The Long Detour Home through Central and Eastern Europe Lithgow is caught up momentarily in the ‘War of Gradisca’ between Venice and the Imperial army – from Vienna down the Danube in the company of a Greek dragoman of the Ottoman ambassador to Austria – across the Hungarian plain – admires its fertility and fruitfulness – speculations on the Hunnish origins of the Magyars – the topography and administrative geography of Ottoman Hungary – enters the Transylvania of Gábor Bethlen – praise for his wise rule – into northern Moldavia (?) where nearly murdered by bandits – crosses the Carpathians to Cracow – excursus on the Tatars – receives a warm welcome from Scottish traders in the towns of Poland – falls ill and nearly dies at Danzig but returns through the Baltic to Denmark and London

ABSTRACT

Inquisition there; see above, pp. 26-27), meeting with his ‘Cousing’100 Simeon Grahame, and via Umbria and Romagna and then Ferrara and Padua, reached Venice. His bald narrative here is only enlivened by a violent diatribe on the delinquencies and vices of various of the popes, his aim being, so he says, ‘to let our Papistes here at home, see the shamefull lives & cruell deaths, of most of their Popes beyond Seas: which their owne best Authors in France, Italy, and Spaine, have justly & condignely avouched & recorded’.101