William Wey (or Way) (c.1407–1476) was an English traveller and author.
Wey was born in Devon apparently in 1407, and was educated at Oxford, where he graduated M.A. and B.D. before the autumn of 1430, when he became fellow of Exeter College. He held his fellowship at least till 1442, if not later, and then became an original fellow of Eton College, though his name does not occur, as Harwood implies, in the charter of foundation.
Early in 1456 he started on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Santiago de Compostela, leaving Eton on 27 March, and sailing from Plymouth on 17 May. He reached Coruña on 21 May, and left it on his return home on 5 June, arriving at Plymouth on the 9th. As the statutes of Eton College forbade fellows to be absent more than six weeks, Wey probably obtained leave of absence similar to that granted him in a letter from Henry VI, among the archives at Eton dated 11 August [1457], to go on a second pilgrimage to holy places. He left Venice on 18 May 1458, reached Jaffa on 18 and Jerusalem on 24 June, leaving again on 2 July, and returning to Eton late in the autumn, the whole journey having taken thirty-nine weeks. On 26 February 1462, Wey left Eton for a second visit to Palestine, sailing from England on 13 March, and arriving at Venice on 22 April. He remained there five weeks, witnessing the ceremonies of St. Mark's day and those connected with the installation of Nicolas Moro as doge in succession to Pascale Malopero. He left on 26 May, arriving at Jaffa on 16 July; he started back from Jerusalem on the 25th, and landed at Dover on 1 December.
Soon after his return from his third pilgrimage, Wey resolved to take the monastic vow, thereby vacating his fellowship at Eton. He entered the Augustinian monastery at Edingdon, Wiltshire, where he passed the remainder of his days. He gave that house some church furniture, relics, and curiosities which he had collected in Palestine, and died on 30 November 1476.
Wey left a remarkably detailed and interesting account of his pilgrimages, the Itineraries, formerly preserved in Edingdon monastery (not, as Aungier states, at Syon), and now in the Bodleian Library (MS. 565); it was edited with introduction and notes for the Roxburghe Club in 1857. The manuscript begins with two introductory treatises in prose, giving information useful for travellers, much in the manner of a modern guidebook; the narratives in verse follow in a stilted metre, said to resemble Lydgate's. That of the journey to Santiago de Compostela is the least interesting of the three, though it contains some information on the ecclesiastical condition of Spain. The narrative of the first journey to Jerusalem is detailed after Wey's departure from Venice, while that of the second journey is fuller on his travels across Europe.
Besides his itineraries, Wey wrote 'Sermones dominicales super Evangelia per totum Annum' and 'Sermones de Festis principalibus et Sanctis cum aliis multis Sermonibus generalibus'; both were formerly extant in Syon MS. Q. 14 (Bateson, Cat. Libr. Syon Monastery, 1898, p. 162).
A pilgrimage is a journey to a holy place, which can lead to a personal transformation, after which the pilgrim returns to their daily life. A pilgrim is a traveler who is on a journey to a holy place. Typically, this is a physical journey to some place of special significance to the adherent of a particular religious belief system.
The Camino de Santiago, or in English the Way of St. James, is a network of pilgrims' ways or pilgrimages leading to the shrine of the apostle James in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain, where tradition holds that the remains of the apostle are buried.
The Via Francigena is an ancient road and pilgrimage route running from the cathedral city of Canterbury in England, through France and Switzerland, to Rome and then to Apulia, Italy, where there were ports of embarkation for the Holy Land. It was known in Italy as the "Via Francigena" or the "Via Romea Francigena". In medieval times it was an important road and pilgrimage route for those wishing to visit the Holy See and the tombs of the apostles Peter and Paul.
Sir Harry Charles Luke was an official in the British Colonial Office. He served in Barbados, Cyprus, Transcaucasia, Sierra Leone, Palestine, Malta, the British Western Pacific Territories and Fiji. He is the author of some books on several of these countries.
Jaffa Gate is one of the seven main open gates of the Old City of Jerusalem.
Itinerarium Burdigalense, also known as Itinerarium Hierosolymitanum, is the oldest known Christian itinerarium. It was written by the "Pilgrim of Bordeaux", an anonymous pilgrim from the city of Burdigala in the Roman province of Gallia Aquitania.
