1. Introduction
The Itinerarium Burdigalense (the route Bordeaux-Jerusalem), as it was known in the late Roman Empire and the medieval times, is a detailed description of a journey’s route to the Holy Land in A.D. 333. Such kind of itineraries (Itineraria) was often written, in order to facilitate the travellers. They were practically the guidebooks of those days.
2. The journey
The journey described in the itinerary had as its starting point the city of Bordeaux (Burdigala) and was heading through south France and northern Italy to Milan. From Milan (Mediolanum) two alternative routes were given. The first one followed the Italian peninsula as far as its southern end, and the other one, which appears to have been the main route, was leading towards the east: Aquileia, Poetovio (Ptuj), Sirmium, Naissus (Niš), Serdica (Sophia), Constantinople, Chalcedon, Ankyra, Tarsos, Caesarea, Tyras, Neapolis (Namblus). Explanatory notes were provided for various stations of the journey, which makes the text highly interesting those who look for information about the cities of Asia Minor during that period. Thanks to these notes we know that the travellers departed from Constantinople on the 30th of May, A.D. 333, during the consulship of Dalmatius and Zenophilus, and returned back the same year on the 26th of December. During their return to France they followed different route in the last part of their journey: after the Macedonian Herakleia they went to Aulon and from there they were ferried across to Brundisium. Then, they started going up through Capua, Rome and Fano to Milan.
3. Usefulness
The Itinerarium Burdigalense, just as many other relevant texts, was mainly addressed to military men, but also to citizens who, just as its writers, were starting for long-distance journeys, whether on foot or by horse or with some carriage, either for professional or for recreational reasons (the second being at the time a combination of visiting monuments and of holy pilgrimage). Upon the route, stations were marked every 6 miles, whereas a typical daily distance that someone could cover on foot, must have been 18 miles.