Journey and Pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre

In the spring of 1519, Ludwig Tschudi, a gentleman of Glarus, leaves his mountains for the Holy Sepulchre. Eighteen Confederates, among them his friend Peter Falck, Schultheiss of Fribourg, cross the Gotthard, go down the Po and make their way to Venice.

There they must sign a twenty-article contract with the ship's patron, Ludwig Delphin, pay their respects to Doge Loredan, pull a companion out of the clutches of a clerk, and lay in ship's biscuit and remedies against lice and seasickness. Then the galleass puts to sea: Dalmatia, Corfu, a storm off Zante, Candia, St Elmo's fire on the stern, Rhodes and its knights, Cyprus, and at last the roadstead of Jaffa.

In the Holy Land, under the guard of the faithful Gamaliel, the pilgrims greet Jerusalem on their knees, spend three nights locked inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, keep vigil at Bethlehem and bathe in the Jordan under threat from Arab raiders. On the night of 14 to 15 August, Tschudi is dubbed a knight of the Holy Sepulchre together with Melchior zur Gilgen.

There remains the journey home, among Turkish corsairs, dead calms and fevers. Kept day by day and published at Rorschach in 1606 by his nephew, this diary of a twenty-four-year-old Swiss brings back to life the Mediterranean of Venice and the Ottomans, three years before the fall of Rhodes. But how many of the eighteen will see Glarus again?