Niccolò da Poggibonsi (fl. 1345-1350)

by Caroline Stone (see Chinese translation)

Little is known with any certainty of the early life of Niccolò da Poggibonsi (see alternative names), and only a very few clues are provided in the acrostic with which he tried – unsuccessfully – to protect his work from plagiarists. There are various theories, including that he may have been connected with the illustrious Corbizi family of Florence.

He took the habit as a Franciscan and at some stage decided to make the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where the Order was already established. Judging by comparisons that he made in the course of his work, he must already have travelled in Tuscany and had perhaps visited Rome.

In his account, Libro d'oltramare, written after his return, Poggibonsi gives almost no dates and the episodes do not appear in strict chronological order, although his itinerary can be broadly reconstructed from internal information, such as references to Feast Days, weather conditions, and so forth.

He set off from Poggibonsi sometime before 25 March, 1346 and travelled to Venice via Florence, Bologna, Ferrara and Chioggia. Leaving Venice on 6 April, he had a difficult journey, between storms and pirates, and after 56 days reached Famagusta on Cyprus. From there, he went to Nicosia, where he spent six months as chaplain to Hugh IV, the ruler of Cyprus. In obedience to the Franciscan rule, Poggibonsi did not carry money or solicit funds, but preferred to earn his way by saying Mass and performing other religious services.

In 1347, he set out for Jaffa, reaching Jerusalem, where he stayed for four months, on 25 February. There, he served at the Holy Sepulchre and on 15 August, he celebrated the Feast of the Assumption at the Tomb of the Virgin. From Jerusalem, he went on to visit Hebron and Ain Karem, travelling in Samaria and Galilee, before returning to Jerusalem. He celebrated the Nativity in Bethlehem and the rituals of the Epiphany by the Jordan.

He visited Mount Quarantania, the site of the Temptation, and Jericho, before setting out for Damascus, which he praised highly for its beauty and riches. Like many other pilgrims, he was much impressed by the urban culture he encountered throughout the region. He spent a year in Syria and Lebanon, travelling as far as Baghdad – the most difficult and dangerous part of his journey, as he was off the established and, to some extent, protected “tourist route”.

Early in 1349, he set out for Beirut, suffering from the deep snow along the way, as he did again on his visit to the Monastery of St Catherine. He travelled on to Egypt – Damietta, Alexandria and Cairo, after which, he crossed Sinai and Gaza, before going back to Damietta. In the summer of that year, he sailed to Cyprus, returning to Venice by way of Slavonia, Istria and Friuli. Leaving Venice in January 1350, he arrived home via Chioggia, Ferrara, Bologna and Florence, sometime in March or April.

Niccolò da Poggibonsi was a man of wide interests and, although a Franciscan and obviously devout, was not concerned with missionary work on this journey, contrary to what might have been expected. He seems to have observed the rule of poverty, however, not carrying money or accepting gifts, which means that his experiences would have been different from those of the well-provided Florentines. His intention, he says, was “….to visit everything, and not to return to my country without doing so. And what I saw with my eyes and touched with my hands, and asked of others, and when I was well certified of the things, that I wrote on two small tablets that I carried by me.”

Far more than other pilgrims, Niccolò was interested in art and architecture, copying inscriptions and describing techniques and styles with some accuracy - perhaps not so surprising for a Tuscan at that date. His list of churches is therefore of particular interest and subsequent archaeological research has proved that many of his descriptions of things now damaged or vanished – for example the aedicule of the Holy Sepulchre levelled in 1555 – were correct. He also provides possible dates for the destruction of particular monuments, such as the House of the Virgin, which fell prey to Muslim fanaticism.

Niccolò was less accurate when writing about the numerous sects of the Eastern Church, but this is hardly surprising given the language difficulties and the fact that the differences were less clear cut than they are today, enabling him to say Mass for communities that were not strictly in communion with Rome. He is, however, on the whole remarkably open-minded and tolerant, not only of Eastern Christians, but also of Jews and Muslims, and indeed for the latter expresses a certain respect, although he was no doubt aware that access to the holy places was dictated not by Muslim piety, but by the financial advantages that always accrue from pilgrim sites. Clearly, curiosity and interest in the new and unfamiliar world around him generally trumped traditional prejudice.

Like other pilgrims, Niccolò had some contact with guides and interpreters, since the Franciscans, although already present, seem not to have begun acting as guides until about 1345. He was particularly struck by a certain Said, who, as a youngish man, took him to Sinai and, 35 years later, then aged 70 and accompanied by his son, was to act as guide to the Florentines, among them Frescobaldi, Gucci and Sìgoli, who were equally impressed. The old man told them he had made 66 journeys.

The guides were not necessarily well informed and some were probably responsible for the numerous uncanonical stories and legends which the pilgrims, including Niccolò, absorbed avidly. As Fr. Bagatti points out in his excellent Introduction, if a washerwoman went on pilgrimage she would naturally be delighted to be shown where the Virgin washed Jesus’ baby clothes and would have very little interest in the accuracy of the story. It was, in fact, about this time that the cult of the Virgin was becoming increasingly important and the sites associated with her multiplied correspondingly.

A very important reason for going on pilgrimage, although not the prime one for Niccolò, was obtaining indulgences. By visiting and praying at certain places it was believed that the sinner would be saved from a part of his or her punishment in the afterlife; signs to this effect are still visible in many older churches today. The indulgences were of different kinds and Niccolò’s listing is very important as being the first and the most complete. Of the Tuscans travelling 35 years later, Frescobaldi gives a few, Gucci none and Sìgolì a complete, but much less detailed, list.

Libro d’oltramare, is lively and extremely varied. Niccolò wrote it in part as a guide for future pilgrims and in part to convey something of what he saw to those who stayed at home but longed to know more of the Holy Land. With this in mind, he shares every sort of detail, including some practical information, although – unsurprisingly – he was much less concerned with costs and general prices than the Florentine merchants travelling a generation later. Again, it was surely with the aim of sharing his experiences with a lay, as opposed to ecclesiastical or learned audience, that the book is written in Italian and in accessible language.

Niccolò was clearly proud of his book and keen that his authorship should be recognized, adding his name and a few other details twice in acrostics, one of which is made up of the first letter of each chapter “so that nobody might attribute to himself the said labour, which I had.” Unfortunately, this did not work, in part because his book was so successful. No known autograph manuscript exists, but there are numerous copies and partial copies, both under his name, and anonymous. To add to the complication, Niccolò’s work came to be printed in Bologna in 1500, almost unchanged, under the name of Fra Noë of the Order of St Francis. Versions of this continued to appear for almost three centuries, in spite of the fact that the Holy Land had by then changed out of all recognition. It is not clear how or why the confusion arose.

His book was also translated into German and a traveller from Nuremberg, Gabriel Muffel, claimed it as his work, in spite of having written other travel accounts of his own. The British Museum has a spectacular manuscript (Egerton 1900) probably written at Passau, c.1467 and enriched with 147 miniatures, many of architecture. This, translated back into Italian, seems to have been the source for the Bologna edition, Viazo da Venesia al Sancto Iherusalem, which had 145 wood cuts and went into 26 editions between 1500 and 1600.

The manuscript and publishing history of Niccolò’s work is complicated, for the reasons given above and the relationship of the original text and the later illustrations, as well as the texts and their variants, are still in the process of being analysed, by various scholars, among them Katherine Blair Moore (see bibliography).