Since the Moslem conquest, visitors
had mostly come to Palestine through Egypt; the Christian conquest of
Syria re-opened the direct sea route as the conversion of Hungary and
north-east Europe had re-opened the direct land route one hundred years
before (_c._ 1000-1100). The lines of the Danube valley and of the
"Roman Sea" were both cleared, and the West again poured itself into the
East as it had not done since Alexander's conquest, since the Oriental
reaction had set in about the time of the Christian era, rising higher
and higher into the full tide of the Persian and Arabian revivals of
Asiatic Empire.
Among the varied classes of pilgrim-crusaders in Saewulf's day were
student-devotees like Adelard and Daniel from the two extremes of
Christendom, England and Russia, Bath and Kiev; northern sea-kings like
Sigurd, or Robert of Normandy; even Jewish travellers, rabbis, or
merchants like Benjamin of Tudela. All these, as following in the wake
of the First Crusade, and for the most part stopping at the high-water
mark of its advance, belong to the same group and time and impulse as
Saewulf himself, and are clearly marked off from the great thirteenth
century travellers, who acted as pioneers of the Western Faith and
Empire rather than as camp-followers of its armies.
Pages:
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133