Bandits, Bad Roads, and The Plague: The hardships of travel in sixteenth-century Europe
“A journey is a fragment of hell.” Awliyái Efendi (1611-1679)
For most of us, travel is fun. It’s exciting. It’s a chance to see and do something different. It’s a break from routine. Even for those who do not see travel as a fun adventure, it would be hard to argue that twenty-first-century travel is not convenient. We have airplanes that can bring us from one side of the country to the other in a matter of hours. Cars that can bring us from one side of the city to the other in minutes. Both without leaving the climate-controlled indoor comfort of a cushioned, reclining chair. But for most of human history travel was not nearly as convenient, despite layovers and traffic, as it is today.
Set in Europe in 1565, The King’s Anatomist by Ron Blumenfeld includes a journey, by land and by sea, of more than 1200 miles from Belgium to Greece. In the opening pages of the novel, Jan van den Bossche, a wealthy merchant living in Brussels, learns of the death of his best friend, the famed anatomist Andreas Vesalius, on the Greek island of Zante (now called Zakynthos). Jan grieves over the unexpected loss while deliberating whether or not to make the arduous journey across the continent to pay his final respects. Remember, Jan cannot board a plane or hop on a Mediterranean Yacht to get there. He decides to go, and while the main plot of the story focuses on the strained but faithful friendship between van den Bossche and Vesalius, the story also includes many of the challenges and unpleasant realities of sixteenth-century travel.
To get from one place to another in the sixteenth century, people could go by foot, horse, or cart. The options were limited and no matter their choice, it was slow. Those who went by foot could make 20 to 30 miles a day depending on the conditions. By horse, a traveler could go 30 to 40 miles a day. By cart or carriage, distance covered could be much less because of the deplorable conditions of most roads. While in or near the city, a traveler could expect to find traversable, often paved, roads. But outside the city roads were not well maintained. This was because of years of feudalism that left no single authority to manage a system of roads. Also, petty warfare made it advantageous for small communities to leave roads in disrepair so that they could not be easily attacked. The result was narrow, bumpy roads that quickly became mud when it rained or were nothing more than semi-trampled paths.
If a sixteenth-century traveler successfully traversed the muddy, unmaintained roads, there were various other dangers that might have stopped them in their tracks. Treacherous river fords, for instance, frequently turned travelers around or forced them to find a new route. Sometimes there were bridges. However, bridges were often unsafe leading some travelers to ford the rivers even where bridges existed. Another danger to many European travelers were the Alps. Crossing Europe’s tallest mountain range was not taken lightly and never done without some assistance. At any given time, summer or winter, a storm could move through, killing any number of wayfarers. In The King’s Anatomist, Jan describes his encounter with the Alps like this:
“I had not Crossed the Alps in a quarter-century, but I was still overcome in equal measure with wonder and dread as we rode up toward the mountain passes. Once again I was awestruck by the snowy peaks, the proud legions of evergreens, the rolling expanses of meadow, and the shining lakes. The crisp air brings on a certain elation even as it seems there is less and less of it to breathe. But hidden within the magnificence of the Alps is a gauntlet of hardships no matter the season—bone-chilling winds; drenching rains; cruel snowstorms; washed-out trails; landslides; downed trees—not to mention the ever-present danger of bandits and those lawless reaches. Mountain inns provide little more than primitive shelter.”
Lithgow in Trouble, From the 1632 edition of his "Rare Adventures."
In this excerpt, Jan brings up another travel danger: bandits. Thieves stalked the roads, stealing from unguarded travelers or taking them and selling them into slavery. This included not only robbers, but soldiers who were on leave from the duties of war. Those travelers who could afford it, hired escorts for their safety. Others sewed coins into their waistbands, under their armpits, or in their boots where they hoped robbers would not find them. In The King’s Anatomist, Jan’s solution was to purchase a letter of credit from Fugger agents—the Fugger’s being the largest financiers in Europe at that time—where he could draw local coin when necessary. He also had his servant, Marcus, sew six gold coins into the waistband of his breeches.
The list of dangers and inconveniences for sixteenth-century European travelers could go on for many pages, but the last that will be mentioned here is disease. The Black Death was at its height in Europe in the middle of the thirteenth century, killing about one third of the European population. But the plague that caused the Black Death, did not go away for many hundreds of years. Travelers across Europe in the sixteenth century had to be careful to avoid plague-infested areas while inn-keepers and city-dwellers had to keep plague-infested travelers out. In Venice, for instance, travelers were required to obtain a “bolletta” certifying freedom from plague before they could enter the city. If a traveler failed to obtain a “bolletta” or could not guarantee freedom from plague, they had to "far la contumacia," go into quarantine for forty days. This might sound familiar to the pandemic we are experiencing today.
Jan van den Bossche and his servant Marcus made it to Zante and back, but the journey was certainly not without its risks and hardships—including an unpleasant twenty-nine day trip from Venice to Zante aboard the military galleon Trieste. The story, of course, is not about the hardships of travel. It’s about a complicated friendship and about highlighting some of the important medical, scientific, and artistic advancements at the time. But how interesting it is to see the world as it was, to understand how far we’ve come, and in some cases, to recognize how little has changed.
Check out this blog post about the history of vaccines by author (and doctor) Ron Blumenfeld.
Source:
E.S. Bates, Touring in 1600: A Study in the Development of Travel as a Means of Education, (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflan Company, 1911); https://www.gutenberg.org/files/48594/48594-h/48594-h.htm
The King’s Anatomist is available for Pre-Order now or Buy Direct from the publisher.
