14th century travel

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History of travelling: how people started to travel.

• Tea Gudek Šnajdar
• Cultural Tourism

Although we often have a feeling like people are travelling for the last few decades only, the truth is – people are travelling for centuries. Old Romans were travelling to relax in their Mediterranean villas. At the same time, people in Eastern Asia wandered for cultural experiences. I’ve got so fascinated with the history of travelling, that I did my own little research on how people started to travel. And here is what I’ve learned.

History of travelling

I was always curious about the reason people started to travel. Was it for pure leisure? To relax? Or to learn about new cultures, and find themselves along the way?

I wanted to chaise the reason all the way to its source – to the first travellers. And hopped to find out what was the initial motivation for people to travel.

According to linguists, the word ‘travel’ was first used in the 14th century. However, people started to travel much earlier.

While looking at the history of travelling and the reasons people started to travel, I wanted to distinguish the difference between travellers and explorers. Most of the time, when thinking about travel in history, people like Marco Polo or Christopher Columbus are coming to mind. However, they weren’t really travellers in a modern sense. They were explorers and researchers. So, to really learn about how people started to travel, I wanted to focus on ordinary people. Travellers like you and me, if you wish.

Romans and their roads

First people who started to travel for enjoyment only were, I’m sure you won’t be surprised, old Romans. Wealthy Romans would often go to their summer villas. And it was purely for leisure. They could, of course, start doing that because they invented something quite crucial for travelling – roads. Well developed network of roads was the reason they could travel safely and quickly.

However, there is another reason that motivated people in Antiquity to travel. And I was quite amazed when I learned about it.

It was a desire to learn. They believed travelling is an excellent way to learn about other cultures, by observing their art, architecture and listening to their languages.

Sounds familiar? It seems like Romans were the first culture tourists.

⤷ Read more : 20 Archaeological sites you have to visit in Europe

Travelling during the Middle Ages

It may come by surprise, but people started to wander more during the Middle Ages. And most of those journeys were pilgrimages.

Religion was the centre of life back in the Middle Ages. And the only things that connected this world with the saints people were worshipping, were the relics of saints. Pilgrims would often travel to another part of the country, or even Europe to visit some of the sacred places.

The most popular destinations for all those pilgrims was Santiago de Compostela, located in northwest Spain. People would travel for thousands of kilometres to reach it. To make a journey a bit easier for them, and to earn money from the newly developed tourism, many guest houses opened along the way. Pilgrims would often visit different towns and churches on their way, and while earning a ticket to heaven, do some sightseeing, as well.

Wealthy people were travelling in the caravans or by using the waterways. What’s changing in the Middle Ages was that travel wasn’t reserved only for the rich anymore. Lower classes are starting to travel, as well. They were travelling on foot, sleeping next to the roads or at some affordable accommodations. And were motivated by religious purposes.

⤷ TIP : You can still find many of those old pilgrim’s routes in Europe. When in old parts of the cities (especially in Belgium and the Netherlands ), look for the scallop shells on the roads. They will lead you to the local Saint-Jacob’s churches. Places dedicated to that saint were always linked to pilgrims and served as stops on their long journeys. In some cities, like in Antwerp , you can follow the scallop shell trails even today.

Below you can see one of the scallop shells on a street and Saint-Jacques Church in Tournai , Belgium.

Grand Tours of the 17th century

More impoverished people continued to travel for religious reasons during the following centuries. However, a new way of travelling appeared among wealthy people in Europe.

Grand tours are becoming quite fashionable among the young aristocrats at the beginning of the 17th century. As a part of their education (hmmm… culture tourists, again?) they would go on a long journey during which they were visiting famous European cities. Such as London , Paris , Rome or Venice, and were learning about their art, history and architecture.

Later on, those grand tours became more structured, and they were following precisely the same route. Often, young students would be accompanied by an educational tutor. And just to make the things easier for them, they were allowed to have their servants with them, too.

One of those young aristocrats was a young emperor, Peter the Great of Russia. He travelled around western Europe and has spent a significant amount of his time in the Netherlands. The architecture of Amsterdam and other Dutch cities definitely inspired a layout of the new city he has built – Saint Petersburg . So, travelling definitely remains an essential part of education since Roman times.

⤷ Read more : 15 Best museums in Europe you have to visit this year

The railway system and beginning of modern travel in the 19th century

Before the railway system was invented, people mostly travelled on foot (budget travel) or by water (the first-class travel at that time). However, when in the 1840s, an extensive network of railways was built, people started to travel for fun.

Mid-19th century definitely marks a real beginning of modern tourism. It’s the time when the middle class started to grow. And they have found a way to travel easily around Europe.

It’s coming by no surprise that the first travel agency, founded by Thomas Cook in England, was established at that time, too. He was using recently developed trains together with a network of hotels to organise his first group trips.

⤷ Read more : The most interesting European myths and legends

History of travelling in the 20th century

Since then, things started to move quickly. With the development of transportation, travelling became much more accessible. Dutch ships would need around a year to travel from Amsterdam to Indonesia. Today, for the same trip, we need less than a day on a plane.

