Pilgrim Accounts and Plague Recipies: Ludolf von Sundheim’s unique Pilgrim Guide
Frankfurt/Main (?), Germany, c. 1470-1480
An intriguing compendium of pilgrim accounts, remedies against the plague, and recipes forming a unique guide for pilgrims. Encompassing the work of Ludolf of Sudheim's 'De itinerary terrace sanctae' recounting his travels to the Holy Land between 1336 and 1341.
Price on request.
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Manuscript in Latin and German on paper.
c. 210 x 140 mm. Written by different hands in a Bastarda script in light and dark brown ink. Vertical catchwords at the end of some quires. The first part with red lombards, rubrics, and versals touched in red. Marginal comments mostly by the scribe’s own hand. Watermark ‘p’ in a Gothic minuscule, also known from Frankfurt incunables.
This well-preserved manuscript with its engrossing variety of travelogues, recipes, and remedies gives us invaluable insight in the life and the trepidations of medieval individuals.
Overview
This riveting collection of early pilgrim literature has survived in an almost complete copy. The compendium encompasses Ludolf of Sudheim’s De itinere terrae sanctae, the author’s account of his voyage to the Holy Land between 1336-41. Besides two shorter text-fragments of pilgrim accounts, the manuscript also includes an entertaining calendar of edible winter fish, a recipe for gelatine, and three remedies for the Black Death. The combination of these unusual texts is intriguing and rare. The second text, a shorter fragment of a pilgrim account, possibly written by a Franciscan monk from Frankfurt, only survives in this individual manuscript.
The volume at hand may have been intended as a pilgrim’s guide and a number of blank pages leave room for its owner’s notes. Filled with fascinating tales of adventurous and often perilous voyages in unknown lands, pilgrim’s accounts, like the ones at hand, were in high demand in the late Middle Ages. A vast number of these travelogues were read to bits until they literally fell apart. This compendium was also believed to be lost. We are therefore incredibly lucky for the survival of this copy, even more so, as the manuscript is still preserved in its original binding.