding a step forward in stylistic development in comparison
with earlier works. However, we cannot be certain that he thought along these lines,
for his praise is not as explicit as that of Vasari in his Life of Donatello: “he proved
himself such a master in the proportions and excellence of this huge cast that he chal-
lenges comparison with any of the ancient craftsmen in expressing movement, in de-
sign, skill, diligence, and proportion.”50
We can learn more from his striking misinterpretation of the sculpture’s identity,
for it is remarkable that he mistook the first life-size bronze equestrian statue since
antiquity as having an ancient subject. Lengherand’s editor suggests that a local in-
formant told Lengherand the rider was Antenor, and this is certainly possible.51 How-
ever, Narni, the condottiere portrayed in the sculpture, died in 1443, and Donatello
completed the sculpture a decade later; thus one would expect Lengherand’s Paduan
informants to be able to identify the rider correctly in 1486. On the other hand, Ante-
nor was certainly important to Paduan identity, and not far from the Gattamelata stood
his alleged tomb, which had been fashioned in the thirteenth century (unmentioned by
grand; ne say bonnement à quoy ce servoi, aultrement qu’il me fut dit que en temps passé il avoit esté con-
ducteur des gens de gherre de ceulx de Romme, et pour rénuméracion requist à ceulx de Romme ausquelz il
avoit fait de grans services, que leur plaisir fust le ainsi faire mettre après sa mort pour mémoire: ce que
lesditz de Romme ont fait, et entendis que ce n’est que une jument, non pas ung cheval”; Voyage de
Georges Lengherand (n. 3 above) 66.
49
“Il y a ung grand cheval du cuivre et ung homme tout armé nommé Anthenor qui fut s[ei]g[neu]r de
Padua dessus, ayant ung gros baston en sa main, le cheval ayant la teste dorée, et du piet au monter devant,
le cheval marche sur le boullet d’un canon, ledit cheval le mieulx fait que oncques j’en veisse nulz”; ibid.
31–32.
50
Giorgio Vasari, “Life of Donatello,” The Lives of the Artists: a selection, trans. George Bull (New
York 1987) 1.182.
51
“Notre voyageur a été mal renseigné par son cicerone,” Voyage de Georges Lengherand (n. 3 above)
215 n. 38.
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Lengherand).52 It could be the case that Lengherand knew or was told of Padua’s pride
in Antenor, and that he mistakenly linked the rider to the founder when writing up his
account. But the mistake may be still more revealing. If we remember that all the
identities proposed for the Aurelius statue recognized the antiquity of its subject, it
may be that Lengherand, recognizing the Gattamelata’s classical style, assumed that it
must refer back to a distant figure in the city’s history. Even if Lengherand did not
recognize the sculpture’s classicism, he may have believed its impressive appearance
required a most distinguished subject and expected this to be associated with the city’s
origins. In either case, his mistake is a chastening reminder that even the most straight-
forward meaning might be missed by some almost contemporary observers.53
Lengherand also commented on the famous church of Saint Anthony in Padua,
largely built in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries:
We returned to the Church of the Franciscans in Padua, which is the most beautiful Francis-
can church I have ever seen, [and] we saw where lies the body of our my lord Saint Anthony
of Padua where one climbs seven richly ornamented steps. We went into this church to see
where they say that there lies the body of St. Luke, who was not canonized. The choir of this
church is very beautiful and the best enclosed with beautiful stones that I have seen up to
now and [with] the most beautiful appearances; also the whole pavement of this church is
very beautiful and rich. The entire church in five round vaults very richly covered in lead.
And as was said, there are so many colorful stones, of jasper, chalcedony, [and] alabaster
that it seemed a rich thing to me.54
His remarks here touch on several aspects. First, by saying that this is the most beauti-
ful Franciscan church that he’s seen, he suggests an ability to categorize churches by
the orders with which they are affiliated. His comments on the church—and particu-
larly its choir—convey his appreciation for richly colored stone interiors (a taste
shared by Venice’s visitors, as we will see in the next section). And, recalling his
structural comments on the typical Brescian church, he specifies that Saint Anthony’s
has five round vaults.
Lengherand also commented on churches much closer to home. Near the beginning
of his trip he saw Reims cathedral, which he judged the “most beautiful church I have
seen yet and [with] the most beautiful portal; it is very dark, but it seems that this re-
sults from the windows which are so very rich and full of workmanship [ouvrages].”55
52
For the tomb, and Antenor’s role in Padua’s civic memory, see Carrie Beneš, Urban Legends: Civic
Identity and the Classical Past in Northern Italy, 1250–1350 (University Park 2011) 38–60.
53
Jacques Le Saige, traveling in 1516, avoided this mistake by sticking to an almost laughably generic
statement about the statue’s meaning: “There is … a figure of gilded copper on a great horse of the same
material; and it is for the victory that he won in his time” (“Il y a en lattre ung personnaige de queuvre dorés
sur eng grant cheval aussy de meisme; et est pour le victoire quil fit en son tamps)”; Voyage de Jacques Le
Saige (n. 32 above) 50.
54
“Revinsmes par l’eglise des Cordeliers audit Padua, qui est la plus belle église de Cordeliers que viz
oncques, veismes où gist le corps de mons[ei]g[neu]r sainct Anthoine de Padua où l’on y monte à VII de-
grez richemont acoustrez. Allàmes en icelle église veoir où l’on dist que le corps saint Lucas gist, lequel
n’est point canonisié. Le ceur d’icelle église est fort beau et le mieulx clos de plus belles pierres que jusques
à ceste heure j’ay veu et les plus belles formes; aussi tout le pavement d’icelle église est fort beau et riche.
Toutte l’eglise est par dessus en cincq vaulsures rondes couvertes de plomb bien richement. Et comme dit
est, il y a tant de pierres de coulleurs, de jaspres, cassidones, albastres que ce me semble riche chose”; Voy-
age de Georges Lengherand (n. 3 above) 31.
55
“la plus belle église que je avoye veue à ceste heure et le plus bel portal; elle est fort sombre, mais si
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Unlike the Italian churches, at Reims the vaulting was familiar, so it is not mentioned.
Instead, Lengherand emphasizes the church’s portal, and the dark interior, a product of
its richly historiated windows. We believe that Lengherand made this observation be-
cause the dark interior of Reims contrasted with the brighter churches of his own day,
churches which favored more transparent grisaille windows. While he does not men-
tion the age of the cathedral, he shows us how a great thirteenth-century building was
received near the end of the fifteenth century; he is as interested in its optical impact
of Reims as he was in the iconography of the much newer monastery in Dijon or the
vaults of Saint Anthony in Padua. This is significant. Panofsky showed that fifteenth-
century painters (and presumably their viewers) made broad distinctions between
Romanesque and Gothic architecture; Lengherand suggests the ability to distinguish
differences even within Gothic.56
If Reims’s age is only intimated here, Lengherand explicitly invokes age when
writing about the church of Saint Ambrose in Milan. “We were in the church of Saint
Ambrose in Milan which is very old and badly maintained, and one says that Saint
Ambrose lies below the choir of this church.”57 It is significant that one of
Lengherand’s only invocations of a building’s age is in conjunction with its poor con-
dition. The wear-and-tear of time was widely recognized. Rome’s ruins were its great-
est sight: having admired the marvelous but destroyed Colosseum, Jacques le Saige
added that “there are so many other destroyed places that it is a terrible thing to see.”58
Conversely, aged buildings in good condition were notable: praising Paris’s cathedral
the Italian poet Antonio Astesano expressed his surprise that “miraculously, up to the
present ... great age / which is accustomed to consume all things gradually, has barely
injured it."59 In Lengherand’s account, Saint Ambrose’s decrepit condition contrasts
with Milan’s cathedral: “In the city of Milan there is a very beautiful church called …
Our Lady of Milan, which is completely new, very rich and beautiful, and they work
on it every day. Even from the outside of this church there are many great figures in
white marble; and certainly this church is a great thing and would be even greater if it
were finished.”60 Here, as at Brescia, Lengherand was drawn to work in progress; he
puelt sambler que la cause sy est pour ce que les verrières sont sy fort riches et playnnes d’ouvrages”; ibid.
3.
56
Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting (Cambridge, MA 1953) 134–140. Wood develops this
in Forgery, replica, fiction (n. 18 above) 187, 189, 193–201; see also Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renais-
sance (n. 18 above) 135–144. For more on the reception of 13th-c. architecture in 15th-c. France, see Erik
Inglis, Jean Fouquet and the Invention of France (London 2011) 148–154, 163–168, 172–203.
57
“Nous fùmes en l’église de Saint Ambrose audit Millan qui est fort vielle et mal retenue; et en bas
desoubz le ceur d’icelle église, l’on dist que saint Ambrose y gist”; Voyage de Georges Lengherand (n. 3
above) 23.
58
“ll y a tant d’autres lieux destruicts que c’est terrible chose a regarder”; Voyage de Jacques Le Saige
(n. 32 above) 29. For a study of the role that ruins played in the imagination of Rome’s visitors, see Benson,
“Medieval Descriptions of the Ruins and Relics of Rome” (n. 1 above).
59
“mirabiliter, nec adhuc longaeva vetustas,/quae res paulatim solita est consumere cunctas,/laeserit in
minimo”; Antonio Astesano, Heroic Epistles, Paris et ses historiens aux XIVe et XVe siècles, ed. Antoine Jean
Victor Le Roux de Lincy, and L. M. Tisserand (Paris 1867) 538. Master Gregorius also identified time and
vandalism as dual threats to objects when he wrote about the statue of Marcus Aurelius: “The horse, the
rider and the columns were lavishly gilded, but in many places the gold has fallen victim to Roman avarice,
and time has also taken its toll”; Marvels of Rome (n. 1 above) 19.
60
“Et en ladicte ville de Millan y a une très belle églize que l’on dist l’églize Nostre Dame de Millan,
laquelle églize est toutte neufve, fort riche et belle, et y euvre l’on chascun jour. Mesmes par dehors icelle
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used almost identical words for Cologne’s cathedral, which he said would be a “very
beautiful church if it was finished.”61
Nor was he alone in this: the centuries-long construction of Milan attracted many
travelers’ attention. The French anonymous of 1480 admired it (“the big cathedral
church is all of white marble or alabaster”62), while Pierre Barbatre was so struck by
the massive scale of the construction that he imagined its future:
Milan is a good city, big and rich, its castle very strong; the mother church is dedicated to
Our Lady. Every day there are two hundred men working to cut and set stone, and as they
take apart the old church they build the new one; if it should be finished as it is begun, it will
be the most beautiful [church] in the world, the highest, the largest and the most expensive,
more beautiful above than below, its length is not yet determined. In this church are several
venerable objects [dignités]. First up above in the choir’s vault is one of the nails with which
our Lord Jesus Christ was attached to the cross; and there a lamp burns day and night. In this
church are the bodies of my lord Saint Gervais and Protasius; and they say they have the
body of Saint Vitalis their father, but those of the city of Ravenna which is on the path from
Venice to Rome say that he is in their church in a well where he was thrown. Item at Milan
they have the body of my lord Saint Ambrose, the body of St. Peter Martyr, of Saint Sym-
phorien, Saint Nazare, and Saint Celsus patrons of the place and several other relics and
saintly bodies. The church is all of white marble and it seems to me that with great effort it
may be finished in one hundred years as it is begun. It is a marvelous thing, it is called the
Dom.63
In addition to its interest as a remark on the cathedral, Barbatre’s comment is typical

