So perhaps one of us might have formed in his mind an image of a putative Jerusalem: however greatly different the actuality may be, as his mind has fashioned [its image] for itself so [Jerusalem] will seem to him…; from known shapes he fashions a thing unknown-Alcuin of York 1 La construction d'un récit de voyage se fait souvent dans un rapport de dependence avec des écrits antérieurs. Le récit a une mémoire, toile de fond faite de references et d'influences culturelles, tant de l'auteur que du lecteur ciblé-Nicole Chareyron 2 Much of the research for this article was supported by the Philip Leverhulme Prize (2011-13) and the preliminary work was undertaken during my tenure of the Walter Hines Pages Fellowship of the Research Triangle Park Foundation at the National Humanities Center. I am grateful to the two anonymous readers for SAC and to Sarah Salih who gave many useful suggestions on drafts of this piece. I am particularly grateful to Rob Lutton and to Matthew Coneys for discussions with me about Larke, Wey, and Mandeville. Various audiences have heard versions of this material and I am grateful to them for their feedback, specifically at conferences and lectures at Ben