Medieval Ethnographies: European Perceptions of the World Beyond [Reprint ed.] 0754659550, 9780754659556

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgements
General Editor’s Preface
Introduction
PART ONE: CONTEXTS AND GENRES
1 The Outer World in the European Middle Ages • Seymour Phillips
2 The Emergence of a Naturalistic and Ethnographic Paradigm in Late Medieval Travel Writing • Joan-Pau Rubiés
3 Ethnographers in Search of an Audience • J.K. Hyde
PART TWO: MYTHS
4 Continental Drift: Prester John’s Progress through the Indies • Bernard Hamilton
5 The Medieval West and the Indian Ocean: An Oneiric Horizon • Jacques Le Goff
6 Marco Polo and the Pictorial Tradition of the Marvels of the East • Rudolf Wittkower
7 The Indian Tradition in Western Medieval Intellectual History • Thomas Hahn
PART THREE: ENCOUNTERS
8 Gerald’s Ethnographic Achievement • Robert Bartlett
9 William of Rubruck in the Mongol Empire: Perception and Prejudices • Peter Jackson
10 Neolithic Meets Medieval: First Encounters in the Canary Islands • David Abulafia
11 Veni, vidi, vici: Some Fifteenth-century Eyewitness Accounts of Travel in the African Atlantic before 1492 • Peter Russell
12 Travel Fact and Travel Fiction in the Voyages of Columbus • Valerie I.J. Flint
PART FOUR: EXPLAINING CULTURAL DIFFERENCES
13 The Image of the Barbarian in Medieval Europe • W.R. Jones
14 Perceptions of Hot Climate in Medieval Cosmography and Travel Literature • Irina Metzler
Index

Citation preview

The Expansion of Latin Europe, 1000-1500

Medieval Ethnographies

THE EXPANSION OF LATIN EUROPE, 1000-1500 General Editors: James Muldoon and Felipe Fernández-Armesto

P art I

1

The Medieval Frontiers of Latin Christendom: Expansion, Contraction, Continuity E dited by Jam es Muldoon and F elip e Fernández-Armesto

2

Internal Colonization in Medieval Europe E dited by F elip e Fernández-Armesto and Jam es M uldoon

3

The North Atlantic Frontier of Medieval Europe: Vikings and Celts E dited by Jam es M uldoon

4

The North-Eastern Frontiers of Medieval Europe: Scandinavia and the Baltic (Provisional title)

5

The Medieval Latin Frontiers in Central Europe (Provisional title)

6

The Expansion of Medieval Latin Europe in the Eastern Mediterranean E dited by E lean or Congdon

7

The Expansion of Medieval Latin Europe in the Western Mediterranean E dited by E lean or Congdon

8

The Expansion of Medieval Latin Europe in Spain and the Atlantic E dited by E lean or Congdon

P a r t II

9

Medieval Ethnographies: European Perceptions of the World Beyond E dited by Joan -P au Rubiés

10

Travelers, Intellectuals, and the World Beyond Medieval Europe E dited by Jam es M uldoon

11

Religion and Expansion: The Medieval Missionary Impulse E dited by Jam es F. Ryan

P a r t III

12

The Expansion of Orthodox Europe: Byzantium, the Balkans and Russia E dited by Jonathan Shepard

13

The Mongol Empire and its Impact (Provisional title)

14

Islamic Expansion in the Later Middle Ages (Provisional title)

The Expansion of Latin Europe, 1000-1500

Volume 9

Medieval Ethnographies European Perceptions of the World Beyond

edited by Joan-Pau Rubiés

First published 2009 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X 14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint o f the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition copyright © 2009 Taylor & Francis, and Introduction by Joan-Pau Rubiés. For copyright of individual articles refer to the Acknowledgements. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. ISBN 9780754659556 (hbk) British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Medieval ethnographies : European perceptions of the world beyond. - (The expansion of Latin Europe, 1000-1500) 1. Ethnology - Europe - History - To 1500 2. Travel, Medieval 3. Ethnicity - Europe - History - To 1500 4. Europe - Intellectual life I. Rubiés, Joan-Pau 305.8Ό094Ό902 US Library of Congress Control Number: 2008940507

THE EXPANSION OF LATIN EUROPE, 1000-1500 - VOL 9

Contents Acknowledgements General Editor’s Preface Introduction

vii ix xiii

PART ONE - CONTEXTS AND GENRES 1 The Outer World in the European Middle Ages

Seymour Phillips

2 The Emergence of a Naturalistic and Ethnographic Paradigm in Late Medieval Travel Writing

Joan-Pau Rubiés

3 Ethnographers in Search of an Audience

J.K. Hyde

1

43 65

PART TW O -M Y TH S 4 Continental Drift: Prester John’s Progress through the Indies

Bernard Hamilton

5 The Medieval West and the Indian Ocean: An Oneiric Horizon

Jacques Le Goff

6 Marco Polo and the Pictorial Tradition of the Marvels of the East Rudolf Wittkower 7 The Indian Tradition in Western Medieval Intellectual History

Thomas Hahn

121

155 175

209

CONTENTS

vi PART THREE - ENCOUNTERS

8 Gerald’s Ethnographic Achievement Robert Bartlett

231

9 William of Rubruck in the Mongol Empire: Perception and Prejudices Peter Jackson

273

10 Neolithic Meets Medieval: First Encounters in the Canary Islands David Abulafia

291

11 Veni, vidi, vici\ Some Fifteenth-century Eyewitness Accounts of Travel in the African Atlantic before 1492 Peter Russell

315

12 Travel Fact and Travel Fiction in the Voyages of Columbus Valerie I.J. Flint

329

PART FOUR - EXPLAINING CULTURAL DIFFERENCES 13 The Image of the Barbarian in Medieval Europe W.R. Jones

347

14 Perceptions of Hot Climate in Medieval Cosmography and Travel Literature Irina Metzler

379

Index

417

Acknowledgements The chapters in this volume are taken from sources listed below, for which the editors and publishers wish to thank their authors, original publishers or copyright holders for permission to use their materials as follows: Chapter 1: Seymour Phillips, ‘The outer world in the European Middle Ages’, in Stuart B. Schwartz (ed.) Implicit understandings'. Observing, Reporting and Reflecting on the Encounters between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era (1994): 23-63. Chapter 2: Joan-Pau Rubiés, ‘The emergence of a naturalistic and ethnographic paradigm in late medieval travel writing’, extracted from J. Eisner and J.P. Rubiés (eds.) Voyages and Visions: Towards a Cultural History o f Travel (1999), ‘Introduction’, pp. 2 9 ^ 6 . Copyright © Reaktion Books 1999. Chapter 3: J.K. Hyde, ‘Ethnographers in search of an audience’, in J.K. Hyde [ed. by Daniel Waley], Literacy and its Uses. Studies on late medieval Italy (Manchester University Press: 1991), pp. 162-216. Chapter 4: Bernard Hamilton, ‘Continental Drift: Prester John’s progress through the Indies’, in C.F. Beckingham and Bernard Hamilton (eds.) Prester John, The Mongols and the Ten Lost Tribes (Ashgate: 1996), pp. 237-69. Copyright © 1996 C.F. Beckingham and Bernard Hamilton. Chapter 5: Jacques Le Goff, ‘The Medieval West and the Indian Ocean: an Oneiric Horizon’, in Jacques Le Goff, Time, work and culture in the Middle Ages, translated by A.Goldhammer, (Chicago, 1980), pp. 189-200. Copyright © 1980 University of Chicago Press. Chapter 6: Rudolf Wittkower, ‘Marco Polo and the pictorial tradition of the marvels of the East’, Oriente Poliano (Rome, 1957): 155-72. Chapter 7: Thomas Hahn, ‘The Indian tradition in western medieval intellectual history’, Viator 9 (1978): 213-34. Copyright © 1978 University of California Press. Chapter 8: Robert Bartlett, ‘Gerald’s ethnographic achievement’, from Gerald o f Wales, 1146-1223 (Oxford, 1982), ch. 6.

viii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

C hapter 9: Peter Jackson, ‘William of Rubruck in the Mongol empire: perception and prejudices’, in Zweder von Martels ed., Travel Fact and Travel Fiction. Studies on fiction, literary tradition, scholarly discovery and observation in travel writing (Brill: 1994): 54-71. Copyright © 1994 Brill Academic Publishers. C hapter 10: David Abulafia. ‘Neolithic meets medieval: first encounters in the Canary Islands’, in D.Abulafia and Nora Berend (eds.) Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices (Ashgate: 2002), pp. 255-78. Copyright © 2002 David Abulafia and Nora Berend. C hapter 11: Peter Russell, 'Veni, vidi, vici: some fifteenth-century eyewitness accounts of travel in the African Atlantic before 1492’, in Historical Research 66 (1993): 115-28. Copyright © 1993 Institute of Historical Research. C hapter 12: Valerie I.J. Flint, ‘Travel Fact and Travel Fiction in the voyages of Columbus’, in Z.von Martels (ed.), Travel Fact and Travel Fiction. Studies on fiction, literary tradition, scholarly discovery and observation in travel writing (Brill: 1994), pp. 94-110. Copyright © 1994 Brill Academic Publishers. C hapter 13: W.R. Jones, ‘The image of the barbarian in Medieval Europe’, Comparative Studies in Society and History XIII (Cambridge, 1971): 3 7 6^07. C hapter 14: Irina Metzler, ‘Perceptions of hot climate in medieval cosmography and travel literature’, Reading Medieval Studies 23 (1997): 69-105.

General Editors’ Preface This series began with a suggestion that a volume dealing with medieval European expansion would make an interesting prologue to the Expanding World: The European Impact on World History 1450-1800 series that was already appearing. Several of the volumes in that series did include articles dealing with aspects of the medieval background, but the medieval ‘expansion of Europe’ - within and along the frontiers of Latin Christendom - lay outside the terms of reference. So did an important part of the medieval prelude to the story of the ‘expanding world’: the growth of neighboring cultures with which Latin Christendom collided. Motives, practices, and tools characteristic of modem European expansion were creations or developments of the Middle Ages. ‘The internal colonization of Europe’ was the basis of subsequent overseas colonization. Along the edges of Latin Christendom, expanding societies encountered Celts, Scandinavians, Slavs, and others who were organizing societies of their own that could block or redirect European expansion, initiate cultural exchange, and exercise varying degrees of influence on the way Europeans thought about themselves and the world. As medieval Christian society expanded further, Europeans encountered other societies with which they competed or cooperated. The introductory volume for the entire series will deal with the expansion of European society during the Middle Ages in terms of the frontier experience, setting the stage for the entire series. Gradually or fitfully, with occasional reversals, between the late ninth and midfourteenth centuries, the culture of Latin Christendom spread outwards in all directions from the heartlands of western Europe. In spite of the contraction of Latin Christendom after the Black Death, the check to the outward growth of the frontier, and the continuing expansion of Islam, the basic motives for expansion remained, as did knowledge of institutional structures employed in developing overseas trade and colonization. Other volumes will deal with the expansion of Europe in geographical terms. The first will examine the internal colonization of Europe that began around 1000 as the population began to increase, previously unfarmed areas were transformed into arable land, and new towns created. This period of growth provided impetus for acquiring new lands to settle and for developing the techniques of colonization, techniques that were to have a long history. Remaining volumes will deal with European expansion along specific frontiers. While European expansion possessed some general qualities, each frontier had its own particular characteristics. The first external frontier to be considered is with the Muslim world. One volume devoted to the Muslim frontier deals with the crusades and related efforts to block or reverse Muslim

X

GENERAL EDITORS’ PREFACE-

expansion in the Mediterranean. The crusades were also early examples of colonization as the crusaders established permanent settlements and a kind of European feudal government in the reconquered territories occupied by an urban population of Christians, heretical and schismatic, Jews, and Muslims. The second volume dealing with Christian expansion along the frontier with the Muslim world will examine the reconquista in the westward-facing parts of Spain and Portugal, a process that not only led to the creation of the Spanish and Portuguese kingdoms, but also to Christian occupation of parts of the African coast, exploration of the Atlantic, and the discovery of several island chains. These efforts in turn led to Columbus’s voyages and to Portuguese explorations that eventually linked the Atlantic to the trade routes of the Indian Ocean. Along other frontiers, European Christians expanded into lands occupied by a variety of societies, often employing religious motives to justify their actions as they had done in the crusades to regain the Holy Land. For example, expansion along the Celtic frontier brought Anglo-Norman conquerors of England into contact with Scots, Welsh, and Irish, all Christians yet, by continental standards, ‘uncivilized’. Expansion here meant not only conquest but also, as in the case of Ireland, a responsibility for reforming the Church as well. There was also the task of transforming the pastoral societies of the Celtic fringe into agricultural societies that the intruders assumed to be the basis for fully civilized society. On the northern, southern, and eastern shores of the Baltic where unevangelized Slavs and Baltic peoples dwelled, and - further south - along the Danube and inland from the Dalmatian coast, Christian Scandinavians, Germans, Slavs and Magyars faced a variety of intractable infidels who deployed modest levels of material culture in terrain classifiable, according to the values of the time, as savage. English and Spanish medieval experience of dealing with the peoples encountered along the frontier shaped initial responses to peoples encountered in the Americas. When they came to the New World they came with perceptions about people who lived on the frontier and with institutions for dealing with them. Europeans saw, or thought they saw, in the Americas societies like those that they had encountered in the course of their medieval expansion so they attempted apply lessons learned from that expansion to the Americas. Within two generations, however, colonizers began to recognize that the Americas were different and that the lessons learned in the course of medieval expansion were not necessarily directly applicable to the New World. The second set of volumes deals with two inter-related issues; first, the role of religion in shaping the medieval response to the world beyond Europe and the perceptions of nonEuropeans that circulated throughout Europe. The Christian responsibility for preaching to all mankind encouraged missionaries to move beyond the geographical frontiers of Christendom to preach to infidels who lived along those frontiers. Early modem overseas expansion, Catholic and Protestant, renewed this notion of mission on a large scale. A further volume

GENERAL EDITORS’ PREFACE

xi

in this category deals with European knowledge of the world beyond Europe. Much of this knowledge came from missionaries, especially Franciscan friars, and from merchants such as Marco Polo who had visited China, India, and the Islamic world. Missionaries and merchants subsequently wrote down their observations about these worlds, providing their fellow Europeans with the earliest first-hand information about the eastern world, information that shaped the fifteenth-century search for a new route to Asia. The third group of volumes focuses on the other expanding societies that Latin Christians encountered in the course of expansion. These volumes demonstrate how expansion led to interaction with other societies, some expanding, others contracting. The Byzantine Empire ruled a Christian society that became increasingly estranged from the Latin West over theological and cultural issues between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries. To some extent, the Byzantines found themselves caught between two expanding societies, the Latin Christians of Europe and the Muslims who had emerged from Arabia in the seventh century, eventually conquering a great deal of territory that the Byzantines once ruled. The crusades that Europeans launched at the end of the eleventh century aimed at assisting in the defense of the Byzantine Empire and at freeing the Holy Land from Muslim hands. As things turned out, however, the crusaders were not interested in restoring the lands to Byzantine control. They sought instead to carve out kingdoms for themselves at the expense of both the Muslims and the Byzantines. Muslim expansion was not only at the expense of the Byzantines, however. From the mid-seventh century to the late seventeenth, Muslim expansion also had a serious impact on Western European development. Christian armies encountered Muslim societies in Iberia where a several-centuries long series of wars led to the creation of numerous small states. At the other end of Europe, Muslim expansion through the Balkans from the fourteenth century to the seventeenth century blocked European expansion eastward and pushed the boundaries of Latin Christendom back as traditionally Christian kingdoms such as Hungary fell to Turkish armies. European expansion into the African Atlantic began in the fifteenth century partly in order to find a route to Asia that would outflank the Muslim-dominated eastern Mediterranean. Another society whose expansion impinged on Europe was the Mongol Empire that Genghis Khan (1162-1227) created. On the one hand, the Mongols wrought a great deal of havoc on the eastern frontiers of Christian Europe as well as on the Muslims in the Near East. On the other hand, Mongol control of the routes between Europe and Asia made it possible for European merchants and missionaries to travel back and forth, thus providing Europeans with more accurate knowledge about the East than they had ever possessed before. The collapse of the Mongol Empire in the fourteenth century made possible the creation of new states out of the Mongol domain. From the perspective of Western Europe the most important of these successor states was Moscow whose rulers embarked upon a policy of expansion that eventually led to the creation of a Russian Empire. This empire not only

xii

GENERAL EDITORS’ PREFACE-

succeeded to the Mongol hegemony in Central Asia, it also took over the Byzantine Emperor’s role as leader and defender of Orthodox Christianity, identifying Moscow as the Third Rome and heir to the Byzantine tradition. Subsequent expansion brought the Russians into conflict with peoples of the Latin West, Islam, and China. Russian expansion eventually extended through Siberia, across the Bering Strait to the North American mainland. The expansion of Europe between 1000 and 1492 provided the foundation upon which modem expansion built. This first stage of European expansion was a part of a larger process, global age of expansion. This series traces the origins of a vital aspect of modernity back into the Middle Ages and sets an early chapter of the rise of Europe in the context of the history of the world. James Muldoon and Felipe Fernández-Armesto General Editors

Introduction In recent decades a traditional image of the European Middle Ages as a static period of primitive economies, fragmented jurisdictions and obscurantist learning dominated by religion has been qualified, when not actually discarded, through an awareness of how economically creative, politically decisive and culturally dynamic the period between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries was - that is, what can be conventionally defined as the Late Middle Ages. These were also four centuries marked by the territorial and maritime expansion of Latin Christendom.1 One of the many legacies of this period that contributed to the emergence of Western Europe as a leading civilization in world history was the growth of empirical ethnographies. Of course, when compared with the growth of travel writing and the historiography of colonial imperialism, and indeed knowledge of exotic societies, civilized or savage, in the early-modern period, the medieval contribution seems indeed modest. Nor is ethnography as obviously significant as sailing ships and firearms are for the history of the global expansion of Europe. It is nevertheless the case that some of the key foundations of the ethnographic genres that became so prominent after the sixteenth century were laid in the late Middle Ages. Moreover, medieval ethnographic texts articulated European views of other cultures no less decisively than would be the case after the Renaissance. The growing attention paid by historians to these medieval ethnographies is therefore justified not only for the important insights that their study offers into what has been called ‘the medieval expansion of Europe’, but also for what they add to our understanding of the cultural roots of the ‘western divergence’, by which early-modern Europe emerged as historically unique in a global context. For the purposes of this volume of selected essays, and for practical reasons, the rich historiography concerning the encounters between Latin Christians, Islam and Judaism has not been represented (although it should be found elsewhere in the same series).2 However, it is important to emphasize that European perceptions of cultural diversity, always mediated to some extent by religious considerations, encompassed at its most fundamental level a confrontation with peoples of the two rival Biblical religions. Either as religious minorities under Christian rule, or as political enemies in the case of the long Islamic frontier extending from Spain to the Middle East, Jews and Muslims were always the primary others of European Christians. A case could be made for including Oriental Christians - Greeks, Armenians,

1 J.R.S. Phillips, The m edieval Expansion o f Europe (Oxford, 1988); Robert Bartlett, The making o f Europe. Conquest, colonization and cultural change 950-1350 (Harmondsworth, 1993). 2 Jim Muldoon is preparing a parallel volume, Travellers, Intellectuals, and the World Beyond M edieval Europe which will include a number of articles concerned with the scholastic and missionary traditions.

xiv

INTRODUCTION

Nestorians, Jacobites and other churches considered ‘heretical’ - within a similar category. In my discussion below, therefore, this dimension will be briefly considered. Let us, as a starting point, acknowledge some non-European perspectives. Although the importance of Arab and Persian geographical and historical literature has long been recognized, including the genre of the rihla which described a form of extended pilgrimage within Islam, there is still much to be learned from a systematic comparison of European and non-European ethnographic genres. The use of travel accounts to describe other cultures was far from uniquely European, and important traditions existed not only in Islam, but also in China, for example under the early Ming, when both extensive maritime expeditions and land embassies were professionally recorded. Ambassadorial reports can be particularly illuminating of the empirical potential of those genres, because political envoys were under pressure to report accurately about foreign courts and to find common grounds of understanding that transcended religious definitions. When we consider for example accounts of early-fifteenth century Persian embassies from Timurid Herat to China and India alongside the near-contemporary account of a Castilian embassy to Timur’s court, or the earlier descriptions of the Mongols produced by Franciscan envoys such as William of Rubruck, what seems most striking is the universality of the capacity for descriptive empiricism. It is also pretty clear that ethnocentric attitudes were prevalent in all maj or cultural traditions, although the particular modalities could differ (hence Chinese travellers constructed their sense of cultural superiority on the basis of Confucian ideals, with little reference to the religious categories that were so determinant for both Christian and Muslim writers). Finally, it is also quite remarkable the extent to which notions of civilization inspired by urban culture and its artistic products were analogous, whilst not even the most religiously bigoted observers were unwilling to praise some foreign customs as acceptable on the basis of a limited form of pragmatic relativism. From this comparative perspective, what seems especially notable in the trajectory of the Latin West is not simply the emergence of a growing sense of cultural confidence after the twelfth century (at the same time that the central lands of Islam suffered from numerous waves of conquest and devastation), but also the increasing importance of the genre of empirical ethnographies within the cultural system. Yet, however influential, a book such as Marco Polo’s was a rarity in medieval Europe, and it was only during the Renaissance that the growing disparity with China and Islam in the development of the ethnographic genres becomes entirely obvious. In other words, what is most distinctive of Europe is the genre’s long-term ‘impact’ rather than its ‘empirical potential’, and, from a comparative perspective, what needs emphasizing is the multiplication of original writings over time, their increased circulation, and their more authoritative status as a ‘scientific’ discourse.3 Whilst cultural ethnocentrism and the religious justification for conquest and enslavement were far from being something exclusive to Europe, it remains nevertheless important to note the extent to which fundamentalist attitudes in the Latin Church inspired religious intolerance 3 I offer this argument more extensively in my ‘Late-medieval ambassadors and the practice of cross-cultural encounters 1250-1450’, in Palmira Brummett (ed.) The ‘B o o k ’o f Travels: Genre, Ethnology, Pilgrimage 1250-1700 (Leiden, 2009): 37-112.

INTRODUCTION

XV

and, more generally, negative attitudes towards other cultures. If at one end of the theological spectrum Augustinian views encouraged the idea that there could be no salvation outside the Church and that therefore deviations of belief and worship were devilish and idolatrous, the more rationalist philosophies of the scholastic period also led to the assumption that the truth of Christianity was not only universal, but also corresponded to the supposedly rational norms of European civil life and morality. The distinction between faith and civil customs - between religious law and secular law - was theoretically possible, for example in Thomas Aquinas’ theology, but not always consistently observed, especially when applied to societies perceived to be barbarian (most obviously nomadic peoples).4 In fact, the role of reason in the theology of salvation remained notoriously tricky. Although Christian writers, notably Augustine, had consistently emphasized the need for faith (‘seek to believe that you may understand’), late medieval apologists and missionaries, especially the Dominicans, also developed the assumption that natural science was fully compatible with faith, and that the most rational peoples - those most civilized - should be especially prone to accepting the truth of Christianity. As the early fourth-century Latin apologist Lactantius had suggested in his Divine Institutes, it could be said that whilst human reason was not sufficient to know divine truth, it nevertheless made it possible to create the antechamber to true wisdom by proving to others, without recourse to contested scriptural authorities, that Christianity was more rational than any other religion, whether idolatrous/polytheist or heretical/monotheist (and of course atheism, the denial of Providence, was obviously untenable, as all the mainstream ancient schools had already proved in their polemics against Epicureans).5 This rationalizing impulse, revived after the twelfth century, gave Latin Christians a sense of cultural superiority, a temptation even to seek to prove their religion through reason alone, as Ramon Llull’s convoluted arguments with Jews, Muslims and gentiles exemplify. Latin confidence was made possible by military strength and only truly shaken when Providence seemed to turn decisively against Christians: as the Dominican Riccoldo da Montecroce revealed in an agonized letter to God written in Baghdad following the fall of Acre, in practical terms the only argument that truly mattered was not theological, but rather whose side was God supporting, with miracles or simply through history: in the face of the prosperity of Islam ‘it seems that you, God, have turned yourself into the executor of the Koran’.6

4 Aquinas’ strategy consisted of distinguishing the realm of rational norms (natural law) from the realm of grace as expressed through direct divine revelation, which perfected, but did not contradict, what human reason could discover in nature. 5 Hence the point of rational arguments was not to prove the faith, but rather to prove that the doctrines of idolaters and heretics were inspired by demons and contrary to reason. The Jews, who had the Law directly from God, were a different case, since their sin was a refusal to accept Christ - the New Law - who had been born amongst them. So arguments with Jews were often conducted from within scriptural authorities rather than philosophically. Whilst reason could be used to interpret the Old Testament from a Christian perspective, its authority as Revelation could be assumed, and there was no need for a rational defence of monotheism or monolatry. 6 ‘Epistolae quinque commentatorie de perditione Acconis 129Γ, ed. Reinhold Rôhricht, Archives de Γ Orient Latin II (1884), 264-96.

xvi

INTRODUCTION

Such doubts were rarely expressed. On the contrary, Europe’s success in the West (notably in Spain) seemed to compensate for setbacks in the East, which in any case mainly affected oriental Christians, and the assumption that the ‘Franks’ had both Providence and reason on their side made Latin Christians less, rather than more, tolerant of other religions. Seymour Phillips suggests in his essay ‘The outer world of the European Middle Ages’ (Chapter 1) that the aggression expressed in European attitudes towards overseas peoples in the fifteenth century to some extent represented a transfer of the previous development of institutionalized persecuting attitudes within Christian society - towards heretics and Jews for example.7 As a matter of fact, close scrutiny of various late medieval encounters reveals that pragmatic considerations (involving trading opportunities with Muslims, for example, or the royal taxation of Jews) often took precedence over any blanket intolerance of religious and cultural diversity. However, there is also abundant evidence suggesting that ecclesiastical campaigns imbued with the crusading ideology or with millenarian expectations could undermine existing traditions of limited tolerance, providing a channel for the diversion of social frustrations against religious minorities, and eventually creating the basis for a state policy in pursuit of religious uniformity, as happened in Spain in the fifteenth century. The primacy of religious considerations notwithstanding, the more recent historiography has emphasized the growing importance of empirically-based ethnographies after the twelfth century, in a manner that did not necessarily oppose the religious assumptions of Christian superiority, but which on the other hand often went beyond a mere desire to justify expansionism and brutality by condemning cultural diversity. Although the number of such texts was limited, their significance grew, as shown by the wide circulation of key travel accounts such as the books by Marco Polo and Sir John Mande ville. These two most remarkable texts in reality were radically different from each other, both in conception and empirical validity, but, interestingly, medieval contemporaries could not usually have been in a position to appreciate this. This is symptomatic of a wider problem, namely the complexity of the late medieval genre of travel writing. The sheer diversity of authorial intentions, target audiences, levels of circulation and generic assumptions has led to various attempts to classify the material according the sub-genres.8As I myself suggested in my ‘The emergence of a naturalistic and 7 It was also in the fifteenth century that the persecution of witches became systematic. On the rise of persecuting attitudes see Bernard Cohn’s classic study Europe s inner demons. An enquiry inspired by the great witch-hunt (London, 1975), emphasizing the decisive role of the growth of the irrational idea of a secret sect devoted to devil worship, and R.I. Moore, The Form ation o f a persecuting Society. P ow er and deviance in Western Europe (Oxford, 1987), whose key point is not that religious persecution was peculiar to the Latin West (it was not), but rather that it grew in importance in the High Middle Ages, becoming remarkably institutionalized. It should however be noted that Christianity, as a result of its complex theology, has a historically unparalleled tendency to spawn sectarian interpretations, hence any period marked by a hegemonic Church organization has tended towards the definition and persecution of heresies. 8 Amongst various attempts to sort out the problem of genre in medieval travel writing see Jean Richard, L es récits de voyage et de pèlerin age (Tumhout, 1981); Mary Campbell, The witness and the other world. Exotic European travel writing 400-1600 (Ithaca and London, 1988); J.P. Rubiés, ‘Travel writing as a genre: facts, fictions and the invention of a scientific discourse in early-modern Europe’,

INTRODUCTION

xvii

ethnographie paradigm in late medieval travel writing’ (Chapter 2), geographical literature, ambassadorial reports, mission and pilgrimage all contributed to a pre-humanistic ethnographic impulse, which in turn must be related to the growth of naturalistic and historical narrative forms, rather than to any desire to challenge traditional religious ideologies.9 Particularly symptomatic was the empirical turn in traditional pilgrimage narratives, the religious genre par excellence. The prevailing model until the fourteenth century consisted of describing those places that could be linked specifically to scriptural or miraculous events, making abstraction of the changing historical reality of the Holy Land. By contrast, the continuous juxtaposition of passages depicting the cultivation of piety in sacred locations with descriptions of historical peoples and contexts becomes apparent in a number of fourteenthcentury vernacular narratives, beginning with that produced by the Franciscan Friar Niccolô da Poggibonsi in 1350, where a combination of practical advice and sheer curiosity leads to vivid descriptions of savage Arabs, oriental Christians, exotic animals (for example an ostrich), the loss of a faithful interpreter in the desert, or a friendly visit to a synagogue.10 Here perhaps the most significant underlying issue was the growth of self-centred narratives of personal encounters in the historical world, remarkable precisely because pilgrimage was traditionally understood as seeking the opposite effect, a transcendent experience, and Christian fathers such as Augustine had warned specifically against curious travel, the perfect metaphor for the distracting enjoyment of the amenities of the journey that was man’s life on earth. However problematic, the late medieval tendency towards personal and curious observation is too general to be accidental, and was given its most influential expression in the fictional travels of Sir John Mandeville, whose core identity was that of a pilgrim - modelled, in this case,

Journeys 2000 [now in Travellers and Cosm ographers. Studies in the History o f Early M odern Travel and Ethnology (Aldershot, 2007), I]. See also Scott D. Westrem, B roader Horizons. A study o f Johan n es Witte de H esse s Itinerarius and M edieval Travel Narratives (Cambridge Mass. 2001). 9 The essay ‘The emergence of a naturalistic and ethnographic paradigm’, included in this volume at the suggestion of the series editor James Muldoon, is an extract from the ‘Introduction’ written together with Jas Eisner to our edited collection Voyages and Visions. Towards Cultural History o f Travel (London, 1999). I am grateful to Jas Eisner for his willingness to see this extract published separately and, more generally, for his insightful classicist’s contribution to my thinking about the topic, as reflected especially in the sections of the ‘Introduction’ dealing with ancient travel and pilgrimage. See in this respect now also Jas Eisner and Ian Rutherford eds. Pilgrim age in G raeco-R om an & early Christian antiquity. Seeing the Gods (Oxford, 2005). 10 Fra Niccolô da Poggibonsi, ‘Libro d’Oltramare’, in P ellegrini Scrittori. Viaggatori Toscani del Trecento in Terrasanta, ed. by A. Lanza and M. Troncarelli (Firenze. 1990). Other examples of pilgrims of this type are the Irish Franciscan Symon Semeonis (1324), the Florentine patricians Simone Sigoli, Lionardo Frescobaldi and Giorgio Gucci (1384), and later in the fifteenth century the German Dominican Felix Fabri (1480/1483). The narratives by friar Niccolô and others are discussed in Kenneth Hyde’s excellent essay ‘Italian pilgrim literature in the late Middle Ages’, published posthumously in his Literacy and its uses. Studies on late m edieval Italy, ed. by Daniel Waley (Manchester, 1993), with an emphasis very similar to the one I offer here. See also Christian K. Zacher, Curiosity and Pilgrim age: the literature o f discovery in fourteenth-century England (Baltimore, 1976), and A. Gabroïs, L e pèlerin occidentale en Terre sainte au Moyen Age (Paris, 1998).