in the way it links an appreciation of the structure’s impressive appearance with a de-
scription of its contents, its “plusieurs dignités.” Both are noteworthy: Barbatre would
have recorded the big building without the relics, and the relics without the building;
to find the two combined is thus doubly-noteworthy. The French anonymous of 1480
explicitly cited these two distinct factors of a site’s prominence when writing of a
temple on Cyprus: “On the island of Cyprus there was in ancient times the temple of
Venus famous throughout the world, as much for the sumptuous edifice as for the su-
perstitions observed there.”64 Pilgrims thus had the ability to distinguish between a
église, y a plusieurs grans personnages de marbre blancq; et certes c’est grant chose d’icelle églize et seroit
encoires plus s’elle estoit toutte parfaicte”; Voyage de Georges Lengherand (n. 3 above) 24.
61
“fort belle église s’elle estoit parfaitte”; ibid. 205.
62
“la grant eglise cathedralle est toute d’un marbre blanc ou albastre”; Voyage de la saincte cyté de Hie-
rusalem (n. 29 above) 8.
63
“Millanc est bonne ville, grande et riche, le chateau tres fort; la mere eglise est fondee de Notre Dame.
Il y a chacun jour deux cens hommes ouvrans a massoner et tailler pierre, a mesure que l’en despiece la
vielle eglise on fait la neufve; se elle estoit achevee comme elle est commencee ce seroit la plus belle du
monde, la plus haulte, la plus large et la plus chere, plus belle hault que bas, la longueur n’est pas encore
prinse. En icelle eglise sont plusieurs dignités. Primo en hault contre la voulte du ceur est ung des clous
duquel Nostre Seigneur Jesuschrist fust attagé en la croix; et la a une lampe ardante jour et nuyt. En icelle
eglise sont les corps de monseigneur Saint Gervaiz et Saint Prothaiz; et dient avoir le corps Sainct Vital leur
pere, maiz ceulx de la cité de Ravennez qui est le chemin de Venize a Romme dient qu’il est en leur eglise
en ung puys ou il fust getté. Item a Millanc ont le corps monsseigneur Sainct Ambroise, le corps de Saint
Pierre le martir, de Sainct Simphorien, Sainct Nazare et Sainct Celse patrons d’estuy et plusieurs aultres
reliques et corps sainctz. L’eglise est toute de marbre blanc et d’albatre et me semble que a grant paine sera
bien achevee en cent ans comme elle est commenchee. C’est une chose mervilleuse, elle est nommee le
Dom.” Pierre Tucoo–Chala and Noël Pinzutti, “Le voyage de Pierre Barbatre à Jérusalem en 1480—Edition
critique d’un manuscrit inédit,” Annuaire–Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de France (1974) 94.
64
“En ladicte isle de Cypre estoit anciennement le temple de Venus renommé par tout le monde, tant
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building’s appearance and its religious function, while prizing both and noting how
they could be connected. This two-fold approach must be recognized, lest we take an
appreciation of the visual to be entirely subsidiary to an appreciation of the holy.
In the case of Milan, the interest of a work in progress was enhanced by the cathe-
dral’s size. Size was a frequent cause for comment: thus Lengherand, impressed by a
massive bell in Troyes, provided its dimensions: “In Troyes we went to see the belfry
of the city in which there are two bells, of about nine feet in width, and nine feet high
or more, and I well believe that it has more height than width. And we were told that
when it was first made, there was cast XXXm of tin and metal, but now it weighs only
XXIIm; and the hammer of the bell weighs IIIIc XIIl of iron, and this bell is damaged
and cracked a little. A little higher above this big bell there is another much smaller on
which one rings the entries into the city of Troyes.”65 Thirty years later Jacques Le
Saige was similarly impressed by the city and its big bell: “We stayed there the next
day until we had dined to see the city which is beautiful and very mercantile[forte
marchande] and its churches very ornate. We went to see the bell which is in the bel-
fry [and] it’s a beautiful piece: it is eight feet wide. We had to pay money to see it.”66
Le Saige also used Douai’s bell-tower to communicate the height of a cliff-side in
the Alps: “I went on a little peak of which the sides were three times deeper than the
belfry of Douai is high; so it seemed to me.”67 Le Saige is not the only traveler to com-
pare what he sees to familiar monuments elsewhere.68 Stopping in Ragusa (modern
Dubrovnik), the French anonymous of 1480 wrote that “there is a very beautiful
fountain with ten or twelve pipes like that in the Holy Innocents [cemetery] in Paris
and much more beautiful,” a comparison that involves both a technical description and
an aesthetic judgment.69 The same author used another Parisian monument to describe
the Holy Sepulcher: “The church of the Holy Sepulcher of our Lord Jesus Christ is
large like the church of Saint Germain des Près at the most; but in style and siting [fa-
pour la grande somptuosité de l’ediffice que pour les superstitions là observes”; Voyage de la saincte cyté de
Hierusalem (n. 29 above)56.
65
“Audit Troyes allâmes voir le beffroy de la ville ouquel a deux cloches, de IX piez de cloyere ou envi-
ron, et de haulteur IX piez et plus, et croy mieulx qu’elle a autant de haulteur que de largeur. Et nous fut dit
que quand elle fut premiers faicte, il y eubt que d’estain que de métal fondu XXXm; mais elle ne poyse à
présent que XXIIm; et le bateau de ladite cloche poise IIIIc XIIl de fer, et est icelle cloche fausée et fendue
ung petit. Ung peu plus hault par dessus icelle grosse cloche, en y a une aultre beaucop mendre sur laquelle
se frapent les entrans en ladite ville de Troyes”; Voyage de Georges Lengherand (n. 3 above) 4.
66
“Nous y demourasmes jusque lendemain que eusmes disner pour veoir la ville laquelle est belle et
forte marchande et ses eglises fort aornes. Nous fusmes veoir le clocque qui est au beffroy cest une belle
pieche: elle a huit pies de creu en largeur. Il nous fallut donner argent pour le veoir”; Voyage de Jacques Le
Saige (n. 32 above) 190–191.
67
“je alloie sur une petite crete dont de costés faisoit plus bas trois fois que le beffroy de Douay nest
hault: ad ce qu’il me sembloit”; ibid. 10.
68
For a study of this sort of comparison see Arnold Esch, “Anschauung und Begriff. Die Bewältigung
fremder Wirklichkeit durch den Vergleich in Reiseberichten des späten Mittelalters,” Historische Zeitschrift
253 (1991) 281–312; see also Chareyron, Pilgrims to Jerusalem (n. 31 above) 51. Because these formal
comparisons are motivated by empirical description, they are distinct from the iconographic comparisons
invited by artists who place medieval buildings in classical or biblical illustrations to draw parallels between
different periods (as when Fouquet places Paris’s Notre–Dame in the background of the Lamentation); see
Inglis, Jean Fouquet (n. 56 above) 176–198.
69
“il y a une moult belle fontaine qui a dix ou douze tuyaulx comme celle des saincts Innocens à Paris et
plus belle beaucoup”; Voyage de la saincte cyté de Hierusalem (n. 29 above) 38. The fountain was almost
certainly designed by Onofrio de Giordano in teh 1430s.
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çon et situation]it is much different than the churches of the west. One enters the
church of the Sepulcher in the middle, on the south side.”70 The need to describe the
Holy Sepulcher generated many such comparisons. Coppart de Velaine compared its
height to the church of St. Piat in his home town of Tournai.71
Pietro Casola wrote one of the most interesting comparisons in his description of
the Holy Sepulcher’s dome: “The cupola above the Holy Sepulcher ... is very remarka-
ble, and was built with great magnificence ... At the first glance the said cupola, seen
from below, resembles that of Santa Maria Rotonda at Rome, because it also is some-
what low and decorated, and has a large hole in the center which gives all the light, not
only to the said cupola, but to the rest of the Temple. After a more careful examina-
tion, however, the said cupola is seen to be built on the same plan as that of San Lo-
renzo the Greater at Milan, for below one can walk all around by means of a gallery,
and the same above.”72 Casola builds his comparisons very carefully; the first, to Santa
Maria Rotonda (the Pantheon), is based on the dome’s profile and oculus, while the
second, the product of longer looking, is preferred on the basis that suggests more ac-
curately a greater part of the Sepulcher’s interior. Esch correctly notes that this degree
of description is unusual in pilgrim reports.73
To sum up Lengherand and his fellow travelers: they comment on cities; on sculp-
tures ancient and modern, Burgundian and Italian; and on churches from the fifth,
thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. They praise them broadly, compare them to famous
sites from their native lands, and at times lament their condition. This breadth of range
and reference complicates the normal boundaries we have drawn between medieval
and Renaissance. However, those boundaries are largely a sixteenth-century construct.
Within the fifteenth century, their interest in and appreciation of so diverse an array of
monuments are right at home. We can compare them to Pius II. Pius was widely-trav-
elled, and praised works north and south of the Alps; thus, his Renaissance rebuilding
of Pienza includes a church with clear echoes of the German Gothic buildings the
Pope had seen on his travels.74
These travelers’ accounts, even when going into some detail, still leave a lot out.
Lengherand does not tell us what made Reims’ portal so beautiful to him, or anything
about its iconography; his judgment that Milan’s Saint Ambrose is old and in bad
shape is similarly lapidary. Their brevity must be evaluated within their original com-
position and reception. Most pilgrims’ accounts aimed at a very limited audience; their
authors were probably also their most interested later reader, so they are closer to
journals than they are to contemporary guide books. In this context, the fixation on
70
“L’eglise du Saint Sepulchre de Nostre Saulveur Jesuchrist est grande comme l’eglise Sainct Germain
des Près lès Paris au plus; mais elle est moult differente en façon et situation aux eglises d’Occident. On
entre en ladicte eglise du Sepulchre par le meillieu, du costé de middy”; 94–95. Esch, “Anschauung und
Begriff” (n. 68 above) 300.
71
Voyages d’un tournaisien (n. 38 above) 26 n. 1.
72
Pietro Casola, Canon Pietro Casola’s Pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the Year 1494, ed. M. Margaret
Newett (Manchester 1907) 276.
73
Esch, “Anschauung und Begriff” (n. 68 above) 307–308.
74
Wood, Forgery, Replica, Fiction (n. 18 above) 65–66, 186, 198; Nagel and Wood, Anachronic
Renaissance (n. 18 above) 18, 161, 170. Both offer useful suggestions about how 15th-c. material has often
been distorted by the 16th-c. lens through which we have been trained to look.
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one or two details, combined with a reductive description, suggests a sort of memory
aid or mnemonic.75 When Lengherand writes that “Reims was the dark church with
the beautiful portal,” he offers himself a few suggestive words that will help him recall
a complex res. We see then that far from being incurious, pilgrims responded to the art
and architecture they encountered during their travels. These responses might be
sparked by a work’s beauty or its technique, by its size, age or novelty, the fame it
already had or the fame they thought it deserved. And their responses are as varied as
the works they saw, making summary or synthesis difficult to achieve. After this broad
introduction, then, the next section turns to reports to a single city, Venice.
2. VENICE
In the fifteenth century, Venice was the principal collecting point for pilgrims heading
to the Holy Land, so that most people who travelled to Jerusalem stopped here. Addi-
tionally, since there was a specific season for travel, many pilgrims had a period of
enforced leisure in Venice while they awaited their departure. Felix Fabri, for exam-
ple, arrived in Venice a month before boarding his boat. He and his companions re-
solved to spend their time making pilgrimages in Venice, visiting at least one church
every day. They also engaged in what Fabri terms “curious” pursuits, but as noted
above he coyly avoids reporting on these.
Pilgrims’ reports on Venice reveal two of the chief ways that travel reports are dis-
tinctively valuable in contrast to other contemporary texts about art and architecture.
First, the alterity of Venice provoked surprise and admiration in its visitors. Many a
pilgrim who is comparatively silent on things seen elsewhere treats Venetian sights
expansively; this fact suggests that they were accustomed to looking at art and archi-
tecture throughout their travels, but that it required the shock of difference to prompt
them to record what they saw in particular detail. Registering Venice’s difference from
their native lands, the pilgrims provide a point of view that is particular to their status
as visitors. Second, as in the case of Arnold von Harff’s report of the relic-book in
Toulouse, travel reports also provided the occasion for recording local knowledge that
was transmitted orally in Venice and not written down by natives; here, it is not just
the point of view of the writer, but the very fact of the writing, that matters.
Reports on Venice have a fair amount in common.76 Everyone mentions the fact
that the city occupies the sea and is filled with rich merchandise. The local glass and
military industries also impressed visitors. Lengherand praised Murano, where “one
makes the richest and most beautiful glass I have ever seen, and of all kinds.”77 The
Anonymous of 1480 wrote of the Arsenal: “There is a big plaza about a league in cir-
cumference named the Arsenal, in which there are big rooms all around and it is one
of the most marvelous things in any region of the world near a city, principally for the
great abundance and multitude of artillery and all armaments which are in the rooms.
75
Carruthers, Book of Memory (n. 19 above).
76
Chareyron, Pilgrims to Jerusalem (n. 31 above) 26–46; Élisabeth Crouzet–Pavan, Venice Triumphant:
the Horizons of a Myth, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Baltimore 2002); Crouzet-Pavan, “Venise dans l’iter
hierosolomytain (XIVe–XVe siècles)” (n. 35 above).
77
“on fait voirres les plus beaux et les plus riches que je veis oncques, et de touttes sortes”; Voyage de
Georges Lengherand (n. 3 above) 37.
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And all the pieces are arranged in order ... in such great abundance that it is an in-
credible thing to those who have not seen it. And in this same place there are, every
day, three hundred men paid by the city who make all manner of boats, ships, galleys
and navy boats to go against the Turk.”78 The fascination with this industrial produc-
tion recalls the emphasis on the vast scale of construction at Milan cathedral. Addi-
tionally, the pilgrims’ travel season brought them to Venice in time for the Feast of the
Ascension, a major occasion in the city’s liturgical year, and the pilgrims report regu-
larly on the doge’s procession, his appearance at San Marco, and his marriage to the
sea. In addition to its exotic location and government, the French anonymous of 1480
noted that “there are several sorts of religious which are not present in France, some
dressed in violet-blue, others grey, white and black.”79 As noted above, these discus-
sions aim at conveying the “manners of the country” broadly construed, in which art
and architecture have a place. We see this balance of the alien and the familiar in the
reports on Venice’s buildings. Lengherand, who had been so impressed with the pal-
aces of Brescia, had a similar reaction in Venice. After writing about the courtyard of
the doge’s palace, luxuriously-built on every side, he noted that “even at this moment
they are still building some because they are not richly-made enough for their taste;
and may it please God that there was such a one in our country, so that it was not nec-
essary to come from so far to see something so worthwhile. And among other figures
there were Adam and Eve, the best made that I have ever seen.”80
Lengherand here makes an explicit comparison to the architecture of his native
land, one that favors Venice. He continues with remarks about Venice’s commercial
activity: “throughout the city of Venice there are many places that one would call
markets ... Speaking of the sumptuous houses, the rich merchandise, the boutiques,
and all other such things, I have been to Paris, to Bruges and to Ghent; but they are
nothing compared to Venice. One speaks of the merchants of Bruges and of the mar-
ket, they are little compared to what I saw in the galleries of the palace.”81 When taken
with his earlier remarks on building in Brescia, a city under Venetian control, it be-
comes clear that architecture impressed him as an index of the Veneto’s prosperity.
Individual buildings or even elements of buildings might be compared as well.
Thus, the French anonymous of 1480 praised Santa Maria Gloriosa (the Frari) as “the
78
“Il y a une grande place qui dure environ une lieu de tour nommée l’arcenal en laquelle, partout
autour, par dedans, y a de grandes salles et est une des plus merveilleuses choses qui soit en toute region du
monde près de ville, et principallement pour la grant habonance et multitude d’artillerie et de tous harnoys
de guerre qui sont ès dictes salles. Et sont chascunes pieces mises par ordre ... chascun à part en si grant
habondance que c’est une chose incredible à qui ne le verroit. Et en ce mesme lieu y a, tous les jours, trois
cens hommes aux gaiges de la ville qui font toutes manieres de bateaulx, nefz, gallées et grippes pour aller
contre le Turc.” Voyage de la saincte cyté de Hierusalem (n. 29 above) 20–21.
79
“il y a plusieurs sortes de religions qui ne sont point en France, les ungs vestus de pers, les aultres gris,
blancs et noirs’; ibid. 16–17.
80
“encoires à ceste heure l’on en abbatoit aucuns pour ce qu’ilz n’estoient faiz richement assez à leur
gré; et pleust à Dieu qu’il en y eust ung tel en nostre pays, affin qu’il ne fust besoing de venirsy loing pour
veoir chose qui bien le vallent. Et entre aultres personnages y sont Adam et Eve, les mieulx faiz selon le cas
que je veis oncques”; Voyage de Georges Lengherand (n. 3 above) 35.
81
“parmi la ville de Venise y a plusieurs lieux que l’on diroit halles ... A parler des maisons sump-
tueuses, des richesses de marchandises, des bouticles et de touttes aultres quelzconques choses, j’ay esté à
Paris, à Bruges et à Gand; mais ce n’est riens contre le fait dudit Venise. L’on parle des marchans de Bruges
et de la Bourse, c’est tout peu contre ce que j’ay cy veu ès galleries dudit pallais.” Ibid. 35.
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most beautiful [in Venice] after San Marco.” He was particularly impressed by its
choir stalls, executed by Marco Cozzi in 1468: “there are the most beautiful stalls,
made in three ranks, that one can find; and it seems that they cost more than those
which a cathedral would have there. For comparison, they are worth more than ten
times more than the stalls of Our Lady of Rouen, which are the most beautiful in
France.”82 Pierre Barbatre also compared these stalls favorably to others he had seen
on his trip: “the stalls in three ranks [are] tremendously rich and worth more than all
[the others] in Venice and are as beautiful as those of Padua.”83 The heartfelt and com-
parative appreciation for church furnishings like choir stalls speaks for an era which
did not separate the fine from the decorative arts.84 Scale was also appreciated in re-
ports on Venice, most notably in reports on the tower of San Marco (fig. 5). Several
pilgrims note that its stairway was wide enough to be climbed by horses, a consistency
of report that suggests a common origin in a local cicerone.85 Indeed, the pilgrims
themselves recognized certain clichés about Venice: when Le Saige climbed the tower
“to pass the time,” he noted from his high vantage point that there were more boats in
Venice than horses in Paris, “as I have heard said many times.”86
And just as the ongoing work at Milan was notable, so too pilgrims to Venice re-
ported on work in progress. George Lengherand visited the church of Saint Zacharias,
noting that “it is a small church, but there is a good beginning to make it larger.”87
Fabri, on his second visit to Venice, noted this about Santa Maria dei Miracoli: “they
are building a church of wondrous beauty with a very fine monastery. At the time of
my first pilgrimage folk began to flock to that place, and at that time there was no
chapel there, but merely a portrait of the Blessed Virgin on a panel affixed to a wall,
and it was said that miracles were wrought there. And such a concourse of people
came thither, and so many offerings were made, that a costly church now stands on the
spot, and is called St. Mary of Miracles.”88
Fabri also discusses the city’s deliberations about a monument for Colleoni, a
commission that ultimately resulted in Verrocchio’s famous statue (fig. 4):
We went by water to the greater convent of Minorites [the Franciscans], and saw the build-
ings, which are very grand. In a chapel attached to the church stood a horse, built together
82
“y a les plus belles chaires faictes à troys rengées qu’on ne puisse pas trouver; et semble qu’ilz ayent
plus cousté que telle eglise cathedralle y a au pays. Par advis, ilz vaillent plus dix fois que les chaires de
Nostre Dame de Rouen, qui sont les plus belles de France”; Voyage de la saincte cyté de Hierusalem (n. 29
above) 16–17.
83
“les chaires a troys renges excellentement riches et vallent plus que toutes celles de Venize et sont au-
tant belles que celles de Padue”; Tucoo-Chala and Pinzutti “Voyage de Pierre Barbatre” (n. 63 above) 102.
84
Marina Belozerskaya, Rethinking the Renaissance: Burgundian Arts across Europe (Cambridge
2002); eadem, Luxury Arts of the Renaissance (Los Angeles 2005).
85
Tucoo-Chala and Pinzutti, “Voyage de Pierre Barbatre” (n. 63 above) 101; Voyage de la saincte cyté
de Hierusalem (n. 29 above) 14. For the city-authorized guides, see Robert C. Davis, “Pilgrim-tourism in
late medieval Venice,” Beyond Florence: The Contours of Medieval and Modern Italy, ed. Paula Findlen,
Michelle M. Fontaine, and Duane J. Osheim (Stanford 2003) 19–32, 260–202.
86
“comme pluseurs fois l’avoie ouy dire”; Voyage de Jacques Le Saige (n. 32 above) 43. The French
anonymous of 1480 also equates the number of boats in Venice with horses in Paris; Voyage de la saincte
cyté de Hierusalem (n. 29 above) 12.
87
“elle est petitte église, mais il y a beau commencement pour la faire plus grande”; Voyage de Georges
Lengherand (n. 3 above) 48.
88
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with wondrous art. The Venetians, imitating the customs of the heathen nations, once deter-
mined to reward one of their captains who had fought bravely for the republic, and gained
much new territory for it by his valour, by setting up an everlasting memorial of him, and
placing a brazen statue of a horse and his rider in one of the streets or squares of the city. In
order that this might be done as splendidly as possible, they sought out sculptors throughout
their country, and ordered each of them to make a horse of any material he chose, and they
would then choose one out of the three best horses, and have a horse cast in brass on the
model of that one. Besides the price of his statue, they proposed to bestow especial honors
upon the artist who made the best-shaped horse. So three sculptors met together at Venice,
and one of them made a horse of wood, covered with black leather, which is the horse which
stands in the aforesaid chapel; and so life-like is this figure, that unless its unwonted size and
want of motion betrayed that the horse was artificially made, a man would think that it was a
real living horse. Another sculptor made a horse of clay, and baked it in a furnace; it is admi-
rably formed, and of a red color. The third molded an exquisitely-shaped horse out of wax.
The Venetians chose this latter, as being the most cunningly wrought, and rewarded the art-
ist. But as for what will be done about casting it I have not heard; perhaps they will give the
matter up.89
Fabri’s account of Venice’s monument to a condottiere makes a remarkable compari-

son with Lengherand’s misprision of Padua’s Gattamelata for Antenor. Like
Lengherand, Fabri does not name any of the artists, though he recognizes their com-
petition to demonstrate individual technical and representational mastery. He does not
name Colleoni, but he does understand the basic subject and notes the imitation of
heathen (by which he probably means pagan Roman) examples.90
Predictably, the majority of pilgrims single out San Marco (figs. 5, 7) for particular
attention and praise, with Pierre Barbatre noting its plan “is not at all in the fashion of
those of France. It is almost as wide as it is long, covered everywhere in lead, with
five round bell towers and above other little bell towers with crosses above and round
balls; and that in the middle is both the largest and highest.”91 Most comment at least
in passing on the church’s treasury, with the usual mixture of veneration for relics and
admiration for their housing. And, just as Arnold von Harff saw a gospel book written
by St. John in Toulouse, Pierre Barbatre saw one written by Saint Mark, a sixth-cen-
tury manuscript that had been acquired in 1420 as a relic of the evangelist.92 Barbatre
wrote that “his book is very wonderfully decorated.”93
89
Ibid. 1.1, 95–96. For German equestrian monuments that suggest the domestic context for Fabri’s re-
marks, see Wood, Forgery, Replica, Fiction (n. 18 above) 227 and n. 122.
90
Jacques Le Saige did record Colleoni’s name in his later account of the statue; Voyage de Jacques Le
Saige (n. 32 above) 45.
91
“n’est point de la fasson de celles de France. Elle est pres autant large que longue, partout couvert de
pelon, a V clochers rons et dessus aultres petits clochers rons a croys dessus et des pommes rondes; et celuy
du millieu et plus grand et plus hault”; Tucoo-Chala and Pinzutti “Voyage de Pierre Barbatre” (n. 63 above)
98. Pierre Tucoo-Chala, Noël Pinzutti, “Sur un récit inédit de voyage aux Lieux Saints sous Louis XI,”
Comptes-rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 117 (1973) 191; Esch, “An-
schauung und Begriff,” (n. 68 above) 300. For the pilgrims’ path through the church, see Thomas E. A.
Dale, “Cultural Hybridity in Venice Reinventing the East at San Marco after the Fourth Crusade,” San
Marco, Byzantium, and the myths of Venice, ed. Henry Maguire and Robert S. Nelson (Washington, DC
2010) 182–189.
92
Prior to its acquisition by San Marco the manuscript had been kept in Aquileia, whence the relic-hun-
gry emperor Charles IV had taken two quires for Prague, where they remain; in addition to the portion still
in Venice, there is also a fragment in Cividale. See Otto Demus, The Church of San Marco in Venice: His-
tory, Architecture, Sculpture (Washington, DC 1960) 17; and Marek Suchy and Jiff Vnoucek, “The story of
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Many of the travelers note mosaic as a particular technique of church decoration.