After the Second World War, with the rise of air travel, people started to travel more and more. And with the internet and all the cool apps we have on our smartphones, it’s easier than ever to move and navigate your way in a new country. Mass tourism developed in the 1960s. But, with the new millennium, we started to face the over-tourism.

We can be anywhere in the world in less than two days. And although it’s a great privilege of our time, it also bears some responsibilities. However, maybe the key is to learn from history again and do what old Romans did so well. Travel to learn, explore local history and art, and be true culture tourists.

History of Travelling , How people started to travel , Travel

Travel, trade and exploration in the Middle Ages

Written by Dr. Josephine Livingstone

Medieval Europeans were fascinated by the lands that lay beyond their own continent. Josephine Livingstone looks at the real and imaginary travels of explorers and tradesman through works including  The Book of John Mandeville ,  The Travels of Marco Polo  and medieval maps.

From a 21st-century perspective – in an age of air travel and high-speed communications – it’s easy to imagine that medieval European people knew nothing of the world around them. People even use the adjective ‘medieval’ to indicate somebody who is backward-looking, barbarous or insular in their thought. But medieval Europeans were actually deeply engaged with lands beyond their borders. Often, that engagement was more creative than literal, taking place in texts and maps that were more influenced by literary history than by first-hand experience. But explorers and tradesmen ventured much farther afield in global space than our stereotype suggests, and from their travels, both real and imaginary, they brought cultural influences back with them.

‘Liber secretorum fidelium crucis’ by Marino Sanudo with maps by Pietro Vesconte, c. 1321. Explore this item further

The role of fiction and  The Marvels of the East

Among the non-European lands known to medieval people, India was probably the most important. Europeans got most of their knowledge about the Indian subcontinent from the remnants of Greek learning, which had eroded over the centuries since the end of the classical period but survived in some Latin works. The earthly paradise was reputed to exist in or near India, at the farthest eastern edge of the world. Stories about Alexander the Great were particularly popular, having been handed down from the classical period. Alexander, the leader of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia in the 4th century, famously travelled all the way to India in his pursuit of power and lands. Many manuscripts describe his battles and adventures with  fabulous creatures .

Latin sources gave medieval writers and map-makers a variety of options to draw upon when describing regions of the world. This array of sources, which did not always agree with each other, meant that new medieval writings blended easily into an already-varied culture. Writers such as the 3rd-century Julius Solinus, who drew on the works of Pliny the Elder, encouraged the idea that Asia and Africa were very hot places full of monsters and strange people: people without noses, or with giant feet to shade them from the sun, or with dogs’ heads, for example. The Old English  The Marvels of the East  is one such text that draws on these ideas, as well as those found in a hotchpotch of other Latin sources. Preserved in three manuscripts, including the book that contains  Beowulf , this text describes and illustrates a vast range of strange and magical people and animals. Here you will find dragons, phoenixes and other familiar legendary creatures. But it also features people who are described as having ‘black’ skin, alongside other wonderful people who sleep curled up in their own enormous ears. Medieval Europeans’ view of people of different ethnicities was often bound up with wonder, fear and fiction.

The Marvels of the East is a fantastical account of the lands beyond Europe. This version appears in the same manuscript that also contains the Anglo-Saxon epic poem, Beowulf. Explore this item further

Medieval travel narratives: Marco Polo’s accounts of Asia and  The Book of John Mandeville

While John Mandeville, Marco Polo and Odoric of Pordenone all wrote travel narratives in which they claimed to have seen a number of monstrous peoples, animals and cultural practices first-hand, the authenticity of these claims varied.

Marco Polo  did , however, witness a great deal of what he wrote about. In the medieval period, the Polo family were among the greatest European travellers in Asia. Marco journeyed to China as a direct consequence of an earlier stay there by his father Niccolo and uncle Maffeo, who had set out from Constantinople in 1260 on a routine trading venture to Sudak in the Crimea. After this, they accompanied a caravan travelling along the Volga river to Sarai, the capital of Barka Khan, who was the lord of the western Mongols and grandson of Genghis Khan. In 1262, they got stuck in the region because of a war. While biding their time there, they received a request for an interview from the great Kublai Khan, who had never met any Europeans. He tasked them with taking a letter to the Pope to ask for 100 educated Christians to be sent to the court as missionaries. The only two people nominated for the task refused to go, so they took Marco, who was then aged 17, instead. He did not return to Venice until 24 years later.

In his  Book of the Marvels of the World , also known as  The Travels of Marco Polo , Marco describes many of the marketplaces he travelled through in terms of the strangeness of the business customs he sees, suggesting that they are unreasonable and difficult to understand. He accuses a Brahmin population of superstitions regarding a belief that business decisions could be influenced by the direction from which tarantulas enter a room. In one of the most interesting moments, he expresses delighted bafflement at the use of paper money at the Khan’s court. Marco Polo casts himself as a kind of imaginative  bureau de change , a cosmopolitan Venetian embedded in a foreign court by his own choice.

