Felix Fabri on Mediterranean Sailing

Felix Fabri is the guest writer for this entry.  He went twice as a pilgrim to Palestine between 1480 and 1483.  He was a Franciscan monk from Ulm, in the center of the Holy Roman Empire, and went by land from Ulm to Venice where he and his groups chartered space on pilgrim galleys.  A pilgrim galley was considerably bulkier than the light galley pictured here.  Below is a link to his fascinating account of his travels. Next month will be two entries on the miseries of winter sailing in the Mediterranean, but for late August his accounts of the joys of summer sailing seem about right.

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Between these two countries [Morocco and Spain] the Mediterranean Sea flows in from the Ocean through the aforesaid strait, which is scarce a quarter of a mile in width. For washerwomen stand on either bank, pagan women in Morocco, Christian women in Spain, and abuse one another, and there Africa is divided from Europe. . .

These men [pilots] are all alike so learned in their art that by looking at the heavens they can foretell storms or calms, whereof they can also read signs in the colour of the sea,i n the flocking together and movement of the dolphins and flying fish, in the smoke of the fire, the smell of the bilge water, the glittering of the ropes and cables at night, and the flashing of the oars as they dip into the sea. At night they know all the hours by looking at the stars. Beside the mast they have one compass, and another in the uppermost chamber of the castle, and a lamp always burns beside it at night; nor do they ever turn their eyes away from it when sailing at night, but one always gazes at the compass, and chants a kind of sweet song, which shows that all is going well, and in the same tone he chants to him that holdeth the tiller of the rudder, to which quarter the rudder itself ought to be moved: nor does the steersman dare to move the tiller any whither save by the orders of him who looks after the compass, wherein he sees whether the ship be going straight or crookedly, or sideways. . .

. . . these [sailors] are the men who know how to run about the ropes like cats, who ascend the shrounds very swiftly up to the cap, run along the yard standing upright even in the fiercest storms, who weigh up the anchors, diving into deep water if they stick fast, and who do all the most dangerous work on board. They are in general very active young men, who are quite reckless of their lives, and are also bold and powerful in the galley like a baron's armed followers. Under these again there are others who are called mariners, who sing when work is gong on, because work at sea is very heavy, and is only carried on by a concert between one who sings out orders and the labourers who sing in response. So these men stand by those who are at work, and sing to them, encourage them, and threaten to spur them on with blows. Great weights are dragged about by their means. They are generally old and respectable men. . .

This fortunate wind and delightful run lasted all that day and the following night, during which we slept most peacefully, gliding swiftly and sweetly along, because the course of the galley was not sideways, but straight forward, which inclined us to slumber. For when the wind is quite fair, and not too strong, there is hardly any motion which those who are in the cabin can feel, because the ship runs along quietly, without faltering, and both the pilgrims below and the galley-slaves on deck sleep quietly, and all is still, save only he who watches the compass and he who holds the handle of the rudder, for these by way of returning thanks for our happy voyage and good luck continually greet the breeze, praise God, the Blessed Virgin and the saints, one answering the other, and are never silent as long as the wind is fair. Anyone on board who hears this chant of theirs would fall asleep, even though otherwise he could not sleep, just as restless crying children are lulled to rest by their mother's crooning song, when if all was still they would cry, and they go to sleep more because the song assures them of their mother's presence than because of its sweetness.

[At Modon] I took my lords and some other pilgrims to the church of the Preaching Friars, and there we heard high Mass. The prior of that place and the other brethren knew me well from my first pilgrimage. After Mass was over we went to the house of the bakers, where biscuits are baked for seafarers, wherein dwells an old German, and there we had our dinner cooked, and dined. The other pilgrims went over to the house of the Teutonic lords, and there provided a meal for themselves. After dinner we went up to the walls of the town and walked round upon them, and admired its impregnable fortifications. It is not an island, but part of the mainland, whereof the whole belongs to the Turks. On my return I shall tell you more about this . . . for the city of Modon is said to be midway between Venice and Jerusalem. About vespers both patrons blew their horns to call their pilgrims on board . . .