Thus, the anonymous French pilgrim of 1480, in a run-on sentence that conveys his
breathless enthusiasm for San Marco, says that it is “the most richly painted church in
the world and the painting is mosaic which are little pieces [of stone] and glass the
size of a small coin, refined in gold and blue and other very rich colors and with the
small pieces are made the vaults and walls of churches, all with figures of the Old and
New Testament and, with each figure there are letters naming them with all these let-
ters made of these little pieces and the pavement is [also] made of little pieces of stone
of all colors and with figures of animals, birds and other very beautiful figures.”94 This
fascination with technique, with ars, is one reason we feel justified in crediting pil-
grims with an “art historical imagination” even though they did not define art as we
do.
Jacques Le Saige was similarly impressed by the church’s rich decoration: “After
the mass had been heard they showed us a small stone in the church’s pavement,
which was in front of the pulpit[?], and it was no more than about a foot and half long
and three inches [thumbs] in width. They told us and certified that the clergy of the
church had refused six hundred ducats for this stone. To speak briefly, it is marvelous
to see the richness of the pavement of this church and the chapels are enclosed with
beautiful jasper stone, and there are so many similar columns that one is surprised,
without speaking of the reliquaries, which would be too much for me.”95
Pierre Barbatre’s account links San Marco’s material with its iconography: “gener-
ally all the vaults, arches and the top of the pillars, which are all square, and the
heights of the walls are completely covered and painted with stories [painctes en his-
tores], flat, of all colors, with big images made in a manner of speaking in the art of
mosaic, or set in [the wall], and all in fine gold of ducats in figures as on the door-
way’s vaults: how God created the world, the sky, the earth, the sun, the moon, the
sea, the Old Testament and the New, Paradise, Hell, the life of saints and all things
that one can imagine and equally outside as within.”96 Here, Barbatre suggests that just
the Prague fragment of St. Mark’s gospel through fourteen centuries. A new approach to an established
narrative,” Care and Conservation of Manuscripts 9 Proceedings of the eighth international seminar held at
the University of Copenhagen 14th–15th April 2005, ed. Gillian Fellows–Jensen and Peter Springborg (Co-
penhagen 2006) 83–112.
93
“son livre est moult excellentement aourné”; Tucoo-Chala and Pinzutti “Voyage de Pierre Barbatre”
(n. 63 above) 99.
94
“La plus richement paincte que eglise du monde et est la paincture mosayque qui sont petites pieces et
verrieres de la grandeur d’ung petit denier, boulues en or et azur et aultres coulleurs fort riches et de ces
petites pieces sont faictes les voultes et costex d’eglises, tout par personnaiges du viel Testament et nouveau
et, en chascun personnaige, y a des lettres escriptes qui declairent les personnaiges et sont toutes les lettres
faictes de ces petites pieces et le pavement est de petites pieces de pierre de toutes coulleurs et de figures de
manieres de bestes, d’oyseaulx et aultres figures fort belles”; Voyage de la saincte cyté de Hierusalem (n. 29
above) 12–13.
95
“Après la messe ouye on nous monstra une petite pierre de pavement de l’église, laquelle est devant le
trin, et na environ que piet et demy de long et de large trois pauch. Se nous fut dit et certifiet que cuelx de
l’église ont refusés six cens ducas de ladite pierre. Pour faire court c’est merveille de veoir les richesses du
pavement de ladite église et les chapelles sont encloses de belle pierre de jaspe, et se y a tant de coulombes
pareilles quon est esbahis sans parler des reliquaires, car j’aroye trop affaire”; Voyage de Jacques Le Saige
(n. 32 above) 41–42.
96
“generalement toutes les voutes, arches et le hault des pilliers, lesquieulx sont tous carres, et les hault
des parois sont totalement faictes et painctes en histores, en plat, de toutes couleurs, en grans ymages faictes
par la magniere de parler en art de musique, ou assis, et tout de fin or de ducas en personnages comme au
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as every surface of the church is decorated, inside and out, so that the decoration de-
picts “everything one can imagine,” from the creation of the world to the end of time,
and all things between. For Barbatre, San Marco is iconographically and aesthetically
saturated.
These accounts make it clear that the pilgrims associated mosaic with Venice. So
strong was this association that when the French anonymous of 1480 made it to Beth-
lehem, he noted that the church of the Nativity was “painted in the fashion of Saint
Mark in Venice, that is to say in mosaic.”97 This warrants mention, because we often
expect later medieval viewers to associate mosaics with Byzantium and /or Early
Christianity.98 As far as we know, no northern pilgrims evaluate Venice’s art as
Byzantine or Greek, not even Le Saige, who—as noted above—was struck by the dif-
ference between Greek and Western art. Pilgrims were not alone in this; when
Philippe de Commines described Venice as he knew it as an ambassador from the
French king, he wrote that the Venetians took a proprietary pride in mosaic. Writing of
San Marco, he says that it is “the most beautiful and rich chapel in the world (to have
only the name of chapel) all made of mosaic, on all sides. They [the Venetians] still
boast of having discovered the art, and set themselves to the craft, and I have seen
it.”99 Nor do pilgrims have any particular temporal associations with mosaic; they do
not write that it is either old or new. To judge by what northern pilgrims to Venice
wrote, mosaic suggested not history but geography, and that geography was Venetian.
Geography’s triumph over time extends to most of the works that pilgrims com-
mented on in Venice. This atemporal appreciation of Venetian monuments is typical
of northern pilgrims; we saw the same attitude in the preceding section of this pa-
per.100 As Wood states, once impressive buildings had reached a certain age, they were
granted a sort of eternal status: “They looked as if they had always been there.”101
There are two exceptions to this rule. First, as in Milan, the extreme age or extreme
newness may attract attention. As noted, Fabri talked about new statues and new
churches. Conversely, writing of the church of St. Mary of Pity, he says that it is
“more ancient than any other church in the city,” though this superlative lacks any
chronological precision.102 Second, and more importantly, most pilgrim writers recog-
nized that San Marco’s original fabric and immediate neighborhood had many addi-
tions that invited and even required historical explanation. These included the two
portail, es voutes: comme Dieu crea le monde, le ciel, la terre, le soleil, la lune, la mer, le Ancien Testament
et le Nouvel, Paradis, Enfer, la vie des saincts et toutes choses que l’en fait penser et pareillement dehors
comme dedens”; Tucoo-Chala and Pinzutti “Voyage de Pierre Barbatre” (n. 63 above) 99.
97
“paincte en la façon de Sainct Marc de Venise, c’est assavoir de mosayque”; Voyage de la saincte cyté
de Hierusalem (n. 29 above) 81.
98
Liz James, “Mosaic matters: questions of manufacturing and mosaicists in the mosaics of San Marco,
Venice,” San Marco, Byzantium, and the myths of Venice (n. 91 above) 227–243; Nagel and Wood, Ana-
chronic Renaissance (n. 18 above) 321–346.
99
“la plus belle et riche chapelle du monde (pour n’avoir que nom de chapelle) toute faite de Musaicq,
en tous endroits. Encores se vantent–ils d’en avoir trouvé l’art, & en font besogner au mestier, & l’ay vue”;
Philippe de Commines, Les Memoires de Philippe de Commines Chevalier seigneur d’Argenton (Paris,
1616) 581.
100
Esch (n. 31 above) 311, argues that northern pilgrims are generally unconcerned with dates and sug-
gests that chronology is a humanist concern.
101
Wood, Forgery, Replica, Fiction (n. 18 above) 245.
102
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pairs of freestanding columns outside the church, the horses on the western facade,
and the tetrarchs on the corner of the Treasury (figs. 6, 8, 9, 10). Their discussion of
these features gives us valuable insight into the reception of San Marco’s spolia.103
The two pairs of columns both came from Constantinople; the shorter pair stands
near the church, while the taller pair occupies the waterfront and supports statues of
Mark’s lion and Saint Theodore (figs. 8, 9).104 Their foreign origin was recognized.
The French anonymous of 1480 wrote that “in front of the door, near the palace, there
are two great stone columns, completely round, which were brought from Constanti-
nople and are twelve feet thick: on that on the palace side there is a golden lion with
big wings that represents Saint Mark. On the other there is a big Saint Michael who
kills a big serpent with a lance.”105 Though the Anonymous misidentifies the serpent-
slaying Theodore as St. Michael (a predictable misunderstanding for a Frenchmen), he
correctly understands the foreign origin of the columns, whose measurements he also
gives.
George Lengherand wrote about both sets of columns, though he discussed the for-
eign origin only of the shorter pair. “One finds fairly close to the church of Saint
Mark, two large pillars very decorated with flowers [cut] in the stone itself; and this
stone is very beautiful and rich, and they are between twelve and thirteen feet long the
one and the other, [and] were taken, one says, in the city of Acre near Damietta, at the
conquest won by the Venetians. On the other side, toward the sea, there are two large
round pillars, of marvelous size; each of them [made] from a single stone of marvel-
ously great height. And I never would have believed that one could create such height
from a single stone. On one of these two pillars is Saint Mark, and on the other Saint
Theodore with a great and large serpent under his feet, and Theodore holding in his
hand a sort of lance and a sword at his side.”106 Later in his stay he returned to meas-
ure their circumference: “that which carries Saint Mark and is closest to the palace and
of a greyer color, is about thirty-one feet around, and the other carrying Saint Theo-
dore (which is a color coming closer to red than to jasper) is no more than twenty-five
103
For what follows, the key sources are Marilyn Perry, “Saint Mark’s trophies: legend, superstition and
archaeology in Renaissance Venice,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes XL (1977) 27–49;
and San Marco, Byzantium, and the myths of Venice (n. 91 above). See also Dale Kinnney, “The Concept of
Spolia,” Companion to medieval art (n. 7 above) 233–252.
104
On these columns see two studies in San Marco, Byzantium, and the myths of Venice (n. 91 above):
Fabio Berry, “Disiecta membra: Ranieri Zeno, the imitation of Constantinople, the Spolia style, and justice
at San Marco,” 7–62, esp. 10–13, 52–55; and Robert S. Nelson, “The history of legends and the legends of
history : the Pilastri Acritani in Venice,” 63–90.
105
“Devant le port, près du palays, y a deux grandes coulonnes de pierre toutes rondes qui ont esté
apportées de Constantinoble et sont de la grosseur de deux toyses: sur celle du costé du palays, y a ung lyon
d’or qui a de grandes ailes et signifie sainct Marc. Sur l’aultre y a ung grant sainct Michel qui tue ung grant
serpent de une lance”; Voyage de la saincte cyté de Hierusalem (n. 29 above) 23.
106
“On treuve assez près de l’église Saint Marc, deux gros pilliers fort acoustrez de fleurs faictes de la
pierre mesme; et est ladicte pierre fort belle et riche, et sont de XII à XIIII piez long l’un de l’ature, qui
furent prins, comme l’on dist, en la ville d’Acre les Damiette, à la conqueste faicte par les Venissiens. D’un
aultre costé, vers la mer, il y a deux gros pilliers rond, gros à merveilles; chascun d’iceulx d’une suelle
pierre de grande haulteur merveilleuzement. Et n’euisse jamais cuidié que l’on eust sceu recouvrer de si
grande haulteur d’une seulle pierre. Sur l’un d’iceulx deux pilliers est saint Marc, et sur l’autre saint
Théodor ayant ung grand et gros serpent soubz ses piez, et ledict saint Théodor tenant en sa main à fachon
d’unne lanche et l’espée au costé.” Voyage de Georges Lengherand (n. 3 above) 34. Ménilglaise,
Lengherand’s editor, notes that Lengherand errs in locating Acre close to Damietta (215 n. 40).
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feet around.”107 Though fascinated by their appearance, Lengherand was incorrect