xviii

INTRODUCTION

upon the German Dominican William of Boldensele, although massively amplified with other (often historical) materials.11 In order to appreciate fully what the rise of ethnography represents, we must consider the extent to which cultural relations could be dealt-with non-ethnographically. The traditions of crusade and chivalry are obvious examples. The crusading experience stimulated the growth of a lay historiography which implied encounters with Muslims and oriental Christians, but this was seldom represented with ethnographic accuracy. Muslims were often presented in epic chansons as pagan idolaters who worshipped Muhammad (the genre served as crusading propaganda).12Better informed historians of the crusades like Guibert of Nogent did not deny the monotheism of Islam but treated it as a profane heresy by a false prophet that debased true religion. Subsequent chroniclers of military expeditions in the lands of the Byzantine empire, from Geoffreoy de Villehardouin to Ramon Muntaner, could be historically-minded narrators of controversial events, but repeatedly fell back to literary stereotypes about treacherous Greeks and enemy Turks without expressing any ethnographic curiosity.13 Chivalric literature, in turn, was full of allegorical journeys and encounters with fabulous figures of ‘otherness’, monstrous or simply marvellous, but it was only in a few proto-novels of the fifteenth-century, such as the notable Tirant lo Blanc, that realist settings began to appear. Most notably, the rich literature of theological disputations against Jews and Muslims, whether intended for internal consumption or (more rarely) for actual engagement with opponents, revealed very little attention to religious practices. As Norman Daniel argued in his classic study Islam and the West, the making o f an image, the dominance of polemical intentions meant that negative legends about Muhammad abounded, and in those cases when knowledge of Islam was better grounded, its presentation was notably distorted to facilitate apologetic aims.14 Even those authors of the late thirteenth century committed to missionary 11 On Mandeville see, amongst others, the classic study by Josephine W. Bennett, The rediscovery o f Sir Joh n M andeville (New York, 1954), the decisive work by Christiane Deluz, L e livre de Jeh an de M andeville: une G eographie au XlVè siècle (Louvain, 1988) and, more recently, the sophisticated analysis by Iain Macleod Higgins, Writing East. The “Travels o f Sir Joh n M andeville (Philadelphia, 1997). The importance of Boldensele’s L iber de quibusdam ultramarinis partibus (1336) as model for Mandeville, who essentially ‘overwrote it’ on the basis of Jean le Long’s French version, is emphasized by Higgins, pp. 64 ff. and also by Scott D. Westrem, who has publishd a similar kind of text by a Dutch writer in his B roader Horizons. On the reception of Mandeville see also Rosemary Tzanaki, M andeville's M edieval Audiences. A Study on the reception o f the Book o f Sir Joh n M andeville (13711550) (Aldershot, 2003). 12 In a literary setting Muslims could nevertheless be more honourable than some Christians. A notable example is the twelfth-century vernacular Castilian epic Poem o f the C id (written down c. 1207), remarkable for its semi-historical setting, and where the hero is betrayed by his Castilian sons-in-law to the horror of his Moorish feudatory ‘Avengalvón’ (Ibn Ghalbun). 13 For a recent overview of the complexity of the European engagement with the Levant see Michel Balard, L es Latins en O rientXle-X Ve siècle (Paris, 2006). 14 Norman Daniel, Islam and the West. The making o f an Im age (Oxford, revised ed. 1993 [1st ed. I960]). For a more recent discussion that seeks to go beyond Daniel’s shocked denunciation of how distorted the Christian image of Islam was, in order to answer why this was the case, see also the important synthesis by John Tolan, Saracens. Islam in the M edieval European Im agination (New York,

INTRODUCTION

xix

work through rational arguments in the frontier areas of the Mediterranean and Middle East, such as William of Tripoli, Ramon Llull, or Riccoldo da Monte Croce, whose study of Arabic and the Koran placed them in a position from which to construct a reasonably accurate image of Islamic beliefs, were not particularly interested in representing Muslim practices, except when they could be used to shame Christians into a more consistent moral behaviour.15 The attitude of the Catalan (Majorcan) mystic and inventive apologist Ramon Llull is particularly interesting, since his contact with Islam was sufficiently extensive for him to borrow literary forms from Sufi poetry and even express admiration for the recitation of the Koran, yet at the same time he believed that the Muslim intellectual elites were far too rational to seriously accept the doctrines of Islam, and in his popular exposition of those doctrines he relied on the stereotype of Muhammad the heretic and impostor. 16A similar dichotomy pertains to the rich tradition of polemics with Jews: from the middle of the twelfth century, better knowledge of Hebrew literature was framed within an apologetic context (aiming to prove Christianity from rabbinic authorities) that did not lead to more tolerance, and often excluded any description of actual Jewish life.17 2002). For the distorting role of apologetic aims in the parallel case of the Jews see the review-essay by Harvey Hames, O n the Polemics of Polemic: Conceptions of Medieval Jewish-Christian Disputation’, Studia Lulliana 37 (1997): 131-36. 15 For example, Riccoldo, P érégrination, 158: ‘We were surprised to find how a law of such perfidy could produce works of such perfection. We will here report some of the works of perfection of the Saracens, more for the confusion of Christians than to give praise to the Saracens’. In any case, proponents of rational dialogue such as Llull were not necessarily unwilling to resort to crusade in other circumstances. In this respect see Benjamin Kedar, Crusade and Mission. European approaches towards the Muslims (Princeton, 1984), 159-203. For the general context of the missionary ideal of the late thirteenth century see the classic discussion by Robert Burns S.J., ‘Christian-Islamic confrontation in the West: the thirteenth-century dream of conversion’, American H istorical Review 76 (1971): 1386— 1434. The author of the De statu Saracenarum (1273), a work traditionally attributed to the Dominican William of Tripoli, is perhaps the most exceptional in his positive attitudes towards Muslims (but not Muhammad). This was only because he perceived them as much closer to Christianity than any other writer. It was missionary ecumenism that justified a sympathetic portrayal. 16 John Tolan, “‘Saracen Philosophers secretly deride Islam’” , M edieval Encounters 8 (2002), 184— 208, emphasizes the growth of the idea that intelligent Muslims could not really believe in the Koran. On Llull’s knowledge of Islam see Dominique Urvoy, P enser I Islam : les présu pposés islam iques de l ART de Lulle (Paris, 1980), and Angel Cortabarria, ‘La connaissance de l’Islam chez Raymonde Lulle et Raymond Martin, O.P.: parallèle’, C ahiers de Fanjeaux 22 (1987), 33-55. Where Urvoy insists on the fragmentary nature of Llull’s knowledge of Islam, Cortabarria emphasizes that, compared with the Dominican missionary and fellow Catalan Ramon Marti, author of the influential Pugio F id ei, Llull was formally more inventive, allowing Muslim sources to influence his style (possibly because he sought to address a wider audience, including laymen). However his description of Islam in the Doctrina P ueril, a book written for children (1275), contains things such as the following: ‘The actions of Muhammad were so villainous and obscene, and his words and actions so far from those that pertain to the holy life of a profet, that the majority of those Saracens who are knowledgeable and of subtle intelligence and high understanding do not believe that Muhammad was a prophet’. 17 The literature on attitudes to Jews is vast and growing. See especially Jeremy Cohen, The friars and the Jew s: the evolution o f m edieval anti-Judaism (New York, 1982); Robert Chazan, D aggers o f

XX

INTRODUCTION

The situation is notably different when analysing travel writers, whether ambassadors, spies or even pilgrims. Whenever not trying to prove Christianity superior (and this was seldom their main focus), these first-hand observers were often quite accurate ethnographers. The emergence of this ethnographic impulse can not however be taken for granted: it was not a default mode, but rather, one of the original creations of the late medieval period. As we have seen, the evolution of pilgrimage narratives demonstrates that even a highly conventionalized religious genre could be transformed from the abstract piety of the early medieval centuries to the almost worldly curiosity that came to prevail after the thirteenth century. Kenneth Hyde’s remarkable overview of the rise of ethnography in his provocatively titled ‘Ethnographers in search of an audience’ (Chapter 3) offers a complex chronology of this process, one that emphasizes the role of literate friars in the East in the thirteenth century, and of literate merchants in the Atlantic in the fifteenth, with a long hiatus following the collapse of the so-called pax Mongolica, when fresh ethnographies were rare. However, in his view, writers were perhaps less decisive than audiences: it was the narrative skill of Rustichello da Pisa that made Marco Polo’s description of the world - a geography rather than a travelogue - possible and, indeed, more popular than the systematic ethnography of the Mongols by John of Piano Carpini; even the latter had most impact through the summary in the clerical encyclopaedia written by Vincent of Beauvais, which privileged the historical element over the ethnographic.18 Hence, again, it was the life of genres that gave life to the expression of individual creations and determined their impact. The striking manner by which a writer like the Florentine Dominican Riccoldo da Monte Croce could reveal deep contact with Islam during a stay in Baghdad in the early 1290s in his narrative of pilgrimage (Itinerarius), and yet later deploy crude scholastic arguments in order to misrepresent it as a confused, violent and permissive law that implicitly granted the Christian gospels a higher status (a discourse developed in his Contra legem Sarracenorum of c. 1300), is revealing of the fact that empirical knowledge was not the decisive issue, but rather, how it was culturally constructed in specific contexts and for particular aims. In Riccoldo’s case, a man who had transformed his pious pilgrimage into a bold preaching mission, the sudden collapse of the remaining Latin enclaves in the Holy Land created a crisis of faith that faith : Thirteenth-century Christian missionizing and Jew ish response (Berkeley, 1989); Anna Sapir Abulafia, Christians and Jew s in the twelfth-century R enaissance (London, 1995); Jeremy Cohen, Living letters o f the law: ideas o f the Jew in M edieval Christianity (Berkeley, 1999). Also, in French, Gilbert Dahan, L es intellectuels chrétiens et les ju ifs au moyen âge (Paris, 1990), with a more positive emphasis on cases where Christian theologians showed respect for Jews as expert interpreters of the Hebrew Bible. Ramon Llull is again a peculiar case because, largely working outside the scholasticism of the mendicant orders, he tried to develop an apologetic method that would connect to the intellectual trends of his religious opponents, even subjecting the key Christian tenets of the Incarnation and the Trinity to rational proof (not an orthodox move). For a fascinating exploration of his knowledge of Jewish Kabbalah see Harvey Hames, The art o f Conversion. Christianity & K abbalah in the thirteenth century (Leiden, 2000). 18 On the remarkably faithful editorial practices of Vincent of Beauvais see also Gregory Guzman, ‘The encyclopedist Vincent of Beauvais and his Mongol extracts from John of Piano Carpini and Simon of Saint-Quentin’, Speculum 49 (1974): 287-307.

INTRODUCTION

xxi

could only be met with a literary effort, a fresh attempt to believe in order to understand, as he explained in his extraordinary prayers in the form of letters addressed to God.19 The next step was a violent apology for Christian core beliefs undertaken upon his return to Florence, an effort probably more important for buttressing his own Latin Christian identity than for its potential effects amongst oriental audiences. The apparent virtues of Muslims, such as their piety, could only be interpreted as a warning to Christians, and their worldly success against Christians as a test of faith. Riccoldo’s polemic was built upon previous texts found in a Florentine library (notably the 12th century Liber denudationis by a Spanish Muslim convert to Christianity), rather than inspired by his own rather disturbing Eastern experiences.20 Perhaps we can generalize by saying that the more elaborate the theology of religious difference, the weaker the ethnographic impulse: it was the encounter with pagans or ‘gentiles’, rather than with Muslims, Jews, or oriental Christians, that generated the most detailed empirical descriptions of exotic customs, rituals and beliefs. When dealing with ‘gentiles’ the religious categories were vaguer, the polemical tradition almost non-existent, and there was little opportunity to limit the argument to the interpretation of a contested tradition of scriptural authority, pitting authentic against non-authentic text, or, when books were held in common reverence, the correct interpretation against the incorrect one. When after the thirteenth century Buddhists, Brahmins and shamans were actually encountered, they had little in common with the (purely) philosophical gentiles that a few Christian apologists such as Abelard, Llull or Aquinas had been debating against. Peter Jackson’s analysis of William of Rubruck’s account of the Mongols amply demonstrates that missionaries could, when acting also as ambassadors, become accurate ethnographers, whilst Kenneth Hyde emphasizes the careful planning that went into John of Piano Carpini’s Ystoria Mongalorum, behind the apparent simplicity of its ecclesiastical Latin: his was a ‘literary and intellectual achievement of a high order’. However, it is also clear that the fact that the Mongols were a novel pagan presence helps explain the curiosity of these Franciscan envoys for recording their customs. Similarly, Riccoldo da Monte Croce was fascinated by the savage customs of Turcomans, Tartars and Kurds whom he encountered in his journey from the Holy Land to Tabriz, but said little about oriental Christians and Jews, other than to oppose their heretical views. It is also true that the Dominican friar’s personal narrative was less vivid than William of Rubruck’s: next to the historical legends picked up in his travels and the theological condemnations found

19 Riccoldo, ‘Epistolae’. The remarkable depth of this crisis of faith led the friar to openly question why God had not spared the many good Christians of Acre, including many saintly Dominicans, in order to punish a few impious ones (reversing his mercy towards the people of Sodom, who would have been spared provided only ten just men could be found). The only reply he received was that God’s power, as shown in the Sacred Scriptures, was arbitrary. 20 For a discussion of the sources of Riccoldo’s Contra legem Sarracenorum with an edition of the text see J.M. Mérigoux, ‘L’ouvrage d’un frère prêcheur en Orient a la fin du XHIe siècle’ in M emorie Dom inicane 17 (1986): 1-144. On the L iber denudationis see Thomas Burman, Religious p olem ic and the intellectual history o f the M ozarabs (Leiden, 1994).

xxii

INTRODUCTION

in the libraries of the preaching order, the account of what Riccoldo actually experienced pales into insignificance.21 There can be no doubt that the Mongol conquests had a decisive impact upon European ethnographic genres after the thirteenth century. The fact that the ‘Tartars’ were classified as gentiles was of course relevant, but the competition to convert them to Roman Christianity was also stimulated by the huge geopolitical consequences of their sudden emergence in Eastern Europe and the Middle East (and the complex relationship between diplomatic and religious roles remains one of the key issues for interpreting the mendicant embassies). Theirs was a vast and aggressive empire which, for many decades, made it possible for people, goods and cultural influences to travel relatively easily across the whole Eurasian mainland, from the distant countries of the Franks in the barbarian west to the richest prize of all, Cathay in northern China. For Europeans the ‘Tartars’, most notorious for their cruelty, obviously represented an immediate threat, but perhaps more significant, in the long term they were also a potential ally against a more immediate common enemy, in particular after they successfully settled in Persia, where the Ilkhans made their capital in Tabriz. The contemporary collapse of the crusading states of Outremer together with the steady retreat of the Greek empire, under the combined pressures of the Mamluk restoration in Palestine and the advance of the Turks in Anatolia, created a structure of diplomatic exchanges and missionary dreams (mainly led by the papacy) that would outlast the conversion of the Ilkhans to Islam, casting a shadow until the seventeenth century. This geo-strategic re-alignment, whilst causing immediate destruction to both Eastern Christianity and many Islamic lands, also coincided with a growth in military power, economic sophistication and cultural confidence in the Latin West. It gave European writers of the late thirteenth century a strategic vision of world geography that a variety of practical genres, lay and religious, were ready to articulate. European descriptions of Asia all the way to India and China, such as Marco Polo’s rather exceptional Divisament dou monde (c.1298), became suddenly possible, as did a substantial amount of missionary accounts, from the early efforts by John of Piano Carpini and William of Rubruck amongst the Mongols of Central Asia to, a few decades later, the travels in India and China of Odoric of Pordenone and John of Marignolli, also Franciscan friars.22 The detailed accounts of the Mongols written by John of 21 This priority of the legendary leads to some incongruities, such as when after describing how the Kurds were known to be murderers, robbers sand betrayers, he notes that they actually treated him with great hospitality at a time of great need! See Riccoldo, Pérégrination en Terre Sainte et au p roch e orient. Lettres dur la chute de Saint Je a n d'Acre [Latin text with facing translation], ed. by René Kappler (Paris, 1997), 120. 22 A few Dominicans also reached India, for example Jordanus Catalani of Severac, but they tended to be more active in Persia and Armenia. After 1318 a formal division of missionary areas had been agreed, with the Franciscans in charge of the Mongol lands all the way to Cathay, and the Dominicans responsible for Iran and India. On these various missions to the East and European relations with the Mongols see Jean Richard, La papau té et les missions catholiques en Orient au Moyen Age (XIIIe— XVe siècles), 2nd ed. (Rome, 1998). On some obscure episodes, such as the identification of Ghinggis Khan with Prester John in the ‘Relation of David’, or the account of the Mongols by Simon de Saint-Quentin, see also his Au delà de la P erse et de L Arménie. L ’Orient Latin et la découverte de lA sie intérieure

INTRODUCTION

xxiii

Piano Carpini and Simon of Saint Quentin were incorporated with astonishing rapidity into the Speculum Historiale of the French Dominican Vincent of Beauvais (c.1254), perhaps the most important encyclopaedic synthesis of the Late Middle Ages. The crusading ideal generated more direct ethnography and attention to oriental sources during its messy retreat than at the time of its apparent initial success, that is, when it coincided with an expansion of scientific and narrative genres. It is symptomatic that in this context, in 1307 the exiled Armenian prince Hayton (Hetoum) would preface his appeal to a joint Latin-Mongol crusade that would restore the fortunes of the Christian kingdom of Lesser Armenia (Cilicia) with a substantial account of the peoples of the East from Syria to Cathay, as well as a history of the Muslim dynasties and mostly of the ‘Tartars’. Much of this was based on personal observation and stories gathered at the Mongol courts in places such as the cosmopolitan city of Tabriz.23 (It was also in Tabriz that Rashid ad-Din was then preparing his universal history, written in Persian for his Mongol patrons, with chapters on India, Cathay and ‘the Franks’.) As the fourteenth century advanced, direct contacts became more difficult, but in Europe the new ethnography of the East continued to be copied and translated, summarized and propagated by chroniclers and encyclopaedic writers, and assembled in vernacular collections such as that created in French by the Benedictine monk Jean le Long of Ypres in 1351, who in this way made it possible for someone, perhaps himself, to write the popular travels of John Mande ville (Mande ville’s account of the East is primarily taken from Pordenone’s vivid travelogue). Fresh ethnographic materials were also integrated in a remarkably systematic fashion into revolutionary mappamundi\ one such was the Catalan Atlas prepared by the Majorcan Jew Abraham Cresques in the 1370s, who complemented the navigational empiricism of the portulan charts with the legends of Marco Polo’s account of the far East to inaugurate a tradition of world maps influential until the expeditions of Columbus. Few of these writings were entirely empirical, since all combined personal observations with hearsay, and much of the latter tended towards emphasizing the marvellous. As Peter Jackson notes in his essay ‘William of Rubruck in the Mongol empire: perception and prejudices’ (Chapter 9), even the most personal of narratives contained a great deal of inaccuracy and misunderstanding, manifested for example in the friar’s difficulties making sense of Buddhism or distinguishing it from Manichaeism. The importance of the legend of Prester John also testifies to the continued impact of the ideological wishful thinking that (Turnhout, 2005). In English J.R.S. Phillips, The M edieval Expansion o f E urope, chapter 5, offers a good summary. 23 The F lo r des estoires de la terre d ’Orient was dictated to Nicholas Faulcon at Poitires (where Hayton stayed as a Premonstratensian monk) at the request of pope Clement V, and then was translated into Latin. It deserves more attention from scholars, not only because of its pervasive influence as a source of geographical knowledge, but also as prime example of the cultural mediation exercised by oriental Christians connected to the crusader estates. Prince Hayton was in exile as part of the factional struggle in Cilician Armenia - he was a member of the pro-Latin faction that collaborated with the House of Lusignan in Cyprus. It is likely that the crusading treaty was written separately. One must still consult the edition and study by C. Kohler in R ecueil des Historiens des croisades. Documents Arméniens, II (Paris, 1906).

xxiv

INTRODUCTION

underlay relations with the East: the myth of the Christian priest-king who would join forces with the Latin Christians for a restoration of the crusade, originally inspired by the QaraKhitai’s decisive defeat of the Seljuq Sultan in 1141, was little more than a primitive version of the later idea that the Mongols would convert to Roman Catholicism and crush the Muslim powers of the Middle East. Although Rubruck could assert that reports about the conversion of various Mongol khans to Christianity had been exaggerated by self-interested Nestorian Christians (whom he considered profoundly ignorant in any case), in Europe the legend of the Christian ally not only persisted, but indeed was revived in the most extraordinary sequence of transformations, to eventually inspire the Portuguese in their Atlantic explorations of the fifteenth century. In his illuminating essay ‘Continental drift: Prester John’s progress through the Indies’ (Chapter 4), Bernard Hamilton shows how, from the twelfth century, and in a variety of crusading contexts, fabricated letters and obscure prophecies were conveniently attached to specific potential allies as situations arose, with very little concern for geographical rigour.24 By 1221 Ghinggis Khan himself had become Prester John as one ‘King David’, his recent destruction of the Christian Georgian army notwithstanding. A few decades later a better informed William of Rubruck suggested that Prester John should rather be related to the Nestorian Turkic Khans of Central Asia belonging to the Naiman and the Kerait tribes. The fact that Marco Polo eventually recounted the defeat and utter subjection to Ghinggis Khan of the leader to the Keraits Toghril (Wang Khan), whom he openly identified with Prester John, and mentioned that his descendant George was a Christian and a vassal of Kubilai, did not prevent, but rather encouraged, the final migration of the myth to Christian Ethiopia, where, throughout the 14th century, the Solomonic dynasty was able to expand southwards and then initiate a diplomatic exchange with Latin powers such as the kings of Aragon. Paradoxically, the Ethiopian Negus was a monophysite, that is, he entertained a very different kind of Christological doctrine, one quite opposite to the Nestorian. What this reveals is not utter disregard for geography, let alone theology, but rather the process of accommodation to new empirical realities of a powerful myth that retained its political relevance. Hence there was not a pure religious mythology of the Prester John, but rather a continuous tension and compromise between ideological dream and historical reality. A similar tension between traditional ideas based on literary stereotypes and new realities affected images of the peoples of India, although in this case the literary tradition was particularly strong due to the existence of various classical sources, whilst actual contacts were remarkably limited until Marco Polo late in the thirteenth century, and even then never as intense as with Armenia, Persia and Central Asia. This combination produced a remarkable persistence of fabulous themes, what in his essay (Chapter 5) Jacques Le Goff calls ‘an oneiric horizon’, which he relates specifically to the ‘mediocre’ collection of HellenisticLatin geographical sources available to Europeans, including the Ptolemaic idea of a closed sea, so confusing for fifteenth-century cartographers. India, a vast expanse of ill-defined and often shifting contours, became for centuries the land of the marvellous, both in positive and 24 See also Charles F. Beckingham, ‘The achievements of Prester John’ [1966], reprinted in his Betw een Islam and Christendom (London, 1983).

INTRODUCTION

XXV

in negative terms. It was the place where paradise, but also the monstrous races described by Pliny, could be located: a land where nature experimented with freaks (the point that marvels represented extreme nature rather than anti-nature was important to Christian theologians like Augustine) Jacques le Goff, venturing into a kind of psychoanalysis of the collective medieval mentality, interprets it also as a space of liberation, an anti-Mediterranean, a space opposed to rational civilization. Whilst it can be argued - as I have done elsewhere - that most of the marvellous elements described by actual travellers such as Marco Polo derived from oriental hearsay rather than expressing a collective mentality shaped by the weight of centuries of literary and iconographie influences, there is no denying that no sober description of India was produced in Europe until the humanist Poggio Bracciolini subjected the Venetian traveller Nicolô Conti to a rigorous interview in fifteenth-century Florence.25 One area in which the literary tradition of antiquity exercised a great influence was in the emphasis on marvels and monsters, which medieval authors, following the classical precedent (for example Pliny and Solinus), tended to locate at the extremes of the world. It is important to distinguish the general idea of the marvellous, which simply referred to what is extraordinary and worthy of note, for example peculiar products, animals and customs, from the more specific theme of the monstrous races, which could suggest a transgression from the laws of nature, and had been given an utterly ethnocentric religious interpretation by Augustine (God could never have erred, hence he may have created monstrous races in the East so that Christians be less questioning of occasional monsters in their midst!). There was nevertheless an easy overlap between the two themes, since the most marvellous was often that which seemed unnatural. Whilst empirical travellers such as Marco Polo were understood to tell marvellous stories, included the tale of the dog-headed people from the Andaman and Nicobar islands (also reported in Arab sources), they were also prone to dismiss other tales as fabulous. By contrast, the less empirical accounts were those most reliant on previous literature and therefore more prone to seek to confirm or elaborate existing mythical representations, within a pure logic of self-representation. The relative rarity of detailed empirical ethnographies such as those produced by the Franciscan missionaries or by lay travellers such as Marco Polo not only made it difficult to establish their superior credibility, but also ensured that there was no linear progression from fabulous accounts to sober ones. An example of this is the Mirabilia Descripta by Jordanus Catalani, a Dominican engaged in serious missionary work in fourteenth-century India (he became Bishop of Quilon in 1329), but apparently more interested in witnessing exotic marvels than in producing a balanced and informed assessment of the lie of the land. What he sought was not pure fantasy, but rather to record the novel and the extraordinary of, in his

25 Rubiés, Travel and Ethnology, chapter 3. Le Goff must also be corrected in relation to Conti’s saying about the three eyes of the world - the ‘Indians’ had two, the Franks one, and the other nations were blind. These ‘Indians’, as I have argued, are in fact the Cathayans (Chinese). See Rubiés, ‘Late medieval ambassadors’, 40-55.

xxvi

INTRODUCTION

own expression, ‘another world’.26 He did so in a rather disorderly way, failing to transmit a clear sense of the geography of India.27 Hence, amongst descriptions of mangoes and coconut trees he repeated (obviously from hearsay) the popular story of the dog-headed islanders, revived the traditional idea that one could find many precious stones with special ‘virtues’, and emphasized that the darker people were, the more attractive they were considered. He also offered an account of the sati sacrifice, a description of idolatrous rites, and a confused catalogue of gentile sects, but never a description of a city or a court. This emphasis on the marvellous, supported by a mixture of observations and hearsay, was not peculiar to the European image of India. Gerald of Wales began his description of Ireland (Topograhia Hibernica) of c. 1188 by noting that the West no less than the East produces wonders of nature (it was indeed his aim to restore the balance by giving an account of the western marvels). He went on to distinguish the truly miraculous from those things that were marvellous in themselves, that is, placed by nature in the appropriate climates, and which he subsequently sought to rationalize (these included stories of fish with golden teeth, men who were half oxen, or bearded women).28 Assuming of course a religious vision by which miracles were entirely possible, the obvious question about marvels was not accuracy, but rather interpretation. Marvels, in other words, were an expression of divine power, but because (as declared by Augustine) the created world was the greatest marvel of all, admiring it was, more than anything, an exercise in religious piety, one which led from a consideration of rare wonders in exotic islands to an increased appreciation of the wonder that is nature in its everyday cycles. Admittedly, Gerald also had a political agenda: the wonders of Ireland could testify to the worth of the colonizing project of Henry II of England, since they proved that the land, with its mild and healthy climate, had a great deal of natural potential, in opposition to the more famous East, were all the elements, from extreme heat to lions and, most especially, poisons, invited death. One interesting problem is interpreting historically the psychology of belief associated with the medieval emphasis on marvels. If we assume that human rationality can operate within a variety of cultural parameters, it is quite possible to make sense of the evidence of belief in the marvellous without relying on the facile assumption of a collective mentality that would be particularly credulous and lead, for example, to interpretations of ‘the other’ as monstrous. This is not to deny the existence of cultural stereotypes, but these were not 26 Jourdain Catalani de Sévérac, M irabilia Descripta. L es M erveilles de l ’A sie, ed. Henri Cordier (Paris, 1925). There is a new edition with commentary Une im age de I ’orient au X IV siècle. L es M irabilia D escripta de Jordan C aíala de Sévérac, ed. Chrisitne Gadrat (Paris, 2005). Jordanus’s rather unromantic conclusion was that Christendom was the best land in the world, and with the best customs, if only Christians kept their law properly. 27 There were different traditions concerning the division of ‘India’ into three parts. Jordanus’s account of ‘The Third India’, namely East Africa, was particularly fantastic, because entirely based on hearsay. 28 Bartlett, G erald o f Wales, chapter 4. On this point see also Caroline Walker Bynum, M etam orphosis and identity (New York, 2001). As has often been noted, in later editions of the Topographia H ibernia Gerald elaborated his interpretations with additional erudition and a great deal of moralizing.