Unlike Marco Polo, the medieval ‘traveller’  John Mandeville  is widely believed to have never existed at all. In the enormously popular text  The Book of John Mandeville , the writer claims to be an English knight from St Albans. There is no evidence, however, to suggest that he really existed. His ‘book’ contains claims that John Mandeville was a soldier in the army of the great Khan, and that he had travelled far and wide in the East. There, the book relates, he came across all sorts of monstrous creatures and strange people, of the kind we might recognise from  The Marvels of the East . This faux travel narrative was so popular that  Leonardo da Vinci  and Christopher Columbus both consulted copies, and its lack of authenticity, does not seem to have made a difference to the reception of the text. It survives in a staggering 300 manuscripts, and was translated into at least ten languages.

The Travels of John Mandeville purports to tell the story of one John Mandeville, a knight from St Albans in the south of England, who set of on a journey to the Holy Land and on to Asia and Africa in 1332. In fact Mandeville never existed and the account is a strange and fantastical description of a world away from Europe. Explore this item further

In the lives of real medieval people, global travel typically fell into the categories of religious pilgrimage, warfare (i.e. the conflicts often called the Crusades) or long-distance trade. From around the 8th until the 15th centuries, Venetian traders ran a virtual monopoly on trading with the Middle East and Asia. Materials including silk, herbs, spices and drugs travelled from South Asia over the Indian Ocean to the Middle East, where merchants transported them overland to Europe. Meanwhile, Western Europeans waged a series of wars against Muslim countries, aimed at limiting the expansion of Islam and the powers of its followers. These European powers framed their wars as spiritual conflicts: they were sending their soldiers to reclaim the Holy Land from Muslims. In the long term, Muslim control of formerly Christian lands such as Palestine and Syria remained firm.

Medieval map-making and  Mappa Mundi

If a medieval person wanted to set out on a long, intercontinental journey, we might initially expect that they would consult a globe, or a world map. But the majority of the medieval maps of the world that survive today were not designed for travel; instead they contained information of spiritual and imaginative interest about the world. Some of the biggest examples hung in churches for the public to see, such as the Hereford  Mappa Mundi  which can still be found in that town’s cathedral.

There are several types of these maps of the world, which scholars call  mappa mundi . Around 1,100 or so survive, far fewer than the medieval literary manuscripts we still have. Medieval maps have east at their top rather than north, which is why we say that a map is  oriented  ( oriens  being the Latin word for  east ).

The majority of  mappa mundi  are versions of the Noachid form, named after Noah of the Old Testament. Each continent was supposedly founded after the Great Flood by Noah’s three sons – Shem, Japheth and Ham. These maps are also known as the wheel, tripartite or T-O form, so called because the outline of the world is depicted within the circle of an ‘O’ shape, which is divided into three continents by a ‘T’ formed by the waterways of the Nile, Mediterranean and Don. Many of these maps feature only this T-O shape, with no additional writing or drawings.

Anglo-Saxon Mappa Mundi. This map of the world was probably made in Canterbury between 1025 and 1050. Explore this item further

This map, dating from c. 1400 appears in a history of the world written by Ranulph Higden (d. 1364), who was a monk of the Benedictine abbey of St. Werburg, Chester. Explore this item further

Then there are the Macrobian  mappa mundi , named after the Roman writer Macrobius, which divide the world into climatic zones. These maps impart less narrative content than other types of medieval map, but their climate zones link up with the environmentally deterministic medieval theories of race. The idea that the sun ‘burned’ the skins of Ethiopian people to a brown colour, for example, is expressed in the Old English retelling of the  Exodus .

Beatus, or quadripartite maps, meanwhile, are not round at all – they are roughly rectangular, and show the journeys taken by the Apostles to evangelise the world.

This map is in the T-O form. It appears in an early 7th century work — the Etymologies by Isidore of Seville. The manuscript you can see here was made in the 11th century. Explore this item further

This map comes from the famous ‘Silos Apocalypse’ which was made in the Spanish Monastery of San Domingo de Silos in 1106. Explore this item further

There also survive a few large maps that we call the ‘complex’  mappa mundi , including the one that still hangs in Hereford Cathedral. These maps are usually roughly based on the T-O structure, but they are full of drawings, texts and other details that make them look more like huge narrative illustrations than maps as we would recognise today.

The Psalter World Map was made in London in the 1260s. Explore this item further

In the 13th century, a scholar in St Albans called Matthew Paris created a quite different type of map. He himself never left Britain, but he created a document showing an itinerary running from London to Palestine. His work is partly a map, partly a spiritual document and partly journey description. It is also a hybrid work of illustration and text. Although the book is in one sense a journey for the soul, it also features drawings of real places and things, such as castles, hills and trees.

Matthew Paris’s itinerary maps from London to Palestine. Despite having never been to Palestine, the monk and historian Matthew Paris (c. 1200–1260), created an itinerary from London to Palestine. Explore this item further

None of the medieval maps put Europe at their centre. Nor do the ‘travel’ literatures of medieval writers such as John Mandeville explicitly compare other cultures to European customs and ways of life. This is not to say that medieval Europeans were not ethnocentric, or Eurocentric. But medieval people thought of themselves in global space in a way that is subtly but importantly different to our geographical thought. Influences from the Bible and classical thought were strong enough to shape a medieval person’s view of themselves in the world. The boundary between textual and geographical thought on far-off places on earth was a porous one in the medieval period, and the wide world was very much a part of peoples’ lives.