about the origins of the shorter pair, which came not from Acre but from Constantino-
ple, where they were captured in 1204. Nelson has shown that their alleged origin in
Acre was becoming common lore in Venice in the late fifteenth century; Lengherand
provides evidence that visitors were hearing these reports as well.108
Lengherand also recognized the eastern origin of the church’s famous four horses,
taken from Constantinople in 1204 and installed on the facade (fig. 6). “Above the
large portal of the entry to the church, there are four copper horses that look gilded,
very well made, with neither saddle nor bridle, except that each has a sort of collar;
two have one of the forelegs raised, and the other two have opposite leg raised, which
were taken from Constantinople as was told to us.”109 Lengherand indicates that pil-
grims probably learned of the Byzantine origin of these objects from local guides.
There were other ways of learning about Constantinople. Boldensele had been there in
the fourteenth century, and his report was incorporated into that of John Mandeville.
Constantinople’s fame also reached those who never saw the city, though their
knowledge would have been much less precise.110 Whatever the sources of their
knowledge, the pilgrims’ ability to identify the alien origins of these objects is note-
worthy, because for spolia to communicate, their origins must be recognized. Many
pilgrims were equipped to see in San Marco’s appropriated columns and horses the
proof of Venice’s dominion over the eastern Mediterranean.
107
Ibid. 36–37. Lengherand later used these columns as a reference point for his readers, explaining that
he saw a column in Rome (perhaps an obelisk?) comparable in size to those of Venice (71).
108
The Acre origin was disproved by the 1960 excavation of the ruins of St. Polyeuktos in Constantino-
ple. See Nelson, “History of legends and the legends of history” (n. 104 above), for a full account of these
columns.
109
“Au dessus du grant portal de l’entree de ladicte église, il y a IIII chevaulx de cuivre qui semblent
dorez, très bien faiz, sans selle ne bride, fors chascun ayant à manière d’un colier; les deux ayant chascun
l’un des piez de devant au monter en l’air, et les deux aultres ayant le semblable des piez hors montoirs, qui
furent levez en Constaintinoble comme nous fut dit.” Voyage de Georges Lengherand (n. 3 above) 33.
Lengherand returned to the horses’ origin when he described what he saw in San Marco’s treasury, includ-
ing a “a crystal cup garnished with gold holding the miraculous blood shed by a crucifix after it was struck
several times by a ribald living in Constantinople who had lost his money at dice. I also saw the cross at
Saint Mark, which was a painted cross, and one could see the blows [that had been struck] which was a
great miracle. The Venetians brought it there from Constantinople, together with the miraculous blood, as
with the four gilded horses mentioned earlier. They have also other reliquaries, three or four, like the cross,
and otherwise, but I can not testify to their authenticity (couppe de cristal garnie d’or du sang de miracle que
ung crucifix getta après que ung ribault demourant à Constantinople qui avoit perdu son argent aux dez le
avoit frappé de aucun ferrement plusieurs cops. J’ay aussy veu ledit crucifix audit saint Marc lequel est en
croix en platte painture, et voit–on les cops qui est chose de bien grand miracle. Le feyrent rapporter les
Vénissiens dudit Constantinoble, aussy ledit sang de miracle, comme les quattre chevaulx dorez cy devant
dont ay fait mencion. Il y avoit aussy aultres reliquaires, trois ou quattre comme de la croix, et aultrement,
mais je n’en sçaroye dire la vérité).” Ibid. 43. The memory of their loss also endured in Constantinople—the
northern traveler Bertrandon de la Broquière recorded seeing “three [columns] … placed in a line, and of
one single piece, bearing three [sic] gilt hourses, now at Venice”; “The travels of Bertrandon de La
Brocquiere. A. D. 1432, 1433,” Early Travels in Palestine, ed. Thomas Wright (London 1848) 339.
110
For example, Lengherand knew of Hagia Sophia, and cites it as the model for the identically named
church of Sainte Sophie in Nicosia: “the city of Nicosia has a church of Holy Wisdom made similarly to that
which is in Constantinople, except that it is smaller” (lad. ville de Nicossie a une église de sainte Souffie
faitte semblable à celle que est en Constantinoble, fors qu’elle est plus petite”); Voyage de Georges
Lengherand (n. 3 above) 109. In fact, though, Nicosia’s church is built in the style of 13th-c. northern
France, suggesting that Lengherand—a close observer of structural differences—had heard of but not seen
the Byzantine church, and instead transmits a comment by a local guide.
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But this was not the case with all pilgrims, some of whom believed erroneous ac-
counts of the origins of the horses and tetrarchs, which have been studied by Marilyn
Perry. Barbatre gives a concise version of the most popular version of the story about
the horses: “On the big portal are four big horses of copper, gilded with gold, which
the emperor Barbarossa had made, having laid a long siege of Venice and having
vowed that he would stable his horses in Saint Mark ... He laid siege by sea, his son on
land, his son being captured by the Venetians who remained victorious.”111 Thus
Barbatre has Barbarossa commissioning the horses in order to fulfill his vow, even
though he had met defeat.
According to Perry “by far the most elaborate version” comes from Arnold von
Harff (the same pilgrim who saw the gospel book written by Saint John in Toulouse):
“I asked one of the gentlemen (who are the nobles of Venice) why the horses were put
up here. He informed me that the lords of Venice had caused the horses to be set up
there as an everlasting memorial. In the year ... 1153 there was a Roman emperor ...
called Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, red-beard, who was intent on finding a way to
conquer the Holy Land.” This plan brought him into conflict with the pope and the
Venetians. “Thereupon the Emperor was wroth ... and swore by his red beard that he
would destroy Venice and turn St. Mark’s into a stable for his horses.” In the end,
however, with his son captured he was forced to sue for peace. “But on account of the
great oath which the Emperor had sworn by his red beard, which could never be un-
done, therefore the Venetians, out of respect for him and by reason of his oath, caused
to be set up four gilded metal horses in front of St. Mark’s church as an eternal witness
of these things, a picture whereof, painted with great art, hangs in the Palace in the
Council chamber.”112
Fabri heard a similar tale: “Above the door of the church of Saint Mark towards the
west one sees four great Horses fused in bronze and gilded, works placed there as a
result of the siege of Venice undertaken by Frederick I. Since he had sworn not to lift
the siege until he had set his horses on the church of Saint Mark, and ploughed up the
Piazza, so, in consequence, we will say, it was done. The horses were fused of bronze,
and the whole length of the piazza was paved in various marbles, to record the threat-
ened furrows.”113
A bit like Master Gregorius dismissing “the worthless stories of pilgrims,” Perry
labels such accounts popular, and distinguishes them from the understanding of such
others as Petrarch, who in 1364 had already identified them as “the work of some an-
cient and famous artist unknown to us.”114 Perry’s division is persuasive, particularly
because the popular account was never written down in Venice—it is known only
from travelers’ accounts (though Lengherand and Bertrandon, neither one a humanist,
knew the horses’ prior location if not their age). Focused on the Renaissance, and
111
“Sur le grant portail sont quatre grans chevaux de cuivre dorés d’or, lequieulx fist faire l’ampereur
Barberouse, lequel avoit tenu longuement le siege devant Venize et avoit juré qu’il feroit l’estable de ces
chevaulx en sainct Marc ... Item il tenoit siege en mer et son filz en terre, lequel filz fust prins des Veniziens
et demourerent victorieux”; Tucoo-Chala and Pinzutti “Voyage de Pierre Barbatre” (n. 63 above) 99.
112
Quoted by Perry, “Saint Mark’s trophies” (n. 103 above) 30–31.
113
Quoted by Perry, ibid. 32. See also Nelson, “History of legends and the legends of history” (n. 104
above) 89.
114
Quoted by Perry, “Saint Mark’s trophies” (n. 103 above) 29.
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publishing in a journal devoted to the survival of the classical tradition, she valorizes
those who recognized or researched the actual origin of the statues. However, the pop-
ular account, if wrong, was not unthinking; to say as Perry does that these works
“were shrouded in medieval legend” misses the clear reasoning at work.115 The horses
were beautiful; their unusual and prominent location argued for their historical signifi-
cance; because horses were strongly associated with military deeds, that significance
was likely to be martial. The defeat of Barbarossa was central to Venice’s under-
standing of its history—von Harff notes that travelers also saw a picture of it in the
Doge’s palace.116 Thus, the legend of the horses aligned a significant monument with a
significant event. Making such alignments was perhaps the strongest habit in the way
medieval people thought about the historical origins of the objects that interested
them; we saw it earlier in the attribution of the Godescalc Gospels to St. John, or
Lengherand’s identification of the Gattamelata as Antenor.117
There were also variations on this explanation of the horses. In the account of the
anonymous of 1480, the story is almost identical, but now the emperor is Muslim:
“Above the portal of Saint Mark there are great copper horses who were put up as a
sign of victory because a Saracen emperor had sworn that he would make the church
of St. Mark his stable. In the end he failed, because his son who was chief of the army
was captured by the Venetians and the emperor returned from there in confusion.”118
Jacques Le Saige has a similar report: “above the portal are four horses of copper
gilded with fine gold. Which are as high as a horse of fifteen hands. There are placed
there in memory of a non-Christian emperor, who came before Venice, and boasted
that he would make of the church of Saint Mark a stable for his horses; but to the con-
trary his son was taken by the Venetians and they conquered all and thus were made
the horses as a memorial.”119
The shifting story registers both stability and change: the horses’ retained their
status as remarkable objects that sparked visitors’ curiosity and demanded explanation
along martial lines, while the Muslim culture to the east became increasingly promi-
nent in the imagination of Venice’s residents and visitors.120 Strikingly, the claim that
an Islamic ruler had threatened to stable horses in a church also echoes the stories told
115
Ibid. 49. Nelson also critiques Perry’s approach, “History of legends and the legends of history” (n.
104 above) 65.
116
Pilgerfahrt des Ritters Arnold von Harff (n. 12 above) 45.
117
Nelson, “History of legends and the legends of history” (n. 104 above) esp. 83–84. For an excellent
case study from medieval France, see Amy Remensnyder, “Legendary Treasure at Conques: Reliquaries
and Imaginative Memory,” Speculum 71 (1996) 884–906. Beneš, Urban Legends (n. 52 above) addresses
similar phenomena in late medieval Italian communes.
118
“Sur le portail de Sainct Marc, y a grans chevaulx de cuivre qui ont été mis en signe de victoire pour
ce que ung empereur sarrazin avoit juré qu’il feroit son estable de l’eglise Sainct Marc. Touttes foys il faillit,
car son filz qui estoit chef de l’armée fut prins par les Veniciens et s’en retourna l’empereur confus.” Voy-
age de la saincte cyté de Hierusalem (n. 29 above) 19–20.
119
“sur ledit portal, a quatre chevaulx de queuvre dorés de fin or. Lesquels sont aussy hault que ung che-
val de quinze paumes. Ils sont la assis, en mémoire que fut ung empereur non crestien, lequel vint devant
Venise, et se vantoit quy feroit estable des chevaulx de leglise sainct Marcq; mais au contraire son fils fut
pris des Venissiens et conquirent tout et ainssy furent faicts lesdis chevaulx en mémoire”; Voyage de
Jacques Le Saige (n. 32 above) 54.
120
Nelson, “History of legends and the legends of history” (n. 104 above), traces similar shifts in ac-
counts of the origins of the Pilastri acritani.
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to pilgrims as far back as the twelfth century; George Lengherand reported that Mus-
lims had stabled horses in the church built at Saint John’s birthplace, and the much
earlier pseudo-Turpin chronicle records the stabling of horses in a church in Spain.121
Like the famous horses, the Tetrarchs had been looted from Constantinople in
1204; they were installed on the corner of San Marco’s treasury (fig. 10).122 By the
late fifteenth century a story had been invented to explain their origins. Pierre Barbatre
(apparently unknown to Perry) gives us the earliest extant version of this explanation.
He reports seeing “in front of the palace, on the corner of the treasure of Saint Mark,
the four thieves who robbed it all four in a grey-brown [bise] stone.”123 This very brief
mention suggests that the statues depicted four thieves who had targeted the treasury.
Perry gives several Venetian accounts from the sixteenth century which also identify
the men as thieves, though with a different target. Sansovino gave this account in
1561: “I would like to tell you a fable which is told, that there were formerly four
merchants who, having this treasure, brought it to Venice. And because it seemed to
the possessors that they were too many, two of them agreed to poison their other two
colleagues, who had also come to an agreement to do the same to the other two. Since
they did not watch each other, their intention was put into execution and all four died.
People suggest that those four figures of porphyry which are on the corner meeting
with the carta which is near the main entrance to the Palace, who embrace each other
two by two, may be the foresaid merchants. But I told you it is a fable.”124 While this
account ignores the actual origins of the tetrarchs, it tells us a great deal about how
people looked at them, and suggests some acuity in that looking. First, and most im-
portantly, these legends let us know that for centuries after the statues were placed
they attracted an interested and chatty audience. Although the Venetians had forgotten
the origins of the tetrarchs, they kept thinking about them: they wanted to know what
they meant, and understood that their meaning was tied to their origin. Second, this
audience recognized that the tetrarchs were not integral to the building’s fabric, but
were a later addition—like the horses on the facade. The legend attempts to explain
this addition. Third, the tetrarchs’ dress was (eventually) recognized as alien, with
geographic and cultural differences perhaps clearer to viewers than historical ones.125
Fourth, the misinterpretation tells us that viewers read the tetrarchs’ pose as conspira-
121
Voyage de Georges Lengherand (n. 3 above) 137; Historia Karoli Magni et Rotholandi ou Chronique
du Pseudo-Turpin, ed. C. Meredith-Jones (Paris 1936) chap. 38, 244–245. Guillaume de Nangis accused the
Sultan of quartering his horses in some of Jerusalem’s churches; Chronique latine de Guillaume de Nangis
de 1113 à 1300, ed. H. Géraud (Paris 1843) 1.89.
122
Fabio Barry, “Disiecta membra” (n. 104 above) esp. 34–41, 44; Nelson, “History of legends and the
legends of history” (n. 104 above) 64–65, 78; Michael Jacoff, “Fashioning a Façade: the construction of
Venetian identity on the exterior of San Marco,” San Marco, Byzantium, and the myths of Venice (n. 91
above) 114–115, 133–136.
123
“Devant le palaisau, coing du trésor Sainct Marc, les IIII larrons qui le roberent tous IIII en une pierre
bise”; Tucoo-Chala and Pinzutti “Voyage de Pierre Barbatre” (n. 63 above) 102.
124
Quoted by Perry, “Saint Mark’s trophies” (n. 103 above) 41. Variations of the story persisted into the
seventeenth century; for Thomas Coryat in 1608 the four hapless plotters were noble Albanian brothers; the
Venetians found their dead bodies and “seized upon all their goods as their owne, which was the first treas-
ure that ever Venice possessed ...; and in memoriall of that uncharitable and unbrotherly conspiracy, hath
erected the severall couples consulting together”; ibid. 42.
125
Perry points out that “by the eighteenth century they had changed nationality ..., becoming Moors
who had tried to rob the Tesoro”; ibid. 42–43.
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torial, and recognized their pairings as significant. Finally, the interpretation also tells
us something about the perception of San Marco’s treasury, admitting that it was a
tempting target for thieves, but projecting that desire on an external force. Strikingly,
the legend expresses a fear of plunder like the one that brought the tetrarchs to Venice
in the first place.126
And treasures almost inevitably stir thoughts of theft, as multiple miracles attest.127
The associations of treasury and theft probably helped spark the reinterpretation of the
tetrarchs. Perry also points to a Venetian proverb inscribed near the tetrarchs that
seems to caution would-be thieves: “l’om po far e die in pensar e vega quelo che li po
inchontrar,” which Barry translates as “Man may do and say as he thinks, but in
thinking let him consider that which may befall him.”128 In addition to this caution
against potential thefts, people knew of actual thefts from the treasury: Perry mentions
a 1449 theft from the treasury that was famous in its day, and Barbatre reports one as
well.129Fabri even reported that St. Mark’s body had been taken: “The body of St.
Mark, which the Venetians brought from Alexandria to their city, we did not see, be-
cause it is said that a monk stole it and carried it away into Germany.”130
Pilgrims were also keenly interested in Venice’s penal practices, particularly as en-
forced in the area around San Marco and the doge’s palace.131 George Lengherand was
one of several pilgrims to explain the way important criminals were punished. Writing
of the columns of the palace, he said “between these columns [of the palace] there are
two which seem to be red like jasper, between which one says that they execute no-
blemen when they deserve it.” And, when he discussed the columns supporting the
lion and Saint Theodore, he added: “they say that when some non-noble person is
condemned to death, he is executed between these two pillars.”132 The Anonymous of
1480 also described these columns, though he reversed the identity of who was exe-
cuted where: “In entering the palace, before the bells, there are two marble pillars
about twelve feet (deux toises) from each other; and when the case arrives that a duke
forfeits, they put an iron bar gilded with gold, in the fashion of a gibbet, [and] they
hang the duke from it when he has offended the Seigneurie. And nearby, in the galler-
126
A 15th-c. relief from the Parisian convent of the Grands-Augustins depicts three royal constables
performing an amende honorable before the monks of the convent, after they had violated its jurisdiction.
Like the tetrarchs, the relief was originally placed on the exterior wall of the complex, where it advertised
the punishment which violators of that independence would receive. Henry Kraus, The Living Theatre of
Medieval Art (Philadelphia 1967) 17–18. Kraus also refers to a now-lost painting with a similar theme,
which once hung in the church of the Carmes.
127
The miracles of St. Foy include the saint’s punishment of a man who longed to rob her, and the 12th-
c. illustrated life of St. Edmund now in the Morgan Library depicts an attempted theft from the monastery,
as well as the punishment of the thieves. We thank Anne D. Hedeman for suggesting the parallel with the
Life of St. Edmund.
128
Perry, “Saint Mark’s trophies” (n. 103 above) 40 n. 51; Barry, “Disiecta membra” (n. 104 above) 41.
We are grateful to Frederick Ilchman for his help with this inscription.
129
Perry, “Saint Mark’s trophies” (n. 103 above) 41 n. 43; Tucoo-Chala and Pinzutti “Voyage de Pierre
Barbatre” (n. 63 above) 101.
130
131
The following paragraphs rely on Barry, “Disiecta membra” (n. 104 above) 41–55.
132
“entre lesquelles coullombes en y a deux qui semblent estre rouge comme jaspre, entre lesquelles l’on
dist que l’on fait l’exécution criminelle des gentilz hommes quand ilz le déservent,” and “l’on dist que
quand aucunnne personne non noble est condempnez à mort, il est mis à exécucion criminelle entre iceulx
deux pilliers”; Voyage de Georges Lengherand (n. 3 above) 34, 35.
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ies of the palace, there are two other red pillars where gentlemen and the lords of the
council are hung when they offend. And this very year 1480, there were two hung
because they were guilty in the war with King Ferrant.”133 The Anonymous also wrote
of two men who were hanged near the Rialto, a punishment that made him conclude
that “it takes very little for them to execute people, the very great as much as the
small, and as many from the city as strangers.”134 Jacques Le Saige was similarly
struck by local justice, recording the mutilation and public humiliation of a blasphe-
mous priest.135 The visitors’ fascination with Venetian punishment, together with their
knowledge of the Treasury’s tempting riches, probably whet their appetite for tales of
the tetrarchs as would-be thieves.
Taken as a whole, it is clear that Venice delighted by combining the “familiar with
the foreign”: for fifteenth-century pilgrims from across the Alps, Venice was as exotic
as you could get while remaining in Catholic Europe.136 In Wood’s memorable
formulation, “Venice delivered the East ... and the East was the living archive of the
vanished West.”137 Some pilgrims put it in even more ethereal terms; according to
Jacques Le Saige: “If those of our country who had not been to this place were to find
themselves there they would believe they were in a fairy-realm because of the great
number of goods they would see.”138 Art and architecture played a role in creating this
atmosphere of fairie which, like most fairylands, implies space more than it does time.
Thus, many of San Marco’s sights—especially the richly mosaicked San Marco—
were treated atemporally. However, the pilgrims did not live entirely in a historical
vacuum, and interpreted Venice’s spoils as proof of its centuries-long authority in the
eastern Mediterranean.
3. THE HOLY LAND
Like Venice, the Holy Land was on the itinerary of all the pilgrims discussed thus far.
But Venice was just the staging area, while the Holy Land was the main event. Visi-
tors had a whole apparatus on which to draw to interpret what they saw, with multiple
sources of knowledge, including their own knowledge of biblical history, written
guides to the Holy Land, and the Franciscan guides who took them around.139 This
preparatory material might work on its recipients in various ways. The reception of
133
“En entrant audict palais, devant les cloches, il y a deux pilliers de marbre près l’ung de l’autre envi-
ron deux toises; et quant le cas advient qu’un duc forfait, on met ung barreau de fer doré d’or, en façon de
gibet, en pend on le duc quant il a offencé à l’encontre de la Seigneurie. Et près de lé, ès galeries dudit pa-
lais, y a deux autres pilliers rouges ou sont pendus les gentilzhommes et les seigneurs du conseil quand ilz
offensent. Et ceste année presente quatre cens IIII. XX, y en eut deux pendus pour ce qu’ilz estoient coupa-
bles de le guerre du roi Ferrant.” Voyage de la saincte cyté de Hierusalem (n. 29 above) 15. See also Voyage
de Jacques Le Saige (n. 32 above) 54.
134
“Pour peu de chose on faict mourir les gens aussi biens grans que petis, et tant de la ville que des es-
trangiers”; Voyage de la saincte cyté de Hierusalem (n. 29 above) 16. He refers to further punishments on
26–27.
135
136
Davis, “Pilgrim–tourism in late medieval Venice” (n. 85 above).
137
Wood, Forgery, replica, fiction (n. 18 above) 272. Dale demonstrates that this effect was intended by
the patrons of San Marco’s architecture, “Cultural Hybridity in Venice” (n. 91 above) 151–191.
138
“Se cheulx de nostre païs qui n’ont point estés audit lieu sy fussent trouvés adoncq ils eussent cuydiés
estre en fairie pour le grant nombre de biens que sy voient”; Voyage de Jacques Le Saige (n. 32 above) 51.
139
Morris, Sepulchre of Christ (n. 35 above) 306–327, Chareyron, Pilgrims to Jerusalem (n. 31 above)
78–110.
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well-informed viewers might be shaped by what they read, but what they actually saw
could also cause them to question or even reject it.140
There are many fifteenth century viewers who don’t say much that reveals an art
historical imagination. Robert Ousterhout has persuasively argued that by the twelfth
century the buildings themselves had become relics, and for some viewers this proba-
bly eliminated the need to distinguish between the site and the building on the site.141
Many pilgrims, even in lengthy reports, don’t tell us how the buildings looked to
them, what the buildings meant to them, or whether they saw them in any sort of ex-
tra-Biblical context. However, while a building’s status as a reliquary seems to have
foreclosed inquiry into its historicity for many viewers, this was not the case with eve-
ryone.142 Two in particular stand out: Felix Fabri, the cleric from Ulm whose Venetian
notes were discussed in the previous section, and who left an extensive record of his
second trip to the Holy Land, in 1483, and the French Louis de Rochechouart, bishop
of Saintes, who visited in 1461.143 Louis’s account is testament to the ways pilgrims
distinguished the Holy Land from other areas they travelled through; though he passed
through Venice on his way to Jerusalem, he writes nothing about the city, beginning
his account with his departure from Venice.144 Both Louis and Fabri came prepared.
Fabri did extensive historical research prior to his second trip to Jerusalem, which was
motivated by his inability to remember the Holy City satisfactorily after his first
trip.145 Similarly, Louis had read and refers to Bede’s seventh century treatise on the
Holy Land; while in Jerusalem he consulted Jacques de Vitry’s thirteenth-century
guide, whose text he also compares to what he sees.146 This research made them vigi-
lant on site.
Louis was keenly aware of the differences between the present day and the Biblical
past. Reporting his tour of Jerusalem, led by a Franciscan, he comments regularly on
the historicity of what he sees. Thus: the “house of Pilate ... today is a mediocre
building, and I don’t know if it was so in antiquity; nevertheless it is good enough for
a judge.”147 This is not quite skepticism, as Louis asks not whether this was actually
140
Wood, Forgery, replica, fiction (n. 18 above) 175; Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (n. 18
above) 168.
141
R. Ousterhout, “Architecture as Relic and the Construction of Sanctity: The Stones of the Holy
Sepulchre,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 62 (2003) 4–23.
142
Many reliquaries are signed, either by their maker or their patron, and their materiality and temporal-
ity might enhance instead of detract from their efficiency. In the 15th c., inquests into the authenticity of
relics at Avallon, Paris and St. Omer all attempted to assess the age of their reliquaries. See Ingeborg Bähr,
“Aussagen zur Funktion und zum Stellenwert von Kunstwerken in einem Pariser Reliquienprozess des
Jahres 1410,” Wallraf–Richartz–Jahrbuch 45 (1984) 41–57; and Erik Inglis, “Art as Evidence in Medieval
Relic Disputes: Three Cases from Fifteenth-Century France,” forthcoming in Anna Harnden and James
Robinson, eds., Matter of Faith, November 2011 conference proceedings, British Museum.
143
For Fabri, see Morris, Sepulchre of Christ (n. 35 above) 27, 36, 301, 305, 309–10, 313, 316–317,
321–323, 325–327, 336–368. Our translations from Rochechouart’s Latin benefited from Béatrice Dan-
sette’s modern French translation, Croisades et Pèlerinages (n. 34 above) 1124–1167.
144
Crouzet-Pavan, “Venise dans l’iter hierosolomytain (XIVe–XVe siècles)” (n. 35 above) 496.
145
H. F. M. Prescott, Jerusalem Journey: Pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the Fifteenth Century (London
1954) 69–70.
146
“Journal de voyage à Jérusalem de Louis de Rochechouart” (n. 34 above) 269.
147
“Exhinc ducimur ad domum Pilati, in qua Christus malé et properé cruci adjudicatus est. Hec domus
hodiernis temporibus mediocriter constructa est; et satis bene nescio si fuerit sic antiquis temporibus; tamen
satis bona est pro uno judice”; ibid. 242.
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Pilate’s house, but only if it looked like this in the past. Of Herod’s house he writes:
“Today this house is entirely clad in white and black marble, and appears to be a royal
house. Whatever it is, it is beautiful.”148 Taken to see the place where Peter struck
Malchus at Christ’s arrest, he writes that the wall there looks extremely old, and thus
might date to biblical days; its presence then would explain why Malchus was unable
to escape Peter’s blow. But he admits his uncertainty: it is possible that wall was built
at another time, when the church on the spot was built.149 His Franciscan guides stimu-
late this thinking about the relationship between now and then: he says that they lec-
ture their audience at length on the ancient and modern city, claim that the trees on the
Mount of Olives have been growing there since Christ’s day, explain the original size
of Solomon’s Temple and note that now there are three mosques on the site.150 Writing
of the location where the Franciscan church stands, Rochechouart reports that “the
learned [sapientes] say that in antiquity this was David’s castle where the Ark of the
Covenant stood.”151 The term sapientes suggests that, like Master Gregorius in thir-
teenth century Rome, and modern art historians today, Rochechouart distinguished
between popular and learned interpretations.
Rochechouart is equally interested in much more recent building. Visiting the
church of the Pentecost, he records that the chapel that was built in the fifteenth cen-
tury by Philip the Good of Burgundy, but that it had been recently destroyed by the
Saracens.152 Here Rochechouart has much in common with other travelers to Jerusa-
lem, for Philip’s architectural patronage in the Holy Land was widely recognized and
frequently mentioned. Georges Lengherand, for example, also writes about the duke’s
church here—though he says that the duke had sent “a chapel of wood ready made,
but the Moors would not suffer it to be placed.”153 The French anonymous of 1480
also reports that “within a courtyard there is a great quantity of beautiful wood that
Philip the Duke of Burgundy had brought here from Venice.”154 Three years later Fe-
lix Fabri wrote of the hostel in Rama: “This house was bought long ago by Philip,
duke of Burgundy, of blessed memory, for the use of pilgrims.”155 These accounts,
both written after Philip’s death in 1467, suggest the duke’s success gaining personal
recognition for his patronage. However, in 1518, when Jacques Le Saige stayed at the
hostel in Rama, he credited it more loosely to “a duke of Burgundy,” without specify-
ing which duke.156
Thus far Rochechouart’s temporality is familiar—now or then, today or the Bible.
But the bishop of Saintes also recognized the periods in between; he was aware of
intervening work, and sometimes respected it. Writing about the place where the an-
148
“Exhinc ... est domus Herodis. Domus hec hodierno tempore tota vestita est a foris marmore albo et
nigro, et prima facie apparet esse regalis domus. Quicquid est, pulcherrima est.” Ibid. 242–243.
149
Ibid. 244
150
Ibid. 245
151
“Dicunt sapientes ibi antiquitus fuisse castrum David et ibi archam federis stetisse”; ibid. 247.
152
Ibid.
153
“une Chappelle de bois toutte faicte, mais les Mores ne vollurent souffrir qu’elle y fust mise”; Voyage
de Georges Lengherand (n. 3 above) 130.
154
“dedans une court, y a grant quantité de beau boys que Philippe le duc de Bourgogne y a faict mener
de Venise”; Voyage de la saincte cyté de Hierusalem (n. 29 above) 81.
155
Fabri, Wanderings (n. 26 above) 1.2, 246–247.
156
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gels announced Christ’s nativity to the shepherds, he notes that between the biblical
event and his own day a monastery rose and fell on the site: “in antiquity this was the
monastery of Paul and Eustochius, and its vestiges remain.”157 Shown Lazarus’s
grave, he is not persuaded that he sees the original tomb: “Then we came to the grave
of Lazarus. There is a church there in which is the sepulcher from which Lazarus rose.
The stone sepulcher is made of marble. I believe that it was not thus, when Lazarus
was resurrected, but that it was made by the Latins.”158
This reference to the Latins is significant. Rochechouart’s recognition of the
twelfth- and thirteenth-century Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem complicated both his his-
torical periodization and his approach to buildings.159 His periodization can be com-
pared to that which undergirds the Nine Worthies, who included not only biblical and
ancient Roman leaders, but also medieval figures, including Godfrey of Bouillon, the
crusader selected as Jerusalem’s first Christian ruler after the city’s conquest.160 God-
frey’s memory was strong among pilgrims to Jerusalem, and Rochechouart was one of
many to note his tomb in the Holy Sepulcher. Coppart de Velaine, who visited in
1432, described the monuments of Godfrey and Baldwin of Bouillon as “two beautiful
stone tombs raised high.”161
The importance of this period is particularly clear in Rochechouart’s observations
on Bethlehem’s church of the Nativity (fig. 11), remarks notable for their attention to
the building’s appearance, history, and condition. This site, a standard stop for pil-
grims, had a complicated building history. The original church was built by Helena
and consecrated in 339. Gravely damaged by fire in the sixth century, the church was
substantially rebuilt during Justinian’s reign. Under the Latin Kingdom buildings were
added to the complex, and, by 1165/1169 new mosaics were added to the nave.162
Rochechouart writes of the church:
We were led to the church, which in antiquity was a cathedral, consecrated to the Virgin’s
name, clad in marble on the floor and walls. It is roofed with wood beams, which were used
for roofs in antique times. This structure is damaged and especially above the choir. The
Saracens do not want to permit building or restoration, but it is a miracle of the little one
born in it, that the surviving elements still stand. This church is the most eminent, and very
sumptuous, constructed in the manner of the church of St. Gatien in Tours, except that the
157
“ibi antiquitus fuit monasterium Paule et Eustochii, ed adhuc apparent vestigia”; “Journal de voyage à
Jérusalem de Louis de Rochechouart” (n. 34 above) 261
158
“Exhinc venimus ad sepulchrum Lazari. Ibi est ecclesia in qua est sepulchrum ex quo resurrexit Laza-
rus. Sepulchrum illud est lapideum ex marmore. Credo tamen quod non erat tale, quando surrexit Lazarus,
sed per Latinos fuit sic edificatum; sepulchrum est non proprie in medio ecclesie.” Ibid. 263.
159
For acute remarks on the challenges that periodization posed to 15th-c. people, see Wood, Forgery,
replica, fiction (n. 18 above) 64, 134–135, 193–194, 206, 225–226, 245, 276; and Nagel and Wood, Ana-
chronic Renaissance (n. 18 above) 46, 92.
160
For the Nine Worthies, see Elizabeth Morrison and Anne Dawson Hedeman, eds., Imagining the past
in France: history in manuscript painting, 1250–1500 (Los Angeles 2010) 260–261, 305–317.
161
“deux bielle tombes de piere hautes eslevées”; Voyages d’un tournaisien (n. 38 above) 27–28. Gode-
froy’s tomb is also cited by the French Anonymous of 1480, Voyage de la saincte cyté de Hierusalem (n. 29
above) 95; and Jacques Le Saige, Voyage de Jacques Le Saige (n. 32 above) 111.
162
Denys Pringle, “The planning of some pilgrimage churches in Crusader Palestine,” World Archaeol-
ogy 18 (1987) 350; idem, The churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: a corpus (Cambridge 1993–
2007) 1.137–156; Lucy-Anne Hunt, “The Mosaics of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem (1169) and
the Problem of ‘Crusader’ Art,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 45 (1991) 69–85.
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nave has not stone vaults but wood. All the walls of this church are painted with most worthy
[dignissima] and rich images [pictura], in the manner of the church of Venice, to the left and
right. However much they are obscured, there remain precious vestiges. The cities of Judea
are depicted in it and the genealogy of the Savior, designated in Greek and Latin letters.
There are fifty marble columns in the church. On the high altar the Virgin Mary is painted; it
appears to be pulled from the wall; on the right Abraham and on the left David. Above the
choir is an epitaph, not a proper epitaph but an indication of what time and under what em-
peror and under what presule the church was built. Such are the verses: King Amalric,
[guardian of virtue] generous comrade of honor and impiety’s foe, patron of justice and pi-
ety, avenger of wrong, was fifth on the throne. And over the Greeks ruled also Emmanuel,
the generous giver and pious ruler. Here there lived as prelate and governor of the church
Ralph the kindly, worthy of the bishop’s throne, when the hand of Ephraim, they say, made
for them the gracious [mosaics].163
In this single paragraph Rochechouart deploys almost the entire arsenal of tools that
late medieval pilgrims used to write about the buildings they visited. He compares this
distant church to one that his readers might know, the cathedral of Tours (though
Tours is approximately 150 miles north and east of Saintes, the seat of Rochechouart’s
diocese).164 He then nuances this comparison by noting the difference in roofing tech-
nique. Likening the decoration of the building to Venetian mosaics (which had evi-
dently left their mark on Rochechouart, even though he wrote nothing about his time
in the city), he also tells us something of its iconography.
Rochechouart’s description also has a strongly historical aspect. He recognizes the
church’s wood roof (which distinguished it from French churches) as typical of an-
cient buildings. He laments the impact of age when decrying the church’s ruinous
condition, which he blames on the Sultan’s refusal to allow the church to be repaired.
Most remarkably, he recorded the inscription naming the patron and artist. This is the
only occasion we know of a pilgrim naming a specific artist. Rochechouart also notes
that the inscription allows the church to be dated—though he does not calculate or
163
“Ducimur ad ecclesiam, que antiquitus fuit kathedralis, nomini Virgineo consecrata, marmore in
fundameno et parietibus vestita. In tecto est strues lignorum que pro tecto, antiquis in temporibus, constructa
fuit. Hec structura dietim corruit, et maxime supra chorum. Nec volunt permittere Sarraceni edificari sive
restaurari, sed est miraculum parvuli in ea nati, ut superstes maneat. Hec ecclesia eminentissima fuit, et
magni sumptus, in modum ecclesie sancti Gaciani Turonensis fuit constructa, excepta navi que non habet
voltam lapideam sed ligneam. Omnes parietes hujus ecclesie depicte sunt dignissima et ditissima pictura,
more ecclesie Venetorum, ad dextris et sinistris. Quanquam sit obfuscata, habent tamen preciosa vestigia.
Sunt civitates Judee in ea depicte et genealogia Salvatoris, designate epr litteram grecam et latinam. In ec-
clesia sunt quinquaginta columne marmoree. Pro parva ecclesia nunquam vidi pulchriorem. In altari majori
est depicta effigies Virginis Marie, que a pariete quasi vi evulsa fuit; ad dextris Abraham, et ad sinistris
David. Supra chorum est epytaphium, non proprie epytaphium sed designacio sub quo tempore et quo impe-
ratore et quo presule constructa fuerit ecclesia. Tales sunt versus: Rex Almaricus custos inimicus. Largus,
honestatis comes, hostis et impietatis, Justicie cultor, pietatis criminis ultor, Quintus regnabat, et Grecis
imperitabat Emmanuelque, dator largus, pius imperitator, Presul vivebat hic, ecclesiamquie regebat Pon-
tificis dictis Radulphus, honore benignus, Cum manus his Effren fertur fecisse tu autem.” “Journal de voy-
age à Jérusalem de Louis de Rochechouart” (n. 34 above) 259–260. For a different, probably more accurate
transcription, see Hunt, “Mosaics of the Church of the Nativity” (n. 162 above) 72 n. 25; and Pringle,
Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (n. 162 above) 1.154. We have used the translation of the
inscription published in the latter.
164
St. Gatien was also compared to a building in the Holy Land in Jacques d’Armagnac’s Josephus
manuscript, which uses the cathedral of Tours as the model for the Temple. For this and other indications of
St. Gatien’s 15th-c.y reputation, see Inglis, Jean Fouquet (n. 56 above) 174–5, 191, 200, 203; and Nagel and
Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (n. 18 above) 147–451, 159.
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include the date in his text.165 His remarks are far more detailed than those of the
French anonymous of 1480, who wrote that the church “well-enough outfitted and it is
large and spacious and there are four ranks of beautiful pillars of white marble and
most of the site is ruined and the church had been painted in the fashion of Saint Mark
in Venice, that is to say in mosaic, and it is roofed in lead.”166
The church of the Holy Sepulcher presented Rochechouart with a still more com-
plex history with many of the same phases: its construction in the fourth century under
Constantine and Helena, its destruction by Calif al-Hakim in 1009, the rebuilding of
the rotunda and courtyard in the 1040s by Constantine IX Monomachus, and the addi-
tion of a “domed transept and pilgrimage choir” in the mid-twelfth century, during the
Latin Kingdom.167
Rochechouart’s historical imagination is evident in both his description of Christ’s
tomb and of the church as a whole. Inspecting Christ’s tomb, Rochechouart carefully
distinguishes the original burial spot, cut into the rock in the Jewish manner, from the
edicule above it, which he attributes to Helena: “this place is cut into the stone, as was
the custom in the making of Jewish tombs. And we saw several such, near
Alchedemac, where the deserted Jewish tombs are. In my judgment, the base of the
holy sepulcher was a single stone ... And all the Jewish monuments that we saw by the
field of Alchedemac are thus composed. They are cut from the rock, in the manner of
little caves; thus was and is the tomb of the Lord. It is truly to be known that that por-
tion of the Holy Place where lay the divine body of our Lord Jesus Christ is today clad
in marble, in the style of a squared tomb, whose length is seven feet and three palms.
Its height is three and half feet, and squared, in the manner of an altar, although too
low. The color of the marble is white, and I believe that it was arranged and placed by
blessed Helena.”168
Immediately following this distinction between the original rocky tomb and the
squared structure erected above it three hundred years later Rochechouart returned to
the church as a whole. “Now we return our description to the church. The first church
here was, fittingly, a precious and very beautiful building, built through Saint Helena
which the kings of the Latins choicely decorated throughout, in the Venetian style
[more Venetorum]. The remnants of the decoration testify to this. The choir is most
worthy [dignissimum]. To the east it is round. I had its form depicted in this book by a
165
Knowing the mosaic’s patrons did not guarantee an ability to date it accurately, as Rochechouart’s
chronology could be shaky. For example, he took Jacques de Vitry (d. 1240) for a contemporary of Gode-
froy de Bouillon (d. 1100); “Journal de voyage à Jérusalem de Louis de Rochechouart” (n. 34 above) 269.
166
“assez bien appoincté et est grande et spacieuse et y a quatre rengées de beaulx pilliers de marbre
blanc et la plupart dudict lieu est ruyneux et a esté l’eglise paincte en la façon de Sainct Marc de Venise,
c’est assavoir de mosayque et est couverte de plomb”; Voyage de la saincte cyté de Hierusalem (n. 29
above) 81.
167
Robert Ousterhout, “Rebuilding the Temple: Constantine Monomachus and the Holy Sepulchre,”
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 48, March (1989) 67–68. For a convenient and thorough
summary of the complex’s history, see Pringle, Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (n. 162
above) 3.6–72.
168
“Journal de voyage à Jérusalem de Louis de Rochechouart” (n. 34 above) 253. This passage is dis-
cusssed by Edina Bozoky, “Visiter le Saint–Sépulchre (IVe–XVe siècles),” in Catherine Bertho–Lavenir, La
Visite du monument (Cleremont–Ferrand 2004) 66.
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certain architect who was our fellow-pilgrim, so that he who can understand may un-
derstand it. I won’t mention its length and width, since it was round.”169
Though Rochechouart’s chronology of the building lacks specific dates, his account
has four distinct stages: Christ’s death and burial; Helena’s discovery of the cross and
building of the first church on the site; the decoration of the building under the Latin
kings, and the present day. Thus, while most pilgrims visited holy sites to collapse the
gap between then and now, Rochechouart found a legible palimpsest; time at these
sites is like a chain, with multiple links that are simultaneously discrete and con-
nected.170 The most notable aspect here is Rochechouart’s recognition of the contribu-
tion of the Latin kings, which is not lost under the veil of St. Helena’s fame.
Rochechouart’s recognition of the these multiple phases, both pre- and post-Constan-
tinian, makes him an exception to Nagel and Wood’s summary that “observers of the
Church of the Holy Sepulcher and its edicule after the Fatimid destruction of 1009 and
the subsequent Crusader reconstruction never mention the rebuilding. The reconstruc-
tion followed so quickly on the destruction that the gap was elided in collective
memory. ... Medieval observers did not know that the edicule was Constantinian.
Many people seem to have assumed that Constantine found the edicule and simply
protected it with his rotunda.”171 What matters most here is not whether Rochechouart
was correct or not about the church’s 1000 year history, but that his interest in the
building’s history motivated him to inspect it closely and to record the results of his
inspection.
This approach to the buildings in the Holy Land was not unique to Rochechouart;
already in the late thirteenth century the Dominican Burchard of Mount Sion noted
that at
almost all the ... [places] in which Our Lord performed anything, are below ground, and one
reaches them by going down many steps into a crypt; such are the place of the Annunciation,
the place of the Nativity and those of Cana of Galilee and many others, which are shown un-
derground. I can find no explanation of this unless it is that through the frequent destruction
of churches in which those places were, ruins have piled up above ground and thus, after
being leveled out by some means or other, other buildings have been constructed on top.
Christians having the devotion to visit those places and wanting to come to the very spot
where the event took place, have had to clear away the rubbish from those places by degrees
in order to reach them. And for this reason almost all those places appear as if in crypts.172
169
“Nunc vertamus ad situm ecclesi tantisper stillum nostrum. Et primum ecclesia hec prima sui edifica-
cione pulcherrima et preciosissima, sicut decebat, fuit per sanctam Helenam et reges Latinorum, ditissime
depicte tota, more Venetorum. Hoc enim testantur que supersunt reliquie. Chorum habuit dignissimum,
nulla brevitate et longitudine. In Oriente rotunda est. Cujus formam per quemdam architectum nostrum
comperegrinum, hoc libello, dipingi feci, ut si quis poterit intelligere intelligat. De longitudine et latitudine
scribere pretereo”; “Journal de voyage à Jérusalem de Louis de Rochechouart” (n. 34 above) 253–544. We
rely on Dansette’s translation, Croisades et Pèlerinages (n. 34 above) 1997, 1151, for the concluding re-
marks on the rotunda’s shape.
170
For the role of chains, catenae, in medieval memory technique, see Carruthers, Book of Memory (n.
18 above) 5–6, 62, 64. Wood, Forgery, Replica, Fiction (n. 18 above) 15, 18–19, 29–32, 36–42, 51, 230–
231, uses the chain as a metaphor for the historical understanding of numerous buildings and objects, though
he emphasizes the connections between the links whereas our study of Rochechouart and Fabri leads us to
emphasize that they recognized each link’s distinctiveness at a single site.
171
Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (n. 18 above) 60–61.
172
Quoted in Pringle, “Planning of some pilgrimage churches in Crusader Palestine” (n. 162 above) 347.
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In addition to the Holy Sepulcher’s history, Rochechouart was also interested in its
iconography, decoration, and condition. Describing the chapel built on the site of Cav-
alry, he writes that it was
a chapel of wondrous and exceeding beauty, totally covered in marble revetment [vestita
marmoreo tabulatu]. The pavement [is made] with stones in the manner of square dice, with
varied distinct colors. The roof or vaults inside were totally gilded [deaurata] with sumptu-
ous pictures in the manner of Venetian churches, but much more worthy and choice; now
however, on account of the malice of the infidel, who does not permit their restoration, they
have fallen to ruin. The images are obscured, the walls darkened, and the ancient vestiges of
the pictures can scarcely be perceived. I went up exploring with a candle to see if I could see
to whom the pictures were dedicated. And first I discovered the testimony of the prophets
concerning Christ’s passion. Here David spoke: horns are in his hands, and death shall go
before his face [Habacuc 3.4–5] I also read Daniel saying: Christ shall be slain [Daniel 9.6]
etc. But the remnants of these pictures of prophets were obscured and forgotten, so that I
could not recognize them.173
Rochechouart is unusual in narrating his unsuccessful attempts to decipher the build-

