Was Sir John Mandeville more popular than Marco Polo? Read Giles Milton's article on the English traveller on our website: historyextra.com/john-mandeville
1 Seek salvation overseas
Most medieval journeys had a spiritual purpose – although travel in pursuit of financial profit was increasingly common
In the mid-14th century, an English knight called John Mandeville boarded a boat and headed east. He was intending to follow the well-trodden path of pilgrimage to the holy city of Jerusalem. But as his c1356 travelogue, Book of Marvels and Travels, tells us, Mandeville's journey soon morphed into a voyage of curiosity to the edges of the world. On one island near India, he apparently encountered a breed of headless people with faces on their chests. On another, he was confronted by natives with one huge lip that they employed as a sunshade. The inhabitants of a third island had, he tells us, tiny mouths through which they fed themselves with a feather straw.
Mandeville's account of his travels is as extraordinary as it is fanciful. Yet it is not quite as unusual as you might think. People in the Middle Ages travelled in surprisingly large numbers – and, as Mandeville's example attests, by far the most widespread form of travel was pilgrimage.
People travelled in surprisingly large numbers – and by far the most widespread form of travel was pilgrimage
People went on pilgrimages for all kinds of reasons. Often they were entirely voluntary – with the express purpose of seeking salvation or imploring a particular saint's medical aid. For example, images and relics of the virgin martyr St Apollonia, who