INTRODUCTION

xxvii

fixed.29 Ethnographie sources, in particular, reveal a variety of attitudes that often reflect the assumptions of different kinds of observers and audiences. Rudolf Wittkower’s classic essay ‘Marco Polo and the pictorial tradition of the marvels of the East’ (Chapter 6) offers an interesting example of this. Taking as starting point the tendency of audiences to interpret a novel account of diverse peoples such as Marco Polo in relation to familiar categories, he examines in particular the iconography of some an important manuscript of the early fifteenth-century - part of a large collection of travel accounts dealing with the East - and shows that to a large extent the artist departed from Marco Polo’s text. The simpler point is that the artist did not have the first-hand experience of the traveller and had to rely on the conventions of traditional imagery. The more subtle one is that a series of manuscripts combining literary material (such as the romance of Alexander) with descriptions by actual pilgrims and travellers could be unified by this type of iconography of the marvellous. An aristocratic audience reading accounts of the East originally composed a century earlier, and without access to fresh sources of information, need not have been particularly credulous in order to accept this invitation to believe in traditional marvels without discriminating between factual and legendary history. However, this should not imply a culturally-determined lack of rationality. Attitudes could change easily if and when new literary and visual sources were made available in sufficient numbers - something that happened in the sixteenth century. In the meanwhile, the marvellous became most significant when supporting myths, positive or negative. The duality of positive and negative marvels found at the extreme of the inhabited world represented by India is also apparent in relation to its most famous inhabitants, the Gymnosophists, soon identified with the Brahmans. Thomas Hahn’s ‘The Indian tradition in Western medieval intellectual history’ (Chapter 7) examines the indirect influence of the classical accounts of these Indian sages first written by Greek travellers who accompanied Alexander, later summarized by Hellenistic historians and geographers (such as Arrian and Plutarch), and finally elaborated in the multifarious Romance o f Alexander of Pseudo-Callisthenes (c.300), with the various apocryphal writings derived from it.30 The Alexander romance was eventually translated from Greek into Latin (most famously by Leo of Naples in the tenth century) and various European vernaculars.31 What is interesting here is 29 On the theme of monsters see John Friedman’s classic study, The monstrous races in m edieval art and thought (Cambridge Mass 1981); Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order o f Nature, 1150-1750 (New York, 1998). More recently, Rhonda Knight, Saracens, demons a d Jew s: making monsters in m edieval art (Princeton, 2003) and two interdisciplinary collections: Timothy Jones and David Sprunger (eds.), Marvels, monsters and miracles. Studies in the m edieval and early-m odern imaginations (Kalamazoo, 2002), and Bettina Bildhauer and Robert Mills (eds.), The monstrous M iddle Ages (Cardiff, 2003). 30 Of particular importance for the Christianization of the Brahmans as ascetic contemplators, as noted by Hahn, was the work of Palladius of Hellenopolis (in Bythinia), a fifth-century bishop keen on the idea of the salvation of gentiles, as revealed in his De vita bragmanorum narratio, which led to accusations of Origenism. Interestingly, a similarly liberal interpretation had been offered by Philo the Jew. For a modern English edition with a very useful introduction see Richard Stoneman ed. Legends o f Alexander the Great (London, 1994). 31 See also George Cary, The M edieval A lexander (Cambridge, 1956).

xxviii

INTRODUCTION

the medieval ambivalence towards the Brahmans as emblematic figures of natural virtue, that is, as rational philosophers. Taking as a starting point the historical encounter of Alexander the Great with the naked philosophers of India, in particular two, Dandamis and Calanus, there emerged an apocryphal exchange of letters between the heroic but morally flawed king and an ascetic philosopher - the Collatio Alexandro cum Dindimo - which adapted the mainly Cynic and Stoic themes of the ancient Greek sources to the Christianized image of a virtuous gentile observing natural law, an image which was still relevant in the fourteenth century, when John Mandeville came to describe India. However, there also existed an explicit patristic rejection of the idea of pagan virtue, best exemplified by Augustine, which tended to dominate in ecclesiastical culture, the efforts of rationalist philosophers like Abelard to proclaim the sanctity of Dindimus notwithstanding. Thomas Hahn charts how Dindimus survived in the Latin West by becoming ever more Christian, and indeed a vehicle for attacks on idolatry. However, he does not consider the impact of late medieval ethnographies. When empirically described in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by Latin travellers, whether lay writers like Marco Polo or missionary friars such as John of Montecorvino, Odoric of Pordenone and Jordanus Catalani, the Brahmans of India quickly emerged as the most notorious of gentile idolaters, those who worshipped the ox for their god and even (Odoric of Pordenone noted) sanctified themselves with οχ-dung. But the idea of a virtuous gentile did not entirely die out in the face of what seemed like manifest idolatry. For Marco Polo it was Buddha, not the Brahmans, who deserved praise: had he been a Christian, he would have been a saint. If in the case of distant India the weight of literary tradition overwhelmed fresh observations for many centuries, the active frontiers of Christendom North and West made possible a number of encounters with ‘gentiles’ that found expression in the rise of empirical ethnographies. Whilst the case of the Mongols, already reviewed, was crucial in the thirteenth century, a much earlier missionary interaction had taken place with Celts and Slavs, and as early as the eleventh century the ecclesiastical historian Adam of Bremen offered an empirical description of Scandinavian and Baltic peoples, a tradition continued by Helmold of Bosau in the following century when he recorded in some detail the idolatry of pagan Slavs. However, the greatest ethnography of the twelfth-century Renaissance concerned the Irish and the Welsh, who although Christian, were perceived as culturally alien by Anglo-Norman writers like Gerald of Wales. As Robert Bartlett emphasizes in Chapter 8, the interest of Gerald’s Descriptio Kambriae of 1194 is not simply its empiricism, but also the complexity of the personality of a well-read writer living in a frontier society and moved by local piety, who, for example, displayed his mixed heritage by writing both about how the Welsh should be conquered, and how they should resist. Possibly the greatest achievement of Gerald’s description of Wales was that it explained why the geography and economy of the land made liberty the supreme value of its people, but prevented them from coming together to defend it. In that context, moral polarities between virtue and vice (obviously inevitable in Gerald’s ecclesiastical culture) did not lead to a simple moral condemnation of the cultural ‘other’. By contrast, the earlier Topograhia Hibernica is more one-sided, as it was written clearly to reflect the point of view of the Anglo-Norman invaders. It was also a work that made many

INTRODUCTION

xxix

more concessions to the taste for marvels, instead of focusing on the complex web of social practices that makes strange customs plausible. Gerald of Wales was, for his times, an exceptionally well educated man, and to the extent that they were available, he was inspired by classical sources - for example Caesar’s Commentaries - to think historically. In the way he mobilized ecclesiastical culture in order to gain intelligence about potential enemies, he can be compared with the Franciscan and Dominican missionaries who wrote about the Mongols. In sharp contrast, Marco Polo was scarcely literate in his own Venetian vernacular (he had left Europe still a teenager), although he was an accomplished linguist, having learnt various oriental languages such as Turkish, Mongol and Persian whilst in the service of Kubilai Khan. The Divisament dou Monde, as Kenneth Hyde emphasizes in his discussion, is a very peculiar, almost miraculous, book. It offered to his contemporaries an extremely informative survey of vast territories of Asia at the end of the thirteenth century. It had no real successors, despite its wide popularity, because the conditions for its production were exceptional. Most Latin merchants in Persia, India or China (and there were many) did not write about what they saw (what was the need?).32 Marco Polo was not in any case a merchant in any conventional sense, having worked for so many years for a foreign ruler. The template for his book was not a personal travelogue, but rather a series of descriptions of places and peoples originally undertaken as a service to his Mongol patron, although Marco Polo extended the practice to all the places he had seen. The writing of the book in Europe, on the other hand, was made possible by the intervention of a professional romancer, however mediocre, met by chance. Rustichello da Pisa did more than transcribe what he was dictated, he also developed its narrative sections according to Arthurian conventions. There were in fact many versions of the book, and it seems likely that some of the variants originated with Marco Polo himself, as he spoke to different audiences. Others developed as a result of the freedom with which late medieval manuscripts were translated, extracted, interpolated, and modified. And yet even the fullest version omitted some things that a systematic observer would have included, from the great wall to foot-binding and teadrinking.33

32 A non-Latin Christian merchant traveller who did write about his journey, the Russian Afanasii Nikitin, seems to have been motivated by the spiritual angst of having pretended to be a Muslim. The case is to some extent comparable to his Venetian quasi-contemporary Nicolô Conti, who upon his return to Italy was ordered to recount his journey as part of the penance imposed by pope Eugene IV for his temporary conversion. For an analysis of Nikitin’s exceptional narrative see the classic article by Nikolai Trubetzkoi (first published in 1926, and most recently available in French as appendix to A. Nikitin, Le voyage au-delà des trois mers, ed. Charles Malamoud, Paris 1982). More recently, Mary Jane Maxwell, ‘Afanasii Nikitin: an orthodox Russian’s spiritual voyage in the Dar al-Islam 14681475’, Jou rn al o f World History 17 (2006): 243-66. 33 Leaving aside the fact that we do not have all Marco Polo wrote, these omissions are not excessively problematic when set against all he described, and do not justify the idea that he never went to China. We may note, for example, that the great wall was in decay in the late thirteenth century, and that Marco Polo was more interested in the Turco-Mongol elites that dominated China than in the private customs of Chinese literati, a world probably closed to him.

XXX

INTRODUCTION

All these faults notwithstanding, and without denying its entertainment value, the Divisament dou Monde (c.1298) was not primarily a book of marvels, but rather an honest account by a layman of what he had seen and heard, organized around reasonably coherent geographical notions. The greatest marvel was not the existence of monstrous races in India, but rather the astonishing prosperity of a gentile civilization in China, a country inhabited by polite and educated ‘idolaters’ who greatly respected their parents. In addition, the book offered a remarkably positive image of a successful conqueror, the Great Khan, although Marco Polo did not hide the fact that Mongol government over Cathay was hated by the native inhabitants, who in effect had been enslaved. The Great Khan was nevertheless charitable and enlightened, and ruled with equanimity over Muslims, Christians and (Buddhist) idolaters, claiming that he venerated all religions in order to venerate the true one. The truth of a single political power that stood above the diversity of religions vying for supremacy was perhaps more obvious than any theological claim, despite Marco Polo’s own modest efforts to speak for his own Roman Christian faith. Hence Marco insisted that it was up to the pope to send more missionaries; in his view Kubilai Khan actually liked the ethical doctrines of Christianity, but he could not possibly convert unless Christians displayed more learning and (perhaps more important) were able to overpower the magic of their rivals.34 The Atlantic expansion of Western Europe provided a new frontier that would prove immensely important in the long term, once the Portuguese pilots had been able to master the Ocean’s currents and winds. More immediately, driven by the late medieval concerns with trade, crusade and evangelization, the various nations of medieval Spain, with a great deal of involvement from Italian merchants and investors, began colonizing Atlantic islands, and by the middle of the fifteenth century the Portuguese had also established trade in the Senegal and Gambia rivers. The colonization of the Canary Islands initiated by Genoese and Catalans from Majorca in the middle of the fourteenth century - just as the papacy and the mendicant orders struggled to maintain a missionary presence in Central Asia, India and China - provided a blueprint for future Atlantic experiences. Because the Canary Islands were inhabited, unlike those of Madeira, Cape Verde and Azores, there was also opportunity for a fresh encounter with a people previously unknown. The Canary Islanders were a collection of Berber-speaking agricultural peoples living in isolation from the mainland with stone-age technology and little clothing, and civilized Europeans inevitably perceived them as wild men living like animals, without law or religion. Although the Majorcans, inspired by the legacy of Ramon Llull, had created an Episcopal see in Gran Canaria and sought to teach Christianity and bring civility to the natives, the European business of exploration was often fed by violent slaving raids, 34 Beyond Hyde’s excellent discussion, other important contributions include the commentary by the orientalist Paul Pelliot, Notes on M arco P olo, 3 vols. (Paris, 1959-1963); John Larner, M arco P olo and the discovery o f the w orld (New Haven and London, 1999), is sensible about silly controversies such as the one raised by Frances Wood about whether Marco Polo really went to China, and also insightful about the book’s immediate reception; Rubiés, Travel and ethnology, chapter 2, focuses on Marco Polo’s India, which some writers (Larner included) tend to neglect. Leonardo Olschki, L ’A sia di M arco P olo (Florence, 1957), retains its value. From a strongly literary perspective see also Mary Campbell, The witness and the other world.

INTRODUCTION

xxxi

especially when no alternative trade existed, and this was the unfortunate destiny of many the Canary Islanders over a rather long period that only culminated late in the fifteenth century, with the conquest of the largest island of Tenerife under the Catholic kings. However, the early encounter also produced some interesting ethnographic works. David Abulafia (Chapter 10), in his balanced and comprehensive discussion of the problems of interpretation surrounding these reports, emphasizes for example that Bocaccio’s Latin rendering of a Genoese report by one Niccolô da Recco, describing a multi-national expedition of 1341, reveals the struggles of a proto-humanist trying to fit empirical observations with the classical tradition concerning the ‘Fortunate Islands’. The happy abode on the way to Elysium described by Pliny was difficult to match with the poverty of naked idolaters living like animals, ‘asperis cultu et ritu’. Still, Bocaccio found much to admire in those handsome, intelligent and sweet-tempered people who shared their food equitably and did not care about gold, unlike his friend Petrarch, who in his De Vita Solitaria contrasted the virtuous solitude of the hermit who had made a rational choice to withdraw from society - his own ideal - with the animal-like wanderings of men without civility in solitary places, such as were the Canary Islanders. It was only the giving up of vain social pursuits in order to live according to nature that was truly virtuous, a point already made by Seneca in one of his epistles. More generally, the tension between a positive vision of a people living simply and happily according to natural law - an important ideal in some classical sources, often associated with the myth of the Golden Age - and the more prevalent assumption, made authoritative by Aristotle, that only civilization fulfilled the human potential for a rational life, was already apparent. As Abulafia emphasizes, this was a tension that would express itself in very similar terms during Columbus’s discoveries.35 An important consequence of the European exploration of the Atlantic, a process led by the Portuguese mainly in pursuit of trading opportunities, was the establishment of direct encounters with sub-Saharan West African peoples, a region generally termed ‘Guinea’. Notably, what the earliest accounts of Africans (whether Muslims or ‘gentiles’) reveals is not the dominant role of racial or colour prejudices, but rather the growing importance of an empirical curiosity driven by practical considerations. In this respect, these sources followed a similar logic to the ethnographic captions included by fourteenth-century cartographers in their world maps, but without having to rely entirely on hearsay. As Peter Russell emphasized in his analysis of some fifteenth-century accounts of travel in the African Atlantic (Chapter 11), these were autobiographical narratives written by merchants and in the vernacular, often non-Portuguese participants in the trade. Not all are reliable, as sometimes the desire to impress was more powerful than the desire to inform (such is the case of the Genoese Antoniotto Usodimare). However, the most influential of these travellers, the Venetian Alvise Ca’ da Mosto, who sailed up the Senegal and Gambia rivers in 1455 and 1456, was driven by the desire ‘to see and understand new things’, and remarkably accurate. Moreover, he did not simply report what he saw, but also sought rational explanations for differences in climate, 35 For a fuller discussion see also David Abulafia, The discovery o f mankind. Atlantic encounters in the age o f Columbus (New Haven and London, 2007).

xxxii

INTRODUCTION

nature and customs; accordingly, he did not depict savages living without law or religion, as the Portuguese kings routinely did when requesting papal support for their monopolistic ambitions, but rather formidable trading partners who might have lacked sailing ships fit for oceanic navigation, but nevertheless were culturally autonomous human beings, and certainly rational.36 Trade with the Wolof and Mandinka was entirely controlled by the latter, and a great deal of communication (commercial but also social and even sexual) took place, although the Venetian had to rely on interpreters. A Wolof king might have limited resources ‘because his kingdom is of people who are savage and poor, and they lack walled cities’, but he was more feared and revered than a Christian ruler, and he could defend his Muslim faith with solid arguments (for example, surely if God, who was just, had given Europeans so many material advantages and knowledge of worldly things, he would have reserved for the Blacks a superior religious law). A series of contrasts allowed the traveller to build a powerful sense of relativism: compared to Europeans, Africans cleaned their bodies regularly, but lacked table manners; they were simple-minded about the things they did not know about, but very expert in their own arts; they had great eloquence, but could not be trusted not to lie; otherwise, they were extremely hospitable.37 There is a basic continuity between the type of popular (merchant class) ethnography practiced by Marco Polo in the late thirteenth century, and what his fellow Venetian Alvise Ca’ da Mosto wrote a century and a half later, but also a clear evolution towards a more assertive first-person narrative, one that presented events and observations in detail and with a powerful sense of immediacy. It was a narrative model that in the following decades would be repeatedly employed by Columbus, Vepucci, Varthema and many other observers with similar cultural backgrounds and interests, who, amongst other things, offered the first descriptions of the peoples found in the islands and mainland of the Ocean. Recent historiography has emphasized the continuity of economic motivations, ideological justifications and various technologies that led from Mediterranean navigation, trade and colonization to Atlantic exploration, whether in Africa or, subsequently, towards India and Cathay across the Ocean sea.38 We should certainly count the various genres of practical ethnography amongst the important cultural elements of this technological transfer. From this perspective, the ever fascinating figure of Christopher Columbus must be interpreted first of all in relation to his late medieval heritage. That he developed his navigational expertise in the world of Atlantic trade and colonization is sufficiently well-known. The extent to which his ideas and motivations were deeply rooted in late medieval geographical learning and even religiosity has become increasingly appreciated.Even his remarkable ability to combine genuine religious piety with cold economic calculations and, whenever expedient, 36 For a more detailed discussion of Ca’ da Mosto’s Navigazioni see also Peter Russell, Prince Henry ‘the N avigator ’. A life (New Haven and London, 2000), chapter 12. 37 ‘Navigazioni di Alvise Ca’ da Mosto’, in Giovanni Ramusio, Navigazioni e Viaggi [1550], ed. Marica Milanesi (Turin, 1978), vol. I, 498. 38 The thesis can be traced back to Charles Verlinden and is fully explored in Felipe FernándezArmesto, B efore Columbus. Exploration and Colonization from the M editerranean to the Atlantic, 1229-1492 (London, 1987).

INTRODUCTION

xxxiii

with callous inhumanity, is entirely typical of his cultural milieu. Valerie Flint, in her ‘Travel fact and travel fiction in the voyages of Columbus’ (Chapter 12), casts some light on the relationship between the Genoese navigator’s known readings - the few books he is known to have possessed and annotated - and his experience in the Caribbean. Religious and secular authorities, classical and medieval, humanist and vernacular, all contributed to create a horizon of expectations. Hence the Bible helped Columbus interpret his mission in providential terms, Marco Polo and pope Pius II taught him what riches to expect in the extremes of Asia, and Pierre d’Ailly assisted his crucial miscalculation of the size of the earth. These and other readings led to bold sailings, tragic errors, and murky justifications. As documented by Flint, it was the latter that eventually came to dominate Columbus’ anxious readings and his selective use of sources, for example when, after his third voyage, he sought to argue that he was very close to paradise (in what is now the Orinoco river).39 In fact this desperate interpretation bears witness to the traveller’s need to come to terms with the unexpected as he observed it, rather than to a compulsive tendency to subject fresh experiences to textual authority. It was because the naked inhabitants of the islands, whether ‘innocent Tainos’ or ‘cannibalistic Caribs’, had altogether failed to live up to the civilized image of Cathay and Cypangu, that Columbus was prompted to ever more extravagant claims - not an ethnographic failure, but a geographical one. As Peter Russell observes, those culturally autonomous Africans who had elicited so much curiosity disappeared from the European narratives as soon as they became slaves (and the slave trade was a key economic engine of the European exploration of the Atlantic). In fact, the language of barbarism was more than just a way of describing less urbanized peoples: in a frontier setting, such images could be put to political uses, whether in Africa or in Northern Europe. Gerald of Wales for example had clearly depicted the Celtic inhabitants of Ireland as wild and inhospitable savages who went to war naked, were lazy and treacherous, failed to cultivate the soil, were reluctant to accept urbanization, and, to sum up, ‘live on beasts, and live like beasts’.40 Taken together with his account of the natural potential of Ireland - and indeed, the inhabitants themselves were naturally gifted, it was their culture that was entirely deplorable - this sharp image of barbarism was certainly meant to justify the conquest of a Christian people who, from an Anglo-Norman perspective, were neither truly Christian nor especially civilized.41 The opposition between freedom and civilization not only echoed the writings of Roman writers such as Cicero and Tacitus (albeit the former alone was read 39 Flint also argues that Columbus was inspired by John of Marignolli, although her argument is largely speculative. See also, in more detail, Valerie Flint, The imaginative landscape o f Christopher Columbus (Princeton, 1992). 40 History and topography o f Ireland, translated by John J. O ’Meara (Harmondsworth, 1982), 101 .

41 The connection between stereotyped images of barbarism and Anglo-Norman colonialism in Scotland, Wales and Ireland was made by W.R. Jones, ‘England against the Celtic fringe: a study in cultural stereotypes’, C ahiers d ’Histoire M ondiale XIII (1971): 155-171, and most emphatically by John Gillingham, ‘The beginnings of English imperialism’, Jou rn al o f H istorical Sociology 5 (1992): 392-409, who analyzes the work of William of Malmesbury. The Celts hence were wild, poor, lazy,

xxxiv

INTRODUCTION

in the twelfth century), but also prefigured the seventeenth-century interpretation of North American savages. The opposition between barbarism and civilization, with its numerous classical antecedents, is perhaps the most enduring model for explaining cultural differences in the European tradition. It was usually predicated in the contrast between nomadic or very rural communities and urbanized ones, and, as I have suggested, it also finds important parallels in the ArabPersian and Chinese traditions. As W.R. Jones explains in his enlightening contribution ‘The image of the barbarian in medieval Europe’ (Chapter 13), the dissolution of the Roman state and its civilization in the West eroded the Ciceronian distinction between Romanitas and barbarism; instead, in the context of the Christianization of those Germanic invaders that had created the Gothic and Frankish kingdoms, civilization came to be eventually identified with Christian orthodoxy. At a time when the ‘Franks’ might as well be described as barbarians by both Byzantine Christians and, after the conquest of Spain, by Arab Muslims, in Western Europe the ecclesiastical discourse made incorporation into the Roman Church equivalent to civilizing Arian ‘heretics’ and northern pagans. However, the twelfth century Renaissance began a long and often subtle process by which, under a renewed classicizing influence, the notion of civilization became secularized. Gerald of Wales, when describing the Irish, was already appealing to the classical idea (transmitted by Cicero) that societies evolved from nomadic bands to settled agricultural communities and then cities.42 By the thirteenth century, whilst the friars confronting the Mongols assumed that preaching Christianity was the first step towards a political alliance that would eventually bring civilization, in reality the notion of barbarism had acquired a non-religious moral and sociological dimension with rich ethnographic content (one which literate Arab and Persian Muslims would have shared). The Italian humanists would culminate this process of secularization by cultivating a positive notion of civilization not only when they looked back at ancient learning, but also when opposing themselves to other Christian Europeans beyond the Alps (without of course abandoning the image of the exotic other as a brutal barbarian, given a new life by the threat of the Ottoman Turks).43 We may add that a potentially difficult issue implicit in this secular notion of civilization was that one had to acknowledge that the non-Christian was often highly civilized - something made explicit during the interview given to the Venetian

ignorant, cruel, treacherous, and brutish (they also practiced incest and showed no sexual restraint); their condition would only improve under the civilizing influence of the English. 42 Gerald of Wales, History and Topography, 101-2. 43 Amongst the vast literature on humanist writings about the Ottoman Turks see Margaret Meserve’s recent Empires o f Islam in R enaissance H istorical Thought (Cambridge Mass. 2008). Taking a revisionist stand against the emphasis on the modernity of humanist historians, Meserve emphasizes their far from accidental preference for the most stereotyped medieval sources for their historical research into the origins of the Turks. It is well known that the geographical interests of Pius II (Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini), who in his influential H istoria rerum ubique gestraum encompassed classical, medieval and modern sources of information about Asia, were not driven by a mere desire for secular learning, but rather by the project of a new crusade against barbarians that, in his view, threatened both Christendom and civilization, especially after the fall of Constantinople.

INTRODUCTION

XXXV

merchant Niccolô Conti by the humanist Poggio Bracciolini in 1443, and which eventually became a book of his miscellaneous De varietate Fortunae (1448).44 Early modem Europeans would receive as an inheritance from this kind of humanist discourse a subtle tension between the languages of Christianity and Civilization which was subsequently multiplied throughout many cultural encounters, with profound consequences for future ethnological thought. If the opposition between barbarism and civilization constituted a powerful paradigm for explaining cultural differences, geography and ‘climate’ - both associated with astrological influences and distinct national ‘temperaments’ - offered an important alternative. Seymour Phillips notes that the main features of medieval geography - the spherical earth, the division of the earth into hot, temperate and cold zones, and the division of the inhabitable world (the Greek oikoumene) into the three continents of Africa (or ‘Ethiopia’), Asia and Europe, were derived almost entirely from classical sources. Whilst the three parts of the world could be conveniently linked to ethnological classifications that derived from the Biblical genealogy of the sons of Noah - Ham, Shem and Japheth - the theory of climates was of even greater significance for rationalizing cultural differences, as it offered a possible explanatory framework for a wider range of temperamental differences between nations.45 In her ‘Perceptions of hot climate in medieval cosmography and travel literature’ (Chapter 14), Irina Metzler emphasizes the influence of classical ideas about habitable and uninhabitable zones, climates and humours, as transmitted for example by Macrobius, Isidore of Seville, and a number of Arabic writers (Avicenna’s interpretation of the Hellenistic medical tradition was particularly important in this respect). For John Scottus Eriugena in the ninth century, differences in customs were an expression of transformations suffered by men after the fall under the influence of climate, despite a common Adamic origin. In the following centuries Gervase of Tilbury, Jacques of Vitry, Vincent of Beauvais and Albertus Magnus all relied on a similar paradigm to rationalize stereotyped ethnic traits, although often they adapted it to their particular national prejudices. 44 The book on India was immediately popular and also circulated separately. For a detailed discussion of the significance of this encounter see Rubiés, Travel and ethnology, ch. 3 There has been much recent interest in Poggio’s text, with new critical editions in Latin by Outi Merisalo (1993) and also French translations. For a combination of both see Poggio Bracciolini, De lin d e. L es Voyages en Asie de N iccolô de ’Conti, ed. Michèle Guéret-Laferté (Turnhout, 2004). 45 As noted by Benjamin Braude, the association of Shem, Japheth and Ham with Asia, Europe and Africa was Alcuin’s simplification of the more complex distribution proposed by classical writers, from the Hellenistic Jew Flavius Josephus (who therefore interpreted the Biblical account) to the Christian encyclopaedist Isidore of Seville. For Josephus, possibly the key authority (he was the first to link the Biblical genealogy to the three East Meditaerranean regions), Japheth’s descendants were Eurasian, Ham’s descendants Afro-Asian, and Shem’s purely Asian. Although Josephus continued to be read in the Latin West, the T -0 maps - in fact cross and orb icons - enshrined the simplified tripartite version. But variations remained possible. In a typically playful or perhaps perverse passage, John Mandeville suggested that Ham ( ‘Cham’) was the ancestor of the cruel and pagan peoples of Asia, such as the Mongols (hence the ‘Great Khan’), placing instead Shem in Africa as ancestor of the Saracens (but not of the Jews, who were in this version Japhetian Europeans). See Braude, ‘The sons of Noah and the construction of ethnic and geographical identities’, William and Mary Quarterly, 54 (1997): 103-142.

xxxvi

INTRODUCTION

The climatic model, so enthusiastically embraced by scholastic cosmographers, would continue to exert a great deal of influence until the late Renaissance, including the key Aristotelian idea (expressed by Albertus Magnus) that temperate climates produced better men than those that were too hot or too cold.46 This was not however a mere assertion of European ethnocentrism. Assuming a spherical earth, the Dominican Albertus Magnus and the Franciscan Roger Bacon both asserted that a temperate zone also existed in the antipodes and was habitable, daring to contradict Augustine.47Albertus Magnus, whose De natura locorum (c.1250) can be regarded as one of the peaks of scholastic cosmography, also addressed the relationship between race and climate, arguing in particular that black men transplanted to a colder climate would over time become white.48 Whilst the Hamitic genealogy was often used to suggest cultural degeneration on religious grounds (for example by the apocalyptic thinker Joachim of Fiore), Christian monogenism tended to work towards anthropological universalism and stimulated non-essentialist naturalistic explanations for observed racial and national differences (although without preventing the emergence of moral hierarchies). What is more difficult to prove is the influence exerted by elite cosmography upon empirical ethnography, and vice versa. The Italian doctor Pietro d’Abano famously interviewed Marco Polo in order to support his idea that the equatorial zone was inhabited, John of Marignolli could not find Pliny’s monstrous races in India (although he saw evidence that he was close to paradise), and eventually Vespucci, writing about his discovery of Brazil, would reflect upon the fact that men in the tropics were not necessarily black. However, the general tendency was for cosmographers to rely on texts (John Sacrobosco’s De Sphaera Mundi of c.1220, influential still at the time of Columbus, was largely based on a ninth-century Arab text), and for popular travellers to record observations without reference to scholastic cosmography. Empirical comments about the hot climates of India and Africa tended to reflect upon rainfall, nudity, skin colour, and the effects of sunstroke, as well as detailing each country’s peculiar natural products. The most powerful connection was the general assumption that climate was very important for people’s physical health and customs. 46 As revealed by example by Marian J. Tooley in her classic article ‘Jean Bodin and the mediaeval theory of climate’, Speculum 28, 1 (1953): 64-83. For a discussion of the Albertus Magnus’s environmentalism, Clarence Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore. Nature and Culture in Western Thought from ancient times to the end o f the eighteenth century (Berkeley, 1967), 265-71 remains relevant. 47 In the City o f G od (book XVI, chapter 9) Augustine had been sceptical that the antipodes were inhabited, not because they lacked a temperate zone, but because it was difficult to believe that people could have navigated there, and he was most keen to assert the common origin of all men. A similar logic informed his discussion of monstrous races (XVI, 8): they may or may not exist, but if they did and were rational beings rather than beasts, they must be descendants of Adam, the essential point being that natural phenomena could never be used to question divine Providence and the authority of the Bible. For the position of Albertus Magnus, more positive towards the idea that the tropics and the southern hemisphere may be inhabited, see Jean-Paul Tilmann, An appraisal o f the geograp hical works o f Albertus Magnus and his contributions to g eog raph ical thought (Ann Arbor, 1971). 48 On medieval explanations of Black skin, see Maaike van der Lugt, ‘La peau noire dans la science médiévale’, Micrologus. Nature, Sciences and M edieval Societies XIII (2005), 439-75.

INTRODUCTION

xxxvii

One area where cosmography clearly responded to ethnography was in the making of charts and maps. The fact that Ptolemy remained unavailable until the fifteenth century deprived Latin Europe from one of the key Hellenistic geographical works (Strabo’s great synthesis, similarly, would only be recovered by the Italian humanists). However, this did not stop late medieval cartographers from developing empirical methods as an aid to navigation, and in this respect the lack of Ptolemy, which contained some erroneous notions (for example about an enclosed Indian Ocean), was even a positive factor. In the Mediterranean, where magnetic variation was small, from the thirteenth century Genoese and Catalan traders created remarkably accurate depictions of coastal profiles that soon extended to the Canary Islands. These portulan charts, though the use of the compass, a system of rhumbs, and traverse tables, made it possible for pilots to calculate direction and estimate distance. But the Jewish chart makers from Majorca created an even more elaborate product, the illustrated mappamundi, which also depicted the interior of kingdoms, incorporating ethnographic information about Asia and Africa derived from travellers such as Marco Polo, Nicolô Conti, and many anonymous informers in the ports of North Africa, who reported on ‘the land of the Blacks’ across the Sahara where gold was obtained. This type of product, which flourished from the middle of the fourteenth century, was intended for a more aristocratic audience. It was nonetheless fundamentally scientific, and information about new sailings was often updated. The world maps created by Abraham Cresques and succeeding Jewish and (after 1391) New Christian cartographers were so impressive a synthesis that some fictional travelogues were written basically by following the geographical and ethnographic information contained in them.One curious case is the anonymous Libro del conoscimiento de todos los reinos, written in Castilian towards the end of the fourteenth century, and which was taken seriously by the conquerors of the Canary Islands Jean de Béthencourt and Gadifer de La Salle when they sought to reach the ‘river of Gold’ south of Cape Bojador, and subsequently by prince Henry of Portugal in his attempts to reach the trade of Guinea and the lands of Prester John. Although it is obvious that the fraudulent narrative closely follows a world map of the Catalan school a little later than the famous ‘Atlas’ by Abraham Cresques (c.1375), the legend that the journey was somewhat empirical and written by a Franciscan friar has haunted modem scholarship until very late in the twentieth century (even longer than the reality of the traveller Sir John Mande ville).49 The pre-Ptolemaic cartography, taken together with the fact that the most detailed and informed travel narratives of the Late Middle Ages were written by clerics, merchants, pilgrims and ambassadors, makes it sufficiently clear that the impact of humanism upon the genre was 49 The contents of the Libro are very similar to some surviving maps of the Catalan school at the turn of the fifteenth century, for example one by Mecià de Viladestes (c.1413). The idea that the book was written by a mendicant is based on the assertion by the editors of Jean de Béthencourt’s expedition L e Canarien (1402) and, despite the scepticism expressed as early as 1630 by the French travel collector Pierre Bergeron, it was being repeated until recently (for example by Irina Metzler in this volume). For a thorough modern discussion of this text in English see E l Libro del conoscim ineto de todos los reinos (¡the book o f know ledge o f all kingdoms), ed. and translated by Nancy F. Marino (Tempe, Arizona, 1999). Marino offers the interesting hypothesis that the author, writing between 1378 and 1402, was a herald.

xxxviii-

INTRODUCTION

not its creation, but rather the casting of a more critical and learned eye upon it. Speaking to Poggio Bracciolini, then acting as secretary to the pope, the merchant adventurer Nicolô Conti produced an account of India exempt from fables, quite different from the narrative created by the Andalusian traveller Pero Tafur, who also met Conti but was obviously a little naïve and rather interested in the marvellous. However, the credulity of Tafur notwithstanding, the crucial fact is that by the fifteenth century the genre of empirical ethnographies had reached a maturity in which experience could operate as a source of authority with little reference to the classical tradition. Whether we consider Gerald of Wales in twelfth-century Wales, John of Piano Carpini in thirteenth-century Karakorum, or Marco Polo at the court of Kubilai Khan a few decades later, what is most remarkable about all these great ethnographies of the High Middle Ages was the lack of clear scientific or literary models. Classical sources, from Tacitus’ Germania to Strabo’s Geography, were not yet circulating, and therefore could not inspire any of these writers. It was precisely their neglect of classical sources such as then were available, in particular the types of encyclopaedic compendia of Latin writers from the Elder Pliny to Isidore of Seville, or perhaps the willingness to go beyond what these could offer, which made possible the emergence of detailed empirical descriptions of exotic lands and their peoples. The rise of medieval ethnography was, in other words, a triumph of new genres, Latin and vernacular, which took place almost entirely before the rise of humanism. This fact, combined with the observation that even in the sixteenth century some humanists would display little immediate interest in accounts of the New World, has led to the mistaken conclusion that interest in classical learning had little to add to the descriptive efforts of honest observers acting as missionaries, merchants or ambassadors, and using everyday language to record their impressions. In reality the early modem trajectory suggests the opposite: the interaction between humanistic culture and travel writers was complex and pervasive. Late Medieval writers had created a variety of ethnographic genres, but the humanists offered Europe a new sense of history and source of criticism. After the sixteenth century ethnographic sources would not only grow in numerical importance, but also acquire new levels of ethnological depth, exercising a tremendous impact upon the intellectual agendas of a secularizing Europe.50

50 I am grateful to Harvey Hames and to Maaike van der Lugt for their suggestions, that have improved this text.

1

The Outer World in the European Middle Ages Seymour Phillips

I. C O L U M B U S

the final significance of the discovery by the Genoese navigator Christopher Columbus of a series of islands previously unknown to Europeans in the western Atlantic during the autumn of 1492 is still a matter of dispute, there can be little doubt that this event proved to be a turning-point in the history both of the discoverers themselves and of the peoples whom they discovered. Even before Columbus had finished his fourth and final voyage in 1504, the Florentine businessman, explorer and self-publicist Amerigo Vespucci was writing about his own discovery of a "new world/' while perceptive observers, like the Italian humanist Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, were beginning to realize that it would now be necessary to add a new continent to those of Europe, Asia, and Africa into which the land mass of the world had conventionally been divided since classical antiquity; and in 1507 the German cosmographer Martin Waldseemüller, named this new discovery as America in honour of Vespucci.1 Within thirty years of the first voyage of Columbus, the conquest of the New World had been begun by the Castilian adventurer Hernán Cortés, and the globe itself had been circumnavigated by the few survivors of the expedition of Magellan. It is even possible that as early as the 1520s the shores of the continent of Australia had been sighted by Portuguese explorers.2 The profound upheaval in European understanding of the physical nature of the world that these events initiated and that was brought to a conclusion only at the time of the voyages of James Cook in the A lth o u g h

1 2

The Letters of Amerigo Vespucci, ed. C.R. Markham, Hakluyt Society, First Series, vol. 90 (London, 1894; repr. New York, n.d.), pp.xvi-xviii. H. Wallis, 'T he enigma of Java4a-Grande," in Australia and the European Imagination, ed. I. Donaldson (Canberra, 1982); idem, "Java la Grande: the enigma of the Dieppe maps," in Terra Australis to Australia, ed. G. Williams & A. Frost (Melbourne, 1988).

