1. Introduction

In 1518 the Venetian editor Niccolò detto Zopino published the first edition of an anonymous Holy Land guidebook, the Viaggio da Venetia al Sancto Sepolchro et al Monte Sinai (Voyage from Venice to the Holy Sepulcher and to Mount Sinai), which was destined to be reprinted in over sixty editions until the final version of 1800.Footnote ¹ Although this printed book quickly became the most popular Holy Land guidebook in Renaissance Italy, modern scholars have shown little interest in its historical significance because of its anonymity, persistent confusion about its sources and precedents, and a bias against apparent unoriginality. By exploring the connections of the Viaggio da Venetia to related fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscript copies of Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s Libro d’Oltramare (1346–50), this article will reevaluate the current understanding of the genre of the illustrated guidebook written in the vernacular.Footnote ² The question of original authorship emerges as central to the understanding, not only of the multigenerational production of the anonymous Viaggio da Venetia, but also to the inception of the genre in the fourteenth century.

The genre of Holy Land pilgrimage accounts before the adoption of the vernacular in the fourteenth century was characterized by the repeated copying of previous Latin-language texts, which often resulted in accretive works of unknown or uncertain authorship. The origins of the genre ultimately lie in the fourth century, when textual accounts were first created by Christian pilgrims with the intent of allowing readers to visualize physical settings in relation to the corresponding narrative of the Bible.Footnote ³ The earliest manuscript accounts have been compiled and translated by John Wilkinson, who counted only nineteen from the fourth until the eleventh century.Footnote ⁴ After the Latin conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, these numbers dramatically changed. With a sudden influx of pilgrims from all of Europe, many new accounts appeared, which provide detailed descriptions of the geography and architecture of Palestine, Syria, and Egypt.Footnote ⁵ These manuscript accounts continued to be copied throughout the early modern period and were even printed, beginning in the fifteenth century.Footnote ⁶ In other words, although antecedent, the earlier genre continued to thrive, while also serving to highlight the novelty and modernity of the new works. The novel features of these new works, which constitute a new genre, include the adoption of the vernacular, the narrativization of the journey as told from the first-person perspective, detailed descriptions resulting from eyewitness encounters rather than from copying previous accounts, and (often but not always) the incorporation from the outset of pictorial illustrations. The remarkable number of printed books that describe pilgrimages to the Holy Land are catalogued in Reinhold Röhricht’s Bibliotheca Geographica Palaestinae (Geographical Library of Palestine) of 1890. Röhricht’s comprehensive catalogue surveys 1,599 accounts produced prior to the nineteenth century, the majority of which were created in the early modern period.Footnote ⁷

The adoption of printing in the fifteenth century is an important factor in the broader dissemination and widespread appeal of early modern Holy Land guidebooks. Yet printing should not necessarily be credited as the primary catalyst in the formation of the new genre. A look to the fourteenth century, and particularly Franciscan culture, will help to clarify the motivations for these changes. This article traces the genesis of the Viaggio da Venetia to the Franciscan Fra Niccolò da Poggibonsi (fl. 1346–50), an intrepid and remarkably ambitious friar who braved shipwreck, pirate attack, and more than one abduction in order to make the spiritually salutary experience of pilgrimage available for those too poor or weak to make the physical journey.Footnote ⁸ In the book that describes his journey of 1346–50 there are innovations characteristic of Franciscan culture, beyond the adoption of the vernacular. Despite a longstanding recognition among Franciscan scholars of the importance of the Libro d’Oltramare — the first pilgrimage guidebook written in the vernacular — its full significance has yet to be explored: as will be seen, this results from both the loss of the illustrated manuscript versions of the book and the failure to understand the connections of the original manuscript version to the printed books inspired by it. Ironically, the author’s name became disconnected from the text as the book’s popularity exploded in print, in the form of the Viaggio da Venetia. Although readers of the printed books were unaware of the author’s identity, Fra Niccolò’s function as an author certainly exceeds the limits of his fourteenth-century text.

When the origins of the Viaggio da Venetia are resituated in the context of the fourteenth century, an assertive individuality emerges from the original text that defied the generic structures of the genre of pilgrimage accounts — characteristics typical of the contemporary works of other vernacular authors. The originality of Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s project in the fourteenth century continued to inform the popularity and authenticity of his text, both in itself and as an inspiration for other accounts. By exploring the connections of the Viaggio da Venetia to the original fourteenth-century manuscript versions of Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s pilgrimage account, this article hopes to restore to the Franciscan friar his originary status in relation to the genre, while also acknowledging that his historical identity was not the essential factor shaping its development, in a way that reflects the necessity and flexibility of the author function in the early modern period.

2. Fra Noe’s Viaggio da Venetia (1518–1800)

The innovativeness of the author of the Viaggio da Venetia and the connections of the book to Franciscan culture have been obscured by persistent confusion regarding its origins. The printed versions of Fra Niccolò’s account have consistently been dismissed as derivative, generally believed to have been created in the late fifteenth century by some unknown author from other printed guidebooks, rather than from earlier manuscript sources. One scholar, for instance, described the first printed edition as “not a masterpiece of originality.”Footnote ⁹ The book has particularly been overshadowed by the fame of one of the earliest printed Holy Land guidebooks, the Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam (Voyage to the Holy Land), first published in Mainz in 1486. In 1483 the noble author of the Peregrinatio, Bernhard von Breydenbach (1440–97), took an artist, Erhard Reuwich, on his journey, in order to create pictorial illustrations that would complement his description of the Holy Land. Reuwich’s depiction of Syria, Egypt, and Palestine in a single foldout panorama has been hailed in the modern literature as the first eyewitness illustration of the Holy Land. The woodcut illustrations of the Viaggio da Venetia, in contrast, have been dismissed as works of artistic fantasy, lacking the topographic accuracy that is so strikingly innovative in the Peregrinatio.Footnote ¹⁰ The perceived inferiority of the various editions of the Viaggio da Venetia vis-à-vis the Peregrinatio was the basis of the common assumption that its text was not an original creation, but instead a debased version of Breydenbach’s account. Hugh William Davies even went so far as to hypothesize that the anonymous author met Breydenbach during the latter’s journey of 1483–84.Footnote ¹¹ More generally, Breydenbach’s printed guidebook has been regarded as the inaugural text for the entire genre of the illustrated guidebook, a status that will be reconsidered through an examination of the textual origins of the Viaggio da Venetia.Footnote ¹²