Willibald was an 8th-century bishop of Eichstätt in Bavaria.
Edington Priory in Wiltshire, England, was founded by William Edington, the bishop of Winchester, in 1351 in his home village of Edington, about 3+3⁄4 miles (6 km) east of the town of Westbury. The priory church was consecrated in 1361 and continues in use as the parish church of Saint Mary, Saint Katharine and All Saints.
George Jones Adams was the leader of a schismatic Latter Day Saint sect who led an ill-fated effort to establish a colony of Americans in Palestine. Adams was also briefly a member of the First Presidency in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite). In preparation for colonizing Palestine, he changed his name to George Washington Joshua Adams, to tie himself to two well-known country builders: George Washington of the United States and Joshua, from the Hebrew Bible.
Christianity has a strong tradition of pilgrimages, both to sites relevant to the New Testament narrative and to sites associated with later saints or miracles.
Symon Semeonis was a 14th-century Irish Franciscan friar and author.
Niccolò da Poggibonsi was a Franciscan friar of the 14th century who made a famous pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1345–50, which he described in Italian in his Libro d'oltramare.
Daniel the Traveller, known also as Daniel the Pilgrim, Daniel of Kyiv, or Abbot Daniel, was the first travel writer from the Kievan Rus. He is known for travelling to the Holy Land in the aftermath of the First Crusade and his descriptions are important records of the region during that time. Some have identified him with a certain Daniel, bishop of Yuryev between 1115 and 1122.
An-Nabi Samwil, also called al-Nabi Samuil, is a Palestinian village in the Quds Governorate of the State of Palestine, located in the West Bank, four kilometers north of Jerusalem. The village is built up around the Mosque of Nabi Samwil, containing the Tomb of Samuel; the village's Palestinian population has since been removed by the Israeli authorities from the village houses to a new location slightly down the hill. The village had a population of 234 in 2017.
George Williams (1814–1878) was an English cleric, academic and antiquary.
William McClure Thomson was an American Protestant missionary who worked in Ottoman Syria. After spending 25 years in Syria, he published a bestselling book that described his experiences and observations during his travels. He used his knowledge of the region to illustrate and explain passages from the Bible, giving readers a new perspective on the scriptures.
Sæwulf was probably the first English pilgrim to Jerusalem following its conquest in the First Crusade. His Latin written account of his pilgrimage tells of an arduous and dangerous journey; and Sæwulf's descriptive narrative provides scholars brief but significant insight into sea travel across the Mediterranean to the new Kingdom of Jerusalem that was established soon after the end of the First Crusade.
Gabriele Capodilista, also di Capo di Lista, de Capitibus Lista or de Capolista, was an Paduan nobleman, canon lawyer and humanist. He held administrative positions in Perugia (1473–1475) and Rome. He is most famous today for the account he wrote in Italian of his 1458 pilgrimage to the Holy Land, the Itinerario in Terra Santa.
Historical sources of the Crusades: pilgrimages and exploration include those authors whose work describes pilgrimages to the Holy Land and other explorations to the Middle East and Asia that are relevant to Crusader history. In his seminal article in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Dominican friar and historian Bede Jarrett (1881–1934) wrote on the subject of Pilgrimage and identified that the "Crusades also naturally arose out of the idea of pilgrimages." This was reinforced by the Reverend Florentine Stanislaus Bechtel in his article Itineraria in the same encyclopedia. Pilgrims, missionaries, and other travelers to the Holy Land have documented their experiences through accounts of travel and even guides of sites to visit. Many of these have been recognized by historians, for example, the travels of ibn Jubayr and Marco Polo. Some of the more important travel accounts are listed here. Many of these are also of relevance to the study of historical geography and some can be found in the publications of the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society (PPTS) and Corpus Scriptorum Eccesiasticorum Latinorum (CSEL), particularly CSEL 39, Itinerarium Hierosolymitana. Much of this information is from the seminal work of 19th-century scholars including Edward Robinson, Titus Tobler and Reinhold Röhricht. Recently, the Independent Crusaders Project has been initiated by the Fordham University Center for Medieval Studies providing a database of Crusaders who traveled to the Holy Land independent of military expeditions.
Agrefeny was a Russian monk and archimandrite who made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land around 1370 and left an account of his travels.