Dr Josephine Livingstone is the staff culture writer at the  New Republic . Her PhD was in medieval literature and postcolonial studies, which she received from New York University in 2015. Her dissertation focused on race and landscape in late medieval poetry and maps. She has taught medieval literature widely in New York, but now focuses on cultural criticism as an “alt ac” practice. She still writes often about the medieval period, especially in the context of the alt-right.

Originally published by The British Library (CC BY-NC 4.0)

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Travel and Travelers by James Muldoon LAST REVIEWED: 15 December 2010 LAST MODIFIED: 15 December 2010 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195396584-0102

There is a common belief that medieval men and women lived their lives within a narrow geographical and psychological space, the village and the neighboring fields for the most part. According to this opinion, it was not until the Renaissance and the voyages of Columbus and those who followed him that Europeans became aware of the wider world around them and shed the blinders that had constrained them for centuries. What makes this opinion so at odds with medieval reality is that one of the most famous and widely read pieces of medieval literature, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales , deals with the travels of a group of medieval Christians who range from a crusading knight to farm laborers, individuals representing a cross section of the middling levels of 14th-century English society. Merchants, crusaders, missionaries, pilgrims, exiles, and others motivated by simple restless curiosity traveled around Europe, to the edges of the Christian world, and then all the way to China and India and, sailing westward, to North America. Travel and travel imagery also played an important role in Christian life. The Bible begins with the creation of the world, traces the course of God’s involvement with his people over time, and concludes with the end of the world, the ultimate goal of mankind as defined by the Creator. The life of the individual Christian is a pilgrimage within this context, the movement of the soul to union with God, a microcosm of this larger narrative. It is no coincidence that the most famous work of medieval literature, Dante’s Divine Comedy , was cast as a travel tale.

In recent years scholars from several disciplines have devoted increasing attention to travel and travel literature as an important aspect of the general expansion of medieval Europe during the Middle Ages. The best short introduction in English to expansion is Phillips 1998 , especially because of its extensive bibliography. Friedman, et al. 2000 contains articles of various lengths on all aspects of medieval travel and expansion. Newton 1968 is an old but readable introduction to travel literature. In recent years literary scholars ( Goodman 1998 ) have approached travel literature in terms of modern literary theory. Recent works such as Labarge 1982 , Ohler 1989 , and Ohler 2004 focus on the mundane elements of travel such as roads, bridges, ships, and inns, the mechanics of travel so to speak. Zacher 1976 examines the attitude of medieval people to those beyond Christendom and argues that medieval people were more curious about such peoples than has been assumed.

Friedman, John Block, Kristen M. Figg, Gregory G. Guzman, and Scott Westrem, eds. Medieval Trade, Travel, and Exploration: An Encyclopedia . New York: Garland, 2000.

A basic volume containing brief biographies of important travelers and short articles related to travel, with up-to-date bibliographies. The best starting point for anyone interested in medieval travel.

Goodman, Jennifer. Chivalry and Exploration, 1298–1630 . Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1998.

An important study dealing with the way in which medieval travel literature shaped early modern travel accounts.

Labarge, Margaret Wade. Medieval Travellers: The Rich and the Restless . London: Hamish Hamilton, 1982.

A detailed discussion of travel by those who could afford to travel in comfortable style.

Newton, A. P. Travel and Travellers of the Middle Ages . London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968.

A series of public lectures by leading scholars originally published in 1926 and clearly dated. Superseded by later scholarship on many points, this volume still provides a readable introduction to medieval travel literature. Several articles remain useful, especially T. W. Arnold, “Arab Travellers and Merchants, A.D. 1000–1500,” and E. D. Ross, “Prester John and the Empire of Ethiopia.”

Ohler, Norbert. The Medieval Traveller . Translated by Caroline Hillier. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer, 1989.

The translation of the earlier version did not include the extensive bibliography.

Ohler, Norbert. Reisen im Mittelalter . 4th ed. Munich: Artemis and Winkler, 2004.

A discussion of modes of travel, bridges, highways, and other practical matters that faced medieval travelers; includes an extensive bibliography.

Phillips, J. R. S. The Medieval Expansion of Europe . 2d ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998.

This is the basic narrative introduction to the expansion of medieval Europe and the place of travelers and travel literature in that expansion.

Zacher, Christian K. Curiosity and Pilgrimage: The Literature of Discovery in Fourteenth-Century England . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.

The author discusses the way in which the reports of pilgrims and other travelers, written and oral, in turn encouraged curiosity about the wider world and broke down medieval criticism of curiosity as a danger to faith.

