Burchard of Mount Sion (ca. 1283)

by Robert K. Harding (See Chinese translation)

Burchard of Mount Sion, also called B(r)ocard, was probably from Magdeburg in Germany. He became a Dominican friar and from 1274 onwards travelled in the Middle East. For a decade he was in Palestine before travelling to Armenia and on to Cyprus; since a few manuscripts include a section on Egypt, it is possible he was also there. But it is his description of the Levant for which he is most famous. It is organised rationally into four sections, with the geography of each one laid out in detail. He is also known for a published plan to launch a new Crusade, an idea that garnered no interest.

The textual history of his Descriptio Terrae Sanctae (A Description of the Holy Land), c. 1283, is complex. There is both a long and a short version. Whether or not Burchard wrote both of them, the text has been added to over the centuries and this includes items of biographical information, especially in the short version. (Baumgartner 2013, pp. 16-17) It is thus difficult to tell how much of this information is genuine.

The significance of the book is twofold. First, it is the most comprehensive description of Palestine from the 1200s; and it was the last such work before the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem finally ended with the Fall of Acre in 1291. His visit to Cyprus meant he met the last King of Jerusalem (and Cyprus), Henry II.

About a hundred versions of the text dating to the medieval and early modern periods are extant and are either of the short or the long version. It has been unclear which may have come first and the differences between them make it difficult to regard either as a version of the other. However, it has recently been established that certain material in the shorter version make no sense without reference to the longer, so that the latter must have come first. (Harvey 2012, pp. 98-100)

Burchard tries to give as complete a picture of the Holy Land as he can. He describes Christian sacred sites carefully, but he also discusses physical geography, fauna and flora, as well as local religion. In a number of cases he is careful to admit he did not see or experience the things he describes, and resorts to an eyewitness.

It was the long version that attracted most of the visual elaboration through maps and diagrams, and whose place-names help the reader conceive of the Holy Land as both religious and political. Following Burchard’s textual description, his diagrams are all centred on Acre, the last stronghold of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, with routes spreading out from there across a territory from Armenia to Egypt. Understanding the Descriptio as a religio-political text explains the deep attention Burchard paid to Crusader fortresses and their locations – even though most of them by his time were either destroyed or in enemy hands. Burchard also jams all periods of the Holy Land together, so that the divisions of the Twelve Tribes, the Israelite Monarchy, the New Testament and later history are all presented as one tableau. Later cartographers, taking their cue from Burchard, reproduced this vision in maps and diagrams, presenting a specifically Christian Holy Land and a Christian claim to it, long after the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem had ended. (Baumgartner, 2013) This is in contrast to near-contemporary guidebooks written in the 1260s, which were continually revised as the Sultan Baybars of Egypt progressively conquered Christian fortresses and towns. (Pringle, p. 9)

But Baumgartner’s claim that Burchard’s vision is a colonial one is only partially true. The main aim of such a work was to give the reader of scripture an immediacy and a visual aid in his meditations on scripture. To be able to “see” the Holy Land was to help interiorise it; a form of “being there”. Crucial in this respect is his linkage of this to his guarantee that this is accurate, verifiable knowledge:

“For what hour is there of the day or night throughout the whole cycle of the year in which every devout Christian does not recall by singing, reading, psalmody, preaching and meditation those things that were done or written in this land and in its cities and localities?

Seeing, however that some people are affected by a desire to picture for themselves in some degree at least those things that are unable to look upon face to face and wanting to satisfy their wish as far as I can, I have inspected, diligently recorded and studiously described in so far as I have been able that land through which I have frequently passed on foot and I would wish the reader to know that I have included nothing in this description except what I saw with my own eyes when I was in the place itself or, when I was unable to gain access, what I saw standing on some mountain or in another suitable place; and I have noted down what I have learnt from Syrians, Saracens or other inhabitants of the land, diligently questioning them.” (Pringle, p. 242).

Similarly, the Descriptio is presented analytically, divided into parts, with each part described in order, rather than a subjective order dictated by the route of one person’s journey, tied together by that individual’s experiences. And the rhetoric of precision is crucial in his self-presentation as a reliable witness. Side by side with such precise passages are the identifications of place with biblical history that are given respectability by the rhetoric.