Despite the pervasive assumption of a derivative relation between the 1486 Peregrinatio and the Viaggio da Venetia, neither the text of the book nor its woodcut illustrations bear any resemblance to Breydenbach’s Peregrinatio, the former work incorporating dozens of cities and buildings not found in the latter. The Viaggio includes descriptions and individual illustrations of remote sanctuaries, like the church at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, for instance, that are not found in the Peregrinatio. Likewise, the earliest printed version of the book, the Viazo da Venesia al Sancto Iherusalem, published in Bologna in 1500, like the later Venetian editions includes descriptions and illustrations of animals such as the elephant (figs. 1–2), also not found in the Peregrinatio.Footnote ¹³ The issue is further confused by the fact that several illustrations not in the 1500 Viazo but added to the 1518 Viaggio and included in every later edition closely resemble the illustrations of Corfu, Modon, Crete, and Rhodes first published in the Peregrinatio. Unlike the panoramas in the Peregrinatio, the same images in the Viaggio da Venetia have been reduced to diminutive images presented across two pages, approximately one-sixth the size of Reuwich’s panoramas.Footnote ¹⁴ Moreover, the illustrations of Jerusalem, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and the Temple of Solomon were replaced by new illustrations in the 1518 Viaggio drawing on Reuwich’s woodcut designs.Footnote ¹⁵ Otherwise, the illustrations of the 1518 Viaggio have never been attributed to a known designer, and the woodcut illustrations of the 1500 edition remain attributed to the fanciful artistry of a certain Piero Ciza, whose name is inscribed in the frame of the title page of that edition.Footnote ¹⁶

Figure 1. The elephant, Viazo da Venesia al Sancto Iherusalem. Bologna, 1500. Image from Viazo da Venesia al Sancto Iherusalem (Rome: Edizioni dell’Elefante, 1972).

Figure 2. The elephant, Viaggio da Venetia al Santo Sepolcro et al Monte Sinai. Venice, 1606. Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (88–B1091).

The question of the authorship of the Viaggio da Venetia seems to be resolved when we turn to the seventeenth-century editions, which were printed under the name of a certain Franciscan friar, referred to as “the reverend Fra Noe of the order of Saint Francis.” The first known edition with this attribution was published in 1600 in Treviso.Footnote ¹⁷ A Servite pilgrim with a similar name, Fra Noe Bianco, or Bianchi (d. 1568), made an account of his journey of 1527: the resulting guidebook, first published in the second half of the sixteenth century, bears no resemblance to the Viaggio da Venetia.Footnote ¹⁸ Although studies as recent as 1994 and 2007 continue to cite Noe Biancho or Bianchi as the author of the Viaggio da Venetia, Titus Tobler had already dismissed this attribution as a historical impossibility in the nineteenth century.Footnote ¹⁹ Despite this, many libraries and rare book collections continue to catalogue the various editions of the Viaggio da Venetia under the name of Noe Bianchi. It is not known whether the seventeenth-century editors formulated the name Fra Noe because they believed this Servite pilgrim had originally composed the Viaggio, or whether they simply wished readers to believe this.Footnote ²⁰ It is important to note that this Fra Noe is consistently identified as Franciscan in the seventeenth-century editions of the Viaggio. This identification suggests a possible awareness of the author’s original identity, or, more likely, the fictive attribution acknowledges the unique role of the Franciscans as authorities regarding indulgences and pilgrimage in the Holy Land.

Amid the persistent confusion about both the author of the text and the designer(s) of the woodcut illustrations of the Viaggio da Venetia, an intriguing description of the author maintained at the very beginning of every edition, including that of 1500, has been overlooked: “This voyage of the holiest Sepulcher of our lord Jesus Christ a worthy man wrote, who wanted to go with the help and willingness of the omnipotent God. And deliberately leaving from Venice, he wanted to write and at the same time draw all of the lands, ports, cities, [and] villages, from one place to the next through sea and through land. And at the same time he was drawing the churches and holy places that he found through all of his journey.”Footnote ²¹ This statement indicates that the original author produced the description of the pilgrimage from Venice to Jerusalem and the drawings of the buildings and cities he encountered simultaneously. This statement, like many anecdotes found in the first person throughout the book, has been ignored as fictive by modern scholars.Footnote ²² Yet it is possible that the editors of the first editions of the Viaggio da Venetia believed that a single pilgrim had created both the text of the guidebook and its illustrations, even if they did not know his name.

3. Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s Libro d’Oltramare (1346–50)

In the early twentieth century, a scholar of Franciscan literature recognized that the text of the 1500 Viazo, like the 1518 Viaggio and subsequent editions, was in fact a version of the first Holy Land guidebook written in the vernacular, the fourteenth-century Libro d’Oltramare written by the Franciscan Fra Niccolò da Poggibonsi. Although Girolamo Golubovich made the assertion in his encyclopedic survey of Franciscan literature, many historians of printed books have remained unaware of it.Footnote ²³ Niccolò spent four years traveling from Venice to Jerusalem, Damascus, Cairo, and Alexandria, via Cyprus, and his first-person account of his travels was copied many times after his return to Tuscany in 1350.Footnote ²⁴ I have found four illustrated manuscript versions of Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s Libro d’Oltramare dating from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which suggest not only that the basis of the woodcut illustrations were these previous manuscript drawings, but also that the original creator of the illustrations may have been Niccolò da Poggibonsi himself. Compare, for instance, examples of the drawings of the elephant from two of these manuscripts with the same woodcut illustrations in both the 1500 Viazo and the 1606 Viaggio (figs. 1– 4).Footnote ²⁵ In the narrative of Niccolò’s journey, the detailed description of the elephant is found toward the end, in his eyewitness account of several exotic animals that he saw in Cairo.Footnote ²⁶

Figure 3. The elephant, BNCF II. IV. 101, fol. 41^r. Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence. By kind permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali della Repubblica Italiana / Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze.