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Middle Ages

By: History.com Editors

Updated: June 6, 2023 | Original: April 22, 2010

People use the phrase “Middle Ages” to describe Europe between the fall of Rome in 476 CE and the beginning of the Renaissance in the 14th century. Many scholars call the era the “medieval period” instead; “Middle Ages,” they say, incorrectly implies that the period is an insignificant blip sandwiched between two much more important epochs.

The Middle Ages: Birth of an Idea

The phrase “Middle Ages” tells us more about the Renaissance that followed it than it does about the era itself. Starting around the 14th century, European thinkers, writers and artists began to look back and celebrate the art and culture of ancient Greece and Rome . Accordingly, they dismissed the period after the fall of Rome as a “Middle” or even “Dark” age in which no scientific accomplishments had been made, no great art produced, no great leaders born. The people of the Middle Ages had squandered the advancements of their predecessors, this argument went, and mired themselves instead in what 18th-century English historian Edward Gibbon called “barbarism and religion.”

Did you know? Between 1347 and 1350, a mysterious disease known as the "Black Death" (the bubonic plague) killed some 20 million people in Europe—30 percent of the continent’s population. It was especially deadly in cities, where it was impossible to prevent the transmission of the disease from one person to another.

This way of thinking about the era in the “middle” of the fall of Rome and the rise of the Renaissance prevailed until relatively recently. However, today’s scholars note that the era was as complex and vibrant as any other.

The Catholic Church in the Middle Ages

After the fall of Rome, no single state or government united the people who lived on the European continent. Instead, the Catholic Church became the most powerful institution of the medieval period. Kings, queens and other leaders derived much of their power from their alliances with and protection of the Church.

In 800 CE, for example, Pope Leo III named the Frankish king Charlemagne the “Emperor of the Romans”–the first since that empire’s fall more than 300 years before. Over time, Charlemagne’s realm became the Holy Roman Empire, one of several political entities in Europe whose interests tended to align with those of the Church.

Ordinary people across Europe had to “tithe” 10 percent of their earnings each year to the Church; at the same time, the Church was mostly exempt from taxation. These policies helped it to amass a great deal of money and power.

The Middle Ages: The Rise of Islam

Meanwhile, the Islamic world was growing larger and more powerful. After the prophet Muhammad’s death in 632 CE, Muslim armies conquered large parts of the Middle East, uniting them under the rule of a single caliph. At its height, the medieval Islamic world was more than three times bigger than all of Christendom.

Under the caliphs, great cities such as Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus fostered a vibrant intellectual and cultural life. Poets, scientists and philosophers wrote thousands of books (on paper, a Chinese invention that had made its way into the Islamic world by the 8th century). Scholars translated Greek, Iranian and Indian texts into Arabic. Inventors devised technologies like the pinhole camera, soap, windmills, surgical instruments, and an early flying machine. And religious scholars and mystics translated, interpreted and taught the Quran and other scriptural texts to people across the Middle East.

The Crusades

Toward the end of the 11th century, the Catholic Church began to authorize military expeditions, or Crusades , to expel Muslim “infidels” from the Holy Land. Crusaders, who wore red crosses on their coats to advertise their status, believed that their service would guarantee the remission of their sins and ensure that they could spend all eternity in Heaven. (They also received more worldly rewards, such as papal protection of their property and forgiveness of some kinds of loan payments.)

The Crusades began in 1095, when Pope Urban summoned a Christian army to fight its way to Jerusalem , and continued on and off until the end of the 15th century. In 1099, Christian armies captured Jerusalem from Muslim control, and groups of pilgrims from across Western Europe started visiting the Holy Land. Many of them, however, were robbed and killed as they crossed through Muslim-controlled territories during their journey.

Around 1118, a French knight named Hugues de Payens created a military order along with eight relatives and acquaintances that became the Knights Templar , and they won the eventual support of the pope and a reputation for being fearsome fighters. The Fall of Acre in 1291 marked the destruction of the last remaining Crusader refuge in the Holy Land, and Pope Clement V dissolved the Knights Templar in 1312.

No one “won” the Crusades; in fact, many thousands of people from both sides lost their lives. They did make ordinary Catholics across Christendom feel like they had a common purpose, and they inspired waves of religious enthusiasm among people who might otherwise have felt alienated from the official Church. They also exposed Crusaders to Islamic literature, science and technology–exposure that would have a lasting effect on European intellectual life.

The Middle Ages: Art and Architecture

Another way to show devotion to the Church was to build grand cathedrals and other ecclesiastical structures such as monasteries. Cathedrals were the largest buildings in medieval Europe, and they could be found at the center of towns and cities across the continent.

Between the 10th and 13th centuries, most European cathedrals were built in the Romanesque style. Romanesque cathedrals are solid and substantial: They have rounded masonry arches and barrel vaults supporting the roof, thick stone walls and few windows. (Examples of Romanesque architecture include the Porto Cathedral in Portugal and the Speyer Cathedral in present-day Germany.)

Around 1200, church builders began to embrace a new architectural style, known as the Gothic. Gothic structures, such as the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis in France and the rebuilt Canterbury Cathedral in England, have huge stained-glass windows, pointed vaults and pointed arches (a technology perfected in in the Islamic world), and spires and flying buttresses. In contrast to heavy Romanesque buildings, Gothic architecture seems to be almost weightless. Medieval religious art took other forms as well. Frescoes and mosaics decorated church interiors, and artists painted devotional images of the Virgin Mary, Jesus and the saints.

