1611 Bongars / Vesconte Crusader Plan of Jerusalem

This rare plan of Jerusalem is the earliest printed iteration of Pietro Vesconte's manuscript plan of the city. While not committed to print until this 1611 edition by Jacques Bongars, the map is the work of the 14th-century Venetian cartographer Vesconte, who produced it c. 1320 to promote Marino Sanudo's proposed crusade to recapture the city. As such, it is one of the earliest surviving plans to support a specific military effort.

Reading the Plan

As it was bound into Bongars' work, the plan is oriented to the south (as indicated by the plate number at the upper left corner). Bongars has, however, rotated the composition ninety degrees to fit the sheet. The manuscript original is oriented to the east, and this is reflected in the orientation of Bongars' engraved text. (We have pictured the plan with its proper eastern orientation.) The plan includes not only the walled city of Jerusalem, but also embraces the surrounding region as far as the village of Bethany to the east. Towns, forts, and towers are shown pictorially and fig palms are pictured. All are rendered in the manner of Vesconte's original, 14th-century manuscript.

The Basis of the Plan

Vesconte's 14th-century manuscript has no clear precursor. Its sources include both the ancient descriptions of Josephus (c. 37 - c. 100) and the firsthand medieval reports of Burchard of Mount Sion (fl. late 13th century). The latter was one of the last westerners to write about a visit to Jerusalem prior to its fall to Sultan al-Ashraf Khalil in 1291. His reports would have been of particular interest to Sanudo: Burchard, in his own turn, also proposed a new Crusade. Like Sanudo's, Burchard's plan called for a preliminary conquest to form a jumping-off point for the retaking of Jerusalem - although his initial target was not Sanudo's Egypt, but the Orthodox lands of Serbia and Constantinople.

A Practical Plan of Jerusalem

Sanudo, Vesconte, and Burchard were all Western Christians and their primary interest in Jerusalem and the Holy Land was its carried weight of Biblical history: consequently the plan includes the holy sites the proposed crusade was intended to seize. For instance, near the village of Bethany is the fig tree cursed by Jesus. At the center of the plan is the Palace and Temple of Solomon. The plan also includes the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Medieval features, such as the Church of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives appear as well. Significantly, the plan also offers a practical focus: it details the city's walls, and emphatically its water supply, here dramatically exaggerated. The Kidron is depicted as a huge river, nearly enclosing Jerusalem like a moat. While not based on any sort of systematic survey, the depiction of the city emphasizes a physically real city with its fortifications, and neighboring villages with their own forts.

Promoting a New Crusade

This plan of Jerusalem was not intended for the religious edification of the armchair pilgrim, but rather as part of a practical set of suggestions in anticipation of an actual attempt to sieze the city. While it would not have been of use to actual soldiers in the field, its purpose, and that of the portolan maps accompanying it, was to convince the leaders of Western Europe - Pope John XXII and King Charles IV of France - of the practicality of a new crusade. It appeared in the Venetian diplomat Marino Sanudo's Liber secretorum fidelium crucis (Book of Secrets for True Crusaders), which detailed his proposed effort to take the Holy Land for the Christian West.

Publication History and Census

This printed edition of the plan appeared in Jacques Bongars' 1611 Gesta Dei per Francos, sive Orientalium expeditionum, et regni Francorum Hierosolimitani historia which collected in one volume the surviving medieval texts pertaining to France's role in the crusades. As such, it presented in print for the first time the full complement of Vesconte's maps. (The map specifically of the Holy Land, dubbed the Sanuto-Vesconte map, found its way into several of the printed editions of Ptolemy's Geographia, but the other maps such as this remained neglected.) The book, while well-represented in institutional collections, was printed in a single edition and its maps are rare on the market. One example of the separate map is listed in OCLC.