Johannes von Würzburg

The opening of John's Descriptio from the Tegernsee manuscript. It begins Johannes, Dei gratia in wirziburgensi ecclesia, id quod est, dilecto suo socio et domestico Dietrico salutem et supernae Jerusalem... ("John, who by the grace of God is that which he is in the church of Würzburg, wishes health and a sight of the heavenly Jerusalem to his beloved friend and follower Dietrich...")

John of Würzburg (Latin Johannes Herbipolensis) was a German priest who made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the 1160s and wrote a book describing the Christian holy places, the Descriptio terrae sanctae (Description of the Holy Land).

Life All that is known of John's life is what he records in his Descriptio. He says that he was a priest of the church of Würzburg and he dedicated his work to a friend named Dietrich (Theoderic). The Tegernsee manuscript calls John the bishop of Würzburg, but there was no bishop named John. Possibly the copyist or whoever added the description of John to the Tegernsee manuscript confused him with his friend, who is sometimes identified with Dietrich of Hohenburg, who was bishop of Würzburg in 1223–24. This identification is not certain.

John's pilgrimage took place while the holy places belonged to the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem, but before the major renovation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. He may have written his Descriptio several decades after the pilgrimage, possibly after 1200. His account is not entirely based on what he himself saw, he admits that he made use of eyewitness reports and in some cases borrowed from other travel guides (especially Fretellus

John's Latin is educated but ordinary. It has also aroused interest for its early indications of the rise of national feeling in Europe. John was a German patriot who laments the lack of credit given to the German crusaders. In his thirteenth chapter, he writes: Three days afterwards is the anniversary of noble Duke Godfrey [of Bouillon] of happy memory, the chief and leader of that holy expedition, who was born of a German family. His anniversary is solemnly observed by the city with plenteous giving of alms in the great church, according as he himself arranged while yet alive. But although he is there honoured in this way for himself, yet the taking of the city is not credited to him with his Germans, who bore no small share in the toils of that expedition, but is attributed to the French alone.