Harald Hendrix (Royal Netherlands Institute Rome, Utrecht University)
Early modern educational travel in theory and practice
As of the mid sixteenth century travel became a highly valued instrument in the
training program of youngsters, particularly of those young men who were
supposed to start a high profile career in public office. The numerous instructive
texts produced for this purpose as of the 1570s, particularly in the Low Countries,
indicate that the objective of such educational travelling was oriented towards both
knowledge acquisition and attitude formation. This paper looks at how these ideals
thought out by humanist instructors worked out in the practice of travelling
youngsters. To do so, the paper juxtaposes the humanist travel instructions from the
late sixteenth and early seventeenth century with various sources -- travelogues,
guidebooks, testimonies, court reports -- that enable us to better understand which
knowledge and attitudes were in fact acquired by these youngsters while performing
their educational tour of Europe.