Travel

In 1400 the world of most people was defined first by their local surroundings and then by their region or province. Except for peddlers, pilgrims, soldiers, and sailors, members of the lower classes did not usually travel because they could not leave their farm or workshop. For these people, the walk to a fair in a neighboring village was probably as far as they ever traveled from home. Moreover, most roads were no more than rocky pathways, dangerous in many areas because of bandits, and travel by sea was even riskier because of storms and pirates. The merchants, missionaries, diplomats, artists, students, and others who journeyed cross-country or across the oceans used horses, mules, carts, wagons, coaches, riverine vessels, coasting vessels, and seafaring carracks that could transport nearly 1,000 people. Some journeys, of course, were easier than others. Slaves stacked by the hundreds in the hold of ships surely experienced the worst of Renaissance travel; members of royal families transported in the elegant, padded carriages of the late 16th century traveled in comparative luxury. Europe was flooded with reports of new lands and new opportunities between 1493 and 1600, prompt-

Handbook to life in Renaissance Europe

9.3 Map of the world. Engraving published in the 1574 Latin edition of Ortelius’s atlas. Note the extraordinary size of Antarctica, covering the entire southern portion of the globe. (Photograph courtesy of Sotheby’s, Inc., © 2003)

Ing numerous individuals to depart from the relative safety of home with the knowledge that they probably would never return. By 1600 even those who stayed home were aware of a much larger world than that of the previous century. Travel literature and engravings of distant places put the world at their door.