On the twenty-third, the eve of St. John the Baptist, we sailed before a very strong wind, and during the previous night sailed so fast that in the morning we saw no land, nothing but the . . . sea. When the sun set and it was growing dark, our sailors prepared to make St. John's fire on the galley, which they did as follows: They took many more than forty lanterns made of wood and transparent horn, and hung them one above the other on a long rope, and then, when the lamps were lighted, they hoisted them up aloft to the maintop, in such sort that the burning lanterns hung down from the maintop as far as the rowing-benches, and lighted up the whole galley. To see this sight all men came on deck from the cabin, the poop, and the innermost chambers of the galley, and stood round about it. Thereupon the trumpeters began to blow their trumpets, and the galley-slaves and other sailors sang, rejoiced, chanted, danced, and clapped their hands; whereat all who stood round about were wrought upon by the shouts of gladness and the clapping of hands to rejoice at the respect paid to the most blessed forerunner of our Lord. Before this show I never had beheld the practice of clapping the hands for joy, to which allusion is made in the forty-sixth Psalm, which saith: 'O clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph.' Nor could I have believed at the same time, when done out of gladness, would have such great power to move the human mind to joy. So we rejoiced greatly on board of the galley until about midnight, sailing along all the while swiftly and quietly on our way. After this we laid ourselves down to sleep.

Excerpts are from The Book of the Wanderings of Felix Fabri (Circa 1480-1483 A.D.) trans. Aubrey Stewart. 2 vols. London: Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society, 1896. 
 For a very different view of Mediterranean sailing, read what happened to John VIII Palaiologos in the winter of 1437. 

Otranto

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Bones of 1480, Otranto Cathedral

When I lived in Venice 12 years ago, the manuscript I was working on contained a number of references -- from 1479, 1480, 1481 -- to the seventy crossbowmen in Nauplion's Castle of the Franks who were much overdue to be paid and so who were close to starvation. They were unimportant in the manuscript as a whole, but I became fixed on the idea of these seventy hungry crossbowmen and it became very important to know who they were. Then I learned that there was a crossbow competition at San Sepulcro -- they have done this annually with another town since 1441 -- and went with delight because I could combine crossbows with Piero della Francesca.

I learned a lot about crossbows and crossbowmen that day. There were exactly seventy men in the competition, of all ages and physical types. They sat to shoot. The quarrel -- the bolt shot by the crossbow -- was terrifying. Those men gave me my seventy hungry crossbowmen, and I saw something of the period in which I was working.

Similarly, the bones of the eight hundred honored in the Cathedral of Otranto have stood witness in my mind -- quite apart from the respect due to their own history -- to the eight hundred of Davia, the  eight hundred of Methoni, the eight hundred of Negroponte. Eight hundred seems to be the chosen number for the summer executions after Ottoman victories, but when a city fell without surrender, all lives were forfeit. 

The siege began on 28 July.  Otranto had no cannon of their own for defense, but even today it is littered with Ottoman cannon balls. They sent messengers to Ferrante of Naples asking for aid, and hunkered down.  The Ottomans offered a chance for surrender, but Otranto rejected it, filled an Ottoman messenger with a second offer with arrows, and threw the keys of the city into the sea. 

It was a very short siege. On August 14, 1480, the male survivors were executed.  Or massacred.  Or martyred.  These eight hundred have since been honored as martyrs who refused to exchange their religion for their lives.  John Paul II beatified the eight hundred there on this day in 1980, and in 2007 Benedict XVI formally authenticated their martyrdom.

According to the story, an elderly tailor named Antonio Primaldo, was the first to die.  A renegade priest in the employ of the Ottomans tried to persuade Primaldo  to convert, but he refused with a terrific speech.  Thus, all eight hundred males over the age of 15 were condemned to decapitation.  It would be a much more moving story did it not include the detail that when Primaldo was decapitated his corpse stood up, headless, and remained standing through the next 799 decapitations.

As a historian, I am uneasy with elements of the martyrdom because of what I think know about the Ottomans in the period of Mehmed II. I have neither the language competence nor the time to do the research I would like. The story is said to come from Francesco Cerra, one of four surviving eyewitnesses. The heroism of Otranto was magnificent and the story deserves honor as it stands.  Martyrdom gives meaning to the unbearable and I will not take away meaning from this extraordinary chapel and these bones.

Otranto was retaken a year and a month later, on 13 September 1481.  The brothers and relatives and friends of the eight hundred sorted through what the birds and the dogs had left. It must have been nearly unbearable.  The account of martyrdom made their work possible. Most of the bones retrieved were saved in the cathedral, some were sent to King Ferrante of Naples.  These are the bones in the picture above, three great cases heavy with them. Tourist information calls them "spooky," "Gothic," "gruesome." For these bones, such words are obscenities.

When we visited in January 2005, we spent a long time with the bones.  It was easy to spot wounds and fractures in skulls, smashed jaws, damage from abscesses, and after a while we were able to work out faces, some older, some very young. We were surrounded by a great crowd of witnesses to 14 August 1480, and we stood among them as witnesses ourselves.