ABSTRACT
The fifty-six year old Nürnberg physician Hieronymus Münzer traveled around Italy and Spain in 1494–5 to avoid the plague in his native city. He had three companions: Anton Herward from Augsburg, who spoke Italian and Spanish, and two Nürnberg friends, Kaspar Fischer and Nikolaus Wolkenstein. His strategy worked; he lived until 1508. Spain was new to him, and he made a complete circuit, entering from France, going up the west coast to Barcelona, then down and across Granada, Malaga, Seville, and up through Portugal to Galicia. From Padrón and Compostela, he went down to Salamanca, then northeast to Zaragoza, rejoining the familiar pilgrim's route through Pamplona and Roncesvalles back to France. It took one hundred and forty-six days in all, and the distances and travel time are carefully noted in his Latin account of his journey. 1 His record provides a description of the shrine at Padrón, and the city and church of Compostela as they were in the late fifteenth century. What is of particular interest is that he also saw, and made notes from, a manuscript containing Codex Calixtinus texts. He is the first foreigner, and the first layman, whom we know to have done so. An English translation of his description of Compostela and the parts of the pilgrim route he travelled, and his excerpts from the CC manuscript he saw, conclude this article.