Figure 4. The elephant, NYPL Spencer 62, fol. 92^r. Spencer Collection, The New York Public Library; Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

The detailed descriptiveness applied to all things encountered on his extraordinarily long journey — animals, people, buildings, and cities — combined with the friar’s emphasis on his personal experiences, always recounted in the first person, are unique features of the Libro d’Oltramare, without precedent in the Latin guidebooks of previous centuries. The originality of the eyewitness account and the author’s expressed intent to accurately record all things encountered on the journey had persuaded Golubovich to believe that the lost autograph copy of the book must have contained drawings created by Niccolò da Poggibonsi during his journey. Without further evidence Golubovich was forced to conclude that “if the manuscripts with drawings had existed they were now lost.”Footnote ²⁷ Golubovich’s otherwise unsubstantiated hypothesis was easily refuted by Bellarmino Bagatti, who maintained in the introduction to the 1945 English edition that “it remains to be proved that Niccolò over and above his descriptions of the places, also made drawings of the places to adorn his book.”Footnote ²⁸

With the rediscovery of the illustrated versions of the guidebook, Bagatti’s refutation of Golubovich no longer holds. Their rediscovery also allows us to understand the historical significance of a German manuscript version of the same guidebook. In 1984, C. D. Cossar discovered that a fully illustrated, fifteenth-century German pilgrimage guidebook in the British Library was in fact a translation of the Libro d’Oltramare (BL Egerton 1900).Footnote ²⁹ The manuscript is dated by the British Library to around 1467: it was evidently created for another pilgrim, Gabriel Muffel, a patrician of Nuremberg who is said to have made his journey in 1465.Footnote ³⁰ Believing that no other illustrated versions had been made, Cossar argued that the German manuscript was the basis for the 1500 Viazo. Footnote ³¹ BL Egerton 1900 postdates at least two of the newly found Italian illustrated versions (BNCF II. IV. 101 and BNCF Panc. 78); its illustrations closely correspond to the precedents in those earlier manuscripts. The more likely scenario is that the Italian illustrated manuscripts were the basis of both BL Egerton 1900 and the 1500 Viazo.

BL Egerton 1900 omits any mention of Niccolò da Poggibonsi; three of the four Italian illustrated versions, on the other hand, retain the author name. It seems remarkable that all of these manuscripts escaped the notice of modern scholars for so long. Alberto Bacchi della Lega created the first modern version of the text of Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s guidebook in 1881, drawing on ten manuscripts in Florence. His sources included three of these illustrated versions — BNCF II. IV. 101, BNCF Panc. 78, and BNCF Panc. 79 of the Biblioteca Nazionale of Florence — but nowhere within the introduction or notes of his two-volume transcription are the drawings that he must have seen mentioned.Footnote ³² This curious omission accounts for why scholars have assumed that all ten manuscripts were unillustrated.Footnote ³³ Indeed, when the first English translation of the Libro d’Oltramare was produced in 1945, T. Bellorini and Eugene Hoade never consulted all of these manuscripts, instead primarily relying on an unillustrated copy in the Library of St. Saviour’s in Jerusalem, which was itself a copy of another manuscript in Perugia.Footnote ³⁴

One of these illustrated manuscripts was not known to Bacchi della Lega or Bellorini: Ms. 62 of the Spencer Collection of the New York Public Library has until now been misidentified as the Viaggio of Fra Noe or Noe Bianchi, because of its resemblance to the 1500 Viazo.Footnote ³⁵ This manuscript lacks an author name and had never been identified as a copy of Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s fourteenth-century guidebook. NYPL Spencer 62 does not contain a colophon, but its script closely relates to a manuscript dated to 1451.Footnote ³⁶ Only two of the illustrated versions of Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s guidebook can be precisely dated according to the inscriptions of their copyists: BNCF Panc. 78 (to 1453) and BNCF Panc. 79 (to 1481).Footnote ³⁷ BNCF II. IV. 101 appears to be the oldest of the surviving manuscripts, but like NYPL Spencer 62 it does not contain a colophon indicating its date of creation or the identity of the scribe. The end of BNCF II. IV. 101 contains various appendices (all in the same hand) including illustrations of different alphabets and an account of the indulgences of the churches of Rome, the latter also found in NYPL Spencer 62.Footnote ³⁸

Although all of the illustrated copies were produced on paper, unlike the later manuscript copies the text and drawings of BNCF II. IV. 101 were produced by the same hand, in the same pen without color wash.Footnote ³⁹ The script is idiosyncratic and at times almost illegible, formatted into two columns with most drawings tightly fitted within the width of a single column. In contrast, the three later illustrated manuscript copies are formatted into one block of ruled text, executed in a clear script, with large spaces left for an illuminator to add illustrations in both pen and color wash. Underneath some of the drawings of BNCF Panc. 79 it is still possible to see the faint handwriting indicating what illustration the artist should insert.Footnote ⁴⁰ In contrast, the drawings of BNCF II. IV. 101 are tightly embedded within the text and composed of shaky lines and awkward forms indicating the work of an amateur artist.

The unique features of BNCF II. IV. 101 present the possibility that it may be either the original version of the guidebook, or an immediate copy of it. If BNCF II. IV. 101 was indeed produced by Niccolò da Poggibonsi himself after his return to Italy in 1350, then this would confirm the statement in the printed versions of the guidebook — first appearing in the 1500 Viazo — that asserts that the author simultaneously described and drew the holy sites during his journey to Jerusalem. A revealing statement made toward the end of the Libro d’Oltramare seems to confirm Niccolò’s intent to record his experiences firsthand: “I have recounted the places of the monastery [of St. Catherine] as briefly as I could but of this writing I must be forgiven, because the things that one cannot so briefly describe and the other places [which I have already described] can provide some spiritual delight; and rather I have tired myself writing this, in order that one can better understand, [and so] I have represented [these places] as close as to how they are; although that I thought in my heart and decided in my mind to never leave from the place until I had seen everything as you find written. And in order to not fail I wrote day by day on a pair of gessoed tablets that I carried by my side.”Footnote ⁴¹ Golubovich argued that this statement reveals that “Niccolò had supplied his manuscript with pen drawings,” and it is possible that BNCF II. IV. 101 was the autograph manuscript that Golubovich believed to have been lost.Footnote ⁴²

Several factors indicate that BNCF II. IV. 101 was produced in the Florentine orbit. By 1670 the manuscript was in the Strozzi Library in Florence, when a new binding and introduction were added.Footnote ⁴³ Niccolò’s hometown of Poggibonsi, where a Franciscan establishment had existed since the thirteenth century, is a short distance from Florence; although nothing is known of the date or location of his death, it seems that his guidebook must have remained in Tuscany.Footnote ⁴⁴ The majority of the unillustrated copies were produced in Florence in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and we also know for certain that BNCF Panc. 78 and BNCF Panc. 79 were copied in Florence in the mid-fifteenth century. The scribe of BNCF Panc. 78 writes that he copied “from the original itself” in 1453, suggesting that his source — hypothetically BNCF II. IV. 101 — was known in the fifteenth century as the autograph copy.Footnote ⁴⁵ The scribe of BNCF Panc. 79, working in 1481, identified himself as “a priest of Sant’Ambrogio of Florence,” indicating that he was connected to the Benedictine church of Sant’Ambrogio in Florence.Footnote ⁴⁶

