The Beginning

Friar Felix Fabri, a Dominican reformer and pilgrim to Jerusalem in 1480, left his adopted hometown of Ulm, Germany, for a second trip to
Jerusalem, Mount Sinai, and Egypt in April of 1483.

This blog will retrace part of his journey.

(For the fullest account available online in English, see the link below to the "Traveling to Jerusalem" website at the University of Colorado-Pueblo)

Fabri began his account of his journey thus:

I SHALL now begin my wanderings on my most desirable and delightful pilgrimage, which pilgrimage I intend to describe in the following order, arranging it in twelve chapters, according to the twelve months, more or less, for which the pilgrimage lasted, and dividing each chapter into as many heads as there are days in the month, so that each month makes a chapter and each day a heading. I shall begin with the day of my departure, and end with that of my return, and shall faithfully set down all the places which we saw month by month and day by day, and will tell truly all that befell us in each month and on each day, adding descriptions of the holy and other places the better to explain my narrative. For I never passed one single day while I was on my travels without writing some notes, not even when I was at sea, in storms, or in the Holy Land; and in the desert I have frequently written as I sat on an ass or a camel; or at night, while the others were asleep, I would sit and put into writing what I had seen...

On the 14th [of April, 1483] having got together the baggage which I intended to carry with me, and having placed it on the horse which I had bought, I mounted, and was about to ride away in company with the Count's servant. However, as I sat upon my horse, all the brethren flocked round me and eagerly begged me to take careful note of all the holy places I saw, and to write an account of them and bring it to them, so that they also, in mind, if not in body, might enjoy the pleasure of visiting the holy places. I promised the brethren that I would do this, and with that the Count's servant and I went out of the convent and rode stealthily, as though hiding ourselves, out of the city, crossing the river Danube by the gate which leads to the sheep-bridge. 



Ulm in Fabri's day. From Hartmann Schedel's Weltchronik (the Nuremberg Chronicle), 1493, fols. 190v-191r


Ulm's location:


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