Note 1496 — Chapter XII · REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY (continued 2)

Benjamin of Tudela traversed the length of Italy on his way to the Orient. He gives in his Itinerary (Adler’s edit., pp. 5–10) some details 479regarding the cities which he passed through. Genoa and Pisa, he said were governed “neither by king nor prince but only by the judges appointed by the citizens.” Each was noted for its “turreted houses for battle in time of strife.” Rome was “the head of the kingdoms of Christendom,” but Benjamin dismissed with brief phrase her claims to glory as the seat of the Papacy. On the other hand, he wrote in some detail of the Jewish inhabitants of Rome and more especially of the ruins, among them “eighty palaces belonging to eighty kings who lived there, each called Imperator, commencing with King Tarquinius ... and ... ending with Pepin, who freed the land of Sepharad [Spain] from Islam, and was father of Charlemagne.” The Colosseum, the Catacombs, statues of Samson and of Constantine the Great, and “many other edifices” and “remarkable sights beyond enumeration” aroused the admiration of the Hebrew traveler. Farther south he spoke of the great school of medicine at Salerno; of Amalfi, “the inhabitants of which are merchants engaged in trade, who do not sow or reap, because they dwell upon high hills and lofty crags, but buy everything for money;” of Benevento; of Trani, with a convenient port where pilgrims gather to take ship to Jerusalem; of Brindisi; and, finally, of Otranto, whence one crosses to Corfu.

Interesting details of a journey through Italy in the twelfth century are also supplied in Abbot Nikulás’ Itinerary (Werlauff, Symbolae, 1821, pp. 29–35).