Both BNCF Panc. 78 and BNCF Panc. 79 are missing several of their original folios, so that it is difficult to definitively establish their relation. While the surviving parts of both dated copies closely correspond to the text and illustrations of BNCF II. IV. 101, both copies omit many of the illustrations in the latter part of the book describing the journey in Syria and Egypt. The drawings that are omitted — including the cities of Damascus, Alexandria, and Cairo, and the plants and animals of Egypt — are illustrated in BNCF. II. VI. 101, NYPL Spencer 62, BL Egerton 1900, the 1500 Viazo, and the 1518 Viaggio da Venetia. For this and other reasons it seems that BNCF Panc. 79 was an immediate copy of BNCF Panc. 78, while both BNCF Panc. 78 and NYPL Spencer 62 were apparently directly copied from BNCF II. IV. 101, or intermediary copies (fig. 5). BNCF Panc. 79 also includes several figural illustrations that are not found in other illustrated copies or printed versions, including a depiction at fol. 73^v of Niccolò’s interpreter being abducted by “Saracens” in the Arabian desert (fig. 6).Footnote ⁴⁷

Figure 5. Hypothetical relations of the illustrated versions of Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s Holy Land guidebook (author).

Figure 6. Niccolò’s interpreter is abducted by Saracens, BNCF Panc. 79, fol. 73^v. Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence. By kind permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali della Repubblica Italiana / Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze.

Little is known about NYPL Spencer 62, since there is no copyist name, date, or location indicated. The original preface, written in the first person and in which Niccolò da Poggibonsi explains when and why he made his four-year journey through the Holy Land — found in BNCF II. IV. 101 and BNCF Panc. 78 — has been replaced in NYPL Spencer 62 with a vague introduction to the voyage to the Holy Land. Although the author’s name has been omitted, this introduction, unlike those of the three other illustrated copies, includes a reference to the unnamed pilgrim-author as “drawing every place as best one can.”Footnote ⁴⁸ NYPL Spencer 62 exhibits other unique features, including appendices on Rome and Fiesole (fols. 129^v–136^v), the latter suggesting that the manuscript was probably also produced in Florence. The list of the pilgrimage sites in Rome is accompanied by drawings of St. Peter’s, Castel Sant’Angelo, and the city of Rome (fols. 130^v, 133^r, 134^v). This is followed by a unique account of the indulgences gained from visiting certain places in Fiesole, illustrated by a double-folio drawing of that Florentine town (fols. 135^v–136^r).Footnote ⁴⁹ Special mention is made of the cathedral dedicated to San Romolo in Fiesole; perhaps the scribe was connected to the Benedictine abbey there.Footnote ⁵⁰

Unlike NYPL Spencer 62, BL Egerton 1900, and the 1500 Viazo, the three illustrated Italian manuscripts in the Biblioteca Nazionale of Florence (BNCF II. IV. 101, BNCF Panc. 78, and BNCF Panc. 79), like the majority of the unillustrated fifteenth- and sixteenth-century copies of Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s guidebook, all retain the author’s name. These manuscripts also retain an acrostic within the text that identifies Niccolò as the author. Niccolò explains that he created this acrostic, formed out of the initial letters of each chapter, beginning at the description of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, so that no one else could claim to have written his book.Footnote ⁵¹ A transcription of this particular passage from BNCF II. IV. 101, NYPL Spencer 62, the 1500 Viazo, and the 1518 Viaggio appears in Appendix 2, not only as an example of how the author’s name has been omitted in the later versions, but also in order to compare the different dialects employed in each. Both BNCF II. IV. 101 and NYPL Spencer 62 employ the Tuscan dialect, albeit one of the fourteenth and one of the fifteenth century, while the 1500 Viazo employs a Bolognese dialect, which was then re-Tuscanized for the 1518 Viaggio.

4. The Viazo da Venesia al Sancto Iherusalem (1500)

Almost every drawing found in the manuscript versions of the Libro d’Oltramare was transformed into a woodcut illustration in the 1500 Viazo. With the exception of the new illustrations discussed above, the woodcuts in the 1518 Viaggio were based upon those of the 1500 Viazo. Compare, for instance, the illustrations of Nazareth (figs. 7– 10) as well as the church of Mount Sion (figs. 11– 13) in BNCF II. IV. 101, BNCF Panc. 79, NYPL Spencer 62, the 1500 Viazo, and the 1606 edition of the Viaggio. The schemata for many of the illustrations that were established in the manuscript versions were replicated in the over sixty editions of the Viaggio da Venetia, including in the last edition of 1800.Footnote ⁵²

Figure 7. Nazareth (lower left) and fountain of the archangel Gabriel (lower right), BNCF II. IV. 101, fol. 28^r. Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence. By kind permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali della Repubblica Italiana / Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze.

Figure 8. Nazareth, NYPL Spencer 62, fol. 61^v. Spencer Collection, The New York Public Library; Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

Figure 9. Nazareth, Viazo da Venesia al Sancto Iherusalem. Bologna, 1500. Image from Viazo da Venesia al Sancto Iherusalem (Rome: Edizioni dell’Elefante, 1972).

Figure 10. Nazareth, Viaggio da Venetia al Sanco Sepolcro et al Monte Sinai. Venice, 1606. Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (88–B1091).

Figure 11. The church of Mount Sion, BNCF Panc. 79, fol. 22^r. Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence. By kind permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali della Repubblica Italiana / Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze.

Figure 12. The church of Mount Sion, Viazo da Venesia al Sancto Iherusalem. Bologna, 1500. Image from Viazo da Venesia al Sancto Iherusalem (Rome: Edizioni dell’Elefante, 1972).

Figure 13. The church of Mount Sion, Viaggio da Venetia al Santo Sepolcro et al Monte Sinai. Venice, 1606. Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (88–B1091).