ing’s iconographic program; few contemporary writers give us this much evidence of
their hunger to see and understand the decoration of a holy structure, particularly in
difficult circumstances.
Fabri’s account of the buildings he saw is more complete than Rochechouart’s. He
is the exception to the rule that “observers of the Renaissance ... had little capacity to
‘parse’ a building ... Neither architects nor scholars were practicing a philology of
architecture that might distinguish building fabrics and serve as the basis for a recon-
struction of building histories. They had little interest in doing so. The label ‘antique’
left unresolved—deliberately unresolved—the distinctions between being an old
building, replacing an earlier building, and altering an earlier building.”174 Like most
pilgrim authors, Fabri structures his account after his travels around the Holy Land;
since he visited some sights more than once (including six nights in the church of the
Holy Sepulcher) his comments on them appear in multiple locations in his text. He
also concludes his account of traveling in the Holy Land with an account of its history
from the Old Testament to the present, and this history includes further remarks on the
most important buildings. While these returns and repetitions make it a challenge to
summarize Fabri’s thinking, they also allowed him to present an almost encyclopedic
array of approaches to buildings in the Holy Land.
Fabri is always concerned to put the importance of the buildings in its proper per-
spective. Arguing that the buildings obscure the history that had happened at their lo-
173
“capella mire et eximie pulchritudinis, tota vestita marmoreo tabulatu. Pavimentum autem [est] ex
lapillis more taxilli quadratis, vario colore distinctis. Tectum sive volta ab intus tota deaurata fuit cum
sumptuosis picturis, more ecclesie Venetorum, sed multum dignioribus ditioribusque; nunc vero malicia
infidelium Sarracenorum, qui non permittunt aliquid renovari, abit in ruinam; obfuscantur picture, deni-
grantur parietes, ut vix possint antiqua vestigia picture discerni. Feci ego cum candela accensa summam
indaginem, quo possim cognoscere quid sibi vellent picture. Et primum inveni testimonia prophetarum de
passione Christi prophetancium. Ibi David loquitur: Cornua in manibus ejus, et ante faciem ejus ibit more.
Legi pariter de Daniele dicente: Occidenter Christis, etc. Reliqua vero prophetarum pictura obfuscata et
oblita [est], ut nequeat cognosci.” “Journal de voyage à Jérusalem de Louis de Rochechouart” (n. 34 above)
251.
174
Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (n. 18 above) 136.
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cation, he writes that these sites would be better off if no one had ever built on them:
“And I would that no church had ever been built there, for then we should have more
clearly understood the meaning of the Gospels where they tell of the Lord’s passion
and resurrection. I verily believe that the Christians would not have altered the form of
the place, had the Emperor Hadrian not done so ... [when he] came to Jerusalem [in]
175
AD 119.” Fabri uses his own experience to demonstrate how buildings could distract
from the proper attentiveness:
This was what befell me ... on my first pilgrimage. When we had been locked into the church
... we began in our joy to run to and fro through the church, seeking the holy places without
any regular order, and every man went whithersoever he would at the bidding of his own
spirit. I did not hurry, but went with a slow step towards the middle of the church, walking
without any set purpose, and after I had gone forward about seventeen paces I stopped, and,
lifting up my face, looked at the vault above me. I cast my eyes upon the upper windows
with curiosity, as ill-bred men stare about in strange places and houses without respect for
anyone, and so I stood by myself with wandering eyes.
Fabri’s description of his path through the church is very similar to Lengherand’s
touristic stroll around Brescia, and this disordered curiosity caused him to gape like
“ill-bred men,” inspecting the unimportant structure at the expense of an all-important
relic. His curiosity had consequences: standing there he was rebuked by two female
pilgrims, who noted with dismay that that his careless wandering has led him to stand
on the stone where Christ’s dead body had been anointed:
When I heard this I trembled, and, drawing back my feet with horror, I fell on the earth be-
fore the stone. Now I scarce dared to touch with my mouth that which before I had not
feared to tread irreverently upon with my shod feet. O Lord! I prayed, ... have patience with
me, and I will pay Thee all reverence and honor at Thy holy places, and will render to Thee
whatever else is Thy due with all the piety of which I am capable, and which Thou Thyself
shalt bestow upon me.176
Fabri says that such curiosity was misplaced because architecture does not matter
much: “a description of the holy sepulcher ... is not a matter of great importance.”177
Even after a lengthy disquisition on whether and how the current site corresponds to
the original, Fabri minimizes the significance of this discussion: “the devout and quiet
pilgrim should grasp this fact, that whether the cave as it stands at the present day be
the true and entire monument of Christ, or whether a part of it be there, or whether
none of it be there, matters very little either one way or the other, because the main
175
176
Ibid. 1.2, 342–3. Morris, Sepulchre of Christ (n. 35 above) 313, notes that taken as a whole, Fabri’s
text presents a self-conscious, almost diagnostic account of the extreme range of reactions to art, architec-
ture and landscape. He notes how particular circumstances can affect a viewer’s reaction: “to struggle after
mental abstraction whilst bodily walking from place to place is exceeding toilsome” (1.1, 299). Even ritual
events like processions can pose obstacles: “In ... solitary visits to the holy places men feel greater devotion
and abstraction from the world than when they do so in the general procession, in which there is much
pushing and disorder, and disturbance, and singing, and weeping, whereas in the other case there is silence
and peace.” Fabri’s desire for devotional solitude led him to the subterranean chapel of the Invention of the
Cross: “I took great delight in that underground place, because it was quiet and suited to me, for the Mount
Calvary and the Lord’s sepulchre, and the other places up above were filled with an unbroken throng of
pilgrims, and very noisy” (1.2, 381–2).
177
Ibid. 1.2, 398.
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fact connected with the place abides there, and cannot by any means be carried away
or demolished, the fact, to wit, that this was the place of the most holy burial and res-
urrection of Christ, where, albeit there may not be the very monument wherein
Christ’s body was laid, there is nevertheless a monument erected to Christ, and in
which the sacrament of His body has ofttimes been celebrated: it is a double cave,
exactly like the original tomb, and equally holy, reverend, and venerable: even as the
tables which Moses made in the likeness of the first tables which broke contained the
same commandments, and were equally holy and reverend, so that they were depos-
ited in the ark of the covenant as most important and most holy relics. Let this suffice
about the holy sepulcher.”178 Thus Fabri emphasizes the site at the expense of the
sight. The location is the same, and the current structure—whatever its precise date—
is made venerable by long and continuous devotion.
Fabri here gives an eloquent account of Nagel and Wood’s substitution principle.179
The comparison of the architecture to the written tablets of the law is remarkable, sug-
gesting that a building—like a text—can retain its identity across a variety of supports.
For pilgrims thinking along substitutional lines, continuity of site and ritual matter
more than a building’s changes over time. This mindset, common in the Middle Ages,
would seem to eliminate the need for and even the ability to practice any variety of
architectural history. Fabri’s claim that it would have been better if no buildings occu-
pied these sites points to another reason substitution works: Christian theology holds
these very artifacts to be unimportant; it is the theological insignificance of any artifact
that allows copies to be as useful as originals.180 Substitution works because original-
ity of artifact is ultimately a matter of little consequence. The buildings are not relics
for Fabri.
And yet, while Fabri is at pains to minimize or delimit the significance of these
buildings, he is deeply attentive to their histories and appearance.181 This might appear
paradoxical: if the buildings are unimportant, why investigate their past? However,
there is no paradox here; Fabri’s careful scrutiny of the buildings’ passage through
time secularizes them, using the original sense of that term, meaning that he makes
them temporal rather than eternal phenomena. This secularization of the buildings
178
Ibid. 1.2, 415–6; Morris, Sepulchre of Christ (n. 35 above) 321–322.
179
Note that Fabri’s explanation of the substitution principle, not cited by Nagel and Wood, is limited to
explaining the relevance of later buildings at a single, long–hallowed location. He has nothing to say here
about the replication of the Holy Sepulcher in copies throughout Europe, or the replication of famous Mar-
ian icons, phenomena that Nagel and Wood claim are also explicable through the substitution principle.
180
After a lengthy passage in which Fabri lamentingly contrasts the dirtiness of Christian shrines and the
rude behavior of their visitors with the cleanliness of the Dome of the Rock and the decorum of its wor-
shipers, he concludes that “perchance this irreverence itself may be interpreted in a good sense, because,
seeing that we have true sacraments ... we therefore take less care concerning the mere outward ornaments
of our temples, whereas the heathen, who do not seek after inward purity of heart, are all the more eager for
outward cleanliness.” Fabri, Wanderings (n. 26 above) 2.1, 260. One thousand years earlier, Jerome dis-
couraged Paulinus of Nola from visiting the Holy Land, since no place, building or artifact is any better than
any other place, building or artifact; St Jerome, “Letter LVIII, to Paulinus of Nola,” Saint Jerome: Letters
and Select Works, Select Library of Nicene and Post–Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. VI (New York 1893)
119–123; see also G. Constable, “Opposition to Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages,” idem, Religious Life and
Thought (11th–12th Centuries) (London 1979) 125–146.
181
Thus Thomas Renna’s claim that Fabri “focused on the holiness of the sites, and not on the buildings
which adorn them” requires some qualification; “Jerusalem in Late Medieval Itineraria,” Pilgrims and Trav-
elers to the Holy Land (n. 28 above) 123.
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helps him argue that the architecture matters less than the site. This secularizing effort
is particularly clear in Fabri’s repeated discussions of the Dome of the Rock (fig. 12).
One of these appears in a lengthy passage about a conversation he had with lay pil-
grims looking over Jerusalem from Mount Sion:
The view is a delightful one to a man who knows the Scriptures ... [But] these laymen ne-
glected all the things which lay before their eyes, and directed their gaze upon the temple
which is called Solomon’s Temple, admiring it and desiring to enter it and behold it, and
they discoursed much one to another about how this temple had endured from the time of
Solomon till the present day ... after they had spoken long and unprofitably, I said to them:
“My lords and fellow pilgrims, what is the reason that you ask no questions, and make no
remarks about the holy and wondrous sights which you have before your eyes, but your talk
is only about a vain thing?” To this one of them made answer: “We know this Temple of
Solomon by common report, and we have nothing holier, nothing more glorious or more
beauteous within sight. As for the mountains and valleys round about we do not care for
them, nor do we know them,” and they spoke truly, for they did not as yet know the Mount
of Olives. To this I answered: “The Temple of Solomon is not in sight, for it was long ago
brought to nought, and this temple which you now see is the fourth temple which has been
built on that spot since Solomon’s Temple.” [He suggests that devout attention will be better
directed at the timeless landscape.] “Then we began a profitable discourse about the small-
ness of the valley of Jehoshaphat, and about many of the like subjects.”182
Further on he writes again of the Dome of the Rock’s history: “this temple was built
by the infidels, albeit I have often read in little books of the pilgrims, that it was built
by the blessed Helena. But when I looked narrowly at the temple, this did not seem to
be true, seeing that it is altogether built in the infidel fashion, and has not the shape of
a Christian church, for its main door opens from the east, a thing which I have never
seen in the churches of Christ.”183 A third time he writes of the building’s history and
its various names: “The temple of the Lord, built by Hamor, king of Egypt, upon the
threshing-floor of Araunah, the Jebusite, whereon Solomon built a house of the Lord,
is a building which is not equal to that most famous ancient structure of Solomon. The
infidels call it Halachibis, learned Christians call it Bethel, common and unlearned
Christians call it Solomon’s temple.”184
In each of these passages, Fabri, like Gregorius before him, writes as a learned
cleric correcting the mistakes of lay pilgrims (though unlike Gregorius, his correction
is correct). This distinction between correct and incorrect understanding is a trope that
probably came easily to Latinate churchmen used to scrutinizing lay devotion for er-
ror, and was just as easily shared by scholars (then and now) mocking the beliefs of
the unlettered.185 Thus Fabri would disagree with Nagel and Wood’s claim that “the
sometime identification of the Dome as the Temple ... should be understood not as an
error, but as a theory about the vertical structure of the building history ... There is no
point in distinguishing the observers who got it right from those who got it wrong.”186
182
183
Ibid. 2.1, 242.
184
Ibid. 2.1, 242–243.
185
For other 15th-c. attacks on the beliefs perceived as simple or stupid, see Wood, Forgery, replica, fic-
tion (n. 18 above) 178.
186
Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (n. 18 above) 67–68.
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For Fabri, the Dome of the Rock could not substitute for the Temple because the dis-
tortion of the site’s present use trumped its original role.
Fabri elsewhere uses architectural analysis to note that certain mosques began as
Christian churches. For example, to the south of the Dome of the Rock was the church
of Mary “on the Threshing-Floor of Oman.” The building’s conversion from church to
mosque had already attracted Ludolph von Suchem’s attention in 1350. Ludolph knew
that the building started as a church because of the painting [mosaic?] on its facade:
“Out of this Church of St. Mary the Saracens have now made a church of their own.
Yet all the story of Anna and Joachim and the Blessed Mary’s birth remains to this
day right nobly painted on the front of the church. This painting in my time used to be
all devoutly and religiously explained to Christians by an old Saracen woman named
Baguta. She used to dwell over against the church, and declared that the picture of
Joachim stood for Mahomet, and the painting of the trees for paradise, wherein Ma-
homet kissed girls, and she referred the whole of the painting to Mohammed.”187 Thus,
already in the fourteenth century von Suchem diagnosed the sort of iconographic mis-
understandings we have discussed in this paper.
Fabri knew Ludolph’s account, and used it to understand some obscured images he
saw traces of in the building:
We went into the church, which is now a mosque, and scanned it narrowly. We noticed that
this church had once been beauteous and decorated, for the walls had been painted, but the
Saracens have destroyed the paintings by covering them with white wash. Howbeit, in many
places, the whitewash has fallen off, and the Christians’ paintings can again be seen. There
was painted the story of the conception and birth of the blessed Virgin Mary; how Joachim
was cast out of the temple because his wife was barren; how he abode in the desert with his
shepherds; how the angel appeared to him there; how, beneath the Golden Gate, he rushed
into his wife’s arms; and how Anna bore Mary. I have read in a certain pilgrim’s book that
the Saracens explain these paintings as referring to their own Mahomet; and there used to be
an old woman who dwelt near this Saracen church, who, with floods of tears, used to tell
people how in these paintings was set forth Mahomet’s life and his paradise, putting a carnal
meaning upon all of them. When we had seen all these sights, we came forth from the
church, grieving that so fair a church and so famous a convent, on so exceeding holy a spot,
should belong to the Saracens.188
Lacking information about the structure’s history, Fabri assessed the building’s “form
and character” to determine that it started as a church. Fabri writes that it is
another great temple and exceeding fair church, built in all respects after the fashion of our
own churches. It is larger than Solomon’s temple by reason of the length of its nave; it is
roofed with lead, and by day it is lighted by many windows all round about it, while at night
eight hundred lamps burn therein, because it is an exceeding holy mosque of the Saracens. I
am quite unable to find any account, written by anybody, of who built this temple, and when
it was built; yet I have no doubt whatever in my own mind that the Christians built it after
the last recovery of the Holy City in the time of the Latin kings, because the form and char-
187
Ludolph von Suchem, Description of the Holy Land, ed. Aubrey Stewart, The Library of the Pales-
tine Pilgrims’ Text Society, vol. 12 (1895) 100–101. There is an excellent discussion of this passage in Ali-
cia Walker, “Cross–cultural Reception in the Absence of Texts: The Islamic Appropriation of a Middle
Byzantine Rosette Casket,” Gesta 47 (2008) 99–122, at 112–114, 116.
188
Fabri, Wanderings (n. 26 above) 2.1, 135
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acter of the building show that it was built by Christians, even as the form of what is called
Solomon’s temple clearly proves that it was built by heathens, and no sensible Christian can
believe what they are wont to tell pilgrims, that this same temple was built by Helena ... So
also this temple whereof I speak was not built by any men but the Christians; for when they
had taken the Holy City, they wished that there should be a church of the blessed Virgin near
the temple of the Lord, and so they built this church in her honor, ... now the Saracens have
made a mosque of it, and it has been taken away from the use of the Christian religion.189
Fabri does not specify how the building’s “form and character” helped him identify it
as having been originally a church. However, he describes several mosques, demon-
strating his knowledge that churches and mosques have different liturgical functions.
For example, he imagines the interior of the Dome of the Rock, which Christians were
forbidden to enter:
I have been able to guess with some probability from the outward form of the temple, and
from the other mosques which I have entered; for within it has no sanctuary to contain their
relics, or in which either sacrament or relics might be put, seeing that they have neither sac-
raments nor relics ... In this profane temple there is no altar, no image either painted or
carved, no wooden seats, benches, or stalls, but the whole pavement of various hues of pol-
ished marble can everywhere be seen, and the walls within are decorated with Greek work,
even as they are without, so that nothing stands against the walls of the temple all the way
round, and there is nothing at all within, save that there are lighted lamps hanging down from
the vault above.190
His emphasis on the void within mosques suggest that Fabri’s identified the Christian
origins of the Church of Mary because of its liturgically-conditioned ground plan.
Fabri also attends to the chronology of buildings which have not changed hands,
and studying one church’s fabric led him to change his mind about its date. The
church in question was associated with Jerome, and adjacent to Bethlehem’s church of
the Nativity.
In the “Legend of St. Jerome” we are told that Cyril, the Archbishop of Jerusalem, gave him
the parish of Bethlehem, in which ... he built a monastery ... As far as I can conjecture, I do
not see how the fair church which stands there at this day could have been built in St. Je-
rome’s time. Ignorant men talk about its having been built by St. Helena, and once I believed
this; but the arrangement of the modern buildings renders this impossible, because we are
told that St. Jerome hewed a sepulcher for himself at the mouth of the cave of the nativity,
and that the mouth of the cave was narrow. But at this day St. Jerome’s sepulcher is without
the church—the entrance to the cave is not in the church itself—and the cave is exceeding
splendid, and has two wide openings by which it is entered. I believe that this church was
built in the days of the last of the Latin Kings of Jerusalem, and likewise this great monas-
tery; that Jerome’s little hut was then taken away, and the place arranged anew. This is
shown to be true by the inscriptions, paintings, and sculptures at the place.191
Fabri here combines two sorts of evidence to support his claim: the written histories of
the place and a close inspection of the current building’s appearance, including its
“inscriptions, paintings, and sculptures.”
189
Ibid. 2.1, 260–261.
190
Ibid. 2.1, 245–246; see similar remarks at 2.1, 251–252
191
Ibid. 2.2, 401–402.
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As with Rochechouart, Fabri makes his most extended remarks about two struc-
tures, Bethlehem’s church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and Jerusalem’s church of the
Holy Sepulcher. With both, he devotes specific sections of his text to the buildings as
they were, and as they are now. Fabri’s periodization is remarkably thorough and
complex, and gave him useful temporal categories into which to sort the buildings he
inspected. Introducing the church of the Nativity he says he will address the site as it
existed through seven distinct phases:
I. Before Christ’s coming, in the time of the judges, prophets, and kings of Juda.
II. At the birth of Christ, when Mary bore Christ, therein.
III. After the birth of Christ, when the malice of the Jews raged against the very place itself.
IV. In the time of Helena, who rendered the place illustrious with glory and honor.
V. In the time of St. Jerome, who became famous there for his holiness and miracles.
VI. In the time of the perverted and bad Christians, who desecrated the holy places.
VII. In the time of the Saracens, who have brought it almost to nothing, and reduced it to its
present wretched state.192
He follows a similar though less complex chronology when he starts discussion of the
Holy Sepulcher:
The chief points about which I must speak are the three following:
I. What the Lord’s sepulcher was like at the time when the Lord’s body was laid therein.
II. What that sepulcher which we visited and worshiped is like.
III. Whether this sepulcher is the same wherein the Lord Jesus was laid; and in this third
question lies the whole difficulty.193
Fabri’s account of the early history for each complex are similar: he discusses the New
Testament events which hallowed the sites; their veneration by the first Christians
after Christ’s ascension; the consequences of Jerusalem’s defeat by Titus and Vespa-
sian, which led to their profanation by the emperor Hadrian, who “set up a statue of
Venus upon the rock of Calvary in the place where Christ died, and placed the image
of Jupiter in the cave wherein Christ was buried, and ordained the cave of the Lord’s
nativity to be used for wailing for Adonis.”194 Finally he gets to Helena’s arrival at the
sites, which is carefully dated: “The place[s] remained for more than three hundred
years given up to the vile service of idols, at the end of which time God raised up the
soul of that holy woman Helena ..., who, after she had become empress and been made
a Christian, went to Jerusalem, [and] sought out the holy places.”195 Because this
marks the moment where Fabri believes he may see at least the origins of churches on
these sites, the differences in his accounts become more interesting and will be taken
in turn.
Of the Church of the Nativity he writes:
... when she [Helena] had cleansed the spot, she built above it a church of wondrous beauty.
She called together the best workmen in wood and stone, and told them of her design, which
192
Ibid. 1.2, 584–585.
193
Ibid. 1.2, 398; similar remarks at 1.2, 418.
194
Ibid. 1.2, 587–588.
195
Ibid. 1.2, 588.
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was that an exceeding costly church should be built here, but in such a manner that the rock
beneath which the Savior was born should remain untouched ... She covered all the walls and
all the pavement with white or variegated marble, and caused the upper part of the walls to
be painted in mosaic work. Thus was built a great and noble church of oblong form, ex-
ceeding well arranged ... This church is built after the fashion of Roman churches, for it has
first of all at the west end a covered porch before the doors of the church, and when one en-
ters a great, long, and wide nave; and beyond this to the eastward a choir, into which one as-
cends by some steps from the nave, from which choir one goes up into the sanctuary and into
the presbytery. From the sanctuary one goes up some steps to the high altar. On either side of
the nave are apses. Beneath the choir is the crypt of the Lord’s nativity, which is about as
long as the choir; and beneath the high altar is the hollow stone wherein Christ was born ... It
has a roof made of lead, and is not vaulted, as indeed, the chief churches at Rome are not
vaulted. It has a round choir full of windows, and a passage on the outside above the win-
dows. The nave has many windows on either side, and the church is bright and light. This is
the general arrangement of the church. To come to details, the church measures thirty-seven
paces in length, and eighteen in width. It contains four rows of costly columns, which are
great and tall, and each one of them is made of a single solid stone, and they are polished
with oil, so that a man can see his face in them as in a mirror. So it is also with the slabs of
polished marble with which the walls are clothed, which are so clean that a man can see in
them everything that is in the church more clearly than he could in a good mirror. Each row
of columns has twelve columns, and each column is twelve paces distant from the one next
to it, and in all these are seventy exceeding precious columns arranged as the building re-
quires them. Above the capitals of the columns are placed beams of imperishable wood,
from which on either side a wall rises up as far as the roof. This wall, from the columns as
far as the windows, is not painted, but inlaid, being adorned with mosaic work with won-
drous art on either side, like the church of St. Mark at Venice, with figures from the New
Testament, and corresponding figures from the Old Testament, and the whole church in all
its walls is either cased with white polished marble, or adorned with mosaic work. Above all,
the cave of the nativity beneath the choir is adorned with costly pavements and wall-slabs
and pictures. In all these matters the sainted woman spared no expenses, but contributed with
the greatest liberality.196
Like Rochechouart, Fabri likens the mosaic decoration to Venetian churches; unlike
him, he attributes the whole of the church to Helena’s patronage, missing the twelfth-
century mosaics and the inscription Rochechouart recorded.
Fabri writes that Helena’s church endured in beauty until the late twelfth century,
when “in the year of our Lord 1186, ... there was a king in Jerusalem named Guy, who
was careless and unlucky, and between him and his princes there arose strife and sedi-
tion, so that ... the priests and clergy became greedy and proud, and the common peo-
ple incontinent and vicious. Wherefore the Saracens rose against them, and persecuted
them even to extermination.”197 The Christian’s defeat ushered in the final chapter for
the church of the Nativity: “The seventh state of the place of Christ’s Nativity is that
wherein I, Brother Felix Fabri, beheld it.”198 This state was marked by a much decayed
church. Fabri writes that the Muslims “first destroyed the altars, and then broke the
carven images” in the church. However, their attempts to despoil the church of its
stone revetment and paving were miraculously foiled:
196
Ibid. 1.2, 589–591.
197
Ibid. 1.2, 594–595.
198
Ibid. 1.2, 597.
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When the workmen came with their tools, and had touched the wall near the door by which
one goes into the Lord’s cave with their iron crowbars, the Soldan standing by and watching
them out of the unbroken solid wall, which it seemed that even a needle could not pierce,
there came forth a serpent of wondrous size, who bent his head back against the wall, and
gave a bite to the first marble slab, and split it with his fiery tongue. From thence he swiftly
crawled to the next slab, and onwards to the third and fourth, and so he went along one side,
splitting every slab. He leaped into the chapel of the Three Kings, ran along that highly-pol-
ished wall whereon not even a spider could plant its feet, split forty slabs in two, and, disap-
peared. On beholding this miracle the Soldan was astounded, and all those about him, so that
they changed their purpose, left off destroying, and went away. Now the track of the serpent
over the slabs remains even to this day, and is as though someone had held glowing hot iron
hard against the stones, and as though the stones themselves had been able to burn like
wood. I beheld the traces of this miracle with great pleasure, and often looked curiously
upon them with inward wonderment.199
These depredations, and the refusal to allow the church to be repaired, have left the
structure steps away from desolation. Eventually the Muslims do permit the roof’s
repair:
Wherefore the brethren took measures to have all the wood needful for these repairs got
ready at Venice by workmen who had been given the measurements of the church, and for
having it brought in galleys by sea to Joppa, and carried from Joppa to Bethlehem upon
camels, and thus the whole of the roof of the church has been restored by Venetian work-
men, and all defects in the wood and in the lead have been made good with great labor and
expense; for they took away from the roof the old wood, which was cedar and cypress from
Mount Lebanon, and put in new pine-wood from our mountains. Indeed, Solomon, when
building the temple at Jerusalem, received cedar-wood from Lebanon, which the King of
Tyre sent him over sea in ships to Joppa, and he himself brought it from Joppa to Jerusalem,
as we read in 2 Chron. 2, and Joshua 3.2. Likewise St. Helena caused beams of cedar to be
sent to her over sea by ships to Joppa, and there to be landed and brought to Bethlehem. This
was then easy ... but now it is most difficult for Christians to take timber from Lebanon, be-
cause the infidels now possess those countries, and even if they were to allow us to take it,
they would burden it with excessive customs ..., wherefore it is easier to take wood from our
Alps for the repair of the churches of Christ than from the mountains which border on the
Holy Land.200
This passage is a particularly good example of the way in which Fabri’s knowledge of
the structure’s temporal history engages his scriptural imagination, here sparking a
meditation on the biblical precedents for repaired temples and imported timbers. Still,
despite the new roof, the building is a shell of its former self:
This church at Bethlehem is in its upper part profaned and desecrated, nor has it one single
lamp in its upper part, neither in the choir nor in the nave nor in the chapels, but it stands like
a barn without hay, an apothecary’s shop without pots of drugs, or a library without books;
the precious pictures are dropping from the walls, and there is no one to restore them. Yet we
are thankful that the body of the church is still standing.201
199
Ibid. 1.2, 598.
200
Ibid. 1.2, 600–601.
201
Ibid. 1.2, 604.
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At the Holy Sepulcher, Fabri, like Rochechouart, was concerned with both the actual
tomb and the church as a whole. Like Rochechouart, he recognizes that the edicule in
the church was not Christ’s actual tomb, which existed in the stone below.202 He sup-
ports his argument with four distinct types of evidence: scripture, the writings of other
Christians, the ancient tombs he had seen in the Holy Land, and his own very close
inspection of the sepulcher. Fabri claims that the evidence he had seen was more re-
vealing than the evidence he had read. “It is easy to give an idea of what the Lord’s
sepulcher was like at the time of the death of Christ. He who has beheld the ancient
sepulchers in those countries will not find any difficulty in this, although it cannot be
distinctly gathered from the words of the holy Evangelists, because they speak briefly
and succinctly about this matter.” While the Gospels are little help in themselves, they
do prepare the attentive reader to recognize related structures when he encounters it:
“After having read these [gospel] accounts, a man who sees the ancient tombs in the
Holy Land easily understands what the Lord’s sepulcher must have been like; but it
cannot possibly now be like what it then was, because of the church which has been
built above it, and because of its decorations, as will be shown under the second head,
and also because of the changes which the ground has undergone, because it once was
a sepulchral building outside the walls of Jerusalem, but afterwards a wall has been
built enclosing it, and buildings joined on to it, so that no part of the shape of the
ground has remained like that described by the Evangelists.”203 Fabri also scrutinized
the tomb carefully, using changes in stone work to identify repairs to damaged por-
tions.204 Thus, Fabri uses what he reads in the Bible and what he sees with his eyes
(and takes to be very old) to devise the original appearance of Christ’s tomb.
Fabri also offered a careful (and largely accurate) account of the complex’s tem-
poral history. “It is clear that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which was built by
Helena, stood for seven hundred years, at the end of which it was totally destroyed.
Howbeit, in the year of our Lord 1049 the Divine clemency came,” and al-Hakim’s
heir, Daher, “gave leave to the Christians to rebuild the temple of the Lord’s sepul-
cher. The Christians ... began to build a new church over the Lord’s sepulcher, after
the pattern of the earlier one ... Thus, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher that now is
was built in the aforesaid year, twenty-five years before the recovery of the Holy Land
... The first [church] stood for seven hundred years, and the second, which is now
standing, has stood for four hundred and fifty years, seeing that we are now in the year
1488.”205 Thomas Renna notes that Fabri imbued this complicated secular history with
sacred meaning, comparing the history of the Holy Sepulcher church to that of the
Temple: “As the Jews ... had only two Temples, following one another, to wit, that of
Solomon and that of Esra, ... even so the Christians have had two temples, to wit, Hel-
ena’s temple and that which stands at this day.”206
Like Rochechouart, Felix Fabri is also attentive to the Holy Sepulcher’s damaged
mosaics, though he gives a different explanation of that damage. Fabri complains that
202
Martin Biddle, The Tomb of Christ (Stroud, Gloucestershire 1999) 3, 114.
203
Fabri, Wanderings (n. 26 above) 1.2, 399, 400.
204
Prescott, Jerusalem Journey (n. 145 above) 137; Morris, Sepulchre of Christ (n. 35 above) 36, 322.
205
206
Ibid. 2.1, 283; Renna, “Jerusalem in Late Medieval Itineraria,” (n. 181 above) 124.
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his fellow pilgrims are in the habit of attaching their arms to any holy site they visit, a
practice which obscures the decoration of sacred sites like the Sepulcher and which
had been explicitly forbidden to the pilgrims when they arrived in Jaffa.207 According
to Fabri, this egotistic vandalism so upset the Egyptian sultan on his visit to the Sepul-
cher that he ordered all the heraldry to be removed, and in the process damaged the
mosaics to which they’d been attached. Fabri also laments the damage to the building
done by souvenir seekers who hack out its bits and pieces, another action that had
been explicitly forbidden to the pilgrims on their arrival in Jaffa and again when they
entered the Holy Sepulcher for the first time.208 “This, albeit it hath a semblance of
piety, is nevertheless full of impiety and vicious curiosity: for what reason, save that
one hath gone astray, and is blinded by evil, can propose to strip the holy places of
their ornaments, and to break off pieces from and spoil works artistically wrought with
great labor and expense?”209
The passage is particularly significant, for it shows Fabri accusing the vandals of
two crimes. His charge that they strip “the holy places of their ornament” fits our view
of medieval pilgrims concerned with sacred artifacts, not works of art. For Fabri, how-
ever, these categories are not mutually exclusive, for his second phrase laments the
damage to “works artistically wrought with great labor and expense.” Thus, he sees
pilgrimage churches as simultaneously sacred sites and artistically significant, the
product of a secular construction history of patronage and skill that warrants attention
and respect in its own right. The best proof of this dual attention can be found in
Fabri’s appraisal of the Dome of the Rock. The Dome’s religious role makes it anath-
ema, and Fabri writes that he wishes Christians had destroyed it when they had the
chance, as he believes this would have ended Muslim interest in Jerusalem. Nonethe-
less, Fabri still writes admiringly of its appearance: “It is a noble and exceedingly
costly building, great and round, after the fashion of a great and wide tower ... All
round the circuit in the outer wall there are great oblong glazed windows, like those in
churches, and the space between one window and another is as great as the window
itself. This space on the outside is painted in mosaic in an exceedingly costly fashion,
so that the field of the picture gleams with gold, while the picture itself consists of
palm-trees or olive-trees, or figures of cherubim.”210 This two-fold understanding re-
calls Barbatre’s approach to Milan cathedral, where the building and its dignités were
appreciated, and the French Anonymous’s description of Venus’s temple on Cy-
prus.211
207
208
Ibid. 1.1, 249–250, 1.2, 346.
209
Ibid. 1.2, 90.
210
Ibid. 2.1, 243. For Fabri’s wish that the Dome had been destroyed to prevent the Muslim attachment
to Jerusalem, see 2.1, 241–242.
211
The ability to appreciate an object’s beauty apart from its function was not new in the 15th c. but a
feature of medieval life as well. The classic study is Meyer Schapiro, “The Aesthetic Attitude in Rom-
anesque Art,” Art and Thought: Issued in Honor of Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy on the Occasion of His
70th Birthday, ed. K. Bharatha Iyer, (London 1947) 130–150, repr. in Schapiro, Romanesque Art (New
York 1977) 1–27. More recent works include Andrew Martindale, “‘There is neither speech nor language
but their voices are heard among them’: The Enigma of Discourse concerning Art and Artists in the 12th
and 13th Centuries,” Studien zur Geschichte der europaïschen Skulptur im 12./13. Jahrhundert, ed. H.
Beck, K. Hengevoss-Dürkopp (Frankfurt am Main 1994) 205–217; T. A. Heslop, “Late Twelfth-Century
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These accounts tell us a great deal about the fifteenth century art historical imagi-
nation. Rochechouart and Fabri brought close attention and historical scrutiny to sa-
cred buildings on sacred spots. They had the ability to distinguish the buildings on the
site presently from the site itself, and to appreciate the buildings qua buildings. Having
made this distinction, they attended to the visual qualities of the building, and were
aware that these visual qualities are subject to change (usually for the worse) over
time. This historical awareness is more than we usually credit medieval viewers with.
But then again, these are the most sacred sites in Christendom, so if anything is going
to get this kind of attention, particularly from priests, it makes sense that these sites
would. Rochechouart, for example, passed through Venice without mentioning it.
They might be simply the exception that tests the rule—demonstrating that except
when a cleric is prompted by the exceptional religious nature of a site, late medieval
viewers had little art historical imagination. Similarly, Fabri and Rochechouart might
be taken as the vanguard for the authorial model that would come to dominate in the
sixteenth century, as when Wood writes that “a historian could learn from an experi-
enced traveler such as Felix Fabri with his cold glance on church-promoted relics and
miracles and warm curiosity about the physical remains of ancient culture.”212 Our
final witness, though, demonstrates that this is not the case, that even a provincial
aristocrat composing in French a half-century earlier could share in the secular aes-
thetic curiosity about old medieval artifacts.
4. NOMPAR DE CAUMONT, 1418–1420