2

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 24

Seymour Phillips

eighteenth century was accompanied by an equally profound transformation in European experience and understanding of mankind itself. Edmund Burke, writing in 1777, was to characterize the change as the unrolling of the "Great Map of Mankind," so that "there is no state or Gradation of barbarism, and no mode of refinement which we have not at the same instant under our View. The very different Civility of Europe and of China; the barbarism of Tartary, and of Arabia. The Savage State of North America, and of New Zealand. " 3 This process, the "clash of cultures," "the fall of natural man," or, in a more neutral phrase, "the discovery of man, " 4 had begun both literally and symbolically the moment that Columbus set foot on the island he named San Salvador on 12 October 1492.5 Indeed, the very act of crossing beaches in order to land on islands has been shown to be one of the most potent metaphors available for the historian wishing to describe the encounters between peoples of different cultural backgrounds.6 However, the intention here is to explore some of the assumptions about the world and its peoples that may already have been implicit in the mind of Columbus in 1492 as well as in those of other European explorers of the late fifteenth century. Some important clues can be found in the letter that Columbus wrote early in 1493 while still at sea on the return from his momentous first voyage: Since I know that you will be pleased at the great success with which the Lord has crowned my voyage, I write to inform you how in thirty-three days I crossed from the Canary Islands to the Indies, with the fleet which our most illustrious sovereigns gave me..................When I reached Cuba, I followed its north coast westwards, and found it so extensive that I thought this must be the mainland, the province of Cathay'; 7..........From there I saw another island eighteen leagues eastwards which I then named 'Hispaniola'.......... In 3 4

5

6

Cited on the title page of P.J. Marshall & G. Williams, The Great Map of Mankind: British Perceptions of the World in the Age of Enlightenment, (London, 1982). B.F. Fagan, The Clash of Cultures (New York, 1984); J.H. Elliott, "The discovery of America and the discovery of man," in idem, Spain and its World, 1500-1700: Selected Essays (New Haven & London, 1989); A. Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: the American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge, 1982); idem, "Dispossessing the barbarian: rights and property in Spanish America/' in idem, Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination: Studies in European and Spanish-American Social and Political Theory, 1513-1830 (New Haven & London, 1990). P. Hulme, Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492-1797 (London & New York, 1986), ch. I, "Columbus and the cannibals"; L. Olschki, "What Columbus saw on landing in the West Indies," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 84 (Philadelphia, 1941), pp.633-59. G. Dening, Islands and Beaches: Discourse on a Silent Land: the Marquesas, 1774-1880 (Hawaii, 1980).

3

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Outer world of the European Middle Ages

25

this island of Hispaniola I have taken possession of a large town which is most conveniently situated for the goldfields and for communications with the mainland both here, and there in the territories of the Grand Khan, with which there will be very profitable trade.7

Despite his observation that on the island of Cuba "one of these provinces is called Avan, and there the people are born with tails," Columbus also remarked, I have not found the human monsters which many people expected. On the contrary, the whole population is very well made"; . . . . "Not only have I found no monsters but I have had no reports of any except at the island of 'Quaris', which is the second as you approach the Indies from the east, and which is inhabited by a people who are regarded in these islands as extremely fierce and who eat human flesh.8

The references by Columbus to "the Indies," "the province of Cathay," the "territories of the Grand Khan," and to the city of "Quinsay" and the island of "Chipangu" (which Columbus mentions in his journal9) are a clear demonstration that he was, initially at least, convinced that the destination he had reached by a long and hazardous westward voyage across the mysterious Atlantic ocean was essentially the same one that had been reached by Marco Polo of Venice by the land route eastward across Asia in the 1270s, and his search for monsters in human form has obvious parallels in the narratives of Marco Polo and of other thirteenth- and fourteenth-century European travelers such as Giovanni di Piano Carpini, William of Rubruck, and John of Marignolli. None of this is at all surprising because it is well known that Columbus had read and annotated one of the early printed editions of the travels of Marco Polo, from which he had learned about the wonders of the dominions of the Great Khan in Cathay as well as about the island empire of Japan (Chipangu), which Marco Polo described but had not actually seen. Together with his assiduous readings of other fourteenth- and fifteenth-century authors and of newly published editions of classical authors, such as Claudius Ptolemy, Columbus's mind was therefore well stocked with ideas and impressions about the wider world around him .10 7 8 9 10

The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus, ed. J.M. Cohen (London, 1969; repr. London, 1992), pp.l 15-16, 120. Ibid., pp.119, 121. Ibid., pp.71-3. J.R.S. Phillips, The Medieval Expansion of Europe (Oxford & New York, 1988), pp.778 , 194-5, 201. On these monsters in general, see the very important book by J.B. Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought (Cambridge, Mass., 1981). For a more detailed discussion of Columbus's ideas about "places and peoples/' see

4

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 26

Seymour Phillips II. P L A C E S

Despite the extensive contacts that existed between medieval Europe and other parts of the world, with the lands of the eastern Mediterranean, with large areas of Asia, with parts of Africa and its adjoining oceans, and with the North Atlantic and even North America, 11 understanding of what lay out in this wider world was not always accurate, and older ideas frequently coexisted with and sometimes took precedence over new and more reliable information.12 Thus we find the persistent search, in which Columbus was only the latest participant, for strange races of men, descriptions of whom can be traced back to the writers of classical antiquity.13 Or, to take a more recent example, there was from the twelfth century the quest for Prester John, the supposed ruler of a Christian realm of immense power and wealth lying somewhere in the East, who was allegedly awaiting only the opportunity to come to the aid of a beleaguered Christendom against its Moslem opponents.14 But erroneous as they were, such ideas were

11

12

13 14

P. Hulme, ch. I, "Columbus and the cannibals"; and Mary B. Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400-1600 (Ithaca & London, 1988), ch. 5, "The end of the East: Columbus Discovers Paradise." For the sources of his geographical ideas, see F. Fernandez-Armesto, Columbus (Oxford, 1991), pp.24,34-43; Delno West, "Christopher Columbus and his enterprise of the Indies: scholarship of the last quarter century," The William and Mary Quarterly, April 1992; W.G.L. Randles, "Le projet asiatique de Christophe Colomb devant la science cosmographique portugaise et espagnole de son temps," Islenha, no.5, July-December 1989 (Funchal, Madeira, 1989), ρρ.73-88. See Phillips, The Medieval Expansion of Europe, and the bibliographies supplied for each chapter. I have discussed some possible explanations for European expansion in a forthcoming paper, "European expansion before Columbus: causes and consequences," in The Haskins Journal, vol. 5 (Woodbridge, 1994). See also A.R. Lewis, Nomads and Crusaders, 1000-1368 (Bloomington & Indianapolis, 1988). This has much to say of interest about European relations with the outer world but is restricted by the choice of terminal date and by the concentration on Asia. Phillips, ch. 10, "Scholarship and the imagination"; see also Campbell, The Witness and the Other World; M. Helms, Ulysses' Sail: an Ethnographic Odyssey of Power, Knowledge, and Geographical Distance (Princeton, 1988); J.K. Hyde, "Real and imaginary journeys in the later Middle Ages," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 65 (Manchester, 1982-3), pp.125-47; F. Fernandez-Armesto, Before Columbus: Exploration and Colonisation from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1229-1492 (London, 1987). ch. 9, "The mental horizon"; and the important collection of essays, Discovering New Worlds: Essays on Medieval Exploration and Imagination, ed. S.D. Westrem (New York & London, 1991). See Friedman, The Monstrous Races. Phillips, pp.60-2, 77-9, 190-2. The most thorough survey of the Prester John theme is V. Slessarev, Prester John, the Letter and the Legend (Minneapolis, 1959); but see also C.F. Beckingham, Between Islam and Christendom: Travellers, Facts, Legends in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (London, 1983); B. Hamilton, "Prester John and the three kings of Cologne," in Studies in Medieval History Presented to R.H.C. Davis, ed. H. Mayr-Harting & R.L Moore (London, 1985).

5

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Outer world of the European Middle Ages

27

part of the spur and the incentive for would-be explorers, and they were probably as influential in the fifteenth century as they had been in the twelfth or thirteenth. A twentieth-century student of medieval Europe's relations with and perceptions of the outer world can have a much broader view of the subject than his medieval predecessor: No thirteenth- or fourteenth-century traveler, for example, would necessarily know even what his own contemporaries had discovered about the world. Although it is possible that John of Monte Corvino might have heard reports of Marco Polo's stay in China, which had ended shortly before his own arrival in Peking in 1294, there is no reason to suppose that Marco Polo knew anything of John. Similarly, it is most improbable that Ibn Battuta of Tangier, one of the greatest of all Moslem travelers, who visited India in the 1330s, probably visited China in 1346 and also crossed the Sahara in the early 1350s, and whose career is often compared with that of Marco Polo, ever heard of the Venetian's exploits.15 A number of European travelers wrote about their experiences in Asia soon after the event: In some instances, like those of Giovanni di Piano Carpini in 1247 and Odoric of Pordenone in 1330, their accounts were widely read; in other cases, narratives that are now regarded as of great historical importance, such as those of the Franciscans William of Rubruck, who visited the court of the Great Khan at Karakorum in Mongolia in 1253-4, and John of Marignolli, who was in China in the 1340s, were either little known or were altogether unknown at the time they were written.16 But all these travelers did at least visit various parts of a continent whose existence was a familiar part of European knowledge: In the case of the Viking navigators from Iceland and Greenland who discovered and explored a part of the North American continent in the early eleventh century and who perhaps continued to go there as late as the fourteenth century, there is very little evidence that anyone outside their own ranks even knew of their exploits, let alone was influenced by them.17 Another difficulty arises from the nature of the records of medieval travel. Although it is possible for us to conclude that some contemporary or near-contemporary accounts were written with a consider15 16

17

Ross E. Dunn, The Adventures of Ibn Battuta (London & Sydney, 1986). There is, however, some doubt about Ibn Battuta's visit to China. William of Rubruck's account was known to Roger Bacon but does not appear to have been widely read; John of Marignolli's account was contained in the chronicle of the kingdom of Bohemia, which he composed in Prague and was not rediscovered until the early nineteenth century. Phillips, ch.9, "Medieval Europe and North America," ch. 12, "Fresh start or new phase?"

6

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 28

Seymour Phillips

able degree of objectivity and that others contain a substantial amount of imaginative writing, such distinctions would have been less apparent to a medieval reader and would probably have had little meaning. Outstanding examples are the narratives produced by Giovanni di Piano Carpini, who was sent as a papal envoy to the Mongol Great Khan in 1245, and William of Rubruck who wrote about the Mongols a few years later. Although both men were traveling at a time when the terrors of the Mongol attacks on Europe were fresh in their minds and were describing a society that was alien almost beyond imagining, they nonetheless succeeded in treating the Mongols with sympathetic understanding.18 However, in other cases, most notably perhaps the works commonly known as Marco Polo's Travels and The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, their form is both an attraction to the reader and a barrier to a full understanding of the material they contain. It is well known that Marco Polo's description of his travels was written for him around 1300 by a professional author, Rustichello of Pisa, who did not hesitate to incorporate highly colored passages to make his story more interesting, and also on occasions reused material from earlier works of his own. Exactly where Marco Polo's contribution began and ended is difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain.19 On the other hand, there is no reason to suppose that Marco Polo did not actually go to India and China as he claimed. By contrast, the eponymous Sir John Mandeville did not visit any of the lands described in his travels, and probably never existed. Here we are faced with a skilfully written and very popular piece of literature by an unidentified author who probably intended both to entertain and to improve the minds of his readers and who made use of a wide variety of sources, representing both real and imaginary travels. It is also significant that of the four examples cited, Mandeville's Travels was probably the best known and most widely read in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.20 Although the spherical shape of the earth was well understood and serious attempts were made by classical writers, notably Claudius 18 19

20

Phillips, pp.73-82; Dawson; Mary B. Campbell, ch. 3. Phillips, pp.l 12-20, 204-6; J. Heers, Marco Polo; Marco Polo, The Travels, trans. R.E. Latham (London, 1958); Campbell, ch. 3; Marco Polo and his Book: China and Europe in the Middle Ages. Phillips, pp.206-11; The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, ed. C.W.R.D. Moseley (London, 1983); Campbell, ch. 4; J.W. Bennett, The Rediscovery of Sir John Mandeville (New York, 1954). The most recent major work on Mandeville is C. Deluz, Le livre de Jehan de Mandeville: une "géographie" au XlVe. siècle (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1988). See also J.R.S. Phillips, 'The quest for Sir John Mandeville," in The Culture of Christendom: Essays in Medieval History in Memory of Denis L.T. Bethell, ed. M.A. Meyer (London, 1993).

7

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Outer world of the European Middle Ages

29

Ptolemy of Alexandria in the mid-second century A.D. to supply details of latitude and longitude for all the important places on the earth's surface, the inaccuracy of their results meant that throughout the classical and medieval periods there was a fundamental imprecision in spatial relationships. In the fifteenth century, for example, there was no agreement among European scholars on either the measurement of the circumference of the earth or on the East-West extent of Asia and Europe: The two most common estimates of the latter were 180 degrees of the earth's circumference (a figure derived from Ptolemy) and 225 degrees (a figure quoted in the early fifteenth century by Pierre d'Ailly but derived ultimately from Marinus of Tyre, a predecessor of Ptolemy). Both calculations were overestimates, the true figure being about 130 degrees. The consequences for the calculations of Christopher Columbus, who also accepted Ptolemy's considerable underestimate for the earth's circumference, are well known.21 No classical or medieval European traveler, not even one as 21

Phillips, The Medieval Expansion of Europe, pp.4-5, 213-6; Ptolemy provided a figure of 180,000 Greek stadia (c. 18,000 nautical miles) rather than the more accurate 250,000 stadia calculated by Eratosthenes in the third century B.C. The concept of a spherical earth would have been known to anyone who had received a university education through such works as the textbook, De Sphaera Mundi, written by John Holywood at the university of Paris in the 1220s, which continued to be cited as late as the sixteenth century. It seems to have been a commonplace scholarly and literary theme that the spherical earth could in principle be circumnavigated: this notion can be found in such diverse contexts as the Opus Maius of the thirteenth-century English Franciscan scholar Roger Bacon and the anonymous fourteenth-century literary work known as The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. In the 1370s the French scholar Nicholas Oresme even calculated that a circumnavigation would take exactly four years, sixteen weeks, and two days. (See "A fourteenth-century argument for an international date line," in C. Lutz, Essays on Manuscripts and Rare Books (Hamden, Connecticut, 1975.) Whatever the views of the unlettered about the shape of the earth may have been, educated Europeans were not Flat-Earthers and Columbus was not making any revolutionary claims when he argued for the possibility of a westward voyage to Asia. The real problem lay in the fact that there was no general agreement on the actual circumference of the earth, on the extent of the inhabited landmass, and, just as important, on the breadth of the ocean separating the Far Western from the Far Eastern extremities of the land. Here there was ample room for debate, and it is not surprising that Columbus did not win immediate acceptance for his scheme. As late as 1538 the Libro de Cosmographia by Pedro de Medina, who was one of the cosmographers employed by the Casa de la Contratación in Seville and an expert on practical navigation, included many references to and simple proofs of the spherical earth without any attempt to calculate its dimensions: Phillips, pp. 184, 188-90, 197, 208-9, 215, 245; A Navigator's Universe: The Libro de Cosmographia of 1538 by Pedro de Medina, trans. & ed. Ursula Lamb, The Monograph Series of the Society for the History of Discoveries (Chicago, 1972). The best studies of medieval geographical ideas are G.H.T. Kimble, Geography in the Middle Ages (London, 1937; repr. New York, 1968); and J.K. Wright, Geographical Lore of the Time of the Crusades (New York, 1925; repr. New York, 1965); to these should now be added the very important History of Cartography, vol. 1, Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient and Medieval Europe and the Medi-

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES

8 30

Seymour Phillips

much traveled as Marco Polo, actually succeeded in traversing the full extent of Eurasia from ocean to ocean. But even if someone had done so, his conclusions would have been of little help because the separation of places was seen not so much in degrees of latitude or of longitude or in miles as in the time taken to cover the distance. For instance, it took Giovanni di Piano Carpini over a year in 1245-46 to travel by land from Lyons to the vicinity of Karakorum in Mongolia and John of Monte Corvino took over two years to travel by sea from Iran to China between 1291 and 1293-94, whereas Marco Polo's land journey to China took about three and a half years from 1271 to 127475. Although the compass was available for use at sea in the thirteenth century, and by the end of that century portolan charts were beginning to make it possible to navigate by following a compass bearing, long journeys on land were commonly made by the use of itineraries of the kind that had originally been designed for travel around the provinces of the Roman world. In principle, all the traveler needed to know was the place he was currently situated in and where to go next, and so on until the ultimate destination was reached. The thirteenth-century English chronicler Matthew Paris produced such an itinerary for the journey to Jerusalem, although it has also plausibly been suggested that some of the most elaborate mappae mundi, such as the Ebstorf Map of c.1240 and the Hereford Map of c.1300, which were put on display in great churches, were designed in part to act as itineraries for potential pilgrims to Santiago, Rome, or Jerusalem .22 However, not all destinations were as easily found as these. Then, as now, there was no questioning the existence in some specific location of a city such as Rome or Jerusalem, even if that location could not be described with mathematical precision. On the other hand, what may appear to us as well-defined geographical regions or countries were frequently very inexact in medieval usage. "Ethiopia" or "Sudan" or "Guinea," all of which have a context today as the names of African states, originally all meant more or less the same thing, "the land of the black people" to the south of the Sahara desert, each being expressed in a different language, Greek, Arabic, or Berber. In the case of Asia, the term "India" was very imprecise. A distinction between "India Major" and "India Minor" had already been made in

22

terranean, ed. J.B. Harley & D. Woodward (Chicago & London, 1987), together with future volumes in the series; D. Woodward, “Reality, symbolism, time and space in medieval world maps," Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 75 (1985). Phillips, p.217; M. Jancey, Mappa Mundi: the Map of the World in Hereford Cathedral (Hereford, 1987).

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Outer world of the European Middle Ages

9 31

classical writings, but from about the twelfth century no less than three different usages of "India" were current: "Nearer" or "Lesser" India (roughly the northern part of the subcontinent of India as it is now understood); "Further" or "Greater" India (which referred to the southern part of India and also to the regions farther to the east which would now be called South-East Asia and Indonesia); and finally "Middle" India, which was often applied to Ethiopia, with all the further imprecision associated with that expression. "Middle" India should probably be understood as meaning "Intermediate" India or "on the way" to India proper. Although the modern analogy of "Near," "Middle," and "Far" East may help us to appreciate these different forms of "India," there is no doubt that ambiguity is inherent in any medieval writings that refer to India. It is equally significant that the classical and medieval varieties of "India" prepared the way for the multitude of "Indies" and "Indians" that European observers conjured into being in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. As late as the eighteenth century, "Indians" were still being found as European navigators explored the mysterious islands of the Pacific.23 The main features of medieval geography were derived almost entirely from classical sources: the spherical earth; the division of the earth's surface into equatorial, temperate, and cold µατα or zones; and the three continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe, which were surrounded by the all-embracing world ocean. All the known world was located north of the equator, but the belief that there might be an inhabited southern continent beyond the equator meant that there was an intellectual niche into which Australia and Antarctica could be fitted when these were discovered many centuries later. The southern continent did, however, create problems for Christian theologians, who had to consider whether its inhabitants could have received the blessings of Christianity and, if not, whether they were fully human. There was no such intellectual niche in classical writings for the undiscovered and unsuspected American continent, but the question of the humanity of its peoples was to be a very real problem when America finally was discovered in the early decades of the sixteenth century.24 However, rather than examining the theoretical framework of 23 24

Phillips, pp.203-4; Beckingham. Between Islam and Christendom, 'The achievements of Prester John/' pp.16-19; Marco Polo, The Travels, pp.210, 233, 268, 277-8. On geographical ideas, see Phillips, ch.l, "Classical discoveries and Dark Age transformations/' ch. 10, "Scholarship and the imagination"; and also G.H.T. Kimble. On the "antipodes," see Friedman, pp.38^18. One of the ways in which Columbus formulated his objectives before 1492 and before he settled on an Asian destination was probably as a search for the antipodes; after his return from the New World in 1493 the royal and papal chanceries "inclined to the view that the explorer had found an

10

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 32

Seymour Phillips

medieval geography, which was mainly the province of scholars, it will be convenient to take two commonplace forms of discourse in medieval European geographical thought that may broadly be described as a "western" and as an "eastern" view.25 Apart from their obvious associations with the rising and the setting of the sun and symbolically with birth and death, these views also reflected the fact that the known world consisted of a broad band of territory in the northern hemisphere of the earth stretching from the shores of the Atlantic ocean in the west to an indeterminate point somewhere in eastern Asia. The western view was strongly influenced by the proximity of the Atlantic. Some commentators, such as the twelfth-century Moslem geographer Al-Idrisi, regarded the Atlantic as an empty desolation, "a green sea of darkness" in the familiar phrase. As the most westerly known part of Europe, Ireland was frequently regarded as lying at the end of the world,26 a perception that gave a peculiar and special sense of adventure to those pilgrims from all over Europe who went between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries to one of the strangest and most remote places of pilgrimage in medieval Europe, St. Patrick's Purgatory located on an island in Lough Derg in the north-western corner of Ireland.27 It is ironic, though certainly coincidental, that the suppression of the pilgrimage was ordered by Pope Alexander VI in 1497 at the time that other European travelers were beginning to reveal the reality of a larger and more complex world. However, the fame of the Purgatory also effectively illustrates the very important point that a distant location on the earth's surface, whether in the far west or the far east, might nonetheless be very widely known either at firsthand or from common report. In this case the location happened to be a real one, but it is easy to understand how less wellattested places could also come to have an existence, if only in the imagination. The desolation of the Atlantic and the remoteness of the western shores of Ireland were, however, tempered to some extent by knowl-

25 26

27

antipodal continent/' an opinion that received support from Peter Martyr and other Italian humanists: Fernandez-Armesto, Columbus, pp.32, 43-4, 63, 96-8. Phillips, ch. 10, "Scholarship and the imagination"; cf. M. Helms, Ulysses' Sail, ch. 6 , "The outer realms of Christendom," especially pp.211-26. Phillips, pp. 183-4; D. Metlitzki, The Matter of Araby in Medieval England (New Haven & London, 1977), pp. 123-4; V.H. Cassidy, The Sea around Them: the Atlantic, c.1250, (Baton Rouge, 1968). M. Haren & Y. de Pontfarcy, ed., The Medieval Pilgrimage to St. Patrick's Purgatory: Lough Derg and the European Tradition, Clogher Historical Society (Enniskillen, 1988).

11

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Outer world of the European Middle Ages

33

edge of the existence of numerous islands in the ocean. Irish monks, like the historical St. Brendan in the sixth century, had explored and established hermitages on many of the remote islands off the shores of Britain and Ireland: The monastic settlements on the Scottish island of Iona and on the rocky pinnacle of Skellig Michael off the coast of Kerry are two of the most famous. Irish navigators had also visited the Faeroes by 700 A.D. and Iceland (which they identified with the Ultima Thule of classical tradition) before the end of the eighth century, paving the way for the Viking discovery and settlement of the latter after about 870. Iceland remained as a European outpost in the Atlantic throughout the medieval period, although regarded as a northern rather than a western location.28 The discovery and partial exploration of other groups of islands - the Canaries, Madeira, and the Azores in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries - added a large number of other Atlantic destinations. The real possibility that still more islands were awaiting discovery provided ample scope for the curious and the ambitious fifteenthcentury navigator. Just as important in stimulating ambitions were several other islands, which we would regard as having no substance outside the imagination but which were widely accepted as genuine. The island of Antilia (probably meaning "the island opposite" or on "the other side" of the ocean), which Columbus hoped to find on his way to Cathay, was one example, with its origin in the Iberian Peninsula. Two more were of Irish inspiration but became very widely known throughout Europe because of the circulation in manuscript of such works as the tenth-century Navigatio Brendani in which St. Brendan in his mythological guise wandered from island to island, each more remarkable than the last. The island of St. Brendan and its companion the island of Brasil (Hy-Breasail, "the land of the Blest") had their origins in pre-Christian Irish voyage literature on the search for a western paradise that was later influenced by Christianity and became a spiritual quest. When maps for navigation began to be drawn in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, these two islands were duly included along with the island of Antilia. Apart from an appearance off the coast of Newfoundland in a seventeenth-century chart, St. Brendan's island quickly fell victim to the progress of Atlantic discovery after 1500, but the island of Brasil lasted even as late as the eight28

Phillips, ch.9, "Medieval Europe and North America"; G.J. Marcus, The Conquest of the North Atlantic (Woodbridge, 1980); G. Jones, The Norse Atlantic Saga (Second edition, Oxford, 1986); on the Irish knowledge of Iceland, see Dicuil, Liber de Mensura Terrae, ed. J.J. Tierney (Dublin, 1967).

12

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 34

Seymour Phillips

eenth century as a testimony to the power of the medieval Irish imagination.29 Islands appear to have a special place in the history of human relations with and perceptions of the outer world. Each was in a sense a closed world in its own right, which was entered by the highly significant act of crossing the beach; the ship that took the explorer there was in itself a floating mobile world that took its origin from the society that constructed it, but that operated according to rules of its own.30 Because real islands might hold many surprises for the outsider, it is hardly to be wondered at that islands have a place in the imaginative literature. The islands of St. Brendan and Brasil are two of the most evocative medieval examples: It is even possible that the enthusiastic descriptions of Vinland in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Icelandic sagas as a land of vines and self-sown wheat owed something to literary exemplars like the Navigatio Brendani31 In the fourteenth century the multitude of islands existing in the seas beyond India, to which Marco Polo and Odoric of Pordenone gave eloquent testimony, provided the author of Mandeville's Travels with locations for his dog-headed men and other wonders, secure in the knowledge that few travelers were likely to attempt to check his tales at firsthand. The literary role played by islands can readily be extended via Shakespeare's Tempest and Robinson Crusoe's island to the imaginary worlds of modern science fiction.32 By contrast with the "western view," which was heavily influenced by impressions of the Atlantic and its islands, the "eastern view" was connected with the land mass of the continent of Asia, which had been partly explored in classical antiquity and on which there was therefore a considerable amount of information available. The "East" was also the source of material goods of high monetary and prestige value. For Christians, the East was the direction from which salvation had come, and one very special part of it contained their Holy Places, which were given pictorial representation by the appearance on mappae mundi of Jerusalem as the symbolic center of Christendom .33 In general, how29

30 31 32 33

H.P.A. Oskamp, The Voyage of Mael Duin: a Study in Early Irish Voyage Literature (Groningen, 1970); T.J. Westropp, "Brasil and the legendary islands of the North Atlantic: their history and fable," Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 30, Section C (Dublin, 1912-13), pp.223-60; P. Mac Cana, "The voyage of St. Brendan: literary and historical origins," and D.B. Quinn, "Atlantic islands," in Atlantic Visions, ed. J. de Courcy Ireland & D. Sheehy (Dun Laoghaire, Ireland, 1989). Cf. G. Dening, Islands and Beaches. R. Boyer, "The Vinland sagas and Brendan's Navigation," in Atlantic Visions. See P. Hulme, Colonial Encounters, chs. 3, 5; or, for example, James Blish's novel, Λ Case of Conscience (London, 1958). The central location of Jerusalem should not be seen as an example of European

13

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Outer world of the European Middle Ages

35

ever, European impressions of the East were subject to the imprecision in spatial relationships that was discussed earlier, and also to the association of the East since classical times with many tales of marvels and of wondrous races of men, with the result that it was a location within the European imagination just as much as a real (and very large) location upon the face of the earth. For the inhabitants of medieval Europe, all these uncertainties about the East meant that there was plenty of scope for the exercise of imagination: If the wonders of the East, were not found in one place, then they might be somewhere more distant again, perhaps beyond the empire of Cathay or in the kingdom of Prester John. For many people, the East probably began almost as soon as they left familiar ground, after which any strange experience might be expected to befall them. In the early thirteenth century, Jacques de Vitry, the bishop of Acre in the kingdom of Jerusalem, remarked that "some light-minded and inquisitive persons go on pilgrimage not out of devotion, but out of mere curiosity and love of novelty. All they want to do is travel through unknown lands to investigate the absurd, exaggerated stories they have heard about the east/ ' 34 It is not perhaps all that surprising that such views of the East could be dominant even at times when firsthand information was in principle readily available.35 Medieval European images of the East were founded in the writings of classical authors. These referred to the most distant parts of Asia either as the land of the "Sinae," whose name may correspond to the first ruling imperial dynasty of China in the third century B.C., or as the land of the "Seres," which adjoined that of the Sinae and was the place from which silk was thought to come. Other than these very vague impressions, the country that we think of as China was very little known to the civilizations of either Greece or Rome, and this continued to be the situation in Europe until the time of the Mongol conquests in Asia during the thirteenth century.36 Instead, the most enduring impressions of the East were focused

34 35 36

ethnocentricity comparable with the Chinese portrayal of their own land as the center of the world. Because of Jerusalem's key role in the history of Christianity, it was natural that it should be the center of attention for European Christians. Since Jerusalem also lay more or less at the point of focus of the three continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe, its Christian significance was easily grafted onto the classical idea of the orbis terrarum: see Phillips, pp.188-90, and D. Poirion, ed., Jerusalem, Rome, Constantinople: l'image et le mythe de la ville (Paris, 1986). Cited in J. Sumption, Pilgrimage (London, 1975), p.257. Phillips, ch. 10, "Scholarship and the imagination"; see also the detailed treatment of the theme in Campbell, The Witness and the Other World H. Yule, ed., Cathay and the Way Thither, 2nd edition, vol. I, Hakluyt Society, 2nd. series, 38 (London, 1915), Introduction and pp. 183-97.