But how was a series of Tuscan manuscripts transformed into an anonymous printed book in Bologna in the first place? All four of the Italian illustrated copies were written in the Tuscan vernacular. The text of the 1500 Viazo is, on the other hand, a transcription of the guidebook into the Italian vernacular of late fifteenth-century Bologna. The only additional text is found at the very end: a Latin letter written by a certain Giovanni Cola (Iohanne Cola) who dedicates the book to Giberto Pio, Prince of Carpi (1455–1500).Footnote ⁵³ Giberto is less famous as a patron of art and more as a man of arms, while his cousin, Alberto Pio III (1475–1531), is better known for his involvement in the courtly culture of the Estes at Ferrara.Footnote ⁵⁴ The dedicatory letter concludes with the name of the publisher, Giustiniano da Rubiera (fl. 1495–1534), and the date of publication: 6 March 1500.Footnote ⁵⁵ Giberto had been captain of Bologna on behalf of the Bentivoglio family since 1484, but never spent much time in the city, traveling frequently to Mantua, Venice, Milan, and Ferrara. At the time of the Viazo’s publication, Giberto was fighting on behalf of the Sforzas, and by May the war had concluded unfavorably for the prince, who was forced to sell Carpi to Ercole d’Este (1431–1505) in September. By the end of the month Giberto had died at Bologna of some unknown illness.Footnote ⁵⁶ Giovanni Cola (fl. ca. 1500) was the financer of the project to transform Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s guidebook into a printed book, although little is known of him.Footnote ⁵⁷

The publication of the Viazo was apparently beset with difficulties, besides the death of Giberto Pio in 1500. A year later, Giustiniano da Rubiera was forced to turn over all of his copies of the Viazo to Giovanni Cola for some unknown reason. As a result, Giustiniano did not receive all of the hoped-for profits, leading to his near financial ruin.Footnote ⁵⁸ Interestingly, the historical moment when the original author’s name was permanently removed from the text coincided with a new perception of that text as property to be owned and from which to derive financial gain. The convenient reproducibility offered by printing was undoubtedly a factor. Indeed, the punitive and possessive nature of Giovanni’s action could be considered as symptomatic of a new conception of the value of books and authorship in the sixteenth century.Footnote ⁵⁹ Perhaps Giovanni Cola thought that his physical appropriation of the printed editions of the Viazo in some way let him also claim authorial rights. Despite the physical possession of the printed books, Giovanni was in some ways destined to fail, as authorial rights could not be similarly physically possessed. In all subsequent editions published in Venice, his name was absent. Niccolò da Poggibonsi had similarly failed to permanently conjoin his name to the book that he created, despite the acrostic he wove into it and the numerous passages asserting that he alone had created the text. These personalized elements were all too easily excised, as occurred with the creation of NYPL Spencer 62 and BL Egerton 1900. Indeed, Giovanni Cola may have been aware of the original author of the manuscript sources for the Viazo, and knowingly suppressed his identity in order to take possession of the book and potential profits.

After the printing of the Viazo in 1500, two separate traditions of Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s Holy Land guidebook diverged, developing on independent trajectories: the anonymous printed versions that were illustrated and produced in the Veneto, and the unillustrated manuscript copies that continued to be produced in the sixteenth century in Tuscany. A similar disjunction exists in the modern literature, where the two traditions are studied separately. This is best demonstrated by the publication in 2007 of an undated edition of the Viaggio da Venetia al Sancto Sepulchro et al Monte Sinai.Footnote ⁶⁰ The introduction notes that the book was published around 1600 in Venice and that the original author was the Servite Noe Bianco. After a transcription of the Viaggio’s text accompanied by reproductions of the original woodcut illustrations, a final note on the identity of the author states that the first edition of the book was published in 1518. The editors were apparently not aware of the 1500 Viazo published in Bologna, and also mistakenly believed that the Servite Noe Bianco had made his journey early in the sixteenth century. This modern edition is of great value, since it makes more widely available the text and illustrations of one of the later editions of the Viaggio da Venetia; unfortunately, it will no doubt also contribute to the ongoing confusion about the authorship and historical origins of the book.

5. The German Translation

A different problem, one of interpretation rather than attribution, is evident in another study published in 2007, in which the 1533 edition of the Viaggio da Venetia is translated into French with extensive explanatory notes and a historical introduction by Jean-Luc Nardone and Jacqueline Malherbe-Galy.Footnote ⁶¹ Unlike the Italian publishers of the undated edition, Nardone and Malherbe-Galy were aware of both the existence of the 1500 Viazo and its relation to Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s Libro d’Oltramare. Their philological analysis was based upon the assumption that the 1500 Viazo was a translation of the German manuscript (BL Egerton 1900) into Italian, made in Bologna by Giovanni Cola. Their careful study of the relations between the texts of the Libro d’Oltramare, the illustrated German translation, the 1500 Viazo, and the 1533 edition of the Viaggio da Venetia can now facilitate comparison with the texts of the previously unknown illustrated manuscripts.

Cossar, who identified BL Egerton 1900 as a version of Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s Libro d’Oltramare, proposed the possibility that the text of the 1500 Viazo was a translation of the German manuscript back into Italian, based on the evidence that its manuscript drawings closely resembles the woodcuts of the Viazo and that both versions of Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s guidebook are anonymous.Footnote ⁶² After a detailed philological analysis, Cossar was forced to conclude that this was not likely, but that instead a now-lost account of Muffel’s journey, also in German, must have been the basis of the text of the 1500 Viazo.Footnote ⁶³ NYPL Spencer 62 is illustrated with the same drawings and is also an anonymous copy, unlike BNCF II. IV. 101, BNCF Panc. 78, and BNCF Panc. 79. Many of the textual variations between the manuscripts of the Libro d’Oltramare and the Viazo that Nardone and Malherbe-Galy ascribe to the intervening role of the German translation can instead be accounted for by variations in NYPL Spencer 62.

Many of the textual variations evident in BL Egerton 1900 are also found in NYPL Spencer 62, which was not known to Nardone and Malherbe-Galy. For instance, in BNCF II. IV. 101 and the unillustrated copies of the Libro d’Oltramare, Jerusalem is said to have been besieged for seven years by Vespasian by six legions of cavalry, while NYPL Spencer 62 refers to seven legions of men (sette legioni de populo), as does BL Egerton 1900 and the 1500 Viazo (sette lege di populo).Footnote ⁶⁴ While Malherbe-Galy argued that the change in terminology in the 1500 Viazo resulted from the modifications made to the German version, it is clear that the variation could also have resulted from a common relation to NYPL Spencer 62.Footnote ⁶⁵ There are also some important variations among all of the illustrated versions that more directly suggest that NYPL Spencer 62, rather than BL Egerton 1900, may have been the link between BNCF II. IV. 101 and the 1500 Viazo. For instance, in the description of the place where the twelve apostles made the Credo in Deum, the text of BNCF II. IV. 101 and the unillustrated copies describe the place as a sloping descent with a great stairway (scala). In NYPL Spencer 62 the same place is described as a descent into un soclo, apparently a confusion of stairway (scala) and ditch (solco).Footnote ⁶⁶ In the 1500 Viazo this becomes a ditch (uno solco).Footnote ⁶⁷ BL Egerton 1900 omits this description. Likewise, in the description of the four columns that bewail the death of Christ in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, a similar variant in the text of the 1500 Viazo perhaps resulted from a misreading of NYPL Spencer 62. While BL Egerton 1900, BNCF II. IV. 101, and the unillustrated copies describe a door with an arched vault (una porta ad arco volta), the 1500 Viazo strangely refers to una messa. In NYPL Spencer 62 we find that the arched door is described as a porta messa in volta, perhaps misread as una messa.Footnote ⁶⁸

