[Reise ins Heilige Land]

E. Reuwich

Breydenbach, Bernhard; Reuwich, Erhard, Fabri, Felix

First edition in German. The book had been published in Latin four months previously with the same type and woodcuts and by the same printer (see Davies, p. 9). The plates include views of Venice, Parenzo, Corfu, Modon, Candia, Rhodes, and Jerusalem. The illustrations in the text include Saracens, Jews, Greeks, Syrians, Abyssinians and Turks, as well as Alphabets of Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic and Armenian languages.
The EJF collection includes a copy of the first Latin edition (Moguntiae, 1486), which lacks the original title page (see entry number 15874), as well as two loose copies of the view of Candia, one (00Φ548Χ) taken from either the first Latin or the first German versions, both published in 1486, and the other (00Φ549Χ) from the edition published in Speier in 1502. The work described here is one of the three editions of the “Peregrinatio” which were prepared under the supervision of Breydenbach.
References: Hugh wm. Davies, Bernhard von Breydenbach and his journey to the Holy Land 1483-1484, Utrecht 1968, p. 9-11.

Breydenbach’s pilgrimage is justly famous for being the first printed travel book illustrated with views of places see en route. Bernhard von Breydenbach, canon of Mainz, went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land from April 25, 1483 to the end of January 1484. He was accompanied by Erhart Reuwich, the painter on whose drawings the woodcuts are based. Another fellow-pilgrim was Felix Fabri, who also wrote an account of the journey. Davies suggests that the Latin text itself was “completed and composed” by Martin Roth, who did not accompany the other to the journey and that the foundation of the itinerary seems to be that of Felix Fabri.

Breydenbach and his party were in Corfu from the 12th to the 15th of June 1483. They reached Methoni on the 15th, leaving the following day and then travelled to Rhodes, where they stayed from the 18th until the 22nd of June. They went to Cyprus on the 26th, staying until the 27th and finally reached Palestine at the end of the month. In September 1483 they travelled to St. Catherine’s in Sinai and started on the return journey soon afterwards, reaching Methoni and Corfu in December 1483.

Παλαιστίνη--1483, Κέρκυρα--1483, Ρόδος--1483, Κρήτη--1483, Μεθώνη--1483, Ιερουσαλήμ--1483, Κύπρος--1483, Σινά--1483, Ίος--1483, Μονεμβασιά--1483, Κωνσταντινούπολη--1483, Βενετία--1483