A History of Curiosity

The Theory of Travel 1550-1800

Justin Stagl

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781136645365
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

First Published in 2002. A History of Curiosity examines the early methodology of anthropological and social research from a critical­historical perspective. The three principal methods of research, travel, the survey and the collection of significant objects, are studied in the context of the social conditions and intellectual trends of early modern times. The author's grasp of the vast, often obscure, but highly interesting body of literature which emerged in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries commands the attention of a wide readership outside purely academic boundaries. He weaves together a series of separate studies, emphasising links between the figures, the philosophies and the literatures of early modern times; links which have previously only been suspected. In focussing on the ars apodemica, or art of travelling'', a body of formal instructions on how to travel, observe and record the information gathered, the author demonstrates the origins of the characteristic inquisitive and systematizing spirit of the modern West.

CHAPTER ONE

The Methodising of Travel in the 16th Century

“Segnius irritant animos dimissa per aurem quam quae sunt oculis subiectae fidelibus et quae ipse sibi tradit spectator”.

Q. Horatius Flaccus, Epist. II 3, 180–182

FROM PILGRIMAGE TO EDUCATIONAL JOURNEY

In the Christian Middle Ages the main model for non-utilitarian travel had been the pilgrimage. It had been a multifarious activity where curiosity, boredom, enthusiasm for travel and other less innocent secular motives intermingled with the religious purpose.¹ Towards the end of the Middle Ages the secular components were clearly on the advance against the religious one. Pilgrimages tended to degenerate into a mere pretext for other things. A comparison of late medieval pilgrim reports shows that less and less attention was paid to religious actions and sentiments, whereas the distance covered became increasingly more important. This tallies with contemporary complaints that pietas meant less to many pilgrims than curiositas.² Pilgrimage was losing its legitimacy. The humanists treated it with irony, the reformators openly attacked it, and the counter-reformators defended it but half-heartedly.³ About the year 1550 pilgrimage had ceased to be a plausible justification for travel. A new legitimation was needed.

It was found in education. In his Colloquia familiaria, Erasmus of Rotterdam (c. 1466–1536) extolled the pious work of self-improvement against the useless, expensive and morally corruptive pilgrimage.⁴ His pupil Joachim Fortius Ringelbergius (Sterck van Ringelbergh, 1499 – c.1536) praised the wandering life in a tone of religious enthusiasm: only by constantly changing one’s abode one could avoid being taken in by everyday life and becoming a commonplace person; only thus one could educate oneself.⁵ Such were the arguments by which the humanists redefined pilgrimage as a journey of education.

In the Middle Ages too education had presupposed mobility. The page training for knighthood, the apprentice entering the service of some master, the student going to an educational institution – they all had to change their abode and be frequently on the road. The peregrinatio academia was especially identified with a pilgrimage. From such socially recognized models the humanists could proceed. Yet they no longer privileged the university towns: the whole earth was for them a place where something could be learnt and where one could improve oneself. Even the old Christian concept of the peregrinatio vitae could be used for this re-evaluation of travel: if life itself was a pilgrimage, why should one go to one special place? And why perform external actions without internal benefit? And why accumulate meaningless indulgences instead of meaningful knowledge and useful accomplishments? Thus the peregrinatio animi causa came to be regarded as a crucial means of education.⁶ A popular humanist tópos was the astonishing diversity of localities and human beings with the concomitant unequal distribution of useful goods and knowledge over the surface of the earth. If this was so, they had to be related to each other and thus to be made even more useful by means of travel.⁷

The only remaining privileged places for the humanists were those where the ancients had dwelt, where taste could be schooled on the remains of classical antiquity, and where the memory of a higher form of civilization still lingered on. These were more important than the places of pilgrimage. The aura of papal Rome was giving way to the aura of classical Rome.⁸ Even a semi-barbarian from the North of Europe could educate himself by entering this classical sphere. This was more useful than so many pilgrimages.

This new emphasis on spatial mobility was linked with a reassessment of intellectual curiosity. Mobility and curiosity had always been seen together. For medieval moralists curiositas was “a wandering, unstable state of mind”, which was “exemplified in metaphors of motion and in the act of travel”. Curiositas was thus opposed to stabilitas. It was seen as a vice leading man away from God, ‘a fastidious, excessive, morally diverting interest in things and people”.⁹ Yet from the 14th century, curiositas slowly gained more positive significance. The interest of the humanists in the external world as well as their enthusiasm for travel were epiphenomena of this change of mentality which prepared for the “age of discoveries”. The total sum of human knowledge came to be seen as something expandable and improvable.¹⁰ Summing up this development till the end of the 15th century Margaret Aston states: “Much travel will no more make a philosopher than much reading. But the exploration of places, like the exploration of books, can act as a powerful stimulus to the philosophically inclined, and in the fifteenth century increased travel and increased reading were both leading to new questioning. ‘The further you go, the more you shall see and know’, as a travel treatise of the period put it. Curiosity breeds criticism and, then as now, travel could help to promote empirical inquiry …. To travel well is to question well and, as both the writing and reading of books (travel books and others) shows, the fifteenth century became increasingly appreciative of the virtues of the good traveller. More people were undertaking more travel of various sorts, and their explorations, intellectual and geographical, made an important contribution to the outlook of the age”.¹¹

