Second printed edition of the travelogue, property of Hartmann Schedel, Nuremberg 1482

The Nuremberg authorised printed edition of the travel report can be dated between 23 February and 20 March 1482. Hans Tucher (1428-1491) had provided his manuscript to Conrad Zeninger and supervised the printing, so that the edition is meticulously correct.

The Nuremberg physician and book collector Hartmann Schedel (1440-1514) owned the present copy of this edition, which he lavishly arranged and had bound together with further texts on the Holy Land. Schedel's transcription alone preserved the notes on the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre that Tucher had taken on 6 August during a stay in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Tucher, striving for authenticity, traced the length and width of the interior of the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre according to the medieval measure of length "foot". He dealt with the reconstruction of the chapel which another pilgrim from Nuremberg, Jörg Tetzel, had donated in the imperial city and which stood in the courtyard of the Heilig-Geist-Spital (Holy Spirit Hospital) until its destruction in World War II: "It was well meant, but will never equal this chapel."

Schedel paid tribute to the Jerusalem crusader who died at the age of 63 in a Latin obituary at the end of the book. He emphasised the man's Christian change and character, and referred to his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, "whose traces he sought on earth, whose true sight he received the grace to see after death".

Randall Herz

To the digitised copy