Despite these indications, there remains a curious reference in the 1500 Viazo not found in any of the surviving Italian manuscript copies, including NYPL Spencer 62, which seems to directly connect to BL Egerton 1900. In the description of the Dalmatian port of Zara (Zadar in modern-day Croatia), Giovanni Cola adds that the city is like Passau on the Danube and Nile (como Pastania nel Danubio el Nillo); in BL Egerton 1900 the city is compared to Passau on the Danube and Inn, while in NYPL Spencer 62 there is no such comparison.Footnote ⁶⁹ Moreover, there are other additions to the description of Zara in the 1500 Viazo that have no precedent in BL Egerton 1900.Footnote ⁷⁰ If this was not a common comparison, then perhaps Giovanni Cola had multiple manuscript sources when he created the Viazo, including BL Egerton 1900 and NYPL Spencer 62.Footnote ⁷¹

When we turn to the woodcut illustrations in the 1500 Viazo, we can likewise see that the drawings in BL Egerton 1900 could not have been the only source for Piero Ciza. One example is the Porta Aurea (Golden Gate): in all four illustrated Italian manuscripts, the structure is represented in frontal elevation as a square, crenellated building with two arched entryways and a window between (figs. 14– 17). The same illustration in BL Egerton 1900 — still evident as an underpainting — has been painted over as a pink building with crumbling walls and narrow windows.Footnote ⁷² Another example is the illustration of the Templum Salamonis (Temple or Palace of Solomon) and Templum Domini (Temple of the Lord), together forming the illustration of the Tempio di Salamone (Temple of Solomon): in BNCF II. IV. 101 (fig. 18), BNCF Panc. 78, BNCF Panc. 79, NYPL Spencer 62 (fig. 19), the 1500 Viazo (fig. 20), and the 1518 Viaggio these two buildings are represented in a single illustration.Footnote ⁷³ In BL Egerton 1900, however, the illustration is separated into two independent drawings located back-to-back on a folio.Footnote ⁷⁴ These are just two examples of the variations between the illustrations of BL Egerton 1900 and the 1500 Viazo that suggest that the illustrated Italian versions of the Libro d’Oltramare were probably the source for the woodcuts of the printed book, rather than the German translation.

Figure 14. Golden Gate, BNCF II. IV. 101, fol. 20^r. Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence. By kind permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali della Repubblica Italiana / Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze.

Figure 15. Golden Gate, BNCF Panc. 78, fol. 8^v. Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence. By kind permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali della Repubblica Italiana / Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze.

Figure 16. The Golden Gate, Viazo da Venesia al Sancto Iherusalem. Bologna, 1500. Image from Viazo da Venesia al Sancto Iherusalem (Rome: Edizioni dell’Elefante, 1972).

Figure 17. Golden Gate, Viaggio da Venetia al Santo Sepolcro et al Monte Sinai. Venice, 1606. Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (88–B1091).

Figure 18. Templum Salamonis Templum Domini, BNCF II. IV. 101, fol. 20^v. Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence. By kind permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali della Repubblica Italiana / Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze.

Figure 19. Templum Salamonis Templum Domini, NYPL Spencer 62, fol. 42^r. Spencer Collection, The New York Public Library; Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

Figure 20. Templum Salamonis Templum Domini, Viazo da Venesia al Sancto Iherusalem. Bologna, 1500. Image from Viazo da Venesia al Sancto Iherusalem (Rome: Edizioni dell’Elefante, 1972).

6. Later Editions of the Viaggio da Venetia

Although the format of the guidebook was entirely reconceived for the 1518 edition printed in Venice, many of the illustrations continued to be connected to the woodcut illustrations of the 1500 Viazo. The scale and conception of the illustrations have been so modified that this relation is not immediately evident. While the woodcut illustrations of the 1500 Viazo employed the same conventions of pictorial representation first established in the fourteenth-century version (BNCF II. IV. 101), one-point perspective, shading, and a continuous background landscape have been added to many of the illustrations of the 1518 Viaggio (see figs. 7–13).Footnote ⁷⁵ While the name of the illustrator of the 1500 Viazo, Piero Ciza, is known, no such name is found in the 1518 edition and none of the woodcuts have signatures.Footnote ⁷⁶ The design of the 1518 edition has never been attributed to a known artist.Footnote ⁷⁷ Whoever the designer of the 1518 Viaggio may have been, it is only in the third edition of the book, produced in 1520 by a new publisher, Joanne Tacuino, that a signature appears in one of the woodcuts. The monogram “L” is found in the illustration of Venice, which otherwise is a reworking of the illustration in the 1518 Viaggio.Footnote ⁷⁸ The source of this illustration, in fact, was not Breydenbach’s Peregrinatio, but rather Fracanzano da Montalboddo’s Paesi Novamente Ritrovati (Newly Discovered Countries), published in 1517 by Zorzi de Rusconi Millanese.Footnote ⁷⁹

The 1524 edition has a series of new figural illustrations with no precedent in the illustrated versions of Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s Libro d’Oltramare. This edition was published in Venice by Nicolo Zoppino and Vicenzo de Polo with a new title: Viaggio da Venetia al santo Santo Sepulchro & al monte Monte Synai, con disegni de Paesi Città Porthi Chiese & Santi luoghi con additione de genti & animali che se trouano da Venetia sino al santo Sepolchro & per tutta la Soria: tratti dal suo naturale: non mai piùstampate (Voyage from Venice to the Holy Sepulcher & to Mount Sinai, with Drawings of the Countries, Cities, Ports, Churches, and Holy Places with the Addition of the Men and Animals that One Finds from Venice until the Holy Sepulcher and all through Syria: Taken from Nature: Never before Published).Footnote ⁸⁰ These five never-before-published illustrations taken from nature of the people and animals found on the voyage from Venice each include the monogram “z.a.”Footnote ⁸¹ This monogram is found on many woodcuts produced in Venice from around 1516 onward, and whether it can be associated with Zuan Andrea, Zuan Andrea Vavassori, or another artist or artists remains controversial.Footnote ⁸² The new figural illustrations were included in most, but not all, subsequent editions of the Viaggio da Venetia, sometimes without the “z.a.” monogram (fig. 21).Footnote ⁸³

Figure 21. The men of Crete, Viaggio da Venetia al Santo Sepolcro et al Monte Sinai. Venice, 1606. Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (88–B1091).

