Travels and Mobilities in the Middle Ages: From the Atlantic to the Black Sea by ed. Marianne O’Doherty and Felicitas Schmieder

Abstract

Reviewed by: Travels and Mobilities in the Middle Ages: From the Atlantic to the Black Sea by ed. Marianne O’Doherty and Felicitas Schmieder Jason stoessel O’Doherty, Marianne, and FelicitasSchmieder, eds, Travels and Mobilities in the Middle Ages: From the Atlantic to the Black Sea (International Medieval Research, 21), Turnhout, Brepols, 2015; hardback; pp. xliii, 344; 20 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. €90.00; ISBN 9782503554495. This collection of fourteen essays has its roots in the 2010 International Medieval Congress in Leeds. Marianne O’Doherty and Felicitas Schmieder have done an admirable job of framing the book in their Introduction, successfully linking chapters by an international field of established and emergent scholars on a range of topics on medieval and early modern travel and mobilities. The following essays are arranged into four parts that extend chronologically from the seventh to sixteenth centuries and geographically from China to the Americas. From the outset, the editors challenge the reader to put aside the modern myth of medieval immobility. Indeed, this collection’s essays reveal that relatively ordinary people regularly travelled long distances in the course of their studies, work, adventures, and pilgrimages. Contributions to this volume focus less on ‘exceptional travels’, like those of Marco Polo or Ibn Battuta, and more on cases of the everyday travel of mendicant friars, soldiers, students, and diplomats. In keeping with recent scholarly trends, a strong thread of cross-disciplinarity runs through this collection, particularly with regard to constructions of gender, identity, disability studies, and material culture. Part I explores ‘Centres and Peripheries: Travellers to and on the Margins’. Essays by Johnny Grandjean Gøgsig Jacobsen and Sæbjørg Walaker Nordiede consider, respectively, the travels of mendicant friars and papal envoys in Scandinavia. Iona McCleery examines the journeys of Portuguese medical practitioners, Tomé Pires, Garcia de Orto, Diego Ávarez Chanca, [End Page 158] and Master Alfonso, to India, China, and the Americas, and concludes with several cautions about succumbing to binary oppositions (like ‘home and abroad’) and later nationalisms (like ‘Italian’) for identifying individuals in the early modern period. Irina Metzler’s essay on the mobility of the disabled in the Middle Ages surveys examples wherein the physically impaired went, or had themselves transported, on pilgrimages in search of cures or spiritual solace. John D. Hosler’s essay, the first of Part II, ‘Nobility of the Road: Travel and Status’, sits less comfortably in this collection, asking why King Stephen of England did not join in the Second Crusade. Despite Stephen’s clear intention to take the cross, domestic affairs intervened in his plans for long-distance travel. The following contributions by Hrovoje Kekez and Mary Fischer are more at home. They respectively explore the mobility of fifteenth-century Slavonian noble, Ivan Bubonić, and literary tropes on chivalric rites of passage for Prussian crusaders. Fischer’s discussion of gendered identity within the fourteenth-century German knightly class pre-empts the theme of Part III, ‘Men and Women on the Move: Gendered Mobilities’. Stefanie Rüther’s analysis of gendered discourse in the songs of highly mobile German mercenaries (Landsknechtslieder) of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries offers insight into alternative models of masculinity, often in direct conflict with the Church’s teachings. Rüther deftly negotiates her subject material to the benefit of historical analysis: Landsknechtslieder were revived in Germany during the first half of the twentieth century for very different purposes of national identity. Zita Rohr’s essay shifts the reader’s attention to the exceptional case of Yolande of Aragon and her semi-nomadic life as co-regent and ruler of Angevin lands in the early fifteenth century. Drawing together recent French literature and new archival research on Yolande, Rohr’s essay is valuable for its insights into the life of this influential late medieval woman. Zohr’s claims about the peripatetic nature of her rule being influenced by the Spanish model seem, however, misplaced, given that many other rulers, such as John of Burgundy, in this period kept itinerant courts. The final essay by Maximilian Schuh rounds out Part III’s focus on mobilities and gender by reassessing the nature of fifteenth-century wandering scholars, questioning twentieth-century goliardic stereotypes and...