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The Disappearance of an Author and the Emergence of a Genre: Niccolò da Poggibonsi and Pilgrimage Guidebooks between Manuscript and Print*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Kathryn Blair Moore
Kathryn Blair Moore*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Abstract

While the anonymous Viaggio da Venetia al Sancto Sepolchro et al Monte Sinai, first published in Venice in 1518, was the most popular Holy Land guidebook in Renaissance Italy, the historical origins of the book have never been fully understood. From four illustrated versions of an earlier manuscript guide, the Libro d’Oltramare (1346–50), one can hypothesize about both the text and its author. The ultimate prototype for the Viaggio da Venetia was very likely one or more of these illustrated manuscripts, and the original author of both the text and illustrations was the Franciscan pilgrim Niccolò da Poggibonsi. Despite the eventual erosion of his name from the printed versions of the guidebook, the assertiveness and originality of the author parallels the production of other vernacular literature in mid-fourteenth-century Italy. Unlike Latin guidebooks of previous centuries, the intent to include illustrations that re-create the pilgrimage experience and the unprecedented descriptiveness of the prose together suggest that the book can be considered the foundational text for the genre of the illustrated pilgrimage guidebook.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 66 , Issue 2 , Summer 2013 , pp. 357 - 411
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2013

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Marvin Trachtenberg, Finbarr Barry Flood, and the anonymous readers for providing insightful critiques and suggestions. This research was assisted by a two-year Samuel H. Kress predoctoral Rome Prize and a New Faculty Fellows award from the American Council of Learned Societies, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. All translations are mine, except where otherwise noted.

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