Surprisingly few changes were made to the content of Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s Holy Land guidebook, even as it was copied in various manuscripts in the Tuscan vernacular in the fifteenth century, transcribed into the Bolognese dialect in 1500, and re-Tuscanized for the 1518 edition published in Venice. The final dedicatory letter written in Latin by Giovanni Cola for the 1500 edition was omitted from all subsequent editions, as mentioned above. At the end of the 1518 edition a new section of advice for pilgrims was added, including a remedy for lice. This is kept in later editions with an added preface, first found in 1519, of further instructions for making the pilgrimage, taken directly from Santo Brasca’s guidebook.Footnote ⁸⁴ These amendments indicate that the Viaggio da Venetia, as it was reconceived in Venice in the beginning of the sixteenth century, was especially aimed at pilgrims in Venice about to leave on the Holy Land journey. In the 1523 edition a list of the parishes, convents, confraternities, and holy relics of Venice appears for the first time, suggesting an interest in promoting Venice, in its unique liminal position between Italy and the Holy Land, as an extension of that sacred territory.Footnote ⁸⁵ The increasingly long titles of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century editions reflect the accretive nature of the guidebook.Footnote ⁸⁶

Despite the various additions to the Viaggio da Venetia over the course of three centuries, vestiges of Niccolò da Poggibonsi have remained in the text. In each of the over sixty editions, published from 1500 to 1800, the description of the author has remained in the very first pages, and the story is still told from the perspective of this first-person narrator.Footnote ⁸⁷ The idea of a pilgrim who originally created the entire book — both its text and illustrations — during his journey through the Holy Land was maintained even though his name was omitted.Footnote ⁸⁸ The omission of the author’s name in the first edition of 1500 did not necessarily amount to intentional plagiarism, but could have resulted from the repeated copying of the original fourteenth-century guidebook in manuscript form. The addition of the description of the pilgrim-author to the 1500 text filled the gap left by the absence of an author name, even as it asked for its eventual return.

7. The Franciscan Context

It is likely that by the beginning of the seventeenth century the connections of the guidebook to the Tuscan manuscripts of the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century were unknown to the Venetian publishers of the Viaggio da Venetia. With the publication of a Holy Land guidebook in the sixteenth century by another holy man, Fra Noe Bianco of the Servite order, the seventeenth-century editors were presented with the possibility of implying the identity of the author. The book had become a bestseller by this point, and the reverend (albeit fictional) name of the Franciscan Fra Noe undoubtedly enhanced the authority of the book’s explication of the system of indulgences connected to Holy Land pilgrimage. Even given the possible intention of implying a connection to the Servite Noe Bianco, the later editions of the Viaggio da Venetia, beginning in 1600, consistently refer to the author as Fra Noe of the Franciscan order (R. Padre F. Noe dell’ordine di S. Francesco). This may relate to the continuing importance of the Franciscans, both as the original institutors of the system of indulgences in the Holy Land and as the official custodians of pilgrimage sites: their role as the Custodia Terrae Sanctae (Custody of the Holy Land) was formalized in 1342.Footnote ⁸⁹ The Franciscans played a central role in changing the perception of the Holy Land in the early modern period, especially by promoting the perception of the architecture of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth as redolent with redemptive power, quantified through the new system of indulgences that they both generated and codified. Indeed, the oldest manuscript versions of the Libro d’Oltramare, based upon the Franciscan Fra Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s pilgrimage of 1346–50, contain the most comprehensive verbal and pictorial survey of the pilgrimage sanctuaries, in addition to the earliest account of the expanded system of indulgences.Footnote ⁹⁰

The Franciscan context for Fra Niccolò’s Libro d’Oltramare, as well as the many printed editions of the Viaggio da Venetia based upon it, suggests that these illustrated books belong to a larger category of virtual pilgrimages promoted by the Franciscan order, intended to allow those who could not travel to Jerusalem to experience the Holy Land.Footnote ⁹¹ These Franciscan projects were characterized, first, by a unique familiarity with the architectural landscape of the life of Christ, as a result of the Franciscan custody of the Holy Land, and, second, by an innovative use of a variety of media in concert — reflecting a “multimedia mentality,” as Jeffrey Hamburger puts it — to help facilitate the contemplative engagement with the life of Christ.Footnote ⁹² The text of the Libro d’Oltramare, for example, emphasizes the sensory experience of the pilgrimage sanctuaries through detailed descriptions of movement through architectural spaces, measurements, and materials, altogether facilitating an embodied experience of the architectural relics of the life of Christ.Footnote ⁹³ This vicarious experience was augmented by the simple architectural drawings that inspired the woodcuts of the Viaggio da Venetia. The idea of creating pictorial illustrations during the journey, as Niccolò da Poggibonsi did, was in itself a significant departure from previous approaches to creating pilgrimage accounts. The text of the Viaggio da Venetia, even if it never gives the Franciscan friar’s name, retains the memory of the eyewitness experience of the original author as the creator of the book.Footnote ⁹⁴

Franciscans developed other forms of proxy pilgrimages beyond the context of illustrated books. A similar approach to the idea of virtual pilgrimage is evident in the famous murals of the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi, founded in 1226, of which Fra Niccolò was undoubtedly aware. The attention to architectural detail and emotional vividness in the mural paintings have been broadly categorized as part of “Franciscan realism.”Footnote ⁹⁵ The basilica itself has been interpreted as a recreation of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, heightening the effect of the spectator’s engagement with the life of Christ, as imagined in the many frescoes within.Footnote ⁹⁶ At the Sacro Monte of Varallo, founded in 1491 as the first of a series of sacred mountains, the Franciscan Fra Bernardino Caimi (ca. 1425–1500) instituted a more literal vision of virtual pilgrimage. On the small hilltop site near Milan, a series of chapels were constructed that served as the setting for sculptural arrangements, reconstituting in real space scenes like the Lamentation and Nativity depicted in Assisi, replete with real hair, clothes, and moveable limbs.Footnote ⁹⁷ Fra Bernardino, like Fra Niccolò, was ultimately participating in the same innovative spirit of experiential piety promoted by St. Francis and the order that he founded in 1209.Footnote ⁹⁸ Most famously, Francis had instituted what was considered to be the first Nativity scene at Greccio just three years before his death in 1226.Footnote ⁹⁹ This idea was expanded at Varallo, where, in addition to the Chapel of the Nativity in Bethlehem, every major pilgrimage site in the Holy Land was recreated on the hilltop site.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ The creation of the Sacro Monte of Varallo postdates the origins of the Libro d’Oltramare, but its immense popularity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries parallels the success of the anonymous printed version of Fra Niccolò’s book, which in a different fashion allowed the reader to experience the Holy Land without leaving Italy.

