Sæwulf

Also known as Saewulf, Sewulf

Anglo-Saxon Christian pilgrim — possibly an English merchant turned monk — whose Latin account of his pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1102–03 is the earliest western traveller's description of the Latin kingdom in its founding years.

Sæwulf is known only from his own Relatio de peregrinatione ad Hierosolymam et Terram Sanctam, a brief Latin pilgrimage account that he probably composed at Malmesbury Abbey on his return. Internal details suggest a former English merchant who took the cowl in middle age — William of Malmesbury appears to refer to such a man — and who undertook the journey to atone for the sins of his trading life.

He sailed from Monopoli in Apulia in July 1102, was nearly wrecked in the harbour of Jaffa as he disembarked, and walked up to Jerusalem along the road Baldwin I had only just secured. His description of the city is one of the earliest after the Crusader conquest: he records the Holy Sepulchre with its temporary roof, the still-ruined buildings on the Temple Mount, the springs and gates, and the wider holy geography from Bethlehem and Bethany down to Jericho and the Jordan, walked at his own slow pace.

His return voyage in May 1103 — eight weeks fighting contrary winds along the coast of Asia Minor before reaching Constantinople — is the other half of the value of his text: a vivid eyewitness reminder that the maritime infrastructure on which the kingdom would depend was, in those first years, still a precarious thing.

Read more on Wikipedia: English article