14

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 36

Seymour Phillips

upon India. The earliest known references in Greek sources are in the writings of Herodotus in the middle of the fifth century B.C. and of Ctesias of Cnidos in about 400 B.C. Ctesias named his work Indica, gave great attention to the marvels of India, and so established a genre of geographical writing that was followed by many later Greek and Roman authors, such as Pliny the Elder in the first century A.D. and Solinus in the third century.37 Although it is doubtful whether even Ctesias ever visited India, there were many points of contact between Europe and Asia, through military conquests like those of Alexander the Great and his successors and through trade. With the collapse of Roman power, little opportunity for direct relations between western Europe and Asia remained, but the marvels of India lived on and received a new lease of life from such works as the Cosmography by the mysterious figure of Aethicus Ister, the so-called Letter of Alexander to Aristotle, and the Old English and Latin texts known as The Wonders of the East.38 The spread of Christianity added a number of new perceptions and sources of interest in the East. One idea that became familiar was that of the terrestrial paradise, from which the four great rivers of the world began their course, and that was usually located in the easternmost reaches of Asia.39 Although paradise was inaccessible to mankind, the supposed attempt by Alexander the Great to reach it became a part of the Alexander legend that was very familiar in medieval Europe. One of Alexander's exploits, which derives from material in both the Old and the New Testament, was the enclosure behind a wall or mountain range of the savage tribes of Gog and Magog, whose escape would herald the coming of Antichrist. Alexander's wall is usually identified with the Caucasus mountains, but it is just possible that the story contains an echo of one of the precursors of China's Great Wall far to the east.40 Another tradition of 37

38

39 40

J.B. Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art And Thought, passim; R. Wittkower, "Marvels of the East/' Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 5, 1942. For a collection of classical references to India, see the various works by J.W. McCrindle, e.g. Navigation of the Erythraean Sea and Ancient India as Described by Ktesias of Knidus (Calcutta & London, 1879; repr. Amsterdam, 1973) Phillips, pp.10-11; Friedman, op. cit., pp.5-7; Campbell, op. cit., pp.57-74; S. Rypin, ed., Three Old English Prose Texts, Old English Text Society, 161 (London, 1924, for 1921). J.K. Wright, Geographical Lore of the Time of the Crusades, pp.771-2, 261-5. Wright, op. cit., pp.72-4; G. Cary, The Medieval Alexander (Cambridge, 1956), pp.1301; P. Noble, L. Polak & C. Isoz, ed., The Medieval Alexander Legend and Romance Epic (London, 1982). No European traveler to China in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries made any mention of the Wall, which was constructed in its present form only

15

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Outer world of the European Middle Ages

37

Christian inspiration was the legend of St. Thomas, which existed from about the third century A.D. and was based in part at least on the perfectly genuine spread of Christianity to parts of India. Although the legend underwent a revival in the twelfth century, after which a number of European pilgrims visited the shrine of St. Thomas at Mailapur on the east coast of India,41 it was soon overshadowed by the much more powerful tale contained in the fictitious Letter of Prester John, the eastern king who was preparing to come to the aid of Christendom.42 Once the Letter began to circulate, every European traveler who had the chance to travel in the East was almost bound to divert some of his energies to a search for the elusive Christian ruler.43 A great many ideas and impressions about the East were therefore already current in Europe even before the thirteenth-century Mongol conquests provided an unexpected new opportunity for European travel in Asia. The Mongols did not conquer India at this time,44 but European merchants like the Genoese Benedetto Vivaldi and Percivalle Stancone and the Venetian Marco Polo, and missionaries such as John of Monte Corvino, John of Marignolli, Odoric of Pordenone, and the French Dominican, Jordan of Séverac, who became bishop of Quilon in 1329, did succeed in going there through Mongol-controlled territory in Iran at various times in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.45 Although they were sometimes skeptical of some of the old tales about India, they were never able to shake off all the ideas received from the past. John of Marignolli, for example, wrote several pages of reasoned argument against the existence of the monstrous races, while remaining convinced that while he was visiting Ceylon he had heard the waters issuing from the fountain of Paradise 46 Jordan of Séverac's account of India, written in about 1330, contains much that is recognizable but was significantly entitled Mirabilia Des-

41 42 43 44

45 46

in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: see A.N. Waldron, The Great Wall of China: from History to Myth (Cambridge, England, 1990). Phillips, pp.59-61, 96, 116, 192; Wright, op. cit., pp.74, 272, 275-9; P.W. Brown, The Indian Christians of St. Thomas (Cambridge, 1956). For the literature on Prester John, see fn 14 above. Phillips, pp.60-2, 77-82, 117, 151-3, 161, 184, 191-4, 200, 209, 227, 246, 251-3, 258. A leader of Mongol descent did, however, create the Mughal empire in India in the early sixteenth century. See D.O. Morgan, The Mongols, ch.8 , "What became of the Mongols?" Phillips, pp.96-100, 109-10. Phillips, pp.194-5, 201-2; Cathay and the Way Thither, vol. Ill, ed. H. Yule, Hakluyt Society, Second Series, 37 (London, 1914; repr. Nendeln, 1967), pp.232-5, 254-61.

16

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 38

Seymour Phillips

cripta,47 whereas one of the most elaborately illuminated manuscripts of the account of Marco Polo's travels begins as follows: Ci commence li livres du graunt Caam qui parole de la graunt Ermenie de Persse et des Tartares et dynde, et des granz merveilles qui par le monde sont.48

To Europeans, the reality of the extreme climate of India, the strange plants and animals, and the customs of its peoples were genuine sources of wonder, and it is likely that their written accounts and the fictional ones, such as The Travels of Sir John Mandeville and the Itineraries of Johannes Witte of Hese (1389), which were based upon them, succeeded all too well in reinforcing the old stereotypes about the East.49 By contrast, European understanding of the region of east Asia, which we think of as China, was transformed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In this case there was very little classical precedent to go on, beyond the vague references to the land of the Seres. China was in some ways superficially familiar to a European traveler from the Mediterranean: In both there were great cities, extensive commerce by land and sea, and a highly organized money economy; Christianity existed and was tolerated. It is not surprising, for example, that the city of Kinsai, with its many canals and bridges, should seem very like Venice both in Rustichello of Pisa's version of Marco Polo's travels and in Italo Calvino's modern act of imagination, or that Marco Polo should compare the trade of the port of Zayton with that of Alexandria. But there the comparisons ended.50 Everything about China was on a scale unknown in Europe: If Zayton were comparable with Alexandria, its trade according to Marco Polo was a hun47 48

49

50

Mirabilia Descripta: The Wonders of the East by Friar Jordanus, ed. H. Yule, Hakluyt Society (London, 1863). Bodleian Library, Oxford, Bodley Ms. 264, f.218r. The illuminators of manuscripts sometimes added wonders that were not in the text: see R. Wittkower, "Marco Polo and the pictorial tradition of the wonders of the East/' in Oriente Poliano (Rome, 1957). The literary phenomenon of the imaginary journey has been studied by a number of scholars: see, for example, J.K. Hyde, "Real and imaginary journeys in the later Middle Ages/ ' Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 65 (1982-3), pp.125-47; J. Richard, "Voyages réels et voyages imaginaires, instruments de la connaissance géographique au moyen âge," in Culture et travail intellectuel dans l'Occident médiéval, ed. G. Hasenohr ¿ J. Longère (Paris, 1981); J. Richard, Les récits de voyages et de pèlerinages, Typologie des sources du moyen âge, ed. L. Genicot, Fascicle XXXVIII (Turnhout, 1981). Marco Polo, The Travels, pp.213-31; Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities (London, 1974), pp.68-9.

17

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Outer world of the European Middle Ages

39

dred times more than that of the great Egyptian port; the money in circulation was not made of silver or gold but of paper stamped with the emperor's seal and was accepted without question; China was to outward appearances a land of peace and order, unlike Europe; the local languages were very strange to European ears and were rarely mastered by them; Christians were very much in the minority and many of them were heretical Nestorians, descended from converts made centuries before, who were often hostile to the missionaries from Rome. Nonetheless, Europeans were and remained deeply impressed: Nothing like China had been seen or imagined before.51 Although true on one level, this is also a deceptive account of medieval European relations with China. To begin with, Europeans who went to the Far East in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries were in a sense not going to China at all but to a land that had recently been conquered by nomadic invaders from the north. China, which under normal conditions would have been largely closed to foreigners, was now accessible to outsiders from other parts of Asia and from Europe whose services were needed by the ruling Mongols and who were more trustworthy than their Chinese subjects.52 The "real China" was therefore temporarily in suspense during the rule of the Mongol Great Khans of the Yüan dynasty between 1272 and 1368. Second, China was known in medieval Europe as "the land of Cathay" and the great city of Peking/Beijing as Cambaluc (from the Turkish words "Khanbalik":"City of the Khan"). Strictly speaking, "Cathay" referred to 51

52

Phillips, pp.87-92, 115-19; J. Heers, Marco Polo (Paris, 1983); Marco Polo and his Book: China and Europe in the Middle Ages: Abstracts of papers delivered at the Second International Congress on Marco Polo, Venice, 1989 (published by University of New Hampshire, 1989); Marco Polo, The Travels, pp.40 (languages), 147-9 (paper money), 237 (Zayton). Paper money, which was remarked upon by many foreign visitors to China, was a system of currency inherited by the Mongols from their Chinese predecessors. Lack of knowledge of the local languages was a major problem for the European missionaries in China: see C. Dawson, The Mission to Asia, p.233. Marco Polo is said to have known four languages, but whether these included Chinese is not clear. On the early history of Christianity in China, see A.C. Moule, Christians in China before the Year 1550 (London, 1930). The peacefulness of Mongol-ruled China was probably more apparent to later European travelers than it was to Marco Polo, since the latter arrived in China just as the Mongol conquest of the south was being completed. For a recent detailed study of medieval European conceptions of the "wonders of the East" and of actual travel in East Asia see F. E. Reichert, Begegnung mit China: Die Entdeckung Ostasiens im Mittelalter (Sigmaringen, 1992). For information on China under the Mongols, see especially D.O. Morgan, op.cit., ch. 5; I. de Rachewiltz, Papal Envoys to the Great Khans (London, 1971); China under Mongol Rule, ed. J.D. Langlois, Jr. (Princeton, 1981); China among Equals: the Middle Kingdom and its Neighbors, 10th.-14th. Centuries, ed. M. Rossabi (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London, 1983); M. Rossabi, Khubilai Khan (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London, 1988).

18

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 40

Seymour Phillips

northern China, whereas southern China was known as "Manzi," but Cathay was the familiar and most commonly used word.53 The name Cathay derived not from either the Chin or the Sung dynasties, which had ruled the north and south of China before the Mongol invasions, but from a people called the Khitans who had ruled Mongolia and northern China from the tenth to the early twelfth centuries. Their name had evidently survived the end of their rule in these regions, but it was also preserved in the empire of Kara Khitai, which had been founded in Central Asia in the twelfth century. The victory of their first emperor over the Turks near Samarkand in 1141 may have been one of the sources of the Prester John legend; more recently, in 1218, Kara Khitai had been destroyed by Ghenghis Khan in the course of his own empire building.54 The first European sources to refer to Cathay in a sense that clearly refers to northern China are the narratives composed in the late 1240s and in the mid-1250s by Carpini and Rubruck, both of whom wrote from information they had picked up at the court of the Great Khan in Mongolia. Rubruck was the first to realize that Cathay was probably the classical land of the Seres from which silk had come, and was followed in his conclusion by the Franciscan scholar Roger Bacon, who made use of Rubruck's writings in his Opus Maius composed soon after 1266.55 Marco Polo's narrative of around 1300 is the first account of Cathay (and of Manzi as well) by a European traveler who had seen these countries at firsthand.56 From then on, Cathay was a familiar part of all writings about the Far East, such as the Flor des estoires de la terre d'orient composed at the papal curia in 1307 by the exiled Armenian prince Hayton, the Livre de Vestât du Grand Caan written in 1330 by John of Cori, the Dominican Archbishop of Sultaniyeh in Iran, as well as those of Odoric of Pordenone in 1330 and John of Marignolli in the 1350s.57 Cathay also bulked large in the highly imag53 54 55 56 57

Morgan, op. cit., pp.48, 63, 196. To confuse matters further, the official name for the Mongol capital was "Ta-tu" rather than "Khan-balik": Morgan, p.123. Morgan, op. cit., pp.47-50, 108-9, 123. C. Dawson, ed., The Mission to Asia, pp.21-2, 42, 62, 64, 121-2, 143-4, 184; The Opus Maius of Roger Bacon, trans. R.B. Burke (New York, 1962), vol. I, pp.387-8. Marco Polo, The Travels, passim. There is an extract from Hayton's work in H. Yule, ed., Cathay and the Way Thither, vol. I, Hakluyt Society, Second Series, 38 (London, 1915), pp.260-2 (the full text is published in Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, Documents Arméniens, II (Paris, 1906)); the sixteenth-century English translation has been edited by G. Burger: Hetoum: a Lytell Cronycle: Richard Pynsons Translation (c.1520) of La Fleur des Histoires de la terre d'Orient (c.1307) (Toronto, 1988); for John of Cori (or Cora), see Cathay & the Way Thither, vol. Ill, Hakluyt Society, Second Series, 37 (London, 1914), pp.89-103; for

19

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Outer world of the European Middle Ages

41

inative Travels of Sir John Mandeville, which was composed in either the 1350s or 1360s and then circulated widely in manuscript in many European languages.58 By the time Mandeville's Travels was written, Mongol rule in China was near its end but it and other popular works like Marco Polo's Travels ensured that just as the name Khitai had survived the demise of its original owners in the early thirteenth century, so "Cathay" and its ruler the "Great Khan" survived the ejection of the Mongols from China in 1368. "Cathay" was given a further lease of life by its inclusion in maps, such as the famous Catalan World Atlas of about 1375, which is still preserved in Paris, or the world map of Fra Mauro of Venice, which was made for the Portuguese in 1459,59 and by the appearance of Mandeville and Marco Polo in printed editions from the early 1480s.60 No European is known to have been to China in the fifteenth century, but the Castilian ambassador Clavijo who visited the court of the new Mongol conqueror, Tamerlane, at Samarkand between 1403 and 1406 was there at the same time as a Chinese envoy and probably learnt something about current conditions,61 and the Venetian traveler Nicolo Conti included a description of Cathay in an account of his travels after he returned to Europe in 1444.62 Given the continuing European fascination with Cathay, it is hardly surprising that someone as suggestible as Christopher Columbus should become obsessed by it in his turn. What is more interesting is that "Cathay" survived even the discovery of America. Whereas India became increasingly familiar to Europeans in the sixteenth century,

58

59

60 61

62

Odoric of Pordenone see ibid., vol. II, Hakluyt Society, Second Series, 33 (London, 1913); and for John of Marignolli see ibid., vol. Ill, pp.213-16. The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, ed. C.W.R.D. Moseley (London, 1983), pp.137-60. There are several other available editions. For the diffusion of Mandeville in manuscript and in printed editions, see C. Deluz, Le Livre de Jehan de Mandeville: une "Géographie" au XIVe siècle, Annexe V, pp.416-21. For a discussion of the problem of authorship see J.R.S. Phillips, "The quest for Sir John Mandeville," in The Culture of Christendom: Studies in Medieval History in Memory of Denis L. T. Bethell, ed. M. A. Meyer (London, 1993). Phillips, Medieval Expansion of Europe, pp.220-2; Cathay and the Way Thither, vol. I, pp.299-302; there is an excellent facsimile reproduction of the Catalan map in Mapamundi: The Catalan World Atlas of the Year 1375, ed. G. Grosjean (Zürich, 1975). Mandeville s Travels, for example, was published in German, French, and Latin editions between 1478 and 1483. Narrative of the Embassy of Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo to the Court of Timour at Samarcand, A.D. 1403-6, ed. C.R. Markham, Hakluyt Society, First Series, 26 (London, 1859; repr. New York, 1970), ρρ.171-4; M. Rossabi, China and Inner Asia from 1368 to the Present Day (London, 1975), pp.13-17, 61-2. Cathay and the Way Thither, vol. I, pp.266-7; for other fifteenth-century references to "Cathay" by Toscanelli and Barbaro, see ibid., pp.267-70.

20

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 42

Seymour Phillips

Cathay remained a mystery. It was suspected by the Jesuit missionaries who entered China from the sea at the end of the century that this was the country recorded in earlier European writings, but proof did not become available until 1606 when the Portuguese Jesuit Benedict Goes completed a four-year journey from India and was met by a colleague from Peking just before he died at Suchow.63 Even then, some people were not convinced: As late as 1682 an edition of Peter Heylyn's Cosmography "assumed that there was still a Great Cham ruling over Cathay from a city called 'Cambalu/ although it admitted that nothing had been heard of him for over a hundred years"; and Mandeville's Travels was reprinted ten times in English alone in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.64 Meanwhile, in America the very vastness and intractability of much of the continent led to hopes of discovering a way round it or a short cut through it to the East. Of the fifty-two expeditions sent out by the French in Canada between 1603 and 1751, no less than half had the East as at least one of their objectives. Jean Nicolet dressed in robes of Chinese silk, standing on the western shore of Lake Michigan in 1634 in the hope that he would meet a representative of the Great Khan, is symbolic of the whole European involvement with the East since classical times.65 Distant "Cathay," like "India" before it, had become firmly embedded in the European imagination, and in a curious fashion the "western" and "eastern" views had come full circle, to meet in the heart of the New World.

III. P E O P L E S

In July 1241, three months after the great battles of Liegnitz and Mohi in which the latest and one of the most ferocious invaders of Europe, the nomadic Mongols, had destroyed the armies of Poland and Hun-

63

64

65

B. Penrose, Travel and Discovery in the Renaissance, 1420-1620 (Cambridge, Mass., 1952; repr. New York, 1962), pp.268-70; Cathay and the Way Thither, vol. IV, Hakluyt Society, Second Series, 41 (London, 1916), pp.x-xii, 169-259. P.J. Marshall & G. Williams, The Great Map of Mankind, pp.8-9, citing Heylyn, Book 3, p.204; Peter Heylyn (1599-1662), first published his book in London in 1652 under the title, Cosmographie: Foure Bookes contayning the Chorographie and Historie of the Whole World, and All its Principali Kingdoms, Provinces, Seas and Isles Thereof. Although Heylyn had a section on Cathay in Book 3 of his work (pp.185-205), he was aware that there was some distinction to be drawn between "Cathay" (in the north) and the rest of China and also included a section on the latter in Book 3, pp.206-12. Historical Atlas of Canada, vol. I, From the Beginning to 1800, ed. R. Cole Harris (Toronto, 1987), Plate 36; Phillips, p.259.

21

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Outer world of the European Middle Ages

43

gary and their German allies,66 Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen wrote to Henry III of England and to his fellow sovereigns recounting the horrors of the Mongol attack and appealing for aid to resist their expected advance into western Europe. In doing so, the Emperor listed the military virtues of the countries of Europe - from Germany, furens ac fervens ad arma, France, strenuae militiae genitrix et alumpna, Spain, bellicosa et audax, and England, virtuosa viris et classe munita, through Denmark, Italy, Burgundy, and Apulia, and ending with the nations bounding the western ocean, which he dismissed merely as cruenta Hibernia, cum agili Wallia, palustris Scotia, glacialis Norwegia.67 The language employed is highly rhetorical and the descriptions of the various peoples of Europe are restricted to their supposed fighting abilities, but the letter is nonetheless of considerable interest, because it suggests that there was a perceived pecking order among the nations of thirteenth-century Europe, while at the same time it also firmly opposes Europeans to a group of outsiders who are both alien and terrifying. The Emperor's letter is in fact but one illustration of the forms of ethnographic description that were current in medieval Europe. Some were the product of classical theories and perceptions whereas others were Christian in inspiration; but these did not exist in a vacuum, and were also influenced by specific situations both within and outside Europe in which peoples of different cultural, religious, and political traditions came into contact or into conflict and were forced to develop at the very least some practical working explanation or justification or narrative to describe their relations with one another.68 66

67

68

For a general account of these dramatic events, see Phillips, ch. 4, "Europe and the Mongol invasions"; but see also D.O. Morgan, The Mongols, ch. 6 ; J.J. Saunders, The History of the Mongol Conquests (London, 1971). Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. H.R. Luard (Rolls Series), vol.IV, pp.270-7 (this letter forms part of a collection of documents on the Mongol invasions that was made by Matthew Paris); for the historical context, see P. Jackson, "The Crusade against the Mongols (1241)," The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, vol. 42, No. 1, January 1991, pp.1-18. I am attempting to avoid overprecise definition here. However, I am in agreement with Anthony Pagden's argument that the "Cartesian belief in the fundamental innocence of the observer's eye" cannot be sustained and that "observers of anything ultimately unfamiliar for which there exist few readily available antecedents had to be able to classify before they could properly see, and in order to classify in any meaningful sense they had no alternative but to appeal to a system that was already in use": The Fall of Natural Man (Cambridge, 1982), p.2. My only disagreement with this excellent book is that while it gives full treatment to medieval theoretical precedents drawn from Aristotle and Aquinas, it does not take sufficient account of the complexity and variety of medieval experience-for example, the relations between Christian and heathen in the Baltic lands or between English Christians and Irish Christians in Ireland.

22

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 44

Seymour Phillips

Theories about the origins and distribution of the earth's peoples owed much both to classical and Christian ideas. The traditional classical division of the world into the three continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe was given new meaning by the story in the Book of Genesis of the peopling of the earth by the sons of Noah, Shem, Japheth, and Ham. By the seventh century this idea had been developed to the point at which Europe was the land of Japheth, of the Gentiles, the Greeks, and the Christians; Asia was the land of Semitic peoples, glorious in that they had produced the patriarchs and prophets, the chosen people and Christ himself; but - as the land of the circumcised adherents of older laws - condemned to an inferiority which was stated in the scriptures............As for Africa, the lot of the unhappy descendants of Ham, the Hamitic subjection was equally clearly laid down: Canaan was to be the servant both of Shem and Japheth .69

This distribution clearly implied the preeminence of Europe and its peoples over those of the other two continents and might have become a powerful idea in itself if "Europe" had not been overlaid so deeply for much of the medieval period by "Christendom." Although the whole world was visibly not Christian in allegiance, it was firmly believed that the world had been divided up and preached to by the immediate followers of Christ.70 This idea was sometimes shown in pictorial form in the symbolic world maps that accompanied the commentary on the Apocalypse by the eighth-century Spanish monk Beatus. However, from the time of the papal reform in the eleventh century, the papacy saw itself as the leader of Christendom, which claimed in effect a superiority for Europe over the rest of the world, and which was given practical material effect in 1099 through the consummation of the Crusader71 movement in the capture of Jerusalem. European superiority was also implied in the belief that civilization had gradually moved westward after its beginnings in the East, but that when it reached the uttermost limits of the West the human race would meet its doom and extinction. This idea has been traced through Christian writings from Severian of Gabala in the fourth century to Hugh of St. Victor and the German bishop and historian Otto of Freising in the twelfth. In the prologue to his Chronicon, Otto remarked, 69 70 71

D. Hay, Europe: the Emergence of an Idea (Edinburgh, 1957), ch. I and especially p.14; Friedman, p.39. Hay, pp.27-36, 40. Hay, pp.34-42.

23

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Outer world of the European Middle Ages

45

What great learning there was in Egypt and among the Chaldeans, from whom Abraham derived his knowledge! But what now is Babylon, once famous for its science and its pow er?..........And Egypt is now in large part a trackless waste, whence science was transferred to the Greeks, then to the Romans, and finally to the Gauls and Spaniards. And let it be observed that because all human learning began in the Orient and will end in the Occident, the mutability and disappearance of all things is demonstrated.72

The effect of environment on the characteristics of peoples was another theme with a classical origin that was taken up by medieval writers. Aristotle, for example, had remarked that those who live in a cold climate and in Europe are full of spirit, but wanting in intelligence and skill; and therefore they keep their freedom but have no political organization, and are incapable of ruling over others. Whereas the natives of Asia are intelligent and inventive, but they are wanting in spirit, and therefore they are always in a state of subjection and slavery. But the Hellenic race, which is situated between them, is likewise intermediate in character, being high-spirited and also intelligent.73

In the seventh century A.D., Isidore of Seville wrote that "In keeping with the difference in climate, the looks of men, their color, and their stature vary, and different dispositions appear. Consequently, the Romans are stately, Greeks shifty, Africans sneaky, Gauls warlike by nature and plunge into things, all because the climates they live in differ. " 74 The thirteenth-century English scholar Roger Bacon noted, for example, in his Opus Maius that according to classical sources the Hyperboreans who lived in the far north were "a very happy race, which dies only from satiety of life" and that Claudius Ptolemy was correct in supposing "that nature requires that there be two races of Ethiopians (i.e. black people)," one on either side of the equator.75 Bacon's contemporary, the German Dominican Albertus Magnus, had a considerable amount to say on the subject in his De Natura Locorum. He argued that people born in the hottest places were very hot themselves and became "wrinkled like pepper seeds from too much dryness," whereas the black color of their skin was the result of the thinner parts of the semen boiling away in the womb. People living 72

73 74 75

J.K. Wright, The Geographical Lore of the Time of the Crusades, pp.233-5; cf. Hay, op. cit., p.51; see also C.J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967), pp.276-82. Quoted in Hay, p.5; see also p.33. Friedman, pp.39, 43. Roger Bacon, Opus Maius, tr. R.B. Burke (New York, 1928; repr. New York, 1962), vol. I, pp.325, 327.

24

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 46

Seymour Phillips

in the regions of great heat, like the Ethiopians and Indians, were "quick-witted in invention and outstanding in philosophy and magic." On the other hand, people living in areas of cold were white "because of the cold which constricts the blood"; they were energetic but "dull-witted and untutored," although "they could be aroused to better things by study." The peoples of temperate climates however, existed under ideal conditions. They lived to old age, their works "as natural as they are spirited," were most praiseworthy and they had good customs. The temperate people "live easily among themselves, practice justice, keep their word, respect peace and the society of men. " 76 One of the best known and typically "medieval" forms of ethnography is the belief in monstrous races of men who "were always far away, in India, Ethiopia, Albania, or Cathay, places whose outlines were vague to the medieval mind but whose names evoked mystery. " 77 As is well known, the monstrous races were originally another aspect of the fascination of the classical world with the wonders of the East. Altogether about forty such races have been identified in the writings of Greek and Roman authors from Ctesias in the late fifth century B.C. to Pliny the Elder in the first century A.D.: They include such beings as Amazons ("without breast"), Anthropophagi ("maneaters"), Antipodes ("opposite-footed": supposedly people living on the opposite side of the world), Blemmyae ("headless men"), Cynocephali ("dog-head"), Ethiopians ("burnt face"), and so on .78 J.B. Friedman has pointed out in his remarkable study of the monstrous races that many of them were not monstrous at all in the sense of being anomalous and deformed births. "They simply differed in physical appearance and social practices from the person describing them. Some took their names from their manner of life, such as the AppleSmellers, or the Troglodytes who dwelt in caves; some were physically unusual but not anomalous, such as the Pygmies or Giants; and some were truly fabulous, such as the Blemmyae or men with faces on their chests. Even the most bizarre, however, were not supernatural or infernal creatures, but varieties of men, whose chief distinction from the men of Europe was one of geography. " 79 Some of the "monstrous 76

77 78 79

This passage is a paraphrase and quotation of Glacken, pp.267-9; see also ibid., chapter 6 , "Environmental influences within a divinely created world," and Friedman, pp.51-3. Friedman, p.l. Friedman, ch. 1 , The Plinian races', especially pp.5-22. Ibid, pp.l, 3.

25

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Outer world of the European Middle Ages

47

races" are clearly the result of attempts to describe the unfamiliar: it has been suggested, for example, that the cynocephali, who are one of the most frequently met with, may be derived from hirsute-faced human beings or from cynocephalic monkeys, or from sightings of men dressed in animal skins.80 It has also been argued that the monstrous races were the result of a form of xenophobia,81 but this argument is weakened by the fact that the monstrous races usually seem to have been located in distant places in which they posed no immediate threat. It is interesting, however, to discover that many of the monstrous races known to classical writers also appear in Chinese sources, such as the work known as the Shan Hai Ching ("Classic of the Mountains and Rivers," 6 th century B.C. to 1st century A.D.), which contains, for example, a lively illustration of a "headless man" brandishing an axe in his hand. Various explanations for this coincidence have been put forward, but none that is wholly satisfactory. Whatever the reason, it is apparent that for the Chinese the "wonders of the East" were instead the "marvels of the West. " 82 With the Christian gloss that they were the children of Cain, who had been sentenced to deformity and exile as punishment for their ancestor's sin,83 the monstrous races passed into the medieval European imagination along with other aspects of the East, and they are to be found regularly in works of scholarship, cartography, and literature. In the early thirteenth century, Jacques de Vitry, the bishop of Acre in the kingdom of Jerusalem, described the monstrous races in his Historia Orientalis as if they were among the inhabitants of the Holy Land; the Ebstorf mappa mundi of c.1240 contained twenty-four of the races and the Hereford map of c.1300 includes a total of twenty.84 The author of the mid-fourteenth-century Travels of Sir John Mandeville peopled some of the many islands in the East with dogheaded men, one-eyed giants, headless men, men who sheltered from the sun beneath their enormous upper lip, and beings with the genitals of both sexes, and Johannes Witte of Hese, who set out for Jeru80 81

82 83 84

Needham, vol. Ill, p.507; Friedman, p.15. Needham, vol. Ill, p.507. Some of the races may also represent the projection of subconscious fears of the observers, but that perhaps is to get into too deep psychological waters. Needham, vol.III, pp.503-7 (see illustration on p.506). See Friedman, ch. 5, "Cain's kin." Friedman, pp.42,46,77. On the Hereford mappa mundi see M. Letts, The Pictures in the Hereford Mappa Mundi (8 th.edition, Hereford, 1979); M. Jancey, Mappa Mundi (Hereford, 1987). On mappaemundi in general see the chapter in J.B. Harley & D. Woodward, ed., History of Cartography, vol.l.

26

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 48

Seymour Phillips

salem in 1389, and claimed to have visited both Purgatory and Paradise, also "found" many of the monstrous races along his way.85 On the other hand, a number of the European travelers in Asia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries expressed great skepticism about them. Although Marco Polo claimed that the Andaman islanders were as fierce as mastiffs and had heads like dogs, he also noted that some of the inhabitants of the island of Java tried to deceive unsuspecting travelers by claiming that the dried and shriveled bodies of monkeys were those of pygmies. John of Marignolli, for example, concluded that "no such peoples do exist as nations, though there may be an individual monster here and there," and also argued that the Indian use of parasols to keep off the sun was the origin of the sciapods, who were said to shade themselves with their one large foot. To prove his point he even took a parasol back with him to Florence.86 Almost by definition, the monstrous races existed in distant and inaccessible parts of the world and usually seemed to recede into every greater obscurity whenever any outsider went in search of them. However, on a few occasions they came closer to home. One example is that of the "wild man," who appears in various eastern forms in classical and medieval literature, but who also had a place within European traditions and folklore. He was "a hairy man compounded of human and animal traits, without, however, sinking to the level of an ape," who was particularly to be found in remote places in the mountains and forests of many parts of Europe. He was an ambiguous figure, often regarded as threatening to normal human beings, and with strongly erotic associations, but sometimes seen as a benevolent creature whose behavior could provide useful moral lessons for civilized humanity, becoming in the process a prototype "noble savage. " 87 Another group of savages who were anything but noble were the tribes of Gog and Magog, whose escape from captivity behind Alexander's Gate somewhere in the East would herald the ending of the world.88 It was naturally hoped that the tribes would stay there indefinitely, but it was almost inevitable when the Mongols appeared 85

86 87

88

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, ed. Moseley, pp.134-7; Friedman, p.143. For the marvels included in Mandeville and their geographical distribution, see C. Deluz, Annexe IV, pp.402-15. Phillips, pp.78, 94-5; C. Dawson, The Mission to Asia, p.170; Marco Polo, The Travels, pp.258, 253-4; Cathay and the Way Thither, vol. Ill, pp.254-6. Friedman, pp. 15-16, 200-7 & Ch. 8 , "Monstrous men as noble savages," especially pp.104-7; R. Bernheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages: a Study in Art, Sentiment and Demonology (Cambridge, Mass., 1952; repr. New York, 1970), p.l. Both these books contain illustrations of "wild men." On Gog and Magog, see fn 40.