Nompar de Caumont was an aristocrat, not a priest, and his account—probably taken
down for him by a clerk—is in French, not Latin.213 He comes from Caumont, in
Aquitaine, near Montauban and Toulouse. Even before turning thirty Nompar was
twice a pilgrim, going first to Santiago—a trip which he records with little more than
his itinerary—and then to Jerusalem, a journey about which he is much more verbose.
He has a taste for planning and writing about his plans and goals. However, he gives
very little information about what he sees on his journey to Jerusalem, which took him
over the Pyrenees to Barcelona and on across the Mediterranean. Thus, he records his
passage through Moissac and Toulouse without a mention of their architectural high-
lights, and needs only a single sentence to sum up the twelve days he spent in Barce-
lona awaiting his boat. He goes into some detail about the count of Foix’s chateaux in
Mazères: “a very beautiful castle, and strong, [located] on a river, well fortified and
with big machicolated towers all around, and within it is marvelously painted with
battles; and one finds there [represented] all the generations [dynasties?] both Chris-
tian and Saracen, male and female, each following the appearance of their country.”214
Writing about Art and Aesthetic Relativity,” Medieval Art: Recent Perspectives. A Memorial Tribute to C.
R. Dodwell, ed. G. R. Owen-Crocker and T. Graham (Manchester 1998) 128–141.
212
Wood, Forgery, replica, fiction (n. 18 above) 246.
213
Voyaige d’oultremer en Jhérusalem par le Seigneur de Caumont, ed. Marquis de la Grange (s.l.
1858). Dansette, Croisades et Pèlerinages (n. 34 above) 1057–112, provides an introduction to Nompar and
translates his account into modern French. For more on Nompar, see Margaret Wade Labarge, Medieval
travellers: the rich and the restless (London 1982) 31, 78–82, 87.
214
“ung très beau chasteau et fort sur une rivière, bien enmurré et de grosses tours machacollées tout
autour, et par dedens esttout dépint merveilleusement de batailles; et y troveres de toux les généraçions
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But for the most part when he writes anything it is standard pilgrim boilerplate:
Pamies is a “very beautiful city and rich in which there is a very strong, high cas-
tle”;215 in Cyprus there was a big temple for Venus and “the grapes are generally
black, but the wines are all white.”216
Similarly, his descriptions of buildings in the Holy Land are the barest of bones.
The church of the Nativity is simply “a big, very pretty church.”217 Despite passing
four nights in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, he writes only two brief descriptions.
The Sepulcher itself he says “is in the choir, surrounded by a round chapel all around,
covered with a vault that is not very big.”218 Later he writes that “this church is big and
beautiful, and is made in a very strange way; it has a beautiful tall stone bell tower, but
no bells, because the Saracens won’t allow it.”219 In place of describing the buildings,
he makes an elaborate list of all the indulgences that pilgrims could earn, and lavishes
description on the scarf he designed for the knighthood he received in the Holy Sepul-
cher.220 Unlike Rochechouart he quotes no inscriptions and never addresses the com-
plex afterlives of the holy sites he sees. And far from complaining like Fabri about the
souvenir-seekers chipping away at beautiful sacred buildings, Nompar proudly joined
their number: the objects he brought home from the Holy Land included stones from
the column of the flagellation, from Christ’s crib in Bethlehem and from Jerusalem’s
Golden Gate.221 In short, Nompar de Caumont is almost the stereotype of the pious
pilgrim whose fixation on a site’s sacred status deprives him of an art historical imagi-
nation.
And this would appear to conform to what we would expect of Nompar, who was
no-one’s idea of a scholar or humanist. Unlike Fabri, he did not intend his work for a
large audience; unlike Rochechouart, he didn’t have a library of 200 volumes. And
though Labarge notes that he was “well-versed in standard classical lore,” he’s not
prone to bookish conceits.222 He reports longing deeply for his wife during his
tempest-tossed voyage across the Mediterranean, but apparently never thought to
compare himself to Odysseus, as a humanist might, even though he had earlier seen
the land of Menelaus and Helen.223 Nor, as we shall see, was he well-versed in history,
getting into several muddles about such earlier rulers as Frederick II and Louis IX.
So, when bad weather on his return voyage forced him spend the winter in Sicily,
we might expect him a generic account of the island’s sights, like that which Ludolph
Crestiens et Sarrazins, ung pareil, masle et femèle, chacun sellon le pourteure de son païs”; Caumont,
Voyaige d’oultremer (n. 213 above) 27–28; Labarge, Medieval Travelers (n. 213 above) 81.
215
“trés belle cipté et riche en lequelle a ung hault chasteau moult fort”; Caumont, Voyaige d’oultremer
(n. 213 above) 28.
216
“les raisins sont en general noirs, mais les vins sont tous blancs”; ibid. 195.
217
“une grant églize bien gente”; ibid. 53.
218
“lequel est en laditte églize bas loing du cuer, par soy memez environné d’une chapelle tout autour en
reont, feaite de voute que n’est pas guières grant”; ibid. 50.
219
“Et ceste églize du saint Sépulre est bien grande et belle, et est fette d’une guize mout estrange; et il y
a ung beau clochier et hault de pierre, mès il n’a nul campane, car les Sarrazins ne le veulle”; ibid. 54
220
Ibid. 59–75, for the indulgences; 75–76 for the scarf.
221
Caumont lists these objects at the end of his account; ibid. 138.
222
Labarge, Medieval Travellers (n. 213 above) 82. We have not consulted the unpublished Diz et
enseignmens that he recorded in the same manuscript that contains his pilgrimage account, London, British
Library MS Egerton 890.
223
Caumont, Voyaige d’oultremer (n. 213 above) 109.
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von Suchem wrote in 1350: Sicily “has very many exceeding strong and noble cities,
fortalices and towns, and especially most beauteous and strongly fortified cities on the
sea-shore, all of them with good harbors—to wit, Messina, Palermo, Trapani, and Ca-
tania.”224 Instead, Nompar’s eye, mind and memory began a remarkable collaboration
in praise of the churches of Palermo and Monreale.225 Eve Borsook recognized the
interest of Nompar’s account of the buildings, and published and translated most of
them in an appendix to her book on the mosaics of Norman Sicily.226 Since like most
art historians she is concerned with the origins of objects, her actual study only cites
Nompar once, when (like Lengherand on the Chartreuse) he provides information
about the original disposition of elements that have been altered over time.227 How-
ever, as a witness to the fifteenth-century reception and understanding of twelfth-cen-
tury art, Nompar is invaluable.
Of Palermo he writes:
In this city there is a very beautiful and large chapel, which is called the chapel of Saint Pe-
ter, which the emperor Frederick had made during his lifetime, and one says that it is one of
the most beautiful in the world. And within [it is] made entirely of the technique of mosaic
of small stone gilded with fine gold [soubredorées de fin or], and with three vaults above,
and two ranks of marble pillars, among which there are two of jasper which is a precious
stone. And before the choir of the chapel there is a large square stone embedded in the wall,
which is so shiny [clère] that one who looks in it can see the whole chapel; and as clearly as
one sees in a mirror, and no dagger point can damage it, as was demonstrated to me. And the
same palace has another chapel which, one says, used to be as beautiful but has been allowed
to fall apart [mes l’ont lessé à toute décheoir]. And in the city there is another called the
chapel of the Admiral which is worked in this same manner of stones very prettily made
[bien gentement fette], but is for the most part smaller and not as prettily made as the other.
Also the church of the archbishop is very beautiful, large and long. In this church are buried
the emperor Frederick, who made the aforementioned chapels, and the empress, his wife.
And they are in sepulchers of a very strange stone in which there are only two pieces, one
above and one below; and they are very large shiny so that one can see oneself; and there are
six of this kind, each supported over marble pillars, half an arm’s length [demye brace]
above the ground.228
This paragraph covers a lot of ground, citing four buildings: the palace chapel of
Roger II, built and decorated between ca. 1130 and ca. 1180 (fig. 13); another palace
chapel, which Nompar heard about but did not see; the church of the Admiralty, built
by Admiral George of Antioch beginning in the late 1130s or early 1140s; and the
archbishop’s church, begun on the site of earlier cathedrals by Archbishop Gualterio
Offamilio in 1170 or 1172, consecrated in 1185, and probably still under construction
for some decades afterwards.
Nompar’s remarks can be divided into three categories: appearance, comparison,
and history. He is most concerned with appearance, and in particular with the build-
224
von Suchem, Description of the Holy Land (n. 187 above) 23.
225
“On his return journey, having satisfactorily achieved his pilgrimage, Nompar showed much more
interest in all the secular points along the way.” Labarge, Medieval Travellers (n. 213 above) 79.
226
Eve Borsook, Messages in Mosaic The Royal Programmes of Norman Sicily (1130–1187) (Oxford
1990) 83–86. We have used Borsook’s translations with some modifications.
227
Ibid. 21.
228
Ibid. 82; Caumont, Voyaige d’oultremer (n. 213 above) 105–106.
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ing’s materials. Like northern visitors to Venice (which he had not seen, since he trav-
eled through Barcelona), he is fascinated by mosaic, a technique he saw without men-
tioning in the Holy Land. He mentions the royal chapel’s vaults, but says nothing
about its famous muqarnas ceiling. He is particularly interested in stone: the jasper
columns of the royal chapel, and the extremely hard and reflective porphyry used in
Roger’s chapel and in the imperial tombs. The mention of the attempt at stabbing
porphyry suggests that he had a guide of some sort during his visit, someone who was
already familiar with the stone’s properties and accustomed to showing them off to
visitors.229 Comparison structures and animates the whole paragraph. He introduces
the chapel by saying it is reputed to be “one of the most beautiful in the world,” and
compares it to the next two buildings: the unseen chapel said to be as beautiful but
now decayed, and the chapel of the Admiral, which is beautiful but not as beautiful as
the royal chapel.
While the buildings’ materials were vivid and tangible to Nompar, their history was
more opaque. Dealing with three chapels built by at least two twelfth-century patrons,
he attributes all three to Frederick, born in 1194. The prominence of Frederick’s impe-
rial tomb in Nompar’s account suggests that it contributed to this misprision, particu-
larly in the absence of labeled portraits of Roger II or George in their buildings.
Nompar’s mistake here is akin to that of Lengherand’s mistaking the Gattamelata for
Padua’s founder Antenor. In each case, an impressive artifact is assumed to communi-
cate important information about the origins of its site. This is a common late medie-
val phenomenon, as Wood notes his study of late medieval German tombs, which
were intended and understood as labels for the buildings they occupied.230 Addition-
ally, it seems quite plausible that by the fifteenth century, Palermo—and particularly
its royal buildings—were most closely associated with its famous and unique imperial
ruler, whose memory eclipsed that of his merely regal predecessors (and successors).
Nompar also visited the church of Monreale, built between 1175 and 1190 by Wil-
liam II of Sicily (figs. 14–16). Thought similar to Nompar’s report on Palermo, his
account of Monreale has several distinctive elements. It is much longer; the descrip-
tion appears to follow Nompar’s progress through the building, from exterior, to inte-
rior, to the major portal, to the cloister; Nompar cites a monastic guide, and credits
him as the source of some information; Nompar’s curiosity about the building’s his-
tory and concern for its aging is explicit.
Nompar’s visit to the building was motivated by his desire to see if the reputation
of its beauty was justified:
I rode to a city called Monreale ... because I had heard it said that the archbishop’s church
was said to be one of the most beautiful that there was in the world, and that it had the most
subtle and unusual works [des plus soutils et estranges ouvratges]. In order to look at it and
see if it was as said, I went straight to the city where the church was, called the church of
Sainte Marie. And when I arrived, I went straight to the church and found its doors shut; and
229
Jacques le Saige had a guide in Venice who similarly bragged about the value of a stone in San
Marco’s floor. The stone’s resistance to cutting posed a challenge to medieval and Renaissance sculptors;
for the 16th-c. response to this challenge, see Suzanne B. Butters, The triumph of Vulcan: sculptors’ tools,
porphyry, and the prince in ducal Florence (Florence 1996).
230
Wood, Forgery, Replica, Fiction (n. 18 above) 109–140.
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immediately I saw a one of the resident monks coming who, as soon as he saw me, opened
for me the doors which had been locked shut.231
Nompar prayed at the church’s main altar, but this seems a pro forma gesture, as he
spends much more time narrating his inspection of the building (fig. 14). “I entered
and went straight to the choir of the church where the high altar was. And after having
said my prayers there, I went all around the church to see its manner and condition,
and how it was made.”232 Describing and appraising what he saw, Nompar uses a
straightforward vocabulary that is very similar to most of the pilgrims we have dis-
cussed above. Things are beautiful, pretty, riche, plain, subtle, strange or unusual,
shiny [clère], resplendent and powerful; he is impressed by height and width, and
sometimes offers measurements:
It seemed to me to be very beautiful and rich and worked in an unusual manner [moult belle
et riche et de estrange maniére ouvrée]; because first of all it was big and wide within, and
all around were large carved stones of marble [grans pierres de marbre obrée] in a beautiful
rank subtly posed, which had easily a lance-shaft in length, and about five spans, very pretty
and set upright. And in the choir of the church there were other stones, beautiful and very
unusual and resplendent [belles et moult estranges et roluisans] in which one could see
clearly; and they are called porphyry [porfedo], and there are three types of color: one is
green, the other is white and the other is violet.233
Thus, as at Palermo, Nompar is fascinated with materials and technique. He empha-

