Historical sources of the Crusades: pilgrimages and exploration include those authors whose work describes pilgrimages to the Holy Land and other explorations to the Middle East and Asia that are relevant to Crusader history. In his seminal article in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Dominican friar and historian Bede Jarrett (1881–1934) wrote on the subject of Pilgrimage and identified that the "Crusades also naturally arose out of the idea of pilgrimages." This was reinforced by the Reverend Florentine Stanislaus Bechtel in his article Itineraria in the same encyclopedia. Pilgrims, missionaries, and other travelers to the Holy Land have documented their experiences through accounts of travel and even guides of sites to visit. Many of these have been recognized by historians, for example, the travels of ibn Jubayr and Marco Polo. Some of the more important travel accounts are listed here. Many of these are also of relevance to the study of historical geography and some can be found in the publications of the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society (PPTS) and Corpus Scriptorum Eccesiasticorum Latinorum (CSEL), particularly CSEL 39, Itinerarium Hierosolymitana. Much of this information is from the seminal work of 19th-century scholars including Edward Robinson, Titus Tobler and Reinhold Röhricht. Recently, the Independent Crusaders Project has been initiated by the Fordham University Center for Medieval Studies providing a database of Crusaders (with sources identified) who traveled to the Holy Land independent of military expeditions.
Overview
Authors who wrote about their travels or pilgrimages to the Holy Land or to the land of the Mongols were prevalent through the 16th century, and lasted into the 19th century. Some were accounts by merchants trading with non-European partners.
Notable early travelers include Marco Polo, ibn Battūta, Odoric of Pordenone, John Mandeville, Bertrandon de la Broquière, Marino Sanuto the Younger, and Felix Fabri.Later travelers to include diplomats, were Jean Thenaud, Evliya Çelebi, and Richard Burton. Surveys of the Holy Land were sponsored by the Palestine Exploration Fund, beginning in 1864, including those by Claude R. Conder, Edward Hull, and Herbert Kitchener.
Collections of those works, as well as Crusader-era accounts that are in the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society (PPTS) library (1886–1897), the Hakluyt Society (founded 1846) and the Societé de l'Orient Latin (founded 1875 by Paul Riant) that include Itinera hierosolymitana et descriptiones terrae sanctae... (1879) by Titus Tobler and Auguste Molinier; and Itinéraires à Jérusalem et descriptions de la Terre Sainte... (1882) by Henri-Victor Michelant and Gaston Raynaud. Other collections include Recueil de voyages... (1882–1916) by Charles Henri Auguste Schefer and Henri Cordier; Early Travels in Palestine (1848) by Thomas Wright; Cathay and the Way Thither (1866) by Henry Yule; and those identified in Titus Tobler's Bibliographia Geographica Palestinæ.
Pilgrimages before the Crusades
Descriptions of pilgrims to the Holy Land began long before the Crusades, as early as the 3rd century AD.
Origen. Origen (c. 184 – c. 253), a Christian scholar who wrote In Joannem (Commentary on John) about the desire of Christians to search after the footprints of Christ.<ref name="Baldwin 1969">Baldwin, M. W. (1969). A History of the Crusades. Volume One: The First Hundred Years". p. 69.</ref>
Eusebius. Eusebius of Caesarea (before 265 – after 339), a historian of Christianity published in PPTS I.1.
Historia Ecclesiastica (Church History), where a Cappadocian bishop Alexander who visited the Holy Land in the 3rd century is identified. Life of Constantine. Includes a description of Saint Helen's pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 326–327. Excerpted in The Churches of Constantine at Jerusalem. An earlier Christian scholar Origen (c.184 – c. 253) wrote In Joannem (Commentary on John, Vol VI) about the desire of Christians to search after the footprints of Christ. In PPTS I.1.
Itinerary of the Bordeaux Pilgrim. Itinerary from Bordeaux to Jerusalem (Itinerarium Burdigalense), an anonymous account of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 333–334, with travels beginning shortly after that of Saint Helen. This is the oldest known Christian itinerarium. In PPTS I.2.
Egeria. Egeria (fl. 380s), also known as Etheria or Aetheria, was a Spanish pilgrim from the 14th century.
Itinerarium Egeriae (Pilgrimage of Aetheria). An account of Egeria's pilgrimage to the Holy Land once attributed to Saint Silvia of Aquitaine. In PPTS I.3.