27

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Outer world of the European Middle Ages

49

in the 1240s from the prophesied direction, with little warning and without any indication of their true identity, that many Europeans should be influenced in their descriptions of the invaders by existing ideas of the monstrous races and their supposed characteristics, and so identify them with Gog and Magog.89 Recent work on the chronicles composed by writers such as Thomas of Spalato in Dalmatia who experienced the Mongol attacks at first hand has shown that although they contain ample evidence of the destruction caused by the Mongols, they do not present an apocalyptic interpretation of these events.90 It has also been demonstrated that some of the best known material on the Mongols, particularly that recorded by Matthew Paris in England, far from the scene of events, was probably edited to produce a more dramatic effect.91 But whether edited or not, a dramatic effect was achieved. The Mongols were commonly referred to as 'Tartars," with the implication of infernal origins; some writers claimed that (like the anthropophagi) the Mongols indulged in cannibalism, and Matthew Paris even included a drawing of them committing this atrocity.92 The Mongols could also readily be identified with another form of 89

90

91

92

C.W. Connell, "Western views of the origin of the Tartars': an example of the influence of myth in the second half of the thirteenth century," Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 3 (1973), pp.126-33. Connell, pp.126-7; James Ross Sweeney, "Thomas of Spalato and the Mongols: a thirteenth-century Dalmatian view," Florilegium, 4 (1982), Carleton University Annual papers on Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages, pp. 156-8, 163-71; the text of Thomas of Spalato's chronicle is published in Der Mongolensturm: Berichte von Augenzeugen und Zeitgenossen, 1235-1250, ed. H. Gockenjan & J.R. Sweeney (Graz, Vienna & Cologne, 1985), vol. 3 in the series Ungarns Geschichtsschreiber, ed. T. von Bogyay. For details of the material recorded by Matthew Paris, see J.J. Saunders, "Matthew Paris and the Mongols," Essays in Medieval History presented to Bertie Wilkinson, ed. T.R. Sandquist & M.R. Powicke (Toronto, 1969). For critical remarks on Matthew Paris, see Sweeney, "Thomas of Spalato," pp.157, 172, nn.3,4; and P. Jackson, "The Crusade against the Mongols (1241)", pp.2, 8-9. Connell, pp. 115, 117-18; W.R. Jones, "The image of the barbarian in medieval Europe," Comparative Studies in Society and History, 13 (1971), pp.399-400; J.A. Boyle, "The last barbarian invaders: the impact of the Mongol conquest upon East and West," Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, vol. 112 (1969-70), pp.5-8; G. Guzman, "Reports of Mongol cannibalism in the thirteenthcentury Latin sources: Oriental fact or Western fiction?," in Westrem, ed., Discovering New Worlds; M.R. James, "The drawings of Matthew Paris," in The Fourteenth Volume of the Walpole Society (Oxford, 1925-6), pp.15-16 and drawings nos. 75, 8 6 ; see also the more recent work by Suzanne Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica Majora, California Studies in the History of Art, 21 (Aldershot, 1987). It should however be pointed out that the derivation of "Tartar" from "Tartarus," the classical Hell, was not universally argued by thirteenth-century writers and has been hotly debated by modern scholars: see J.R. Sweeney, "Thomas of Spalato," pp. 177-8. On the other hand, whatever the origin of the name, it probably produced the appropriate "infernal" effect on many of those who read accounts of the Mongol invasions.

28

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 50

Seymour Phillips

ethnography, the image of the barbarian, which was a familiar concept in antiquity in regions as far apart as Greece, India, and China. The barbarian was distinguished by such features as his lack of an ordered urban or rural existence, his inability to manufacture and to employ the material artefacts of more advanced civilizations, and by the absence of a sophisticated spoken and written literary culture.93 Barbarism was, needless to say, in the eye (and in the mind) of the beholder and was particularly ascribed by the members of settled civilizations to neighbors whose way of life was conspicuously different from the accepted norms. When the "barbarian" was not simply someone of a different culture but was also perceived as a threat, the idea became a very emotive one.94 The image of the barbarian outlived the classical world that had given birth to it. For the descendants of the former barbarians who took over the western Roman provinces in the fifth and sixth centuries A.D. and became partly Romanized in the process, there were other peoples living beyond the new frontiers who could now be classified as barbarians. But barbarism was also redefined to make adherence to paganism or to a Christian heresy rather than to Roman Christianity one of the most significant distinguishing marks. By these criteria the unconverted Slavs, Germans, Magyars, and Scandinavians were obvious barbarians, especially if like the latter two they were also a cause of terror and devastation to Christian Europe.95 In this guise the barbarian was bequeathed by classical antiquity to medieval Europe. The medieval European idea of the barbarian can also be understood more clearly through the modern concept of the "core and periphery," as expressed in the relations between areas like AngloNorman England and Germany on the one hand, which considered themselves as the natural repositories of civilization, and on the other the societies with which they came into contact and sought to dominate, Wales and Ireland to the west and the Baltic lands and the Slav territories beyond the Elbe to the east.96 The perceived contrast be93

94 95 96

Based on the definition of "barbarian" given in W.R. Jones, "The image of the barbarian in medieval Europe," Comparative Studies in Society and History, 13 (1971), p.376. This is a very important paper to which I am much indebted for this paragraph. See also A. Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man, ch. 2, "The image of the barbarian." Jones, pp.377-8. Jones, pp.385-8. This idea is very well expressed in A. Simms, "Core and periphery in medieval Europe: the Irish experience in a wider context," in Common Ground: Essays on the Historical Geography of Ireland presented to T. Jones Hughes, ed. W.J. Smyth and K. Whelan (Cork, 1988), p.22; see also the very important collection of essays in Medieval

29

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Outer world of the European Middle Ages

51

tween the core and periphery is clearly stated in a much-quoted passage about the Irish by the twelfth-century historian Gerald de Barri, better known as Giraldus Cambrensis because of his shared Norman and Welsh ancestry: The Irish are a rude people, subsisting on the produce of their cattle only, and living themselves like beasts - a people that has not yet departed from the primitive habits of pastoral life. In the common course of things, mankind progresses from the forest to the field, from the field to the town, and to the social condition of citizens; but this nation, holding agricultural labour in contempt, and little coveting the wealth of towns, as well as being exceedingly averse to civil institutions - lead the same life their fathers did in the woods and open pastures, neither willing to abandon their old habits or learn anything new.97

Gerald's remarks are typical of many that could be cited from twelfthand thirteenth-century English and German authors about the inhabitants of the European periphery. Their pastoral existence was contrasted unfavorably with that of the settled "normal" societies; the richness of their land and their supposed failure to put it to proper agricultural use were stressed; and for good measure they were regularly accused of "ferocity, cruelty, and bloodthirstiness" and "faithlessness and disregard for good laws and customs." Otto of Freising spoke for many of his contemporaries when he said of the Hungarians: "Fortune is rightly to be blamed or, rather, the divine patience is to be wondered at, which exposed a land as delectable as this to such, not men, but human monsters. " 98 Clearly such debased and degraded peoples as these were fit only for conquest, and all the more so if religion or the lack of it could be used in further justification. This was the case, for example, in 1155 when Pope Adrian IV was induced to send his famous bull Laudabiliter to Henry II of England urging him as a Catholic prince to go to Ireland "to enlarge the boundaries of the church, to reveal the truth of the Christian faith to unlearned and savage peoples, and to root out from the Lord's field the vices that grow in it." Despite the recent reforms in the Irish Church that were bringing it into line with the new standards of organization and au-

97 98

Frontier Societies, ed. R. Bartlett & A. Mackay (Oxford, 1989); and R. Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, 1146-1223 (Oxford, 1982), especially ch. 6 , "The face of the barbarian." Cited in Glacken, p.281; Simms, p.24. Bartlett, pp.158-65; Simms, p.24. See also R.C. Hoffman, "Outsiders by birth and blood: racist ideologies and realities around the periphery of Europe," Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, n.s. 6 (Vancouver, 1983); W.R. Jones, "England and the Celtic fringe: a study in cultural stereotypes," Journal of World History, 13 (1971), pp. 155-71.

30

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 52

Seymour Phillips

thority elsewhere in Europe, the core's view of the periphery (the core in this instance being probably the Church of Canterbury) had its customary effect." Where the objects of hostility were heathens the need to convert them to Christianity was an additional argument for intervention. From the time of the expedition against the Wends in 1147 until the final conversion of Lithuania in 1386, a series of Crusades was fought against them and other Baltic peoples. The question regularly arose as to whether conversion could properly be carried out by force. The papacy regularly stated that it could not, but this made little difference to the brutality of the eastern campaigns.100 A twelfth-century bishop of Liibeck once "explained to the Slavs that he was not surprised that the Saxon princes had treated them badly because it was generally believed that it was not a serious sin to maltreat heathen, and in their own interests he encouraged them to convert to Christianity. " 101 In the late thirteenth century an anonymous writer in Bohemia remarked: "May God deign to listen and reveal to his Christian people a Czech king such as he (Alexander the Great); I hope that before long the Latvians, Tartars, Turks, Prussians and the schismatic Russians will experience such terror that they will adopt the Christian faith and relinquish their idols. " 102 The fact that these words were written by a member of a Slav people (albeit one that had been converted three centuries earlier) is a sign that the periphery could fight back, verbally at least. In 1282, for example, the Welsh princes protested to the Archbishop of Canterbury that the English had failed to keep treaties, had devastated and burnt churches, and had slaughtered priests, monks, and nuns, as well as women and children at the breast.103 In the early fourteenth century, when Edward I of England was trying to conquer Scotland, both the English and the Scots attempted to convince the papacy of the justice of their cause by presenting rival versions of mythical history, one employing the widely used Trojan legend while the other went one 99

100

101 102 103

On Laudabiliter, see M.T. Flanagan, Irish Society, Anglo-Norman Settlers, Angevin Kingship: Interaction in Ireland in the Late Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1989), pp.7-8, 52-4, 277-8. The standard work on these conquests is E. Christiansen, The Northern Crusade: the Baltic and the Catholic Frontier of Christendom, 1100-1525 (London, 1980), especially chs. 5, “The theocratic experiment, 1200-73," 6 , "The interminable crusade, 12831410." See also R. Bartlett, "The conversion of a pagan society in the Middle Ages," History, 70 (1985), pp. 185-201; J. Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers and Infidels: the Church and the Non-Christian World, 1250-1550 (Liverpool, 1979). A. Simms, p.24, citing the chronicler Helmold of Bosau. A. Thomas, "Czech-German relations," in Medieval Frontier Societies, p.203. D. Douie, Archbishop Pecham (Oxford, 1952), pp.238-40.

31

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Outer world of the European Middle Ages

53

better and claimed descent from ancient Egypt; in 1317 the Irish tried the same approach in a document that was also filled with examples of alleged English injustice and villainy since the time of Henry II.104 Usually such complaints had little or no practical effect: Wales was conquered and Ireland remained under a kind of English rule. However, a hundred years later an impassioned debate took place at the Council of Constance in which the Teutonic Knights were accused of unjustly attacking the newly converted Lithuanians. The Lithuanians won their case.105 The last barbarians had finally been absorbed. In future, Europe would have to look for them elsewhere. IV . C O N C L U S I O N

Medieval Europeans had acquired a very varied experience of the world and of its peoples well before the opening of the New World by Columbus and his successors. In a few rare instances, notably Iceland, they found and settled lands that were empty of people or, like Greenland, were so vast that for most practical purposes they were unoccupied. In North America they also found a land of vast potential, but of which they learned little and which was moreover already settled by a people to whom the Vikings referred as "wretches" (skraelings) who were almost certainly the "Indians" encountered by a later generation of European explorers. The skraelings conformed to the image of the barbarian but they had a local superiority in numbers that helped to prevent any permanent European settlement on this occasion. Geographical distance from home bases was another factor both in the failure of settlement in North America and in the final disappearance of the Greenland colony in the fifteenth century. In the latter case, climatic change and southward migration by the native inuit, another candidate for the status of barbarian, were also responsible. But so too was the failure of the European settlers to adapt their way of life to local conditions by making full use of the rich fishing grounds around Greenland. Like some of the earliest English settlers in Virginia, they may in effect have "starved in the midst of plenty. " 106 104

105 106

J.R.S. Phillips, "The Irish Remonstrance of 1317: an international perspective", Irish Historical Studies, vol. XXVII, no. 106, November 1990, pp.l 12-29; idem, "The Remonstrance revisited: England and Ireland in the early fourteenth century," in Men, Women and War: Studies in War, Politics and Society, Historical Studies, XVIII, ed. T.G. Fraser & K. Jeffrey (Belfast, 1993). Muldoon, pp.107-19, especially p. 118; Christiansen, pp.223-32. On North America, see Phillips, The Medieval Expansion of Europe, ch.9, but see also G. Jones, The Norse Atlantic Saga (2nd. edition, Oxford, 1986); E. Guralnick, ed., Vikings in the West (Chicago, 1982); L. Rey, éd., Unveiling the Arctic (Calgary & Fair-

32

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 54

Seymour Phillips

In Asia, which was the continent most visited by medieval Europeans and that left the deepest impression on them, Europeans were rarely in a position of even local superiority. The merchants and missionaries who went to Iran, India, and China in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were few in number, surrounded by people of alien culture and dependent for their survival on the continued favor of the local rulers, who were themselves often foreign to these regions. No doubt partly because they were so dependent, European relations with the Mongols, who controlled much of Asia at this time, underwent a transformation. From being the almost supernatural bringers of doom, the Mongols became in European eyes benign and trustworthy and a potential ally against the world of Islam.107 Marco Polo's idealization of Kubilai Khan is a good example of this change in outlook, only a generation or so after the latter's near relatives had sown terror in Europe.108 The Mongols were almost "homogenized" and made safe for domestic use. There are examples of noble families in the city of Genoa naming their sons after the Mongol rulers of Iran with whom they did much diplomatic and commercial business, while in 1344 Edward III of England held a tournament at which the participants were dressed as Tartars. Only a few years before Columbus's first voyage of discovery, a citizen of Genoa bore the name Casano, possibly unaware that he was named after Ghazan Khan who ruled Iran at the end of the thirteenth century.109 In the fourteenth century, female Tartar slaves were a common sight in the households of the great cities of northern Italy, and sometimes, as in the case of Gregorio Dati of Florence in 1391, had children by their masters.110 But the Mongols were only one aspect of European relations with Asia. There is no doubt that in the broadest sense European views of Asia were colored by a form of "orientalism," which was the result of the accumulated experiences and perceptions of both classical an-

107 108 109 110

banks, 1984). I have examined this and other situations involving the movement of populations of European origin in a forthcoming paper, "The medieval background," in In Search of a Better World: Migration from Western Europe, 1500-1800, ed. N. Canny (Oxford, 1994). Phillips, Part II, "Europe and Asia," especially ch. 7, "The lost alliance: European monarchs and Mongol 'crusaders/ " Marco Polo, The Travels, passim. Phillips, pp.109, 198; the information on "Casano" was obtained from the Italian Government travelling expedition on Christopher Columbus, Dublin, 1989. Two Memoirs of Renaissance Florence: the Diaries of Buonaccorso Pitti and Gregorio Dati, ed. G. Brucker (New York, 1967), p.112. On Tartar slaves, see I. Origo, "The domestic enemy: eastern slaves in Tuscany in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries," Speculum, 30 (1955); and W.D. Phillips, Slavery from Roman Times to the Early Transatlantic Trade (Minneapolis, 1985), pp.97-106.

33

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Outer world of the European Middle Ages

55

tiquity and medieval Europe. But, with the important exception of Moslems, this orientalism was not the product of an attitude of antagonism or superiority on the part of Europeans.111 The wealth in goods and spices was well appreciated, as were the technical achievements of the land of Cathay in such things as porcelain manufacture and ship design. But the East was also seen as the abode of virtuous peoples whose conduct compared favorably with that of many Christians at home. Indian holy men, such as the Brahmans, were often described in this way. In 1247, after his return from Mongolia, the papal envoy, Giovanni di Piano Carpini, who was probably confused by reports of Chinese Buddhism, recorded that the people of Cathay "worship one God, they honor Our Lord Jesus Christ, and they believe in eternal life, but they are not baptized/' Carpini also wrote with some admiration of the standards of honesty and justice of the Mongols in their dealings among themselves. It is also possible that one of the intentions of the author of The Travels of Sir John Mandeville in the fourteenth century was to draw a contrast between the corrupt state of Europe and the justice of the East.112 As soon as the favorable conditions created by the Mongols changed, direct European contacts with Asia virtually ceased: Only on the periphery of the continent, on the shores of the Black Sea, and in Egypt did direct relations continue for any length of time. On the other hand, there was no doubt that Europeans were determined to resume relations with the East at the earliest opportunity. For roughly two centuries, between 1099 and 1291, European colonists held a position of local dominance in Syria and Palestine in the crusader states of Antioch, Tripoli, and Jerusalem. But here their situation was complicated by the existence of neighboring Moslem powers that were frequently hostile and that in the end conquered the European enclaves. The society of the crusader states was itself very mixed. European settlers were few in number, being restricted to a select aristocracy, a small urban population of European origin, here and there a few peasant landholders, and a constantly changing contingent of merchants and pilgrims who visited the Holy Land but usually did not stay for long. The native population was a mixture of Moslems and Jews, who were viewed with the distrust reserved in medieval Europe for the "infidel," and Christians, whose allegiance 111 112

Cf. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London, 1978); idem, 'Orientalism revisited," in Europe and its Others, ed. F. Barker, P. Hulme, et al. (Colchester, 1984), vol. I. Friedman, pp.167-70; C. Dawson, ed., The Mission to Asia, pp.21-2, 15-17 (Carpini also wrote extensively about the bad points of the Mongols' character); The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, ed. Moseley, pp.22-9.

34

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 56

Seymour Phillips

and traditions did not endear them to Rome. Greatly outnumbering the colonists, these local communities were inferior to them in legal status and in practice there seems to have been little attempt to win their loyalty.113 The attitude of the colonists was set from the first. In 1098 the conquerors of Antioch informed the pope: "We conquered the Turks and pagans, but we could not defeat the heretics, the Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, Jacobites" and hoped that "all the heresies, whatever they might be, you will eradicate and destroy by your authority and our valour. " 114 There is no doubt that crusading as an ideal long outlived the crusader states and helped to inspire the European expansion at the end of the fifteenth century, but as possible examples of sympathetic understanding of complex cultural situations the European settlements in Syria and Palestine were poor precedents for the future. In regions like Wales and in the Baltic lands, conquest and settlement were more complete and enduring; and a colonial population was also permanently established in Ireland, although the entire island was not conquered until the sixteenth century. In all of these cases there were fundamental differences in the status of colonists and of native peoples. In Ireland the natives were excluded from the English common law courts unless expressly granted the privilege; after 1284 the Welsh were allowed to retain their own civil law for cases involving property and inheritance although coming within the bounds of English criminal law .115 But this was no concession on the part of the English monarch, who preserved only those parts of the Welsh legal system that were "just and reasonable" and consonant with "God and justice." In 1277, Edward I had gone even further and 113

114 115

There is an enormous literature on the society of the crusader states. There is a summary of the general situation in Phillips, ch. 3, "Commerce and the crusades"; but for a more detailed treatment, the most recent work is A History of the Crusades, ed. K.M. Setton, vol. 5, The Impact of the Crusades on the Near East, ed. N.P. Zacour & H.W. Hazard (Madison & London, 1985), especially the section by Joshua Prawer, ch. 3, "The 'Minorities/ " and ch. 4, "The Franks." See also the important collection of essays, Muslims under Latin Rule, 1100-1300., ed. J.M. Powell (Princeton, 1990), which deals with the situation in the crusader states, the Iberian peninsula, and Sicily. Λ History of the Crusades, vol. 5, p.72. The relationship between England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales in the medieval period can readily be approached through two important new books: R. Frame, The Political Development of the British Isles, 1100-1400 (Oxford, 1990); R.R. Davies, Domination and Conquest: the Experience of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, 1100-1300 (Cambridge, 1990); and also R.R. Davies, ed., The British Isles, 1100-1500: Comparisons, Contrasts and Connections (Edinburgh, 1988). On the Baltic lands the standard work is E. Christiansen, The Northern Crusade: the Baltic and the Catholic Frontier of Christendom, 1100-1525 (London, 1980).

35

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Outer world of the European Middle Ages

57

described native Irish law as "detestable to G o d . . . and not to be deemed laws/ ' 116 In practice there was a much greater degree of coexistence in Wales and Ireland than would appear at first sight, but there were nonetheless accumulations of grievances that awaited only the right moment for expression in revolt. The only part of Europe in which a relatively harmonious mixed society was created was in the Iberian peninsula, where the kingdoms on both the Moslem and Christian sides of the frontier contained mixed populations of Moslems, Christians, and Jews, and various intermediate groups resulting from conversion or from acculturation to one group or another. The traditional view of the history of the peninsula in the medieval period has been conditioned by the notion of the reconquista, the opposition between Christian and Moslem Spain, which was expressed in unending warfare until the final Christian victory over Granada in 1492. The conclusions of recent research, however, have suggested that those who did the fighting were as inclined to fight Christian opponents as they were Moslems and that the Christian expansion of the period down to about 1300 "was rather a conquest than a reconquest" and "was propelled by more earthy impulses than earlier and more fastidious scholars chose to contemplate: demographic pressure, climatic change, developing military technology, the needs of an emergent aristocratic elite, the appetites of sheep and cattle." The papacy's attempt to dignify this process by the name of crusade in the twelfth century was really the implanting of an alien concept, which took root only slowly.117 In place of conflict, greater emphasis has been placed on the practical recognition through convivencia of the different religious and cultural traditions, on, for example, the pride of Alfonso VI of Castile in the late eleventh century "on being emperor of the two laws, Christianity and Islam," or on Alfonso X's ability in the thirteenth century to write poetry in Moslem verse forms.118 The intermingling of cultures is particularly well illustrated in the transmission of texts from Arabic to Latin in the twelfth century. When Peter the Venerable, the abbot of Cluny, visited Spain in 1142, 116 117 118

Davies, Conquest, Coexistence and Change, p.367. R.A. Fletcher, "Reconquest and crusade in Spain, c.1050-1150," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th. series, 37 (1987), pp.46-7. R. Highfield, "Christians, Jews and Muslims in the same society: the fall of convivencia in medieval Spain," in Religious Motivation: Biographical and Sociological Problems for the Church Historian, Studies in Church History, vol. 15 (Oxford, 1978), ed. D. Baker, pp.121,123; A. Mackay, Spain in the Middle Ages: from Frontier to Empire, 10001500 (London, 1977), p.90. There is also valuable material on medieval Spain in Medieval Frontier Societies, ed. R. Bartlett & A. Mackay (Oxford, 1989).

36

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 58

Seymour Phillips

the four scholars whom he recruited to make a translation of the Koran were two foreigners, Herman of Carinthia and Robert of Chester; Peter of Toledo, who was a Mozarab (an Arabic-speaking Christian); and Muhammad of Toledo, a Moslem. In another case, one of the works of the Arab philosopher Avicenna was first translated from Arabic into Castilian by a Jewish scholar and then by another scholar from Castilian into Latin. It has been aptly concluded that such people, Jews and Mozarabs, were "hinge men" who could both translate and mediate between the different cultures. " 119 The relations between cultures both in Spain and elsewhere in Europe and in the wider arena of Christendom were also influenced, if never fully controlled, by such features of papal ideology as the just war, the crusade, the universal mission to spread Christianity, and the treatment to be accorded to Moslems, Jews, and pagans, subjects that overlap and intertwine but can only be treated very generally here. By the thirteenth century the debate on the possible justification of war, which had begun with St. Augustine in the fifth century and had been completed by the canon lawyers and theologians, had led to the conclusion that warfare was licit provided that it was conducted by properly constituted authority (a king or an emperor) in defense of legitimate rights.120 In the special case of the crusade the pope or his representative put himself at the head of an armed forced for the defense of Christians and for the recovery of their property.121 In theory a war should not be fought solely for aggressive purposes: Even infidels and pagans were entitled to their possessions. The homelands of pagans could be invaded and occupied only for the purpose of spreading Christianity, but the inhabitants should not be dispossessed, and their conversion should be carried out by preaching and persuasion, not by the "iron tongue" of force.122 This latter view was strongly argued by Pope Innocent IV in the 1240s.123 Also by the thirteenth century the papacy had conceived the mission to preach Christianity in every accessible corner of the world. Gregory IX's bull Cum hora undecima expressed this very clearly in 1235. Already, in 1233, Gregory 119 120 121 122 123

Mackay, Spain in the Middle Ages, p.8 8 . On the just war, see F.H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1975); The Church and War, Studies in Church History, 20, ed. W.J. Sheils (Oxford, 1983). See L. & J. Riley-Smith, ed., The Crusade: Idea and Reality, 1095-1274 (London, 1981), Section B, "The just cause," Section C, "Right intention." Muldoon, pp.34-8; R. Bartlett, "The conversion of a pagan society," pp.186, 196. Muldoon, pp.10, 21-2, 29-48. The idea of the "virtuous pagan," who might achieve salvation through divine grace, although denied the knowledge of Christianity, was also sometimes expressed: see C.L. Vitto, "The virtuous pagan in Middle English literature," Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 79 (Philadelphia, 1989).

37

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Outer world of the European Middle Ages

59

had sent a number of Franciscan missionaries to the sultan of Egypt and other Moslem rulers and even to the caliph in Baghdad, each with a written exposition of Christianity and with an injunction to listen to it; and one of the purposes of the papal envoys who were sent to the Mongol khans later in the same century was to try to convert them to Christianity.124 It was hoped too that even the Jews might one day be induced to see the true light of Christianity.125 In all its policies, however, the papacy was essentially trying to square a circle. Crusading was supposed to be conducted with the minimum of violence, but there was no escaping the fact that it often led to atrocities, such as those that occurred after the capture of Jerusalem in 1099. The language in which preachers presented the crusade was frequently highly colored and an incentive to extremes of violence. In a sermon delivered (c. 1216-25) to one of the military orders, who were professed religious trained specifically for war, Jacques de Vitry, bishop of Acre, informed his audience that "If we were not resisting the Church's enemies, the Saracens and heretics would have destroyed the whole Church. For this reason the poisonous limbs must be cut off and the decayed flesh must be cut out, so that the sound part is not corrupted. " 126 Although the suggestion has been made that the church's simultaneous encouragement of crusading and of peaceful missionary activity involved contradictory aims and that the latter only really came into its own after the loss of Acre and the apparent military failure of the crusades in 1291, such a contradiction was not generally perceived at the time. Peter the Venerable, for example, who commissioned a translation of the Koran and composed a refutation of Moslem doctrine, Liber contra sectam sive haeresim Saracenorum, and believed in a policy of peaceful conversion of the Moslems, was also fully in support of the crusade.127 Nonetheless the crusade was extensively criticized in the thirteenth century on such grounds as the bloodshed involved, or the waste of resources, or through fears by some secular rulers that a successful crusade would make the papacy too powerful. Criticism became so strong that 124

125 126 127

Muldoon, pp.36-45; Phillips, ch. 5, "The eastern missions"; I. de Rachewiltz, Papal Envoys to the Great Khans (London, 1971). The standard work on the subject is J. Richard, La papauté et les missions d'Orient au moyen âge (Rome, 1977). See also R.I. Burns, "Christian-Islamic confrontation in the West: the thirteenth-century dream of conversion," American Historical Review, 76 (1971), pp.1386-1434; B.Z. Kedar, Crusade and Mission: Europe Approaches towards the Muslims (Princeton, 1984). Muldoon, pp.30-2. L. & J. Riley-Smith, p.6 8 . See B.Z. Kedar; E. Siberry, "Missionaries and crusaders, 1095-1274," in The Church and War.

38

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 60

Seymour Phillips

Humbert de Romans, the Master General of the Dominicans, was commissioned by Pope Gregory X to write a treatise refuting the critics for use at the Council of Lyons in 1274.128 In general, little attempt was made to understand the beliefs of Moslems on their own terms. Studies of their religion or of the Arabic language were usually made with a view to refutation or conversion rather than comprehension, while the scholarly works that were translated from Arabic into Latin were in fields like philosophy, medicine, and mathematics rather than religion.129 Relations between Christians and Moslems were characterized for the most part by mutual hostility and suspicion.130 Unlike Moslem communities, which were concentrated in the Iberian peninsula, Jewish communities were widely spread through Europe. The general principle in Christian-Jewish relations was one of toleration by the Church and protection by the secular authorities. But toleration and protection were gained at a price. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, for example, laid down regulations that Jews should wear distinguishing marks and attacked their role as suppliers of capital: " The more the Christian religion curbs the taking of usury, the more does Jewish perfidy become used to this practice, so much so, that in a short time, the wealth of Christians will be exhausted." The protection offered by rulers was predatory in nature: In England, for example, the monarchy made such extensive demands on the financial resources of its Jewish subjects that by the middle of the thirteenth century these were greatly diminished and some of the most prominent Jews close to ruin.131 Medieval Europe has been described with some reason as taking on the character of a "persecuting society. " 132 This was certainly true in relation to open heretics or those who were regarded as deviants from standard Christian belief and practice, all of whom were treated with growing severity from the thirteenth century onward. The institutions of the Inquisition, which were first established at this time to deal 128 129 130

131 132

E. Siberry, Criticism of Crusading, 1095-1274 (Oxford, 1985); L. & J. Riley-Smith, pp.103-17; J.H. Mundy, Europe in the High Middle Ages (London, 1973), p. 76. See N. Daniel, The Arabs and Mediaeval Europe (Beirut and London, 1975); C. H. Haskins, Studies in the History of Medieval Science (Cambridge, Mass., 1927). See J. Kritzeck, Peter the Venerable and Islam (Princeton, 1964); R.W. Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1962); R.M. Thomson, "William of Malmesbury and some other western writers on Islam/' Medievalia et Humanística New Series 6 (1975); J.H. Mundy, op. cit., pp.75-81; M.A. Ladero Quesada, "El Islam, realidad e imaginación en la Baja Edad Media castellana," in Las utopias, Casa de Velásquez (Madrid, 1990), pp.215-40. Mundy. pp.81-92. See also R. Chazan, Church, State and Jew in the Middle Ages. R.I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250 (Oxford, 1987).

39

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Outer world of the European Middle Ages

61

with the Cathars in southern France, were potentially available to be used elsewhere if needed. The "demonization" of groups like the Cathars or the Templars was another indication of the possible extremes of intolerance.133 Some missionaries, like Ricold of Monte Croce at the end of the thirteenth century, spoke of the need to understand the beliefs and languages of their opponents, 134 but such niceties were little in evidence in practice. The Lithuanians may have won the argument at Constance in 1416, but this did nothing to improve relations between them and their bitter enemies, the Teutonic Knights.135 AntiSemitism, which had already shown itself in the massacres in Germany that accompanied the beginning of the First Crusade in 1095-6, was evident in thirteenth-century attempts at forced conversion, in the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290, and in the breakdown in convivencia in the Iberian peninsula that led to the pogroms of 1391.136 The "intensification of lordship" in areas such as Wales and Ireland, 137 the brutalities of warfare in many regions of Europe, and the prevalence of urban and rural revolts were other signs of a society that was not at peace within itself. Such conditions did not augur well for European relations with the non-European world in the fifteenth century. In the Ottoman Turks the Europeans encountered a new set of barbarians whom they could fear but could not overcome; in the native peoples of the Canary Islands, whose occupation began in 1402, European adventurers found a more feasible objective.138 Although the papacy intervened in 1434 to ban further settlement because of attacks on native converts to Christianity, two years later Eugenius IV issued the bull Romanus pontifex, emphasizing the fullness of his power as Vicar of Christ and, in consequence of this power, authorizing the Portuguese to convert all the remaining infidels in the islands. In persuading the pope to make this concession, the king of Portugal had uttered pious sentiments and intentions, but he had also described the native inhabitants in terms that are reminiscent of earlier images of the barbarian: "The nearly wild men who inhabit the forest [of these islands] are not united by 133 134 135 136

137 138

N. Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons (London, 1976). Phillips, pp.85-6. Christiansen, pp.232-4. J. Riley-Smith, 'The first crusade and the persecution of the Jews," in Persecution and Toleration, Studies in Church History, 21, ed. W.J. Sheils (Oxford, 1984); J. Highfield, "The end of convivenda"; A. Mackay, "Popular movements and programs in fifteenth-century Castile," Past & Present, 55 (1972); M.A. Ladero Quesada, Historia de America Latina, vol. I, España en 1492, ch. 6 . The phrase is that of R.R. Davies in Domination and Conquest, ch. 5. F. Fernandez-Armesto, Before Columbus, pp.175-92, 203-12; Quesada, ch.8 .