sizes the use of marble throughout the church, and is again impressed with porphyry.
Nompar’s new-found ability to name this stone, rather than just describe it, offers in-
sight into his interactions with his guide. We must imagine him recognizing the hard
red stone he had prized at Palermo, and taking advantage of his guide’s presence to
find out what it was called.234 He also provides a more detailed account of the tech-
nique and function of mosaic:
... all the upper walls of the church, from one side to the other, are all covered by small
stones the size of dice, and the major part gilded in fine gold, and the others of diverse col-
ors. And this type of work is called mosaic; and with it the church is entirely historiated with
beautiful images of the deeds of our lord and of our lady and of the saints of Paradise, with
no other colors except that supplied by the stones. Which work is most rich and subtle.235
Nompar praises the use of similar techniques for the decoration of the church’s floor,
and registers the visual appeal of the alternating circles and squares:236
231
Borsook, Messages in Mosaic (n. 226 above) 84; Caumont, Voyaige d’oultremer (n. 213 above)111.
232
Borsook, Messages in Mosaic (n. 226 above) 84; Caumont, Voyaige d’oultremer (n. 213 above) 111.
233
Borsook, Messages in Mosaic (n. 226 above) 84; Caumont, Voyaige d’oultremer (n. 213 above) 111–
112.
234
The word he gives, porfedo, is Italian, taken directly from his guide. “Porfedo” occurs throughout the
Italian sources quoted in Butters (n. 229 above), but Nompar’s use of it is the only French example cited in
the Dictionnaire du Moyen Français (1330–1500) of the Analyse et traitement informatique de la langue
française.
235
236
The Parisian scholastic Jean de Jandun made an almost identical observation about the tracery of the
rose windows of Notre–Dame in Paris, praising the windows for their “smaller orbs and circlets of won-
drous artifice, some thus arranged circularly, others angularly”; see Inglis, “Gothic Architecture and a
Scholastic” (n. 47 above) 67.
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Below the floor of the church is all made in worked with small square stones, with little
pieces of many manners of color, and also there are some stones of the aforementioned
porphyry round and square [and] it is very beautiful to see how the church floor is so well
and richly worked [très honestement et richemant ouvrée].237
We know this sort of work today as Cosmati work; it is best known in Rome, and also
appears at Westminster Abbey in England.238 If Nompar made such associations, he
does not record it in his text. His description of the ceiling suggests that he is some-
what surprised by the absence of stone vaulting in so beautiful a church, though he
assures us that the painted beams are themselves pleasing to the eye.
Nompar’s progress through the church is then arrested by three tombs: the first and
most impressive was for William I (called the Bad), the second humbler one was for
his son, William II (called the Good), and the third held the entrails of Saint Louis. He
describes them, and then encapsulates their history:
And within there is a sepulcher of a king called King William who, when he lived, was king
of this island of Sicily and of Naples; which tomb was very beautiful and rich because of the
strange stones which are in it. The tomb is of one very large stone entirely of that stone
called porphyry, of violet color; and above this tomb is the cover all of another piece of this
same stone and color, and they are so subtly joined that one can hardly detect it. This tomb is
held high above ground on pillars of this stone, and surrounding it, are six round pillars of
the aforesaid porphyry, which support a covering of a white porphyry which covers the
whole tomb, nicely made in the manner of a chapel covering. And before this tomb, there is
a stone tomb where the son of this king is buried, like his father named William, who had
this church made; which tomb is not as beautiful nor made so richly, because when he died,
he wanted nothing like it because he said, according to report, that such works [ondrances]
are the vainglory of the world, and that at this death he did not want them. Nevertheless, the
local monks made it in memory of him.239
This interpretation of the simpler tomb as evidence of William II’s rejection of