So for instance, he describes the mountains of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, distances from Tyre and the quality of the valleys and the religious groups living in them, while soon afterwards identifying locations of Jesus’ ministry around the Sea of Galilee. (pp. 256-259)

“Half of this valley is in this second division, which faces north, while the other half is contained in the following third division.” (p. 255)

Burchard is also explicit in linking a particular part of its history, its occupation by the tribes of Israel, and its status as an image of the cosmos:

“…let me turn my pen to a particular description of the land that fell into the possession of the ten tribes. Let it be known first of all…that I have divided the Holy Land into four parts, corresponding to the four quarters of heaven…” (p. 245)

The Descriptio is a wonderful source for the history of sacred geography. It shows the way in which biblical geography and narrative was expanded through stories that created new sacred sites and new relics, thus developing the network of places through which pilgrims travelled. For instance:

“Nine leagues beyond Sidon is the noble and ancient city of Beirut...there also the Jews made an image of Him in paste and mocked it; and when they finally crucified it, they drew from it a large quantity of blood, which is reverently kept in many places today”. (p. 249)

He is also possibly the first to record a feature of the Holy Land from at least Late Antiquity onwards, and his empirical and analytical approach is again in evidence as he attempts an explanation:

“…these places, like almost all the others in which the Lord performed anything, are below ground and one goes down to them in a crypt by many steps. Such is the place of the Annunciation, the place of the Nativity, this Cana of Galilee and many other places, which are shown below ground. The only reason that I can find for this is that, as a result of the frequent destruction of the churches in which those places lay, ruins have piled up above the ground and in this way, after they have been levelled in some way or other, different buildings have been constructed above them.” (p. 267)

However, mixed in with the sacred geography is other material that makes his work more than just a bare list. He wants to enrich the imagination of those meditating on scripture and so he adds comments such as whether an area is hilly or flat, if the land is fertile or not and even if the wine is good – in fact, the fertility and productivity of the land is one of his constant themes. He provides a long summary of the fruits and vegetables available there and calls it “in actual fact…the best of all lands, although some people, who have not inspected it carefully, say the opposite.” (p. 312) Clearly, he is contesting statements of others who deny its fruitfulness, and this is important for him, since its fertility is significant both because of its status as the Holy Land and because this was emphasised in the Old Testament.

Intriguingly, although there are some anti-Semitic elements in the Descriptio, Burchard seems surprisingly broad-minded. Having listed a number of Orthodox churches he says “they are all Christians and are, as they say themselves, in obedience to the Roman church.” (p. 255) He also lets on that he has read the Quran and explains to his readers that the “Saracens” honour St. John, the Virgin Mary and Christ greatly, even though they do not accept Christ’s divinity. (p. 276) He praises their courtesy and hospitality, though he regards them as unclean. In contrast, he admits that

“…we Latins are worse than all the other inhabitants. The reason is this, as it seems to me; when anyone has been an evil-doer…he crosses the sea as a penance, or because he fears for his skin and thus does not dare stay in his own country...but in truth they change their sky, not their inclination….Thus it comes about that because of the sins of its inhabitations before God, the land itself with the place of sanctification comes into contempt.” (p. 314)

This is interesting testimony since this period saw the increase of travel to the Holy Land as a penance for sin in order to take away days spent in Purgatory. (Pringle, p. 12)

His account of Jerusalem is the most detailed of any city in his text and it serves in miniature to illustrate what he was doing with his text. Incidents in the Old and New Testaments are described in relation to places whose physical characteristics are richly described and located in relation to each other; while the physical geography of the city itself is lovingly described. Notable in such a fulsome account is the absence of the Dome of the Rock and the Haram area around it – the Dome had been a key site since it was supposedly the Temple of Solomon and the Haram had been a through-point or the Via Dolorosa that traces Christ’s path on the way to Golgotha. By Burchard’s time Christians had been shut out. (Pringle, p. 12)

A description of the image of Jerusalem shown at the beginning of this essay is taken from Jerusalem by Michel Join-Lambert (Elek Books, 1958):

In 1455 Philip the Good ordered Jean Mielot, canon of Lille, to translate the Descriptio Terrae Sanctae, by the Dominican monk, Burchard du Mont-Sion (1283). Against a stylized and conventional background, the artist has set details which show authentic knowledge; one might even think that he had been to the Holy Land himself. At the foot, by the edge of the sea, stands a ruined stronghold, with a great tower. Perhaps this is Athlit, the Pilgrims Castle that the Templars abandoned in 1291. The first town, bristling with minarets, may well be Ramleh; the one on the left is certainly Bethlehem, with its great basilica. Jerusalem is viewed from the west; the Dome of the Rock still retains its octagonal shape, although the bulbous dome is imaginary; to the right stands Al-Aqsa, shown as a church. On the left the Holy Sepulchre displays its large, open-topped dome, and its outer enclosure. In the foreground the Tower of David can be seen complete with its four corner towers. The Dome of the Ascension dominates the Mount of Olives, up which winds a zigzag road. One might even, with a varying degree of certainty, be able to identify also St. James, St. Anne, Latin-Saint-Mary and the Hospital.

Despite its importance, for Burchard the centre point of his journey is the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. He describes the mosaics of the church, the beauty of the marble floors, but most particularly the cave below, in which Christ was born. There he spends a night kissing both the manger and the stone on which the birth took place and declares “I have not seen or heard anyone say that he has seen so holy a church in all the world.” (p. 303) The remains of St. Jerome’s monastery, where the Vulgate Bible was translated, is also next door. Perhaps for Burchard this was the central point of his journey.