Also, before the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, even books were works of art. Craftsmen in monasteries (and later in universities) created illuminated manuscripts: handmade sacred and secular books with colored illustrations, gold and silver lettering and other adornments. Convents were one of the few places women could receive a higher education , and nuns wrote, translated, and illuminated manuscripts as well. In the 12th century, urban booksellers began to market smaller illuminated manuscripts, like books of hours, psalters and other prayer books, to wealthy individuals.

Did You Know? Juliana Morell, a 17th-century Spanish Dominican nun, is believed to be the first woman in the Western world to earn a university degree.

Chivalry and courtly love were celebrated in stories and songs spread by troubadours. Some of medieval literature’s most famous stories include “The Song of Roland” and “The Song of Hildebrand.” 

The Black Death

Between 1347 and 1350, a mysterious disease known as the " Black Death " (the bubonic plague) killed some 20 million people in Europe—30 percent of the continent’s population. It was especially deadly in cities, where it was impossible to prevent the transmission of the disease from one person to another.

The plague started in Europe in October 1347, when 12 ships from the Black Sea docked at the Sicilian port of Messina. Most sailors aboard the ships were dead, and those who were alive were covered in black boils that oozed blood and pus. Symptoms of the Black Death included fever, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, terrible aches and pains – and then death. Victims could go to bed feeling healthy and be dead by morning.

The plague killed cows, pigs, goats, chickens and even sheep, leading to a wool shortage in Europe. Understandably terrified about the mysterious disease, some people of the Middle Ages believed the plague was a divine punishment for sin. To obtain forgiveness, some people became “flagellants,” traveling Europe to put on public displays of penance that could include whipping and beating one another. Others turned on their neighbors, purging people they believed to be heretics. Thousands of Jews were murdered between 1348 and 1349, while others fled to less populated areas of Eastern Europe.

Today, scientists know the plague was caused by a bacillus called Yersina pestis , which travels through the air and can also be contracted through the bite of an infected flea . 

The Middle Ages: Economics and Society

In medieval Europe, rural life was governed by a system scholars call “feudalism.” In a feudal society, the king granted large pieces of land called fiefs to noblemen and bishops. Landless peasants known as serfs did most of the work on the fiefs: They planted and harvested crops and gave most of the produce to the landowner. In exchange for their labor, they were allowed to live on the land. They were also promised protection in case of enemy invasion.

During the 11th century, however, feudal life began to change. Agricultural innovations such as the heavy plow and three-field crop rotation made farming more efficient and productive, so fewer farm workers were needed–but thanks to the expanded and improved food supply, the population grew. As a result, more and more people were drawn to towns and cities. Meanwhile, the Crusades had expanded trade routes to the East and given Europeans a taste for imported goods such as wine, olive oil and luxurious textiles. As the commercial economy developed, port cities in particular thrived. By 1300, there were some 15 cities in Europe with a population of more than 50,000.

In these cities, a new era was born: the Renaissance. The Renaissance was a time of great intellectual and economic change, but it was not a complete “rebirth”: It had its roots in the world of the Middle Ages.

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Sixteenth-Century Travellers

J.B. James describes how travelling was an occupation that, although they believed it had a good effect on the character, most sixteenth-century Englishmen found singularly unenjoyable.

Travel, Francis Bacon wrote, was for the young a part of education; for the elder, a part of experience. In sixteenth-century England it was usually the sons of noblemen for whom travel was an educatory influence; and the knowledge they obtained varied from the dissolute adventures of Sir William Cecil’s eldest son, who gambled, drank, enjoyed the ‘vanities of love’ and brought shame upon his earnest father, to the noble course of Sir Philip Sidney, who went through Europe dispensing intelligent charm and making scholastic and diplomatic contacts. Some of these privileged few took the precaution of consulting an astrologer before they set off; others were showered with advice.

‘Seek the knowledge of the estate of every Prince, court and city that you pass through’, Sidney’s father had instructed him. ‘Address yourself to the company, to learn this of the elder sort, and yet not neglect the younger. By the one you shall gather learning, wisdom and knowledge, by the other acquaintance, languages and experience.’ Instructions to the young Earl of Rutland were similar:

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K ievan Rus' struggled on into the 13th century, but was decisively destroyed by the arrival of a new invader--the Mongols. In 1237 Batu Khan, a grandson of Jenghiz Khan, launched an invasion into Kievan Rus' from his capital on the lower Volga (at present-day Kazan). Over the next three years the Mongols (or Tatars) destroyed all of the major cities of Kievan Rus' with the exceptions of Novgorod and Pskov. The regional princes were not deposed, but they were forced to send regular tribute to the Tatar state, which became known as the Empire of the Golden Horde. Invasions of Russia were attempted during this period from the west as well, first by the Swedes (1240) and then by the Livonian Brothers of the Sword (1242), a regional branch of the fearsome Teutonic Knights. In the best news of the era for Russia, both were decisively defeated by the great warrior Alexander Nevsky, a prince of Novgorod who earned his surname from his victory over the Swedes on the Neva River.

