History has caught up with us.

Travel during the time of the plague (Michel de Montaigne, Johann Caspar Goethe) and in times of Covid-19

Travel in the Renaissance was fraught with considerable danger, much like in the Middle Ages. Highwaymen and robber bands lurking in numerous regions were a particular nuisance. Montaigne confirms this in one passage of his travelogue ( Un Viaggio in Italia ): "(...) as we have been told, the road from Genoa to Milan is not exactly safe from thieves." The general situation in Rome, especially at night, was also very unsafe and dangerous.

Added to this were the travel obstacles of the time, which we thankfully no longer faced until recently, and which were time-consuming and not without danger to circumvent, and which, surprisingly, have suddenly become so again today. We are thinking in particular of the plague, which was raging in many regions at the time, but which Montaigne skillfully managed to avoid even outside of Italy. While traveling through Switzerland, we read that he would have liked to visit nearby Zurich while in Baden, but bypassed the city because of the plague. Similarly, the author of the travelogue comments that Montaigne and his companions encountered difficulties on their way to Rome because of the epidemic raging in Genoa. These difficulties are not elaborated upon, but it is known that entry to and exit from cities afflicted by the plague were strictly controlled. And it is the same today: entire towns and even regions are being sealed off because of the rampant coronavirus pandemic.

However, how well Montaigne and his travel group (consisting of probably ten to twelve people in total) managed to avoid plague zones is shown by a comparison with another prominent traveler to Italy in the same situation.

Montaigne was just one of many figures who constantly had to contend with the plague during their travels through Italy. This life-threatening risk, also for foreign visitors, persisted far beyond the period in question, the end of the 16th century. Even 160 years later, Johann Caspar Goethe (1710-1782), the father of the famous Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, encountered it during his journey through Italy in 1740 (which he wrote about in somewhat halting Italian, but with great devotion: Il viaggio per l'Italia fatto nel anno). (1844, ed in 1842, and which he considered his life's work with great pride) was confronted with the dangers of the plague. Compared to the Frenchman, the elderly Goethe, as he is often called, presents himself as a completely different type of traveler. While Montaigne approached his host country with an open mind, the German had meticulously planned his journey in advance using the travel guides available at the time. However, anything that did not meet his preconceived expectations once he arrived (the country and its people, their customs and behavior, their food) caused him difficulty and quickly met with radical rejection. These were poor conditions for coping with unexpected situations such as a suddenly occurring, localized threat of plague. The traveler himself seems to have had this insight in retrospect: "One certainly doesn't think in advance about the inconveniences one encounters on a journey."

Unforeseen events, surprises, anything he hadn't planned for, especially anything that might be burdensome or even annoying, were soon met with unease and annoyance by J.C. Goethe. As he approached Venice from Vienna, filled with longing, he was forced to quarantine for several weeks in Palmada, about 70 kilometers away, due to suspected infection with the plague virus. He devoted roughly half of the preface to his extensive travelogue to this period of isolation. The experience must have been truly traumatic for him. He admitted that he hadn't considered the plague that had just broken out again in Turkey and Hungary. Somewhat self-righteous, as he often was on his journey, he didn't hold back in his harsh criticism of the Venetian authorities. They were "overly anxious" and "far too meticulous and diligent"; "(...) they always exaggerate these precautions, and I was among those who had to experience their severity." Neither in Styria nor on the journey to Venice did anyone seem to care about the "alleged illness." Goethe describes his official arrest, thorough questioning, and how he was then, strictly guarded by an overseer, isolated in "a cave" where "mice could easily come and go." Everyone was kept strictly separate from everyone else. He added the "monotonous food like in almshouses," which he threw to the dogs. "Oh, what barbaric customs!" he commented. He became "furious" in the end because, moreover, he had been imprisoned eight days too long and had to pay for it, thus being cheated out of all this "purgatory in this enchanted place." "Shame on these wicked and despicable people," he concluded.

As mentioned, Goethe had planned his Italian journey down to the last detail; unexpected events such as the outbreak of localized plague epidemics could fill him with anger and panic. While Montaigne repeatedly managed to maintain his composure and calmly and even elegantly avoid infected areas, the German traveler did not possess the same skill.

See Reise durch Italien im Jahre 1740 , München 1986, pp. 13-16. (Slightly adapted) excerpt from Hugo Schwaller, Montaigne in Lucca (1581).