40

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 62

Seymour Phillips

a common religion, nor are they bound by the chains of law, they are lacking in normal social intercourse, living in the country like animals"; they had "no contact with each other by sea, no writing, no kind of metal or money. " 139 The final conquest of the Canaries was achieved after great brutality in 1496. At one level the near coincidence of this event with the conquest of Moslem Granada, the expulsion of the Spanish Jews, and the first voyage of Christopher Columbus, all of which took place in 1492, is no more than that. But at another and deeper level the coincidence is symbolic both of the "persecuting society" that had developed within medieval Europe and of an aggressive continent, now starting to think of itself self-consciously as "Europe" rather than as part of Christendom, which was ready to transfer its aggression overseas.140 Europeans entered the new age of expansion at the end of the fifteenth century with a variety of ethnographic models, from the "noble savage" and the "cannibal" and the whole panoply of the "monstrous races" to the "barbarian" and the "infidel." Where knowledge already existed of a particular place or people, such as India before the sixteenth century, it was possible that the old stereotypes, many of which were of great antiquity, would in time be overlaid and to some extent replaced by more objective observations.141 Even then, ideas were slow to change, as the long quest for "Cathay" after 1500 illustrates.142 But the New World and its peoples were so totally unfamiliar and unexpected to their first discoverers, indeed almost like another planet, that the latter had little alternative but to fall back on the ethnographies that were already implicit. It was no wonder, as Lewis Hanke has remarked, that America began as fantasy or that the caption to a woodcut of 1505 could depict the natives as naked cannibals living without disease for a century and a half and lacking rulers and personal property.143 Neither was it surprising that, as with the "antip139 140 141 142 143

Muldoon, pp.119-29, especially pp.120-1. Hay, Europe: the Emergence of an Idea, ch.5, "The emergence of Europe." See, for example, D.F. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. 2, The Century of Wonder (Chicago, 1972). See G. Williams & P.J. Marshall, The Great Map of Mankind (London, 1982). L. Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians (1959), ch. 1, "America as fantasy"; cf. A. Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man (Cambridge, 1982), ch.l, "The problem of recognition"; P. Hulme, Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492-1797 (London & New York, 1986), ch.l, "Columbus and the cannibals"; H.M. Jones, O Strange New World (New York, 1964), ch. 1, "The image of the New World"; Friedman, op. cit., Epilogue; V.I.J. Flint, "Monsters and the antipodes in the early middle ages and enlightenment," Viator, 15 (1984), pp.65-80; L. Olschki, "Ponce de Leon's fountain of youth: history of a geographical myth," Hispanic American Historical Review, 21 (1941), pp.361-85. See also the very important new book by Anthony Pag-

41

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Outer world of the European Middle Ages

63

odal" people who caused such problems to medieval theologians, the humanity and origin of the peoples of America were seriously questioned.144 America became a laboratory for the reexamination of basic problems. But a cynic might argue that the consequences of this reexamination were not much different from those of the past: Given a contest, "natural man" had little chance against his "civilized" rival.

144

den, European Encounters with the New World: from Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven & London, 1993). In its way, the superficial familiarity of China when it was first visited by Europeans in the thirteenth century, which was alluded to earlier, was just as misleading as the total strangeness of mainland America when it was first explored in the sixteenth century. In both cases, Europeans fell back on existing models, one derived from the material civilization of the Mediterranean world and the other from the mental images inherited from classical antiquity. Friedman, pp.47-8; B.M. Fagan, The Great Journey: the Peopling of Ancient America (London, 1988); W.E. Washburn, The Indian in America (New York, 1975).

2 The Emergence of a Naturalistic and Ethnographic Paradigm in Late Medieval Travel Writing Joan-Pau Rubiés

With the failed crusades, the plague and the papal schism, the fourteenth century inaugurated a period of crisis for the feudal institutions of military, economic and ecclesiastical expansion. What characterizes the various manifestations of the theme of travel in the late Middle Ages was the necessity to respond to the problem of credibility of belief, a necessity which, as we shall see, could prompt lay writers to use the traditional form of the allegorical journey to explain theological dogma or to recapture a religious vision. Ultimately, however, the most pervasive response was empiricism, and in this field the contribution of travel literature was not only significant at the level of symbolic expression, but also by its own development as a literary genre which offered an alternative source of

44

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 30

JAS E L S N E R

AND

JOAN-PAU

RUBIES

narrative truth. What the Renaissance inherited from this period was, above all, the idea that there was a kind of truth about men and nature which was accessible to all, rather than just to a specialized religious elite, and which rested upon direct obervation rather than upon written authority. But this principle could grow only because traditional authorities were questionable. It was in the context of a crisis of traditional courtly codes of love and chivalry that ideologies of travel came to express new strategies to cope with the problem of religious belief and observance. 88 Dante was, by reason of his exile from Florence, a wandering courtier forced to embrace a cosmopolitan identity. His attitude towards travel, as expressed in his Divine Comedy (c. 1 3 1 5 - 2 0 ), exemplifies a tension between religious ideals and new forms of lay spirituality which manifested not only the increasing difficulty of the courtly themes of chivalry, love and pilgrimage after the thirteenth century, but also their continuing influence until the end of the Renaissance. In his great visionary poem Dante, as self-reflective poet, occupies centre stage in a quest where the erotic element is entirely subsumed within a theological vision. His journey from hell through purgatory to paradise is entirely allegorical and educational and was understood as such by Dante himself: after Beatrice’s death, he had defined (in the last sonnet of the N ew Life) a ‘new perception born of grieving love’ which was to be the source for a ‘spiritual pilgrimage’, announcing in this way what would become the C o m e d y The journey, dominated by the desire for salvation, is therefore a positive action, and the idealized figures of both the pagan poet Virgil and the beloved woman Beatrice also play positive roles, since literature offers a path, while the beloved offers an image of purity. But Dante’s capacity to recapture a strong image of Christian pilgrimage from the lay materials of poetry and erotic desire also requires a denial of an image of worldly travel which in the Inferno is represented by Ulysses (Odysseus). This Ulysses, unlike Homer’s, never reaches Ithaca because he decides to sail towards the West, led by curiosity alone: I and my companions were old and slow when we came to that narrow outlet where Hercules set up his landmarks so that men should not pass beyond. On my right hand I left Seville, on the other had already left Ceuta. Ό brothers’, I said, ‘who through a hundred thousand perils have reached the West, to this so brief a vigil of the senses that remains to us choose not to deny experience, in the sun’s track, of the unpeopled world. Take thought of the seed from which you spring. You were not born to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.’90

45

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Introduction

31

This journey could only lead to a futile vision. Ulysses reaches the shores of Mount Purgatory, but only to sink with his ship and crew. That truly successful travel had to be religious and canonical, few contemporaries could have questioned. There is however a paradox in the fact that Dante’s early fourteenth-century denial of the worldly traveller coexisted with the growth of ethnographic literature in the Latin West, and that this period saw the development of overland travels to Asia and maritime exploration in the Atlantic. In effect the late Middle Ages are characterized by the growth of ethnography within the related genres of geographical literature, ambassadorial reports, mission and even pilgrimage itself. It would be a mistake to see this ethnographic emphasis as a consequence of humanist education and the imitation of classical models: the missionary William Rubruck, the merchant Marco Polo, the imaginary pilgrim John Mandeville and many other travellers from the period between 1 2 5 0 and 1 4 5 0 responded to an entirely different impulse, one not primarily concerned with new educational ideals but rather with a number of more traditional concerns - sometimes the pursuit of practical knowledge, often the desire for entertainment, occasionally the ideological exploration of human cultural diversity within a traditional religious framework. What these separate developments within travel literature share is an empirical bent (a kind of ‘realism’), which results not so much from a desire to challenge traditional religious ideologies as from the growth of naturalistic and historical narrative forms. This attention to the narration of observed experience, with special attention to human subjects, can in a general sense be seen as the ultimate relocation of the paradigm of travel from the ideal of pilgrimage to those of empirical curiosity and practical science. It results however from the growth and transformation, rather than the mere exhaustion, of the traditional ideologies of pilgrimage, crusade and chivalry under the impact of new religious, political and social concerns.91 The development of the missionary ideal is perhaps the most obvious expression of this shift of emphasis and helps us understand the extent to which the crisis of the traditional paradigms of pilgrimage and crusade led to rationalist ideologies and to historical narrative practices within what, essentially, were religious visions. We find, for instance, unprecedented ethnographic analysis in the narratives of the Mongol missions by the Franciscan friars John of Piano de Carpini (1 2 4 5 - 7 ) and William of Rubruck (1 2 5 2 - 5 ) . 92 We are faced here with detailed narratives written in Latin by high-ranking missionaries imbued with the new Franciscan spirit but also acting as political agents - Carpini for Pope Innocent IV, Rubruck

46

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 32

JAS E L S N E R

AND

JOAN-PAU

RUBIES

for King Louis IX of France. The attention devoted by the papacy and many European princes to the Mongols was related to their political importance, first as a direct threat to Christianity and afterwards as possible allies against common Muslim enemies in the Near East. The historical paradox is that these missions failed miserably in their primary concern to convert the Mongols, whilst succeeding in the creation of a new standard of ethnographic analysis for the sake of political and cultural espionage. As Rubruck declared in his preface to King Louis: ‘You told me, when I left you, to put in writing for you everything I saw among the Tartars, and further urged me not to be afraid of writing to you at length. . . ’93 This he did with great competence, being aware that, among Mongols, he was entering aliud seculum (another world) . 94 In effect we find here the beginnings of a pattern that would be inherited by the missionary writers of the Counter-Reformation, especially by the Jesuits in Asia after the second half of the sixteenth century: not only was a historical analysis of human cultural diversity increasingly seen as a precondition for effective methods of evangelization, but in effect the impact of the missionaries as evangelizers could pale into insignificance when compared to their impact as political meddlers, empirical world historians and ethnologists. The Latin missionary, as traveller, became a figure with increasing importance from the thirteenth century onwards, often as colonial pioneer and information-gatherer in the late medieval and early modern expansion of Europe. However, despite their primarily religious aim, missionary activities actually stimulated the creation of an empirical, rather than a spiritual, travel literature. Ignatius of Loyola - the founder of the Jesuit Order - was, at a distance of three hundred years, an heir to Francis of Assisi who transformed his pilgrimage to Jerusalem into a worldly ministry to Christians and nonChristians. This, inevitably, required a worldly vision too - albeit one that was mystical and worldly at the same time.95 Throughout the late medieval period, mission and crusade were interrelated, rather than opposed to each other, as ideologies of religious travel. More often than not, a war against religious enemies was also seen as a prelude for conversion, and this outlook would be conveniently adopted by the explorers of Africa and the Atlantic in the fifteenth century. They could of course contemplate trade rather than conquest as a convenient option, and alliances with non-Christians were common, but the ideas of war against the infidel, of the conversion of pagans and of the ultimate crusade against Muslim-controlled Jerusalem (from the Atlantic as well as from the Mediterranean) always stood in the background

47

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Introduction

33

and were crucial in shaping the imperial ideologies of the Spanish and Portuguese kings. However, crusade and mission obeyed two different impulses: if, as we have seen, crusade was originally understood as a form of pilgrimage, mission was an evangelical ideal particularly apt in the context of expanding geographical horizons. Certainly the idea of missions to Muslims was originally more relevant than the idea of missions to pagans on the edges of the known world (ranging from China to the Canary Islands), and many missions (like those to the Mongols or to the largely mythical Prester John of the Indies) were conceived as a way of helping the crusade. However, missions also increasingly responded to the consolidation of a more empirical geography, one created by such travellers as Marco Polo or Nicolo Conti. In this way the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus (which Columbus took to be Marco Polo’s Indies) only completed a process of empirical re-orientation of the geographical imagination, and it is this wider focus which made the missionary ideal more apt than pilgrimage or crusade as a religious form of travel that could act as a corollary to trade and conquest. There was no longer an enemy to fight, but many to convert, in a world which still had a centre in Jerusalem but also vast new terrains to map, explore and describe for the sake of both profit and religion. Mission also differed from pilgrimage and crusade in its rationalist bent. It implied preaching and, in any confrontation with alternative theologies, some kind of dialogue. The late medieval emphasis on empirical descriptions - which came to supersede the simple religious ritual of travel for salvation - also found expression in the increasing amount of attention devoted to understanding Islam and, after the sixteenth century, the gentile (non-Biblical) religions. These came to be seen as systems of belief that needed to be contradicted on a rational basis. This was in itself a result of the development of rationalism within Christian theology that necessity to find arguments for faith which led in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries from Anselm of Canterbury’s ‘proofs’ for the existence of God, through Abelard’s advocacy of a rational, philosophical basis for Christian ethics, to the great thirteenth-century theological synthesis of the Dominican St Thomas Aquinas. It is significant, for instance, that important texts of Christian theology (e.g. Abelard’s Dialogus inter Philosophum, ludaeum et Christianum of c. 1 1 4 1 ) were conceived as dialogues with Jews and Muslims, or presented (like Aquinas’s Summa contra gentiles of 1 2 5 6 - 6 4 ) as a tool for preaching in Spain. In its most extreme version, this desire for solid arguments - a desire that in effect expressed a deep insecurity —led to attempts to prove

48

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 34

JAS E L S N E R

AND

JOAN-PAU

RUBIES

rationally the central mysteries of the Incarnation and the Trinity, which distinguished Christianity from other Biblical creeds. The great visionary Ramon Llull (1 2 3 2 - 1 3 1 6 ), a Majorcan contemporary of Dante, organized a whole missionary programme for North Africa and beyond around this desire. In his cultural training he was a courtier imbued with chivalric ideals, a man who had composed poems in the tradition of courtly love. Like Dante, he saw the dangers of this worldly culture as a basis for lay piety but, whilst the Florentine sublimated love to make it divine, Llull threw himself into a missionary and writing career founded upon a religious and cosmological vision which he acquired, not through poetic labours, but through a direct mystical experience. Thus instead of composing a Comedy he wrote about his Ars, a vision of ‘the best book in the world’, which was both his understanding of the workings of God in nature and the key to his missionary method, since (he believed) it would allow him to convince intelligent Muslims and gentiles of the truth of Christianity. His Book o f the Gentile and the Three Wise M en (c. 1 2 7 5 ), presented as a peaceful religious dialogue, is based on this premise. Although in the progress of Christian theology LlulPs extreme faith in rational arguments was marginalized as the intellectually embarrassing excess of a freelancer and mystic, seen in its historical context what is striking is the way he effectively worked to recapture the image of the knight-errant as a religious figure. His own autobiography describing in some detail his visions, travels, works and trials - the Vita coaetanea of c. 1 3 1 1 - was of course in the mould of a religious quest. A few months after dictating this, on his way to the Council of Vienne (where he was to advocate successfully the teaching of Oriental languages at the great European universities for the education of missionaries) he contrived to summarize it more concisely: I was married and with children, reasonably well-off, licentious and worldly. All of this I willingly left in order to honour God, procure the public good, and exalt the Holy faith. I learned Arabic; several times I ventured forth to preach to the Saracens; and for the sake of the faith I was arrested, imprisoned and beaten. For forty-five years I have laboured to move the Church and Christian princes to act for the public good. Now I am old and poor, but my purpose is still the same and the same it will remain, if it so please God, until I die.96

His more influential works, those written in the vernacular, adopted the theme of travel as a pedagogical tool. An allegorical novel such as the Felix or Book o f Marvels (c. 1 2 8 8 ) was structured around the image of

49

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Introduction

35

the innocent traveller who is led by the hermit (that fundamental figure in Chrétien’s Feiceval) through the marvels of the world, offering an excuse for an impressive exercise in Christian encyclopaedism. In this way, the traveller could still be, in the early fourteenth century, no more than a seeker and knower of God.97 In stark contrast to this persistence of allegory and religious idealism, no late medieval travel account exemplifies the emerging empirical bent as well as Marco Polo’s almost contemporary Divisament dou M onde or Description o f the World (c. 1 2 9 8 ). The main difficulty with interpreting this text, with its extraordinary wealth of detail, is the lack of obvious models for it: Polo was certainly not dependent on the ethnographic analysis of such writers as Gerald of Wales, a sophisticated cleric writing in Latin in the twelfth century, for a book which was composed in an Italianate French with the help of a professional romance writer, Rustichello di Pisa.98 The aim and audience were different altogether: Emperors and kings, dukes and marquises, counts, knights, and townsfolk, and all people who wish to know the various races of men and the peculiarities of the various regions of the world, take this book and have it read to you..

Polo and Rustichello were addressing a general audience, aristocratic and popular, in the vulgar tongue. Their appeal was to curiosity and the desire for knowledge alone. Certainly the European protagonists of the journey, Marco Polo and his father and uncle, were made to appear as collaborators with the pope and his missionary purposes, carrying letters back and forth between Latin Christendom and the court of Kubilai Khan. But their mission was on the whole a private enterprise which began as a business venture and ended with the peculiar job of serving the Great Khan as part of his extensive foreign contingent in China. The book, as such, was a combination of pure ethnography and historical or legendary material based on hearsay, organized geographically and framed by an account of Marco Polo’s travels which did not tell much about himself but rather served to guarantee the truthfulness of the book. The traveller therefore appeared mainly as a guarantor of either empirical observation or hearsay (much of the ‘miraculous’ and 'marvellous’ material is not, as has often been suggested, a deformation of empirical reality caused by Marco Polo’s Latin Christian prejudices, but rather a tribute to his willingness to tell a European audience what some Oriental peoples had told him about other Oriental peoples and places). What makes the work original is that the focus of the book is neither the traveller as adventurer, nor his political or religious mission, but

50

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 3

6

JAS E L S N E R

AND

JOAN-PAU

RUBIES

rather the depiction of human empirical diversity, as the preface quoted above makes clear. It has been noted that Rustichello relied on his own Arthurian compilation for this preface, but this in reality only illuminates the way an audience for a new kind of book could be reached: Polo and Rustichello used the well-tried rhetoric of a literature of entertainment in order to create a niche for an empirical geography of human diversity. Occasionally the narrative of wars in distant kingdoms also relied on the late medieval rhetoric of chivalric warfare. But the crucial innovation of the book, and what explains its influence in cartography and its ability to inspire future explorers, was the way in which the figure of the traveller became a rhetorical justification for the use of popular vernacular descriptive language in a ‘realist’ (if rhetorically stereotyped) manner. Nothing could be further from the abstract landscape of enchanted forests and castles of Arthurian literature than the long lists of specific places and their conditions and customs in Marco Polo’s Description o f the World. When the traveller leaves Ceylon and sails westwards for about sixty miles he arrives at the great province of Maabar [the Coromandel coast], which is called Greater India [. . .] it is ruled by five kings, who are all brothers [. . .] You must understand that in this sea is a gulf between the island and the mainland [...] it is in this gulf that the pearls are gathered [. . . ] can assure you that the king of this province derives an immense duty from the revenue paid on this fishery [... ] must tell you that in all this province of Maabar there is no master tailor or dressmaker to cut or stitch cloth, because the people go stark naked all the year round [. . .] except that they cover their private parts with a piece of cloth.. .IO°

And on and on. We find here not an irrational predilection for marvels and monstrosities but rather someone on the lookout for that which is novel and different - the ‘true marvels’ announced by Rustichello and which encompasses in a fairly orderly fashion geography, climate, politics, economy and social customs. The limitations of the book are therefore those of Marco Polo’s relative superficiality as observer, of his (and Rustichello’s) difficulty in organizing a combination of notes and memories in order to create a book, of the differing quality of Polo’s observations made over the course of many years, and above all of the need to adapt many observations originally made for an Oriental employer and possibly in an Oriental language to the religious and civil assumptions of Europeans who had no means to test the veracity of what was being said. 101 A book like this of course created numerous difficulties. It did not deny

51

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Introduction

37

the superiority of Christianity: the analysis of manuscript variants shows that Marco Polo, Rustichello and many later interpolators often felt obliged to cut or to add in order to emphasize the point that idolaters were devilish and so on. But the focus on the diversity of customs and, occasionally, on the ‘local rationality’ of alternative beliefs, including the image of admirable non-Christian urban civilizations, certainly tested the common assumption (implicit, for instance, in Dante’s vision) that the Christian way of salvation and European civility formed a harmonious and comprehensive whole. A book that satisfied curiosity for diversity, here referred to a lay rather than to a clerical audience which might have subjected the analysis of idolatry and strange customs to missionary or theological purposes, also encouraged the kind of worldliness which Dante had condemned when he made Ulysses sink. But Marco Polo also created a problem for the lay readership: if the traveller stood individually for the truthfulness of his observation, how could he be trusted? Only the spectacular increase in travel narratives and the establishment of regular contacts with many different parts of the world after the sixteenth century transformed Marco Polo, who was an exceptional character in his period, into the celebrated pioneer for a new authoritative discourse on human geography. But obviously, even when mistrusted, the empirical traveller represented an important novelty: the issue about him was no longer salvation, not even moral wisdom, but rather the reliability of knowledge, a kind of science of nature and mankind. After Marco Polo the authority of the traveller replaced that of the book; the book was only authoritative if the traveller whose report it contained was authoritative too. It is perhaps for this reason that the most successful medieval travel text after Marco Polo, that of Sir John Mandeville, represented a purely fictional traveller, an invention devised to render a compilation of preexisting travel accounts more coherent and convincing. The Book o f Sir John Mandeville of c. 1 3 5 6 can now be read as a clever fiction because modern critics have been able to trace the vast majority of its statements to its written sources, but for the late fourteenth-century reader - in a period when actual contacts with the East had again been interrupted by the collapse of the ephemeral Pax Mongolica - the familiarity of its statements was only proof of its veracity.102. However, the point about Mandeville is not simply how successfully the first-person fictional persona of the traveller allowed an anonymous writer to weave together his sources, thus creating a ‘false’ Marco Polo who fooled generations of readers, but that the intention of the book

52

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 38

J AS E L S N E R

AND

JOAN-PAU

RUBIES

was clearly contrary to the spirit of Marco Polo’s lay empiricism. John Mandeville is a pilgrim, and his book is a conventional fourteenthcentury pilgrimage to the Holy Land, although with the unprecedented addition of an extended journey to the East, India, Cathay, the land of Prester John, and the walls of Paradise (Paradise itelf is unreachable). As the traveller explains when he introduces himself: Since it is so that the land beyond the sea, that is to say the Holy Land, the land of promission [Mandeville’s own word, meaning where the ultimate promise may be fulfilled], is among all other lands the most excellent and noble, and lady sovereign of them all; and was blessed, sanctified and consecrated by the precious body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in which land it pleased him to become human in the Virgin Mary [. . .] and that land he raised among all others as the best and most virtuous and noble land in the world, for it is the heart and the middle point of all the land of the world [. . .] And for as much as it has been a long time since there has not been any general passage to the land beyond the sea, and many people take pleasure in hearing about the Holy Land, and find recreation therein, I, John Mandeville, knight, though unworthy, born and brought up in the town of Saint Albans in England, who have travelled over there . . . 103

This vicarious pilgrimage, written for a generation who lived without hope of a successful crusade, is much more than an excuse to begin an imaginary journey to India. The coherence of the text relies on the sophisticated intentionality of its author and is brought forth by a comparison of the text with its well-known sources, and also with its many later variant transformations (the manuscripts are as abundant as they are diverse) . 104 In effect the extended pilgrimage serves two purposes for the writer: first, to re-create the theology of a sacred geography by combining a journey to the centre of the world with an account of as complete as possible a journey to its edges; and, second, to express his concerns for religious reform within Latin Christianity by using the ‘exotic other’ —the Oriental Christian, the Muslim, the virtuous gentile - to question ironically the shortcomings of a Roman Christendom caught in a crisis of inner strife and ecclesiastical abuse, the best expression of which was perhaps the repeated failure of the crusades. We do not know who the author was, other than that he wrote in French (even if Mandeville was presented as an English knight). The sources he used have been successfully identified for the most part, and the vast majority belonged to a compilation of travel acccounts translated into French by Jean le Long, a Benedictine monk of Saint Omer, around 1 3 5 1 . The key texts around which the two main parts of Mandeville’s travels were constructed were the pilgrimage narrative of William of

53

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Introduction

39

Boldensele (1 3 3 6 ) and the narrative of the Franciscan missionary to India and Cathay Odoric of Pordenone (1 3 3 0 ) — although not, interestingly enough, the earlier book of Marco Polo. Jean le Long may or may not have been the author, but what is clear is that the writer of the Book o f Sir John Mandeville had a religious aim in mind, one which amounted very much to erecting a Polo type of narrative persona as authority for a theologically compelling ‘description of the world’. Salvation was, now again, the issue, and the different descriptions of cultural diversity, the encyclopaedic ambition, even the geographical speculations describing a world that was round and could be travelled in circles, were all geared towards moral self-reflection and cosmographical re-centring. Mandeville’s world was one where different customs eventually pointed towards a universal natural reason and where distant lands were opposite mirrors to a Christian sacred geography. Mandeville in this way represents both a conservative attempt to reinstate a past vision in a period of doubt and a concession to the new authority of the traveller as direct observer. The book persistently points back towards Marco Polo and beyond him, in a way which is extremely significant for the history of travel literature in late medieval Europe. It seems clear that the narratives of the travels by Marco Polo and Mandeville were the most influential in this period - something that is borne out by the number of surviving manuscripts, the variety of uses to which they were put, and the number of languages into which they were translated. Their opposition also exemplifies the key issue of how an empirical travel literature centred upon the description of anthropological and natural diversity rose against a dominant religious background. Although pious pilgrimage was still a lively genre in the seventeenth century (as an example we may refer to the many editions, translations and plagiarisms of Jean Zuallart’s 11 devotissimo viaggio di Gerusalemme, originally published in Rome in 1 5 8 7 ) , 105 in the long term the victory was Marco Polo’s rather than Mandeville’s. Marco Polo triumphed as the medieval traveller who best represented the new myth of the modern traveller as a curious observer able to explore human cultural diversity through geography. In the following centuries, as the religious vision went through successive crises (of which the more spectacular would be the Reformation) and slowly faded, the truth of empirical observation became more established as a desirable aim for travellers. 106 Even pilgrimage literature, after the fourteenth century more abundant than ever, became increasingly a vehicle for empirical research. It is interesting to note that many of the pilgrim narratives of this period are full of chapters

54

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 40

JAS E L S N E R

AND

JOAN-PAU

RUBIES

describing the customs of Egyptians or the landscape, rather than simply the meaning of a Christian experience, in Mount Sinai or the Holy Land. One example is the Tuscan narratives by the Florentines Lionardo Frescobaldi, Simone Sigoli and Giorgio Gucci, who travelled together (as was usually the case, from Venice) with a few other pilgrims in 1 3 8 4 . There is no lack of piety and interest in miraculous stories in each of their accounts, but like Marco Polo they all combine this traditional belief in religious magic with a great deal of empirical curiosity. One of the best examples is Sigoli’s description of Cairo, which ranges over many subjects, from mosques to local customs to elephants: I shall now describe the nobility of the Sultan and of the city of Cairo, and in addition will record many customs which have not been previously noted [. ..] it would be a long thing to describe the churches of the Saracens, which are called mosques and have tall towers [. . .] the men have beautiful bodies, much more than us, and all have very large beards, and there are many old men over 80 , and it is a great pleasure to see how they carry themselves, because they appear majestic to the eye .. .10?

For Sigoli the Saracens were no less important than the religious indulgences he had gained in his journey (of which he provided a detailed list). Empirical descriptions were not however a phenomenon exclusive to a sophisticated urban milieu such as the city of Florence, arguably under the influence of early Humanism. As early as 1 3 2 3 - 4 an Irish Franciscan, Symon Semeonis, could spend long chapters of his pilgrimage narrative decribing Crete and, in much greater detail, Alexandria and Cairo. 108 Similar attention to geographical detail can be found in the Latin narrative by William of Boldensele, in reality Otto of Nyenhusen, a Dominican who travelled in 1 3 3 4 (as an imposed penitence) and was the key source for Mandeville’s own ‘pilgrimage’, or in Ludolph of Sudheim’s account of his travels through the Orient in 1 3 3 6 - 4 1 as chaplain of a nobleman in the service of the king of Armenia, which was as full as it was confused and grew, Mandeville-like, almost to became a geographical encyclopedia. 109 These trends persisted in the fifteenth century. In 1 4 9 6 - 9 the German pilgrim Arnold von Harff, a knight from Cologne, did not content himself with visiting the Holy Places and describing at length his adventures in Cairo, but he also had to add his further travels in Rome, Compostela, India and to the sources of the Nile - journeys which, since he had not really been to any of these places, he had to make up by copying other sources (including one of the early printed versions of the book of John Mandeville). Even in a case like this, in which the intention was obviously

55

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Introduction

41

pious (all the places which von Harff added to Jerusalem were meant to make his sacred geography complete), the prestige of the exotic traveller was perhaps more important than that of the simple pilgrim. 110 By the time we reach Ludovico de Varthema, who travelled East in 1 5 0 2 - 8 , openly out of intellectual curiosity, as we have seen, he could skip Jerusalem altogether in order simply to pursue Mecca, the Indian Ocean and the Spice Islands. A similar tension between piety and the worldliness of attention to human life is implicit in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1 3 8 6 —1 4 0 0 ). The pilgrimage to the saint’s tomb is almost completely subsumed within a game of story-telling which, seeking to integrate humanity within the Christian vision in the name of literal truth, is in danger of burying the religious dimension altogether. As the Host who proposed the storytelling contest reveals: And I don’t doubt, before the journey’s done You mean to while the time in tales and fun. Indeed there is little pleasure for your bones Riding alone and all as dumb as stones.111

It is not therefore surprising that a little more than a century later the Christian Humanist’s response, famously that of Erasmus, was to condemn pilgrimage as a waste of time altogether in a move which, however pure in pious intention, effectively destroyed what was left of the medieval paradigm of the religious journey.112. But this same sort of tension between religious and secular concerns deeply affected the other major genre of the period in which travel played a key role, namely chivalry. We do still find, of course, images of the Christian knight. For instance the anonymous Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, written in alliterative verse, has as its main theme (like Chrétien’s Perceval) an enigmatic quest which involves a process of self-knowledge. The knight, armed with an impressive array of Christian virtues, travels to his confrontation with an ambiguous figure. These alas, despite a rather impressive performance, do not entirely suffice, but Sir Gawain’s weakness (a sin of fear for self-preservation rather than one of licentiousness) is seen by all but himself as minor and understandable from a human perspective - which allows the writer both to re-state the highest ideal and to humanize it a little with humour. 113 But besides this and other examples of traditional chivalric idealism we also find in the fifteenth century a number of chivalric novels which clearly take a more decisively realistic turn, taking both the setting and the humanizing

56

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 42

JAS E L S N E R

AND

JOAN-PAU

RUBIES

tendencies to extremes, which often affects profoundly the meaning of travel as a narrative theme. Two of the most interesting novels of the fifteenth century, Antoine de la Sale’s Jehan de Saintré (1 4 5 6 ) and the anonymous Catalan Curial e Güelfa (probably also written in the middle of the century), share the premise that the knight will be initiated not by a hermit but rather by a woman, a widow of position who trains a young page at court to become not just a good knight but, especially, a good lover. We are here not only confronted with a world of moral ambiguity in which the psychological interaction between non-conventional lovers takes centre stage at the expense of the quest, but also with a world which is clearly rooted on a recognizable geography and history. Antoine de la Sale (1 3 8 6 - 1 4 6 0 ), a nobleman in the service of the Counts of Anjou, was himself active in Sicily, North Africa and Naples, and his novel is set in a recognizable Europe where his hero, Jehan, is victorious in Paris, Barcelona, Calais and on the Prussian frontier, against Christian rivals and Muslim enemies alike. For the author of the Curial, similarly, the setting is precise - the court of Montferrat in Italy - and the adventures take place in a defined

Map of the Mounts of the Lake of Pilate and the Sibyl, with the entrance to the legendary cave, from Antoine de la Sale, La Salade (Pans, 1 5 2 1 ).

