“P.S.—I beseech by all means that [the] said Janet may not quit Mantua, but be in safe custody, and so you will have obliged me for ever.”
No less determined as a warrior than as a lover, and accustomed, as it seems, in both cases, to put people to flight, William Gold was made a citizen of Venice in recognition of his services on April 27, 1380, and in July of the same year received from the Doge Andrea Contarini a pension of 500 gold ducats for life.[577]
Thinking less of the Jeannettes to be met on the way, troops of pilgrims sailed from England, beginning their long journey towards the Holy Land, usually provided with letters from their sovereign, to serve both as passports and as recommendations in case of need. The tenor of these documents, written in French or in Latin, was usually similar to that of the following letter granted by Edward III in 1354 to one who, it is true, was more of a fighter than a pilgrim: “Know all men that the noble Jean le Meingre, knight, otherwise Bussigand [Boucicaut], our prisoner, is about to set forth, duly licensed by us, with twelve knights to St. James, and thence to march against the enemies of Christ in the Holy Land; and that we have taken him and his twelve companions, {405} their servants, horses, and harnesses under our protection and safe conduct.”[578]
Such travellers were well received by the French King of Cyprus, of the famous Lusignan family; they brought him news of the outer world, with them came variety and hope; they also were sometimes able to actually assist him in his difficulties, which were ceaseless, and the king showed his pleasure in his letters. Thus James I of Lusignan, “King of Jerusalem and Cyprus,” writes from Nicosia, in 1393, to Richard II, that a knight has no need of a personal recommendation to be welcome in the island; his subjects always are. It was for him an honour and delight to be visited by “your noble relative the lord Henry Percy.”[579] In the same manner the troop of French pilgrims, to which belonged the lord of Anglure, was welcomed in Cyprus, by the same king, in 1396. They reached the island on their way home, after a fearful storm, in which they nearly lost their lives.[580] As soon as James heard of their having landed he sent to them {406} provisions in plenty: a hundred chickens, twenty sheep, two oxen, much good red wine and good white bread. Then he asked them to his Court, where they were delightfully entertained by him, by the queen, and their four sons and five daughters. Being himself a great huntsman, James asked them to go hunting with him, a pleasant offer after so many trials, and one not to be refused.
Combats, hunts, storms, encounters of all sorts, in a word, adventure, were thus associated with the idea of the voyage, the holiness of which sometimes disappeared in the midst of so many profane incidents. Well may one wonder whether Saint James was the real attraction, for a De Werchin, Seneschal de Hainaut, who, about to start on a pilgrimage to the shrine of this saint, in 1402, would make it publicly known that, “in the name of God, of our Lord St. George, and of his own lady,” he would accept during his whole journey the friendly combat of arms with any knight for whom he should not have to turn from his road more than 20 leagues. He announced his itinerary beforehand, so that any one might make ready.[581]
The strange man, Jean de Bourgogne by name, who chose to sign his book of travels “Jean de Mandeville,”[582] {407} gives somewhat similar reasons to explain why he undertook his journey to the East in 1322 through perilous seas and countries—or rather, according to modern discoveries—through the books of his library. He started, or, anyhow, he studied and wrote, partly, says he, to sanctify himself, partly to know the world and its wonders, and to be able to speak of them; for many persons, he observes, are much pleased with hearing the marvels of distant regions described. The reason he publishes his impressions is, first, because numbers of people like stories of the Holy Land, and find great consolation and comfort in them; and, secondly, to make a guide, in order that small companies or caravans, like that of Boucicaut and others, may profit by his knowledge.
His ideas as to the road to be followed are not unreasonable. Thus, “to go the direct way” from England to Palestine, he advises the following itinerary: France, Burgundy, Lombardy, Venice, Famagusta in Cyprus, Jaffa, Jerusalem. Very often people went to Jerusalem by way of Egypt. It was a tradition of long standing that the greater part of the difficulties concerning the Holy Land had their root in Egypt; many tombs of saints also attracted the pilgrims there, so that crusaders, or mere pilgrims, often took that road to Jerusalem. “Mandeville” says he himself followed this itinerary. In 1422 Gilbert de Lannoy wrote, “at the behest of King Henry of England, heir and Regent of France,” that is, Henry V, a description in French of the places through which a crusade might be led against the infidels, for this prince, like his predecessors, continued dreaming of a crusade. Lannoy, a practical soldier and diplomat, who speaks only of what he has seen, gives a detailed account of all towns, stating which are protected by walls, {408} towers and ditches; he notices the Venetians’ warehouses for cotton at Acre, and the presence at Beirut of a great number of Christian merchants, Venetians, Genoese, Greeks, and others. He carefully mentions what sorts of provisions in wood, water, etc., may be found in each part of the country, in what plains an army can be easily arrayed, in what ports a fleet shall be safe. He pays the greatest attention to Egypt, and describes its several cities: “Item. There is Cairo, the chief town of Egypt, on the river Nile which comes from Paradise.”[583] But the crusade, in anticipation of which he wrote, never took place, and the next military expedition to reach Syria through Egypt was destined to be a French one, headed by that extraordinary pilgrim, Bonaparte.
Besides his account of a journey to Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Central Asia, and China, “Mandeville” gives a description of a number of countries peopled by imaginary monsters. This fantastic part of his work, where he anticipated no less famous a traveller than Gulliver himself, did not diminish its success, quite the contrary; it was translated into several languages, and above three hundred MSS. of it now remain. But we, less confiding than our fathers, are loth to accept the excuse he gives as a guarantee of, at least, his good faith: “Things that are long past away from sight fall into oblivion, and the memory of man cannot all retain and comprehend.”[584]
Many books, beginning with that of Lannoy, came after his, more practical, less fantastic, and, of course, less famous.[585] While the renewal of the crusades became {409} less and less probable, the number of individual pilgrimages was on the increase. The word of the priest which could no longer uproot and set on the move entire nations, still detached here and there little groups of pious men or adventure seekers, who went to visit the holy places under favour of the Saracen’s tolerant and practical spirit. For the mass of them no longer set out to fight the infidel, but to ask his permission to see Jerusalem, which was the more readily granted that it had to be paid for.
From the fourteenth century onwards, a regular service of transports existed at Venice for the use of pilgrims: “It is the rule,” says a traveller of the fourteenth century, “that the Venetians send every year five galleys to the Holy Land. They all reach Beirut, which is the port for Damascus in Syria; thence two of them bring the pilgrims to Jaffa, which is the port for Jerusalem.”[586]