worldly vanity was probably provided by his monastic docent. It sounds like a story
that might have arisen in the oral tradition of Monreale, as the monks sought to ex-
plain why their good founder’s tomb was much simpler than that of his bad father.
The distinction between a vain worldly father and a humble son is still more ex-
plicit in Nompar’s discussion of the third tomb, which held the entrails of Saint Louis.
Here, William I’s alleged acceptance of a bribe from an Islamic ruler explains his
nickname, the Bad:
On the other side is the tomb of the saint-king Louis who was king of France, where he was
put after he died; of whom the monk who had opened the door of the church for me told me
that he died in Barbarie, laying siege to a Saracen king before Tunis, and there in that place
died of his malady; and then his body was brought to this church and placed in this tomb.
And the king of France at that time sent a request to King William of Sicily that he would
send him the body, and he would send him one of the spines of Our Lord and a hood of Our
Lady. And King William received this present and sent him the body of Saint Louis, with the
exception of the entrails which remained as relics in the tomb. And again I asked the monk
how it had gone at the siege which he laid at Saracen king of Tunis. He told me that, when
237
238
Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (n. 18 above) 185–194, with further bibliography.
239
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he was dead, his people remained with King William, father of the one who made the
church; and the king of Tunis who was besieged, gave him a sum of gold in order that he
raised the siege and left with all his people. And thus he did and departed from the siege: and
because of this they called him thereafter the bad William, and his son they called the good
William, because he had had made and built the church. And they carried the body of his
father and of Saint Louis of France, which had been buried elsewhere, into the church which,
in the time that they died, was not finished.240
This account is historically muddled. The account is accurate on the facts that Louis
died besieging Tunis; that after his death the siege was lifted; and that the king of Sic-
ily took Louis’s body from Tunis to Monreale. It is wrong about the identity of this
king: when Louis died in 1270, the king of Sicily was his younger brother, Charles of
Anjou. Thus, the account either moves Louis IX back a century, or William I up a
century. Nompar credits this erroneous history to his monastic guide, though it is
tempting to believe that he misunderstood what he heard, or misremembered it when
he recorded his travels.241 His conflation of an Angevin with a Norman ruler of Sicily,
like his earlier crediting of the Norman Roger’s chapel to the Hohenstaufen Frederick,
suggests that Sicily’s various dynasties, so clear to us today, were invisible to Nompar.
It bears noting that the chronological error in Nompar’s report relates only to Louis’s
tomb, and the error was recorded precisely because Nompar was so eager to know the
history that had brought the saint’s relics to Monreale, and to relate their presence to
the institution’s larger history.
After studying the tombs Nompar moved from the interior to the exterior, first de-
scribing the main portal (fig. 15):
The doors of it are of wood, but all covered with metal, which is all worked and decorated
well with narrative images [tout ouvré et pourtrait de ymatges ystorié honnestemant.] And
before the big door of this church, there is a rather large place covered prettily with wood;
and this roof is supported by eight round marble pillars, quite high and smooth [bien haults
et plain fais], and the entire wall in front of that entry and as much of the sides as the canopy
covers are made entirely of beautiful slabs of marble joined side to side, laid all along up-
right, very beautiful and smooth. And [the floor] below the whole place is worked with
beautiful violet stone and with great stones of porphyry and of marble, and it is very beauti-
ful to see the entry to this church.242
As is typical in pilgrims’ accounts, Nompar does not specify what narratives are de-
picted. Similarly, though he praises the works in terms of their maker’s ability, he does
not mention their artist or date, even though Bonannus of Pisa signed and dated the
doors in 1186.
240
Borsook, Messages in Mosaic (n. 226 above) 84–85; Caumont, Voyaige d’oultremer (n. 213 above)
113–114.
241
We believe it likely that the monks of Monreale would have had a more accurate sense of their
institution’s chronology than is displayed in this account, particularly as it concerned their founder. In
France, the monks at Ecouis, for example, founded by Enguerrand de Marginy before his execution, main-
tained his memory for centuries, successfully petitioning Louis XI to allow an epitaph to be placed on his
grave 160 years after his death in 1315. Grandes Chroniques de France, ed. J. Viard (Paris 1920–1953)
8.337 n. 7.
242
Borsook, Messages in Mosaic (n. 226 above) 85; Caumont, Voyaige d’oultremer (n. 213 above) 114–
115.
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The cloister also impresses Nompar, and here he attempts to explain how its parts
relate to each other (fig.16):
And to its side there is a square cloister sixty-three paces long on each side. In each of three
sides there is a griffon from which flows fresh water, night and day, and before the door by
which one enters the cloister, there is not one, but in the other side facing this part, on the
right, there are two: one jets from a large griffon, the other from a small round pillar which is
of this stone of a green porphyry, and the water flows from the capital without ceasing. And
all around this cloister are the pillars two by two prettily worked; one of plain marble well-
worked and interlaced at its capital; and the other well worked in mosaic work of this afore-
mentioned small gilded stone, with the capitals subtly interlaced in diverse manners. And
above the cloister two of the sides are covered with stone vaults, and the other two not, these
are of wood because it was not finished; and on the side of the cloister with the two griffons
of the fountain, is the door to the refectory which is beautiful and pretty, long and fairly
wide; and in the middle of this is a marble pillar made all in the round, and from its capital
water jets, and that which falls lands at its foot and goes by a channel outdoors.243
Several features of this account are notable. Coming from southwestern France,
Nompar might have had the chance to see richly decorated twelfth-century cloisters in
Moissac and Toulouse—though he makes no explicit comparisons.244 Nompar clearly
values the contribution of fountains and water—a topic frequently addressed in pil-
grims’ accounts.245 Finally, and remarkably, Nompar notes that the cloister has two
vaulted sides and two sides covered with wood, and attributes the difference to the
cloister’s unfinished state. While it is not surprising that such an attentive viewer rec-
ognized that the work was not complete, to see this written out is quite rare.
This remarkably thorough account reaches a still more remarkable conclusion,
when Nompar, stirred by the beauty of the complex, laments its degradation over time.
Nompar is not the only pilgrim to lament the condition of a building. Lengherand said
that the church of Saint Ambrose in Milan was “very old and in badly maintained,”
while Hungarian ambassadors visiting St. Denis in the 1464 said that the monastery’s
relics were kept “very badly.”246 Visitors to Rome and Jerusalem were also accus-
tomed to commenting on the plentiful ruins in those cities, but those comments are
broader and less pointed. Fabri’s complaints about the damages to the Holy Sepulcher
offer the closest parallel to Nompar, as both are concerned with injuries to the fabric
of a specific building that is described in detail. Finally, Nompar is also eager to learn
the complex’s precise history, down to the details of its cost:
Again I asked the monk how long it had been since it was built. He told me that it could eas-
ily be two hundred sixty years, and must have been the beginning of the abbey, and there
were two abbots, and since then was made archbishopric, as it is at present. Then I asked him
whether he knew or could find in a book how much it had cost to build? He replied that this
243
244
Nompar is not the only 15th-c. creator to present us with the inspection of an older cloister; in his St.
Bertin retable (Berlin Gemäldegalerie) Simon Marmion depicts several laymen visiting a cloister; while
they attend to a painted Dance of Death which looks contemporary, the mural occupies a cloister whose
round arches and elaborate columns bespeak the 12th c.
245
Les Voyages d’un tournaisien (n. 38 above) 14; Voyage de Jacques Le Saige (n. 32 above) 38.
246
Diary of an Embassy from King George of Bohemia to King Louis XI. of France in the Year of Grace
1464, trans. A. H. Wratislaw (London 1871) 58–59.
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could not be found in writing, but that it must have been taken a lot as it was a great thing to
estimate all these big stones, which, he said, were brought from Troy and Constantinople,
and that it was a great marvel to find such beautiful and powerful stonework [belle et puis-
sante pierrerie] as was there, much less to have it worked in this manner and so richly ... So,
having appraised this notable church, I returned to Palermo.247
The monk’s estimate of the monastery’s age at 260 years puts its foundation around
1160, only fifteen years off the actual date of 1175 (the guide’s accuracy here is all the
more reason to blame Nompar for the confusion over Louis IX’s dates). And while
lacking written documentation for the abbey’s cost, the guide knows it must have been
considerable, both because of the quality of the workmanship, and because the materi-
als had to come from so far off, specifically from Constantinople and Troy. Thus, just
as some pilgrims to Venice recognized the foreign origin of San Marco’s spoils,
Nompar’s guide taught him that Monreale’s materials came from the eastern Mediter-
ranean. With its detailed description and historical details, Nompar’s account of Mon-
reale has much in common with Fabri and Rochechouart’s account of the Holy Sepul-
cher and Church of the Nativity. Those accounts, though, were motivated by the most
important sites in Christendom. This is not true of Nompar’s experience in Sicily.
What makes his fascination with Monreale and Palermo so striking is that it is unmo-
tivated by the concerns that usually animate medieval writing about art and architec-
ture. As an accidental visitor to Sicily, he is no local patriot; the sites have no im-
portant relics, carry no indulgence and are not significant to him in other ways. They
are simply buildings he traveled to because he heard they were beautiful, and he wrote
about them because he agreed. He found Monreale so beautiful that he became curious
about its origin and cost, and concerned for its current condition.
If untouched by local pride or devotion to relics, a passage in Nompar’s account
suggests that his enthusiasm for these beautiful old buildings is shaped by chivalric
nostalgia. Nompar lived in a region contested in the Hundred Years War, a dispute
which was widely viewed as hindering attempts at recovering the Holy Land. Near the
beginning of his text he contrasts the fighting which rends contemporary Christendom
to the piety of a lost golden age: “I have heard said by some people, that in times past
the kings, the princes and the great lords and barons had built monasteries [and]
churches, and that now it is the opposite that they ruin and batter and destroy them.” 248
The Sicilian buildings offered him concrete evidence for the truth of this tale of temps
passé. It is significant that the tombs of rulers provide the crux for his historical under-
standing of both Palermo and Monreale; he details their appearance with the same
loving attention he gave the scarf he designed for his order of knights.249 Looking back
over two hundred years, the recently-knighted Nompar sees a grander version of him-
self in the reflective porphyry tombs of Sicily’s dead kings. Nompar’s nostalgia ani-
247
Borsook, Messages in Mosaic (n. 226 above) 84–86; Caumont, Voyaige d’oultremer (n. 213 above)
111–116.
248
“J’ay ouy dire à aucunes gens, que au tamps passé les rois, les princes et les grans seigneurs et barons
fesoient bastir les mostiers, les églizes, et à présent est au revers qu’ils les desfont et abatent et font
destruire.” Caumont, Voyaige d’oultremer (n. 213 above) 19–20.
249
Marie de France’s Yonec, written in the 12th c., anticipates Nompar’s experience; in this lai, an abbot
gives a tour of his monastery’s buildings to a secular couple, ending the tour at an impressive tomb; The
Lais of Marie de France, trans. Glyn S. Burgess and Keith Busby (New York 1986) 92–93.
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mates his historical imagination, making him curious about who built things, when
they did so, and how many resources they devoted to the task.250 William II could not
have hoped for a better audience.
William’s memory also benefits from Nompar’s guide. The guide’s role demon-
strates that while Nompar’s record of his experience is unique, the experience itself
must have been commonplace. Nompar’s docent was clearly prepared to unlock the
doors for an unexpected solo traveler, to walk him through the complex, describe and
name its materials, and narrate its two-hundred-and-fifty year history. His guide was
able to do this not because the monastery’s history had been recently rediscovered, but
because it had been preserved and not forgotten. This now-anonymous monk reminds
us that in the Middle Ages, institutional memory could make archaeology unneces-
sary.
CONCLUSION
Felix Fabri was a connoisseur of religious spectatorship, describing a wide range of
reactions to holy sites and images. Some visitors who “could not be moved by any
speech, advice, or passage of Scripture, by any painting or carving” broke into “tears
[and] groans” when visiting a shrine; others remained unmoved, and even mocked the
devout reactions of their colleagues.251 Fabri himself gaped like an ill-bred man on his
first visit to the Holy Sepulcher, and grew less responsive in the heat or during hectic
religious processions. He also notes that repeated exposure to holy sites can dull their
impact; by the pilgrims’ third night in the Holy Sepulcher, many of his companions
only go through rote devotions before lapsing into gossip, drinking, or sleep.252
Fabri’s diagnosis of these varied receptions makes us very reluctant to generalize,
to say that all fifteenth-century people shared just one or two ways of experiencing
sacred sites. Recognizing the existence of variety and contradiction is all important in
the attempt to assess the art historical imagination of these travelers. Some were
oblivious to the artifacts they saw, and that obliviousness might result from a mixture
of factors aesthetic, religious, or intellectual. Many pilgrims, though, were alert to
their surroundings. They read a city’s buildings—from houses to castles, from parish
churches to cathedrals—as a trustworthy barometer of its vitality and significance, like
its markets, trades, and foods. While not naming individual artists, they routinely
praise an object’s workmanship among its pleasing qualities. One of the most striking
aspects of these texts is that their openness to a wide range of objects. Unbound by the
hierarchy that sets painting, sculpture, and architecture above all other media, they are
happy to signal an especially impressive clock, a rich pavement, or a striking choir
stall, to rank it within its type, and to compare it to familiar works at home.
Just as they rank objects differently than we do, they employ different periodiza-
tions as well. Since the sixteenth century art historians have relied on the tripartite
periodization ancient, medieval and Renaissance. Even the revisionist efforts of Nagel
and Wood remain wed to these three periods. However, for the pilgrims we have con-
250
For chivalric archeology at Maximilian’s court, see Wood, Forgery, replica, fiction (n. 18 above)
177–84, and related remarks at 332.
251
Fabri, Wanderings, 1.1, 284.
252
Ibid. 2.1, 82–84.
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sidered the last two of these terms are meaningless. In many cases, as Nagel and Wood
indicate, the terms “medieval” and ‘Renaissance” are meaningless because the travel-
ers are not at all concerned with the date of the buildings and objects they visit. Thus,
they comment that San Marco or the churches in Brescia look different than the
churches back home, but don’t explore their historical origins. However, there are
more exceptions to this rule than Nagel and Wood suggest when they write that “the
literal circumstances and the historical moment of an artifact’s material execution
were not routinely taken as components of its meaning or function; such facts about an
artifact were seen as accidental rather than as constitutive features.”253 Of the pilgrims
we discuss, Fabri’s interest in architecture is certainly the most developed; his periodi-
zation of the site of the Holy Sepulcher include seven distinct phases—most of them
within what we would label simply medieval. Now, Fabri does seem to be on course
for something new; no one else matches meditations on whether buildings matter with
an archaeological scrutiny of the buildings he sees. That said, Fabri and Rochechouart
share much in common. Rochechouart also noted multiple distinct moments within the
Church of the Nativity’s medieval history, and the two priests could have had a very
lively conversation on the fabric and decoration of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
Secular men might also have joined their conversation as equals. The provincial knight
Nompar de Caumont asked quite similar questions about much less significant build-
ings—and was able to get his questions answered accurately. Visiting Dijon in 1486,
Lengherand knew that Philip the Bold of Burgundy, dead in 1404, had built the Char-
treuse de Champmol, that he was buried there with his son John the Fearless, but that
the body of his grandson Philip the Good was elsewhere. If we compare the churches
that travelers single out for historical inquiry to those—like San Marco—that they just
locate in space, a notable pattern emerges. Some of the churches attended to histori-
cally—the Sicilian churches of Palermo and Monreale, and the Burgundian Chartreuse
de Champmol—housed the graves of their powerful patrons.254 The two in the Holy
Land—the churches of the Nativity and the Holy Sepulcher—were associated with
key events in Christian history, including not just Christ’s birth, death and resurrec-
tion, but also the official embrace of Christianity under Constantine and Helena, and
the fall and reconquest of the Holy Land. In both these categories, the building’s asso-
ciation with well-known historical events or figures offered visitors both a reason to
ask about its history and a means of answering their questions. Many of these pilgrims
also distinguished between a work’s assigned cultural function and its appearance.
This distinction is essential. Nagel and Wood’s theory of substitution, in which later
iterations collapse invisibly into earlier ones, is dominated by an object’s function:
sheltering the tomb of Christ, welcoming pilgrims, housing the doge’s treasure. How-
ever, those viewers who distinguish between a building’s timeless function and its
current appearance knew that objects and buildings changed over time; expecting to
see’s time’s trace, they noted when age, vandalism or—at the church of the Nativity—
a giant serpent had left their damaging marks. Visitors to Milan’s saw its old cathedral
being dismantled to make way for its glorious new one, while nearby the aged church
253
Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (n. 18 above) 405.
254
The power of an imposing grave to explain a site’s history is underscored by Wood, Forgery, Rep-
lica, Fiction (n. 18 above) 109–140.
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of St. Ambrose moldered in in terrible condition. And this attention to time’s impact
was part of a larger pattern of curiosity about origins. Our travelers expected signifi-
cant objects to have significant histories, and they studied those objects’ appearance
for clues to those histories. Visitors to Venice identified the tetrarchs and horses as
later additions to San Marco’s fabric, and explained their meaning in terms of their
origins. That knights and clerics, from France, Aquitaine, and Germany, writing in
Latin and French, could approach such different buildings in different places in such
similar ways indicates that many fifteen century viewers had a strong art historical
imagination that conditioned their reception of old art and architecture.
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FIG. 1a. St. John, Christ, Godescalc Gospels, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France,
MS N. a. lat. 1203, fol. 2v (photo BnF).
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FIG. 1b. St. John, Christ, Godescalc Gospels, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France,
MS N. a. lat. 1203, fol. 3 (photo BnF).
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FIG. 2. Duomo vecchio, Brescia (photo by RobyBS89 from creative commons).
FIG. 3. Donatello, Gattamelata, Padua (photo by Imre Lakat, usage permitted through
Creative Commons).
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FIG. 4. Cast of Verrocchio, Bartolomeo Colleoni, Venice (photo by Peter J. StB. Green
from Wikimedia Commons).
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FIG. 5. Piazza San Marco, Venice (photo by Ingo Mehling from Wikimedia Com-
mons).
FIG. 6. Horses, San Marco, Venice (photo by Tteske from Wikimedia Commons).
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FIG. 9. Pilastri acritani, Venice (photo by Spoliast from Wikimedia Commons).
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FIG. 10. Tetrarchs, San Marco, Venice (photo from Wikimedia Commons).
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FIG. 11. Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem (photo from Wikimedia Commons).
FIG. 12. Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem (photo by Berthold Werner from Wikimedia
Commons).
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FIG. 13. Capella Palatina, Palermo, Italy (photo by Christian Campe from Wikimedia
Commons).
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FIG. 14. Interior, Monreale Cathedral (photo by pjt56 from Wikimedia Commons).
FIG. 15. Portal, Monreale Cathedral (photo by Matthias Süssen from Wikimedia
Commons).
132000_BW_EN_001_416_IC.pdf
FIG. 16. Cloister, Monreale Cathedral (photo by Giuseppe ME from Wikimedia Com-
mons).
132000_BW_EN_001_416_IC.pdf
132000_BW_EN_001_416_IC.pdf

Inglis&Christmon Worthless Stories of Pilgrims-Art-historical Imagination Of15th-C Travelers2Jerusal

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“THE WORTHLESS STORIES OF PILGRIMS”?

THE ART HISTORICAL

Erik Inglis with Elise Christmon*

Viator 44 No. 3 (2013) 257–328. 10.1484/J.VIATOR.1.103486

1. “MANNERS OF THE COUNTRY”: ART AND ARCHITECTURE IN PILGRIMS’ RECORDS

In addition to demonstrating how a pilgrim’s response might be mediated by earlier

Lengherand’s work gives us a good introduction, for in addition to his remarks

In addition to its interest as a remark on the cathedral, Barbatre’s comment is typical

Fabri’s account of Venice’s monument to a condottiere makes a remarkable compari-

Many of the travelers note mosaic as a particular technique of church decoration.

feet around.”107 Though fascinated by their appearance, Lengherand was incorrect

Rochechouart is unusual in narrating his unsuccessful attempts to decipher the build-

4. NOMPAR DE CAUMONT, 1418–1420

Thus, as at Palermo, Nompar is fascinated with materials and technique. He empha-

This interpretation of the simpler tomb as evidence of William II’s rejection of

FIG. 2. Duomo vecchio, Brescia (photo by RobyBS89 from creative commons).

FIG. 9. Pilastri acritani, Venice (photo by Spoliast from Wikimedia Commons).

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