For the next century or so, very little seems to have happened in Russia. In fact, given the tribute demanded by the Tatars, there wasn't much money available for building, campaigns, or anything else of that sort. With the Tatars off to the southwest, the northeastern cities gradually gained more influence--first Tver, and then, around the turn of the 14th century, Moscow. As a sign of the city's importance, the patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church was transferred to the city, making it the spiritual capital of Russia. By the latter part of the century, Moscow felt strong enough to challenge the Tatars directly, and in 1380 a Muscovite prince named Dmitri Donskoy had the audacity to attack them. His decisive victory at Kulikovo Field immediately made him a popular hero, though the Tatar retaliation two years later maintained their rule over the city. It wasn't until 1480, after another century had passed, that Moscow was strong enough to throw off Tatar rule for good. Its ruler at that time was Grand Duke Ivan III, better known as Ivan the Great. Ivan began by subjugating most of Moscow's rival cities, and by the time he tore up the charter binding it to Tatar tribute he was effectively in control of the entire country. However, it wasn't until the reign of his grandson, Ivan IV (the Terrible), that Russia became a unified state.

Ivan the Terrible succeeded his father Vasily III as Grand Duke of Moscow in 1533 at the age of three. His mother served as regent until she too died, when Ivan was eight. For the next eight years, the young Grand Duke endured a series of regents chosen from among the boyars (the nobility). Finally in 1547, he adopted the title of tsar and set about crushing the power of the boyars, reorganizing the military, and preparing to smite the Tatars. In 1552 he conquered and sacked Kazan, and in 1556 Astrakhan, having thus destroyed the lingering power of the Golden Horde. Ivan's Tatar campaigns opened vast new areas for Russian expansion, and it was during his reign that the conquest and colonization of Siberia began.

Believe it or not, Ivan was not supposed to have been very terrible at all during the early years of his reign. However, as he grew older his temper worsened, and by the 1560s he carried out a pretty horrific campaign against the boyars, confiscating their land and executing or exiling those who displeased him. In 1581, in a rage, he struck his son and heir Ivan with an iron rod, killing him.

When Ivan the Terrible died in 1584, he was succeeded by his son Fyodor, who was not exactly up to filling the shoes of an autocratic legend. Fyodor left most of the management of the kingdom to his brother-in-law, Boris Godunov, and it was not long before Godunov began to work to secure the succession for himself. In 1591, he murdered Fyodor's younger brother Dmitri in the ancient town of Uglich, a spot now marked by the magnificent Church of St. Demetrius on the Blood. When Fyodor died in 1598, Godunov was made tsar, but his rule was never accepted as entirely legitimate. Within a few years a pretender arose in Poland, claiming to be Dmitri, and in 1604 he invaded Russia. Godunov died suddenly the next year, and the "Time of Troubles" began. For the next eight years both the first and a second false Dmitri laid claims to the throne, both supported by invading Polish armies. Finally, in 1613, the Poles were ousted from Moscow, and the boyars unanimously elected Michael Romanov as Tsar. The Romanov dynasty was to rule Russia for the next 304 years, until the Russian Revolution brought an end to the Tsarist state.

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Kolomenskoye: Ancient settlement within modern Moscow

Photographs by William Brumfield

Among the many landmarks in Moscow’s system of spacious parks, none has greater historical significance than Kolomenskoye, picturesquely located on a high bluff overlooking the Moscow River in the southeastern part of the city. Encompassing some 390 hectares, the Kolomenskoye Park contains a number of sectors, but the centerpiece is the royal estate and its extraordinary 16th century Church of the Ascension, one of the Russian monuments on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

The first mention of the village of Kolomenskoye dates to 1336. Its name relates perhaps to settlers from the fortress town of Kolomna, located at the confluence of the Moscow and Oka Rivers some 65 miles southeast of Moscow. During the 14th century, Kolomenskoye became a favored retreat and hunting estate for the Muscovite grand prince and his retinue. Although little is known of its early appearance, the estate and village buildings were presumably built of logs in the traditional manner.

During the reign of Basil III (1479-1533) this bucolic site witnessed the construction of one of Russia’s most remarkable churches, undertaken by Basil in supplication to God for the birth of a male heir. Dedicated to the Ascension, this was the first of Muscovy's great tower churches that culminate with St. Basil’s on Red Square. More than 200 feet in height, the aptly named Ascension Church was among the tallest buildings in medieval Muscovy. The upper structure is especially notable for its distinctive steeply-pitched tower known as shatior, from a Turkic word meaning “tent".

Preliminary foundation work for the church apparently took place in the fall of 1528, and work on the main structure began the following year. The birth of a son, whom Basil and his second wife, Yelena Glinskaya (ca. 1510-1538), had so fervently sought, occurred on August 25, 1530.

