English Travellers of the Renaissance by Clare Howard
page 23 of 231 (09%)
page 23 of 231 (09%)
|
in 1561,[42] but Turler's would seem to be the first book devoted to the
praise of peregrination. Not only does Turler say so himself, but Theodor Zwinger, who three years later wrote _Methodus Apodemica_, declares that Turler and Pyrckmair were his only predecessors in this sort of composition.[43] Pyrckmair was apparently one of those governors, or Hofmeister,[44] who accompanied young German noblemen on their tours through Europe. He drew up a few directions, he declares, as guidance for himself and the Count von Sultz, whom he expected shortly to guide into Italy. He had made a previous journey to Rome, which he enjoyed with the twofold enthusiasm of the humanist and the Roman Catholic, beholding "in a stupor of admiration" the magnificent remnants of classic civilization and the institutions of a benevolent Pope.[45] From Plantin's shop in Antwerp came in 1587 a narrative by another Hofmeister--Stephen Vinandus Pighius--concerning the life and travels of his princely charge, Charles Frederick, Duke of Cleves, who on his grand tour died in Rome. Pighius discusses at considerable length,[46] in describing the hesitancy of the Duke's guardians about sending him on a tour, the advantages and disadvantages of travel. The expense of it and the diseases you catch, were great deterrents; yet the widening of the mind which judicious travelling insures, so greatly outweighed these and other disadvantages, that it was arranged after much discussion, "not only in the Council but also in the market-place and at the dinner-table," to send young Charles for two years to Austria to the court of his uncle the Emperor Maximilian, and then to Italy, France, and Lower Germany to visit the princess, his relations, and friends, and to see life. |
|