ABSTRACT

The pilgrimage route from Germany to the Holy Land was a well trodden one in the fifteenth century. The best known of these pilgrim records today is probably that of Friar Felix Fabri, but this chapter concentrates on the comparatively neglected Reisebuch of Hans Tucher. The Franciscan brothers on Mount Zion who provided a centre for pilgrims in the later middle ages evidently kept a collection of documents not only for the use of pilgrims, but also specifically for them to copy. Tucher's Reisebuch contains evidence that this included a short account in Latin of the First Crusade and the twelfth-century kings of Jerusalem and notes on churches and indulgences in the Holy Land. The manuscript topography found in the 1482 edition of the Reisebuch is revealing of another document held in the library: Sanudo's description of the Holy Land that was originally part of the very long Liber secretorum and accompanied by the innovative grid map by Vesconte.