This change in the intellectual climate prompted the humanists to value mobility over stability and to redefine pilgrimage as an educational journey.¹² For many humanists, such as Erasmus and Fortius Ringelbergius, their wandering life was a conscious programme. This programme began to be defined about 1550, especially by North European humanists, such as the Englishmen Andrew Boorde (c. 1490–1559) and Thomas Wilson (1525–1581)¹³. In the following period too the methodizing of travel was mainly advanced by scholars from the “semi-barbarian” countries of the North.

TRAVEL REPORTS

The upgrading of mobility led to a new concept of the travel report. Medieval travel reports had organized their material according to the criteria of special genres. Thus secular travels had been dealt with by the genre navigatio, which also comprised geography and trade, whereas religious travels were described in pilgrims’ reports, a branch of theological literature which attempted to authenticate the history of salvation through the experiences of present-day pilgrims. A third genre was formed by fabulous travel reports which were mainly intended to entertain. There had been little effort to integrate all this into a coherent body of knowledge.

This changed with the advent of the humanist doctrine that the whole earth was a place where something was to be learnt. Now a new genre emerged: the multipurpose travel report. It became a receptacle for empirical information of various sorts.¹⁴ Early modern travel reports were classified with the genre historia, which included, in addition to historiography proper, the description of empirical facts of various kinds. As loosely connected knowledge, historia was opposed to scientia, systematically deduced knowledge, which was considered as more reliable. Historia was dealt with by rhetoric, scientia by philosophy.¹⁵

The typical manner of presenting “historical” knowledge was to string single pieces of information together. This was often called the ordo naturalis.¹⁶ In the case of travel reports, a series of observations and remarks was arranged chronologically, each of them in addition provided with the name of the place to which it pertained. The singular facts were thus localized in a temporal-spatial system of coordinates. The chronological order derived in many cases from that of a diary. Travel diaries had already been known in the late Middle Ages. They originated from the chronologically arranged catalogues of expenses which were kept by some pilgrims. This habit of bookkeeping in connection with travel was transferred to the psychological sphere by humanists like Fortius Ringelbergius. He advised the traveller to observe himself daily and to register his mental states in a diary, where also his observations of the external world should also find their place.¹⁷

There was little or no methodological reflection on the selection of the facts which were to be observed and reported. This was left to the judgement of the traveller. He was supposed to turn his attention to all those facts which were extraordinary, which on the strength of their peculiarity stood out in the field of common experience. Special rhetoric attention was given to such facts and events, which were called memorabilia, insignia, curiosa, visu ac scitu digna (things memorable, striking, curious, worth seeing and knowing).¹⁸

By ascribing these qualities to the things themselves — and not to the system of references of the observer — and by leaving the selection of the things to be reported completely to the judgement of the traveller, the rhetorical theory of knowledge gave to the latter an almost sovereign disposal over his data. At home he could recount what he thought fit. But none the less those left at home had one means of checking: they could refuse to believe the traveller. Travel reports had always laboured under a reduced trustworthiness, yet in early modern times, when the interest in the external world became rampant, their authentication became a basic problem.¹⁹ There were various strategies of authentication. The traveller could attempt to impress his public through the weight of his own personality, that of his patron or of the recipient of his dedication. He could quote authorities, especially classical ones. Yet the principal strategy consisted in adopting a deliberately plain, dry and realistic style. This was looked upon as especially trustworthy.²⁰ Thus Montaigne in his essay Des Cannibales authenticated the informant who had furnished his ethnographic information by telling the reader that this man was “simple and coarse” and thus incapable of inventing lies.²¹

In spite of their self-chosen plainness travel reports became increasingly popular during the 16th century. There was a tremendous interest for everything concerned with travel. The humanists edited the ancient geographers, eth...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. The Methodising of Travel in the 16th Century
• 2. Rerum Memoria: Early Modern Surveys and Documentation Centres
• 3. Imagines Mundi: Allegories of the Continents in the Baroque and the Enlightenment
• 4. The Man Who Called Himself George Psalmanazar or: The Problem of the Authenticity of Ethnographic Description
• 5. Josephinism and Social Research: The Patriotic Traveller of Count Leopold Berchtold
• 6. August Ludwig Schlözer and the Study of Mankind According to Peoples
• 7. From the Private to the Sponsored Traveller: Volney’s Reform of Travel Instruction and the French Revolution
• References
• Index