With the birth of Ivan IV (subsequently known as the Terrible), the Ascension Church was transformed from an offering of supplication to one of gratitude.  In September 1532, the structure was consecrated by Metropolitan Daniil, spiritual leader of the Russian Orthodox Church. The ceremony was attended by Basil, his wife and their infant son.

How to get there

The Kolomensloye Park is located near the Kolomenskoye metro station (green line).

The following year Basil died of a sudden infection, and his wife became regent for the 3-year old Ivan. Her death almost five years later—perhaps of poison—foreshadowed the great turbulence during Ivan’s full reign as Tsar, from 1547 to 1584.    

The distinctive form of the Church of the Ascension, and in particular its "tent" roof over an octagonal tower, has led to comparisons with the design of Russian wooden churches, yet the notion of a prototype in wood has been disputed by many historians. Not only is there no evidence of wooden “tent” churches antedating the Ascension Church, but at least one predecessor in brick has survived: the Church of the Intercession built around 1510 within the grand prince’s compound at Aleksandrova Sloboda, north of Moscow.  

The imaginative leap of the bold design for the Ascension Church remains a historical enigma. The technical problems of balancing so much vertical weight had been solved by the Italian architect known in Russia as Bon Friazin in his design for the Bell Tower of Ivan the Great, the dominant feature of the Moscow Kremlin. Yet the plan of the Kremlin bell tower is simpler than that of the Ascension Church, with its cruciform base and complex tower.

Evidence suggests that another Italian master – possibly the one known as Petrok Malyi in written documents – guided the resolution of this difficult structural challenge. He was an experienced engineer, and the Ascension Church brilliantly displays the skills required by a fortification engineer as well as a designer of large sacred structures.

Its walls, which rest on massive brick vaults reinforced with iron tie rods, vary in thickness between 8-10 feet – considerably wider than needed for the weight of the "tent." The walls are further supported by the buttressing effect of the cruciform design. The raised terrace that girds the lower part of the church is reached by three staircases, each with a perpendicular turn that would have increased the visual drama of ritual processions.

The main block of the tower, edged with massive pilasters, leads upward to three tiers of pointed gables, or kokoshniki, after the pointed design of the traditional festive headdress for Russian women. This ornament is echoed at the top of the octagonal form of the next stage.  

Above the octagon, the "tent" ascends in a pyramidal shape of eight facets delineated by limestone ribs. The rise is accentuated by a rhomboid pattern, also in limestone, that narrows toward the top of each facet. This pattern was more clearly visible before the walls were whitewashed before the 1980 Olympic Games. The tower concludes with an octagonal lantern, a cupola, and a tall iron cross.

The vertical impression created by the Church of the Ascension was intensified by its steep perch above the Moscow River with a view of the princely domains. Its location in the middle of a compound of wooden structures, including a large palace of haphazard form (burned in 1571 and twice rebuilt), created an ensemble whose silhouette was undoubtedly richer than it is today, when the surviving masonry monuments are viewed in a splendid isolation.

Among those nearby monuments are the graceful bell tower and Church of St. George. The tower has been tentatively dated to the mid-16th century. With its conversion to use as a small church in the 17th century, the tower gained a wooden extension that served as a vestibule. In 1840-1842, the wooden additions were replaced by the diminutive Church of St. George, designed by the architect Evgraf Tyurin. Adjacent to the St. George ensemble is a simple but imposing brick structure built in the later 17th century as a water tower for the royal compound.

The entrance to the verdant mall overlooking the Moscow River passes through a structure known as the Front Gateway, built in 1671-1673. At the top is a spire and bell gable, whose bells were connected to a clock mechanism.

Beyond the gateway to the west is the festive church dedicated to the Kazan Icon of the Virgin, an icon especially venerated by the Romanovs. Built in the mid 17th century, the Kazan Church culminates in five blue cupolas decorated with golden stars. The main entrance is marked by flanking stairways that lead to the vestibule. Near the northwest corner is a bell tower in a highly ornamental style typical of the 17th century.

Indeed, the apogee of Kolomenskoye’s glory occurred in the mid-17th century, when Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich (1629-1676) built his grand, rambling wooden palace there in 1667-1668. The young Tsarevich Peter (later Peter the Great) was a frequent visitor; but when he established his new capital of St. Petersburg, the Kolomenskoye estate and palace fell into neglect.

Gothic fantasy at the edge of Moscow

In the early 1760s, Empress Catherine II (the Great) viewed the wooden palace as an unsustainable nuisance and had it razed. Smaller versions were later built, but none of lasting significance. A reconstruction of the palace now exists in another sector of the park.

Along the grassy park leading westward to the Back Gateway are a few examples of historic wooden architecture, including a log house originally built in 1702 near the northern settlement of Arkhangelsk for use by Tsar Peter I during an inspection visit. The house was reassembled at the newly founded Kolomenskoye Museum in 1934.

The Kolomenskoye sector is just one of the treasures to be found at the park, which also includes the monumental Church of the Decapitation of John the Baptist at Dyakovo. The Kolomenskoye Park and Museum deserve many visits, both for the historical monuments and for the natural setting, beautiful in any season of the year.

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