Among the wide range of historical sources for mobility available for studies of pre-modern era, historians usually rely on travelogues, sets of letters, books of friendship and similar „ego-ducuments“, on travel accounts, and less frequently so far, when discussing a specific travel experience, on „pragmatic“ sources: maps, travel manuals and guide books and apodemics. This page will provide general typological oveview and present outcomes of advanced studies on selected groups of them analyzed during the current project: books of friendship, travel manuals and postal maps. 

Travel manuals

Travel manuals provided travelers with lists of places organised in itineraries with distances among them. This way of capturing space for practical purposes proves to be more popular than mapping at least until the end of the 17th century. Travel manuals appear in two forms 1. as books, generally of really small dimensions (here Sommaire description de la France…), 2. as parts of guidebooks (demonstrated here on Francesco Scoto´s Nuovo itinerario d´Italia). There have already been attempts to map these manuals, but only digital web cartography allows to go much further: It is demonstrated by a comparison of Herbert Krüger’s work on Jörg Gail and the geodatabase of all the travel manuals processed in the Beyond the Horizon project.

The routes described by Jörg Gail in 1563, in one of the earliest travel manuals published in Central Europe, were mapped by Herbert Krüger in his 1974 book (Das älteste deutsche Routenhandbuch. Jörg Gails “Raißbüchlin” [1563]. Graz). The swipe function allows you to compare the differences between Krüger´s digitized map and the mapped geodatabase compiling locations from travel manuals processed as part of the Beyond the Horizon project. This window demonstrates the methodological and technological potential of the current digital humanities.

SOMMAIRE DESCRIPTION DE LA France, Allemagne, Italie & Espagne

Sommaire description de la France… is a very rare travel manual in the Czech lands. It seems that Bohemian and Moravian aristocracy prefered manuals insterted in works by Francesco Scoto, or those by Ottavio Codogno, Giuseppe Miselli, and Giovanni Maria Vidari. This copy belonged to Johann Georg Joachim Slavata as shown by his signature on the title page, Moravian Library in Brno, sign. STS-0170.013.

ITINERARIO Ouero NVOVA DESCRITTIONE DE'VIAGGI PRINCIPALI D'ITALIA

Itinerarium nobiliorum Italiae regionum, urbium, oppidorum, et locorum or Itinerario overo nova descrittione de´ viaggi principali d´Italia by Francesco Scoto (Franz Schott) ranks among the most popular early modern guidebooks. It was issued in numerous editions from 1600 to 1761 in Latin, Italian, French and English in varous cities in Italy, the Low Countries, Germany, France and Great Britain. A travel manual was also included. The dataset covering the editions of 1650, 1675 (two editions) and 1700 are available on zenodo.org/records/19909381 (Roma: Filippo de Rossi, 1650; Czech National Library, Prague, sign. 19 H 82)

Postal maps

Books of friendship

Památník Jana Eberharda Swelinga (Schwelinga)

Books of friendship (alba amicora, Stammbücher) are manuscript books where text, coat of arms and images are combined. In the early modern era, they were kept by students and young noblemen on journeys, rarely kept longer, but understood precious pieces in family libraries and archives. They containi entries by travelers´ peers and teachers. While a coat of arm served as a signature, images were usually copies of those appearing in alba and handbooks of common proverbs or motta, scenes form Bible or Classics, rarely topographically true or authentic, but always carefully chosen to adress character, country of origin, family history of the owner or joint adventures. Therefore, the 16th- and 17th-century books of friendship are a big challenge for researchers who aim at decoding their complex nature. There are hounderts of them preserved in GLAM institutions in the Czech Republic and thoousends Europewide. Rarely they made their way also to North-American collections. This is the case of Humprecht Jan Czernin´s one.