Travel from Europe and the Middle East

The genre of epic structures the oldest European travel narratives extant, from the voyages of Ulysses to that of Beowulf. The epic as a form connects travel to conflict and cultural threat, as well as to the landscape of fantasy and to the epic hero. Just as the epic hero is larger and more marvelous than life, so the epic landscape is both marvelous and dangerous. The epic hero and those who accompany him are often engaged in activities that either preserve or extend the culture of which he is the ideal. Such an image of travel has little room for reflection or satiric treatment; the mood is one of high seriousness. The epic form is modified in the oldest Hebrew writings; there, the culture-creating protagonists become sometimes the focal point of narrative but always the recipients of divine directives regarding travel. Biblical travel is conceived in three ways: first, as travel toward a land of divine promise; second, as wandering to or in the land; and third, as exodus or flight. In the Islamic tradition, the travel of the prophet Muhammad contains the same elements of divine directive, flight, and return.

The rise of Christianity and Islam activates a second image associated with travel, that of pilgrimage. One could classify the ancient Hebrew narratives as pilgrimage, but the concept, which gains importance in the period from 800 to 1400 C.E. in Europe and Africa, involves other elements. Pilgrimage is conceived as reenactment; the pilgrim undertakes a sacred journey, the significance of which is primarily spiritual, as he or she visits sites important to sacred history. In the Christian and Islamic traditions, this sacred journey is conditioned by devotion and obedience. Medieval Christian tradition adds the element of veneration and indulgence: the idea that acts of veneration for holy relics and places could provide spiritual benefit can be traced back to the late classical period. But the explicit linking of acts of devotion with the remission of temporal punishment for sin only began with the First Crusade in 1095, when Pope Urban II announced the granting of indulgences to those who fought to regain the Christian holy shrines. Such a view, conditioned by conflict, both renders ambiguous the spiritual aspects of the journey and historically allows the symbolizing of acts of devotion. The act of pilgrimage also allows travelers to escape being accused of the sin of curiosity; travel for sightseeing is problematic in the Middle Ages, but travel for at least ostensibly spiritual reasons can sometimes escape this censure.

In medieval Europe, a mode of pilgrimage writing develops, in which certain items of information and structures of narration become standardized. This tradition approaches landscape and the journey in the following ways: first, the journey is conceived as outgoing; narratives focus on the hardships of the journey out and the travels between the holy places, instead of on the journey out and back. Second, the journey within the holy destination is organized in terms of "stations" or stopping places, often connected with specifically significant sites. These significant sites usually become connected allegorically with a variety of biblical significances. The twelfth-century pilgrimage guide writer Fetellus, for example, localizes a number of biblical references in one spot. When he describes the traditional hill of Christ's crucifixion in his narrative, he names this spot as the site on which Abraham sacrificed Isaac and as the place where Adam was buried (and resurrected by Christ's blood falling upon him). Furthermore, this site has significance for the future, being the place upon which Christ will return at the end of history. Specific physical characteristics of the site are used to bolster these allegorical accretions: the crack running through the rocks of the crucifixion hill is there because of the earth-rending strain of holding the cross. Other sites, from the city of Hebron to the Dead Sea, gain a number of allegorical significances based on their associations with the biblical narrative.

The third important type of travel, for the purposes of trade, had almost certainly been occurring concurrently with other forms of travel since the earliest human cultures. In Europe, commercial travel was seldom documented until well into the Middle Ages. By far the most important Continental writing about commercial travel was the narrative of Marco Polo, a Venetian who traveled to China and back during a twenty-four-year period, between 1271 and 1295. His writings were both widely publicized and widely ridiculed, as his European readers refused to believe the apparently miraculous accounts of the wealth, geographical wonders, and population of the Far East, as well as his account of offices he had held while in China. His ultimate nickname, Il Milione (The million), reflected the European public's sense that he had exaggerated the information that he brought back. The reaction to Marco Polo's narrative also points to the general reaction that hearers and readers in the Middle Ages expected from information derived through travel: generally they wanted to react with a sense of wonder and calculated disbelief to the tales brought back by far-flung narrators. This appetite for wonders can also be seen by the popularity of the information in the compendia of geographical and other lore compiled by such people as Vincent of Beauvais, the medieval encyclopedist (c. 1190–c. 1264).