Two-and-a-half centuries after Fra Niccolò’s journey, another Franciscan friar produced a new survey of the major pilgrimage sanctuaries of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth. Fra Bernardino Amico (fl. 1593–1619), who created both the text and illustrations of his treatise, entitled the Trattato delle Piante & Imagini dei Sacri Edificii di Terra Santa (Treatise of the Plans and Images of the Scared Edifices of the Holy Land), was motivated by a similar interest in helping Italians vividly imagine these buildings.Footnote ¹⁰¹ The sophisticated perspectival views are, as Fra Amico states, to allow the viewer to look at buildings like the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem as if they are three-dimensional models emerging from the page.Footnote ¹⁰² In many ways Amico’s Trattato is a genealogical descendent of the illustrated versions of the Libro d’Oltramare, pairing textual descriptions and visual representations in a comprehensive survey of the churches of the Holy Land, but drawing on the developments in architectural representation in the intervening years. In contrast to the persistent popular appeal of the Viaggio da Venetia, the success of Amico’s Trattato seems to have been limited, having been published in only two editions, first in Rome in 1609, then in Florence in 1620. What is lacking in Amico’s meticulous architectural drawings and careful descriptions of the churches of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth is that which remains in Niccolò’s account even as his name became separated from the text: the sense of adventure in the story of a pilgrim’s journey, and the sense that the buildings of the Holy Land both retain the traces of Christ’s charisma and promise of the remission of sin. By the seventeenth century, the continual reprinting of the book with little modification and no mention of the Ottomans or the need for a new crusade to retake the Holy Land (as in Amico’s Trattato) could have also been perceived as comforting evidence of the unchanging spiritual potency of the Christian holy sites.

8. Conclusion

At the time of the creation of the Libro d’Oltramare in the mid-fourteenth century, the adoption of the vernacular as well as the dominating first-person narrative voice were just as significant authorial choices as the addition of a comprehensive series of pictorial illustrations. Both choices link the book to the works of Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s famous contemporaries: Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), Francesco Petrarca (1304–74), and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–75). By choosing to write in the vernacular, and by not deferring to the authority of previous Latin texts, Niccolò da Poggibonsi can likewise be considered a protomodern author, motivated by the same dynamic creativity and assertive individualism that Albert Ascoli has identified in the works of Dante.Footnote ¹⁰³ Indeed, like other texts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that have been associated with the emergence of the modern author, the Libro d’Oltramare is not a synthetic composition or memorial recollection of fragments from previous texts: instead, it is a first-person eyewitness account, an “I”-centered work.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Niccolò approached the idea of creating a personal travelogue transformatively, self-conscious of the novelty of his enterprise, emphasizing his personal experiences, and describing the physical reality of the Holy Land in unprecedented detail.

It is important to emphasize, however, that Fra Niccolò would not have viewed himself as an auctor of the stature of Dante. Nonetheless, the forceful individuality of his project parallels the innovative spirit of the first vernacular literature.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ The genre of pilgrimage accounts, which had no ancient texts as their basis, as a whole lacked auctoritas.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Although elements of Dante’s Commedia, in particular the Purgatorio, were apparently patterned on descriptions of the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Dante did not draw attention to these sources — in contrast to his self-conscious engagement with the authority of Virgil’s Aeneid, for example.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Despite these qualifications, Niccolò da Poggibonsi was an integral part of the “evolving construction of authorship at the dawn of a properly European and vernacular culture.”Footnote ¹⁰⁸ From the perspective of modern scholars, however, the lack of an author’s name has deprived the Viaggio da Venetia of any real historical significance. Rejoining the Viaggio with the historical figure of Niccolò da Poggibonsi expands an understanding of a transgenerational discourse across the media of manuscript and print, and reframes the book in its initial context at the moment of the genesis of the modern author.

The tenacity of Fra Niccolò as author, despite the erasure of his name, especially in the recurring presence of the speaking “I,” is remarkable. The unnamed friar remains the generator of the book, as the pilgrim whose desire to see and touch everything with his own eyes and hands taps into a pervasive volition on the part of Italians, who similarly wished to encounter the relics of the life of Christ in lieu of his absent body, if only vicariously. The attribution of the seventeenth-century editions to the fictive Fra Noe reflects an understanding of the unique role of the Franciscans as authorities regarding the pilgrimage experience. Even with this fictive attribution, the author of the Viaggio da Venetia retains a universalized, transcendental status that unites the various editions published over three centuries. Indeed, rather than asserting that Niccolò da Poggibonsi be returned to the Viaggio da Venetia as its author, his role as the inceptor of a new genre might be asserted: the illustrated Holy Land guidebook, written in the vernacular and in the first person, of which the Viaggio da Venetia is an integral part.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Niccolò’s guidebook was inaugural in that it established the modes and possibilities for a series of texts that followed it, in particular, Gabriel Muffel’s (d. 1498) guidebook (BL Egerton 1900), the anonymous Viaggio of NYPL Spencer 62, Breydenbach’s Peregrinatio, the 1500 Viazo, Amico’s Trattato, and many other related guidebooks. Breydenbach may have found in an illustrated copy of Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s guidebook his inspiration for bringing an artist to illustrate his journey with depictions of the buildings, cities, and animals of the Holy Land. The conceptual similarities of both guidebooks allowed for the modern presumption that the Viaggio da Venetia was a debased version of the Peregrinatio. Rather than viewing the 1500 Viazo and the sixteenth-century editions of the Viaggio da Venetia as derivative in relation to the 1486 Peregrinatio, all of these might be seen instead as part of a larger discursive formation whose origins were in the fourteenth century, and whose author — in the broadest sense — was Niccolò da Poggibonsi.