57

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Introduction

43

historical period, with precise figures (such as Peter the Great of Aragon) as protagonists, and a war against the Turks as the climax of a chivalric career. The novels present, of course, important differences. Jehan de Saintré succeeds, through his chivalric virtue, in overcoming his devotion to a woman who had captured him for her own pleasure and rejects her when her unfaithfulness becomes apparent, while in a far less misogynistic scenario Curial uses his military success at home and abroad to strengthen his own moral virtue in the face of changing fortune and thus regains the favour of his perhaps justifiably jealous lady. In both cases, however, what is striking is how the traditional roles of chivalry, even those of pilgrimage and crusade, act as proofs of virtue for a purely human scenario. What is at stake in these late medieval novels is not the Christian and chivalric codes of virtue and love, but their revision in the light of a more empirical understanding of human psychology and circumstances. 114 We have Antoine de la Sale’s account of his actual journey in 1 4 2 0 to the two peaks of Mount Pilatos and Mount Sibyl in the Apennines - where, according to a local legend with great diffusion, the Sibyl was supposed to live - as illustration that this new attitude involved an element of scepticism and experimentation. The Paradis de la Reine Sibylle (1 4 3 7 ), dedicated to the Duchess of Bourbon, took as its starting point a tapestry of the mountain owned by the Duchess, and various stories which were told about the supernatural goings-on inside. 115 La Sale offered both a narration of his actual journey and a picture - a kind of map - in which he noted how different reality was from legend (see opposite: this ‘realist’ picture was faithfully reproduced in an engraving included in the Paris edition of 1 5 2 1 ). This, in effect, was the key theme of this fascinating narrative. To begin with, the local legends about Pontius Pilate having been buried on the mountain are scrutinized and refuted on the basis of written authorities (e.g. Orosius) according to an idea of historical coherence. The narration of la Sale’s own visit is extremely precise in its geographical descriptions, leaving nothing to chance. Throughout his ascent and after reaching the cave on Mt Sibyl, la Sale systematically opposes his empirical observations to the supernatural stories he is told: I cannot tell you about the other things and marvels which the cave hides, because I never went further in. This was not in any case my business there, but even if I had tried I would have had to put my life at serious risk [because the hole was so dark, narrow and steep]. Therefore, in honour of truth I should say no more, other than I was there in the company of a learned doctor from that country

58

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 44

JAS E L S N E R

AND

JOAN-PAU

RUBIES

[.. .]Whilst we were there we heard a long cry which seemed to come from a long distance and was like the sound made by a peacock. Then the people said that the voice came from the paradise of the Sibyl, but as far as I am concerned I do not believe this at all. Rather, I think that we heard my horses whinnying from the bottom of the mountain . . .Il6

This is followed by three successive accounts, each more fantastic than the former. A few men penetrated the cave, only to reach a windy gallery which they dared not cross. This la Sale, who spoke to them, is prepared to believe. A priest claimed to have been further inside the cave, and described a magical landscape of bridges over dark rivers and statues of dragons guarding the road, but he did not cross the tantalizing metal doors at the end of the path. However, he is dismissed by la Sale (who also met him) as a lunatic. There finally follows the more significant story of a German knight who actually reached the magnificent court of Queen Sibyl —at which ‘some laugh, whilst others believe very much in the stories that the common people have been telling from old times’. In the paradise of Queen Sibyl the German traveller fell into a life of unbounded carnal pleasures for many days until, remembering God, he decided to return. He also realized that the Sibyl and the ladies of her court, every Friday night, became snakes, only to return to their lovers more beautiful than ever in the morning. Obviously this is the legend of a Melusine-type figure of a female magician, a well-known topos in this period and here clearly associated with the devil. This is not therefore a real paradise, but instead a typical allegory of sin and perdition in the chivalric mould. The knight, who managed to escape, the story goes on to explain, confessed in full to the pope in Rome, but the pope wilfully delayed absolution in order to make an example of the German to the world. In desperation, the sinner returned to the false paradise. There is perhaps some ambiguity in la Sale’s attitude towards this story. He has told these various tales to disprove them, and he also refuses to believe that the devil might have any magical power over men after the death and resurrection of Christ. On the other hand he seems attracted to the empirical feasibility of many of the historical details of the German knight’s story (such as the visit to the pope, whom la Sale tries to identify historically), and he is impressed by the names he finds inscribed on the chamber at the entrance of the cave. He inscribes his own name too, but is careful to stress that he did not penetrate further inside, something which (as the German’s tale confirms) has been expressly forbidden by the pope. We do not therefore find here a denial of the Christian theme of the German’s story (including the suggestion that travelling knights moved by

59

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Introduction

45

curiosity and the desire for adventures, instead of a sane crusading spirit, may fall into perdition), but rather a prudent scepticism towards allegory, which finds its guiding principles in attachment to observed experience, historical feasibility and theological coherence. The final questioning of the chivalric ideal came with Cervantes’s Don Quixote (1 6 0 5 - 1 4 ) as an end product of the Hispanic Renaissance. The values and myths of medieval chivalry had been inscribed in the imperial ideologies of the sixteenth century, in Portuguese Asia as well as in Spanish America. 117 It is for this reason that the criticism, when it finally came, was so poignant - because this was a society which cultivated the imaginary world of the fantastic quest at the same time as it organized the systematic exploitation of fabulous silver mines with forced labour in a newly-found and distant continent. When Cervantes transformed a poor rural gentleman into a parody of the knight-errant, he was not therefore targeting the more historically plausible knights such as Jehan de Saintré and Curial, but rather the more fantastic and popular figures such as Amadis of Gaul, the hero of a late medieval chivalric romance written in Spain and popular throughout Europe. The point of Don Quixote was that the magic quest was over. Instead a different journey was offered, one which would lead to a realistic, self-critical assessment of the true nature of Spanish society and its values under the most Catholic monarchy. Beyond the mere practice of empirical observation, modernity began as disenchantment: Don Quixote replied - ‘I find that you are the one without judgement and under some sort of enchantment, since you have declared so many blasphemies concerning something so well received in the world [...] because to pretend that the knight Amadis did not exist in this world, nor any of all those adventurous knights of which the histories are full, would be like trying to argue that the sun gives no light, ice does not make things any cooler, or the earth does not hold us. Who in the world will be able to argue that that thing about Guy of Burgundy and princess Floripes was not true, or the story about Fierabreás and the bridge of Mantible? This happened at the time of Charlemagne [. ..] If this is a lie, surely there were no Hector and Achilles either, nor a war in Troy, nor the twelve Peers of France, nor king Arthur [. . .] and the quest for the Holy Grail was a lie t o o ...5118

Don Quixote’s refusal to disbelieve even after long and often painful experience was more than a satire on the power of fantastic literature to blur the edges of perception: it also raised the issue of what there was to believe in. 119 Despite the continuing importance of the traditional genres of pilgrimage and chivalry in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the transition from

60

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 46

JAS E L S N E R

AND

JOAN-PAU

RUBIES

occasional to systematic empiricism in travel literature first took place in the more practical field of political reportage. The reason is that ambassadors and spies were always responsible for accurate observation. This, for example, explains the extreme (if rather pedestrian) realism of the report of Ruy González de Clavijo’s journey to Timur’s Samarqand in the name of Henry III of Castile in 1 4 0 3 - 6 , or the more penetrating report by Bertrandon de la Broquière, sent to the Near East in 1 4 3 2 by the Duke of Burgundy, Philip le Bon, in order to assess the opportunities of a crusade against the Turks which would prevent the Muslim conquest of Constantinople. Bertrandon learnt to travel in disguise and to rely on local contacts in order to obtain systematic information. 120 Within this emerging genre of political reportage the merchants and ambassadors of the Venetian Republic often led the way, both in descriptions of European and non-European kingdoms, so that it was in Venice where many of the accounts of the history and customs of the Turks were published in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In this context of an emerging systematic empiricism led by a combination of curiosity and practical needs, and, fuelled by the persistent crisis of the medieval religious vision, the impact of Humanism was double. On the one hand, it offered philological tools and classical literary models which made the empirical enterprise more precise and systematic; we see this influence in exotic travel literature from Poggio Bracciolini’s account of the travels of the Venetian merchant Nicolo Conti in his De varietate fortunae (c. 1 4 4 7 ) to the travel collections of the following century, of which the most important was undoubtedly the Navigationi et Viaggi edited by the Venetian Humanist and civil servant Giovanni Battista Ramusio (1 5 5 0 - 5 9 ) . 121 The second contribution of Humanism was to offer a positive ideology of travel as education within a system of lay, secular learning, that made the empirical traveller who had been emerging since the late middle ages not only as authoritative but also an admirable figure. Marco Polo and Columbus were recognized by their Humanisteducated biographers as men with mythical significance. Ulysses was similarly rescued from the bottom of the sea and enthroned as a model for a worldly wisdom which the most sophisticated European elites came to embrace through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We find here, therefore, the ideological origins of the Grand Tour, as well as of the extended pilgrimages of curiosity of the turn of the seventeenth century (like those performed by the English Anglican George Sandys or the Roman Catholic Pietro della Valle) in which even the religiously orthodox pilgrim became an ethnologist and antiquarian - indeed, an Orientalist. 122

61

CONTEXTS AND GENRES References

77 78 79

the same dome at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre). See the map in Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrimage, p. 3 5 . Liudprand of Cremona, The Embassy to Constantinople and Other Writings, trans. F. A. Wright, ed. J. J. Norwich (London, 1 9 9 3 ). Robert the Monk in his Historia Hyerosolymitana: see E. Peters, The First Crusade: The Chronicle o f Robert the M onk and Other Source Materials (Philadelphia, 1 9 7 1 ), p. 4 . See Marcus Bull, Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade (Oxford, 1993

80

81 82 83

84

85 86

87 88

46a

)

Guibert of Nogent, Dei gesta per francos, 1, 1.6 4 - 7 3 , ed. R. B. C. Huygens, in Corpus Christianorum 1 2 7 a (Turnholt, 1 9 9 6 ), p. 8 7 , translated by Bull in Knightly Piety, p. 3 , with adaptations. William of Tyre, Chronicon xxi, 7 , ed. R. B. C. Huygens, in Corpus Christianorum 6 3 a (Turnholt, 1 9 8 6 ), pp. 9 6 9 - 7 0 . Chretien de Troyes, Arthurian R om an ces, trans. D. D. R. Owen (London, 1 9 8 7 ), p. 4 1 7 . A passage in the rom an solves the puzzle by explaining (through a hermit) that the Grail is used to take the Eucharist to the sick king’s father, whilst the lance is clearly the one Longinus used to pierce the body of Christ during his passion - the most important crusading relic. It is also made clear that Perceval’s failing was a religious one, and he is accordingly subjected to harsh penance in order to meditate upon Christ’s passion (Chrétien de Troyes 1 9 8 7 , pp. 4 5 8 - 9 ). However, this passage, of clumsy construction, is understood by many as an interpolation. This is not implausible, because it appears in the second half of the roman concerning the adventures of Gawain. It seems that at his death Chrétien was working on two separate works, which an editor put together. The editor might have been tempted to add this passage, but it seems more consistent with his lack of further interventions that he was using Chrétien’s drafted notes. For a lucid exposition of this interpretation see the introduction by Mart’n de Riquer to his edition of Chrétien de Troyes, Li contes del graal: El cuento del Grial (Barcelona, 1 9 8 4 ). We have also used the English translation by D. D. R. Owen in Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances. There have been many attempts to trace the theme of the Grail back to Celtic oral traditions, and Chrétien mentions a book given to him by Philip of Flanders as basis for his work. However, whilst the British Celtic setting is an obvious inspiration for the whole Arthurian cycle, the existence of actual Celtic sources is a more dubious proposition. For example a Welsh version of the story of Perceval, the Peredur which appears in the M abinogion, is a thirteenth-century composition derived from Chrétien, rather than the other way round. For the Grail and its evolution see Jean Frappier, Chrétien de Troyes et le mythe du Graal. Etude sur le Perceval ou le con te du Graal (Paris, 1 9 7 2 ), and D. D. R. Owen, T he Evolution o f the Grail Legend (Edinburgh, 1 9 6 8 ). More generally, see Roger S. Loomis, The D evelopm ent o f Arthurian Rom ance (London, 1 9 6 3 ). See E. Gilson, ‘La Mystique de la grace dans la Quête du Saint Graal\ in his Les idées et les lettres (Paris, 1 9 3 2 ). Courtly love was first developed by Provençal troubadours but was codified more explicitly in a treatise by Andreas Capellanus, a contemporary of Chrétien at the court of Marie of Champagne at Troyes. What characterized this love, uniquely, was the emphasis on a rigid social hierarchy, which made the woman almost inaccessible, but also the power of this impossible love to improve the lover’s soul. V Cirlot, éd., Les Cançons de Vam or de Lluny de Jaufré Rudel (Barcelona, 1 9 9 6 ), p. 7 6 . For a more detailed account of the topics raised in this section, see the first five chapters of J.-P. Rubiés, Travel and Ethnology in the R enaissance: South India through European Eyes (forthcoming).

62

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 46b 88

89 90 91 92

93 94 95

96

97

98

99

100 101

102

References For a more detailed account of the topics raised in this section, see the first five chapters of J.-P. Rubies, Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance: South India through European Eyes (forthcoming). From ‘La Vita Nuova’, trans. D. G. Rossetti, in The Portable D ante, ed. R Milano (Harmondsworth, 1 9 7 7 ), pp. 6 τ6 —1 8 . Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy. In fern o, Italian text with prose translation and comment by J. D. Sinclair (New York, 1 9 3 9 ), pp. 3 2 5 - 7 . For a general historical context see J. R. S. Philips, The M edieval Expansion o f Europe (Oxford, 1 9 8 8 ). The best edition is still Anastasius van den Wyngaert, Sinica Franciscana. Volumen i. Itinera et relationes fratrum minorum saeculi XIII et XIV (Karachi, 1 9 2 9 ). In English see Peter Jackson (éd.), The Mission o f Friar William o f Rubruck, Hakluyt Society (London, 1 9 9 0 ), although for Carpini’s narrative one still needs to refer to C. Dawson (ed.), The M ongol M ission. Narratives and Letters o f the Franciscan M issionaries in M ongolia and China in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (London, 1 9 5 5 ). Juan Gil, En dem anda de Gran Khan. Viajes a M ongolia en el siglo XIII (Madrid, 1 9 9 3 ), is a comprehensive Spanish edition of these and related writings. Jackson, The Mission o f Friar William, p. 5 9 . Ibid., p. 7 1 . For Francis of Assisi as missionary see Benjamin Kedar, Crusade and M ission. E uropean A pproaches tow ards the M uslims (Princeton, 1 9 8 4 ), pp. 1 1 9 - 2 4 . For Ignatius see John O ’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, MA, 1 9 9 3 ), chapters 1 and 2 , as well as the concise biography by Philip Caraman, Ignatius Loyola (London, 1 9 9 0 ). From the Phantasticus, as translated by Anthony Bonner in D octor Illuminatus. A Ram on Llull R eader (Princeton, 1 9 9 3 ), p. 4 1 . Bonner’s anthology (based on a more extended edition - Selected Works o f R am on Llull [Princeton, 1 9 8 5 ]) is by far the best introduction to Ramon Llull in English. Ramon Llull, Llibre de m eravelles, ed. M. Gustà and J. Molas (Barcelona, 1 9 8 0 ), which follows one of the best manuscripts of the Catalan original. For a discussion of this book see also Anthony Bonner and Lola Badia, R am on Llull. Vida, pensament i obra literària (Barcelona, 1 9 8 8 ), pp. 1 3 5 - 8 . For a careful discussion of Gerald of Wales as ethnographer in Wales and Ireland, in the context of the twelfth-century Renaissance, see Robert Bartlett, Gerald o f Wales 1 1 4 6 - 1 2 2 3 (Oxford, 1 9 8 2 ). European peripheries in the high Middle Ages were of course also the first ‘other’ of feudal Latin Christendom. Marco Polo, The Travels, trans. and ed. Ronald Latham (Fiarmondsworth, 1 9 5 8 ), p. 3 3 . This is a good English translation, but for a critical edition and analysis of the manuscripts see L. F. Benedetto, II M ilione (Florence, 1 9 2 8 ), and for an English translation which distinguishes different variants see A. C. Moule and P. Pelliott, Marco Polo. The Description o f the World (London, 1 9 3 8 ). The Travels, pp. 2 6 0 - 6 2 . Within the literature on Marco Polo, Leonardo Olschki’s L ’Asia di M arco Polo (Venice, 1 9 5 7 ) remains fundamental. For the reception of the D ivisam ent as a book of traditional marvels (not to be confused with authorial intentions) see R. Wittkower, ‘Marco Polo and the Pictorial Tradition of the Marvels of the East’, in Oriente Poliano. Studi e conferenze . . . in occasione del VII centenario della nascita di Marco Polo (Rome, 1 9 5 7 ). On Mandeville see especially Malcolm Letts, Sir Joh n M andeville: The M an and his B o o k (London, 1 9 4 9 ); Josephine W. Bennett, The R ediscovery o f Sir Joh n M andeville (New York, 1 9 5 4 ); M. C. Seymour, Sir Joh n M andeville (Aldershot, 1 9 9 3 ); Mary B. Campbell, The Witness and the O ther World: E xotic European

63

CONTEXTS AND GENRES References

46

c

Travel Writing, 4 0 0 - 1 6 0 0 (Ithaca, 1 9 8 $), chapter 4 ; Christiane Deluz, L e livre de Jehan de M andeville: une ‘geographie*au XlVe siècle (Louvain, 1 9 8 8 ); Iain Macleod Higgins, Writing East. The ‘Travels’ o f Sir John Mandeville (Philadelphia, 1 9 9 7 ). 1 0 3 M. Letts (ed.), M an deville’s Travels, Texts and Translations, Hakluyt Society (London, 1 9 5 3 ), 11, pp. 2 2 0 - 3 1 . Letts prints the French manuscript from the Bibliothèque Nationale, ms.fr. 4 , 5 1 5 (fromc. 1 3 7 1 ), which represents a ‘Continental’ version that is probably closer to the authorial text than the Anglo-Norman French and English variants mainly found in England. 1 0 4 For a discussion of variants, see Higgins 1 9 9 7 . 1 0 5 On the general theme of post-medieval pilgrimage to Rome, see W. Williams, fThe U ndiscovered C ountry\* Pilgrimage and N arrative in the French Renaissance (Oxford, 1 9 9 8 ). 1 0 6 For a discussion of the subject, with reference to Mandeville, see Christian K. Zacher, Curiosity and Pilgrimage. The Literature o f Discovery in FourteenthCentury England (Baltimore, 1 9 7 4 ). 1 0 7 A. Lanza and M. Troncarelli (eds), Pellegrini Scrittori. Viaggatori Toscani del Trecento in Terrasanta (Florence, 1 9 9 0 ), pp. 2 2 4 - 5 . 1 0 8 Itinerarium Symonis Semeonis ab Hybernia ad Terram Sanctam, with English translation, in Scriptores Latini H iberniae, vol. ιν, ed. Μ. Esposito (Dublin, i 9 6 0 ). 1 0 9 Christiane Deluz (éd.), L iber de quibusdam ultramarinis partibus de Guillaume de Boldensele (Paris, 1 9 7 2 ); Ludolph of Sudheim, De itinere Terrae Sanctae, ed. F. Deycks (Stuttgart, 1 8 5 1 ). For an analysis of this literature see B. Dansette, ‘Les pèlerinages en Terre Sainte aux XIV et XV siècles: étude sur les aspects originaux et édition d’une relation anonyme’, PhD thesis, University of Paris-Sorbonne, 1 9 7 7 . n o Thus von Harff did not simply follow the substance of Mandeville; he followed the model. See Malcolm Letts (ed.), The Pilgrimage o f A rnold von H arff, Hakluyt Society (London, 1 9 4 6 ). The manuscript was written in a German dialect from the Lower Rhine. h i We have used the modern English translation: Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, trans. Nevill Coghill (Harmondsworth, 1 9 5 1 ), p. 4 0 (from the ‘General Prologue’, vv. 7 7 3 —6 ). The original reads: And wel I woot as ye goon by the waye Ye shapen you to talen and to playe, For trewely, confort ne mirthe is noon To ride by the waye domb as stoon. 112

113 114

Erasmus devoted one of his Latin C olloquies (1 5 1 8 , with new editions in 1 5 2 2 and 1 5 2 6 ) to a satirical exposé of devotional journeys as meaningless actions from a strictly evangelical Christian viewpoint. See C. R. Thompson, The C olloqu ies o f Erasmus (Chicago, 1 9 6 5 ). J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 2 nd edn, rev. N. Davies (Oxford, 1 9 6 7 ). For the text we have used Le petit Jehan de Saintré, ed. M. Eusebi (Paris, 1 9 9 3 ), and Curial e G üelfa, ed. M. Gustà and G. E. Sansone (Barcelona, 1 9 7 9 ). It is worth speculating that these two novels actually emerged from a similar cultural moment, the Humanist influence in the Angevin and Aragonese courts, in a specific context of interaction - the contest for Naples between René of Anjou (whom la Sale served) and Alfonso of Aragon (whom the Catalan author of the Curial is likely to have served, since he shows a knowledge of Italy and Italian literature). Both la Sale and the author of the Curial offer strong evidence of the fresh reception of the themes of classical mythology within a chivalric tradition. On la Sale see F. Desonay, Antoine de la Sale, aventureux et pédagogue. Essai de bibliographie critique (Liège and Paris,

64

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 4 6d

115

116 117

118 119 120 121

122

References 1 9 4 0 ); on his use of historical setting see M. de Riquer, Έ1 episodio barcelonés del Jeh an de Saintré y Juan de Calabria en Barcelona’, in M élanges offertes à ]ean Frappier, il (Paris, 1 9 6 9 ), pp. 9 5 7 - 6 7 ; on the limits of his narrative realism, which captures human tragedy but on the whole follows the conventionalized style of medieval chronicles, see E. Auerbach, M imesis. The R epresentation o f Reality in Western Literature (Princeton, 1 9 5 3 ), chapter 1 0 . On the Curial, at an introductory level, see Martín de Riquer, ‘La novel.la cavalleresca’, in H istoria de la literatura catalana, vol. ii (Barcelona, 1 9 6 5 ). Antoine de la Sale, L e Paradis de la Reine Sibylle, ed. F. Desonay (Paris, 1 9 3 0 ). For further comment see J. Demers, ‘La quête de l’anti-Graal ou un récit fantastique: “le paradis de la reine Sibylle”’, in Le Moyen Age, LXXXIII (Brussels, 1 9 7 7 ), pp. 1 6 9 —9 2 . La Sale, 1 9 3 0 , p. 1 5 . The links between chivalry and the early modern literature of discovery are stressed — perhaps with some exaggeration - by Jennifer Goodman in Chivalry and Exploration, 1 Z9 8 - 1 6 3 0 (Woodbridge, 1 9 9 8 ). Miguel de Cervantes, El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la M ancha, ed. J. J. Allen (Madrid, 1 9 8 1 ), I, p. 5 5 6 . For a discussion of the theme of travel in Cervantes, see A. Vilanova, Erasm o y Cervantes (Barcelona, 1 9 8 9 ), esp. pp. 3 2 6 - 4 0 9 . E m bajada a T am orlân , ed. Francisco López Estrada (Madrid, 1 9 4 3 ). L e Voyage d ’Outremer de Bertrandon de la B roquière, ed. C. Schefer (Paris, 1 8 9 2 ). Poggio Bracciolini, Historia de varietate fortunae, ed. O. Merisalo (Helsinki, 1 9 9 3 ). Ramusio’s collection has been edited by Marica Milanesi in Navigazione e Viaggi, 6 vols (Turin, 1 9 7 8 -). George Sandys, R elation o f a Jou rn ey Begun An.D om . 1 6 1 0 , 2 nd edn (London, 1 6 1 5 ); Pietro della Valle, Viaggi di Pietro della Valle il pellegrino, 4 vols: ‘La Turchia’, ‘La Persia’ (1 and 11), ‘L’India’ (Rome, 1 6 5 8 - 6 3 ). For a discussion of Sandys’s pilgrimage narrative see J. Haynes, The Hum anist as Traveller. G eorge Sandys’ ‘Relation o f a Journey Begun An.Dom. 1 6 1 0 ’ (London and Toronto, 1 9 8 6 ).

3 Ethnographers in Search of an Audience J.K. Hyde

I

The Mongols concentrate the Western mind

In the pilgrim literature1 we have observed a number of Italians of very varied backgrounds and abilities reacting in their characteristic ways to a relatively unchanging East. All of them, as we have seen, have something to say about the Moslem state and society with which, however unwillingly, they were forced to come to terms for the duration of their visit. Their reactions, which vary from almost hysterical revulsion to quite warm appreciation, follow no discernible pattern, both extremes, for example, being found among the Florentine pilgrims of 1384-85. Reading them, one is not made conscious of any literary tradition or stereotype imposing its terms on the observations and experiences of the pilgrims; the learned polemic of the Church is only faintly heard and of the extraordinary fantasies concerning Islamic society found in the vernacular chansons de geste there seems to be not the faintest trace. It was their amateur status which enabled the pilgrims to respond fairly spontaneously to what they saw and heard, and this relative open-mindedness is their greatest strength. On balance, it led them to record a far more positive view of Moslem society than that put forward by either the theologians or the poets. The example of Ricoldo da Montecroce drives this home. Alone among our travellers he was not an amateur in Islamic affairs but an expert. During his stay in Baghdad he had learned to speak and read Arabic so that he was able to study the Koran for himself

66

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search o f an audience without leaning on a translator. He was horrified by what he found, which seemed to him full of fables, falsehoods and blasphemies. In later life he wrote a highly influential tract Contra legem Sarracenorum which did much to convince learned men in the West that Islam was not only morally reprehensible but also intellectually indefensible and essentially contrary to reason. Yet as a pilgrim and traveller Ricoldo was one of those who expressed most warmly his appreciation of the many virtues he found among his Moslem hosts. The pilgrim writers could be surprisingly keen observers; what they could not do was to draw their scattered impressions together into anything approaching a coherent view of oriental society. It was not their purpose, and moreover it would have required them to take an imaginative leap outside their own culture and seek to comprehend the Moslem world on its own terms. The failure to appreciate Islam as a religious system with its own values quite distinct from those of Christianity was general in the West throughout the Middle Ages. Recent studies of Western writers on Islam have shown that even those who devoted considerable time and thought to the subject were just as trapped in their own culture as the pilgrims were; the weight of their erudition served only to sink them deeper into the mire of their incorrigible ethnocentricity. Thus Dr Daniel has stressed that, while the essentials of Islamic belief were known, this knowledge served only polemic use, being employed more for Christian propaganda than for any genuine attempt to communicate over the frontier. It does not matter whether, as in the case of Ricoldo, it is the divergences from Christianity which are underlined in order to boost the Western sense of superiority, or whether, as with the slightly earlier writer William of Tripoli, similarities are exaggerated in order to prove the Moslems all ripe for conversion; both writers distorted the true face of Islam for their own purposes.2 However, it would be wrong to conclude from this dismal record that Europeans were incapable of producing a more objective ethnography in this period. Islam was a special case. The rivalry of the two faiths had imprinted itself upon European consciousness at an early stage in its medieval development when all the advantages of power, wealth and sophistication were found on the side of the Saracens. The crusading movement brought new life to long-engrained attitudes, and Islamic resilience kept

163

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses Western fears alive until well beyond the end of the medieval period. The real similarities between the two religions seem to have been a block to objective understanding. Where these factors were absent, Westerners did a little better. Up to the thirteenth century, ethnography as a distinct literary genre was virtually unknown in the Latin West. The classical heritage, which was particularly unhelpful in this area, must bear a good deal of the responsibility for this. The lively ethnography of the Greeks had filtered down to the West in an emaciated and often stultified form through inferior Latin intermediaries with whom it lost its independent standing and was, in the main, shredded into encyclopaedias. The chief culprit was Pliny, whose handling of ethnographic material was, at best, a pedestrian and uncritical compilation from earlier sources which often degenerates into a mere listing of geographical features, provinces and tribes. The drive to produce as comprehensive a catalogue as possible left little or no room for explanation, and all but the most sensational details were squeezed out. The intervention of Isidore of Seville in the seventh century can be seen as an attempt to reclaim some of this material for science. In his Etymologiae ethnographic and geographical data were, like everything else, subjected to the science of etymology, which, even when its findings were not totally mistaken, was invariably a distraction from the search for significant ethnographic explanations. Moreover, by breaking down categories such as laws, religions, languages, natural features and cities into separate books, Isidore accentuated still further the pulverisation of knowledge into discrete ‘facts’ which was the most depressing feature of the encyclopaedic tradition. It is not surprising that, in this dry and dusty landscape, minds cried out for some relief and colour, which were supplied mainly in the form of wonders and monsters. Already strongly in evidence in Pliny, the mirabilia came to the forefront in the third-century writer Julius Solinus, who, by allowing his imagination full rein, elaborated what has been called ‘perhaps the most completely miraculous view of the world ever put forth in Europe’. 3 For this reason most medieval readers preferred him to Pliny, and his pervasive influence, by upstaging more mundane observations, must have impeded the emergence of a more soundly based ethnography. True, the unflagging interest in the monstrous races, half-human creatures without heads, mouths or knee joints, and

164

67

68

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search of an audience with only one eye or foot, not to mention giants, pygmies or dogheads and many others, was not necessarily as unhealthy as it might seem at first sight. Although there was a dark alternative which attributed these aberrations to degeneration and sin, the great authority of St Augustine could be called upon in support of the opinion that they all, however unnatural they might seem, were in their own way perfect because they were the work of the divine craftsman who had created them to bear witness to the beauty and diversity of his creation. By drawing half-conscious fears into the light and fixing them around the fringes of the map, these fantasies probably lessened the terror of the unknown. The natural science of the Middle Ages, with its emphasis on hierarchy and order, had no difficulty in finding a place for the monstrous races as links in the chain joining rational man to the irrational brutes. Those who shared this outlook should, at least in theory, have been predisposed to receive with interest information concerning the diverse customs and races of men.4 Two further factors may be picked out as contributors to the weakened state of ethnography in the earlier Middle Ages. The first was the superior claims of cosmography as a provider of explanations for human character and events. The Platonic injunction to man to cease contemplating the earth and raise his eyes to heaven fused with the predominantly Aristotelian conception of the cosmos as a hierarchically ordered whole, with all earthly happenings activated by causal chains which led upwards through the heavenly spheres to the ultimate Prime Mover. Duly Christianised, this world-view came to dominate educated circles in the West during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. According to this system, there was nothing otherworldly in the contemplation of the stars; on the contrary, astrology offered the surest, most scientific way of discovering the causes of events not only after but even before they happened. Perhaps the most striking expression of this idea was that of the twelfth-century poet Bernardus Sylvester of Chartres, who wrote: For that sequence of events which ages to come and the measured course of time will wholly unfold has a prior existence in the stars. There are the sceptre of Phoroneus, the conflict of the brothers of Thebes, the flames of Phaeton, Deucalion’s flood . . .

and so on, down to his own times, concluding:

165

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses Thus the creator wrought, that ages to come might be beheld in advance, signified by starry ciphers.5

Against such ambitious claims ethnography could only offer explanations of a literally lower order. While no one denied that such things as climate, air and water exerted their influence on human life, these hardly seemed worth investigation when the higher links of the causal chain were so much easier to observe in the heavenly bodies. According to this view, physical geography and ethnography were no more than the backyard of the palace of cosmography, and the fashion for treating these subjects as unimportant appendices in works chiefly concerned with the heavens and their influences, already apparent in Isidore’s De Natura Rerum, retained a following throughout the medieval period. The shift from the rather poetic cosmographies of the twelfth century to the more scientific ones of the thirteenth did not bring much change in this respect; nor did the move from Latin to the vernaculars. 6 Even Brunetto Latini, whose Trésor was expressly intended as a practical encyclopaedia for merchants and other worldly men, devoted far more space to the heavens and the general configuration of the world than to the actual surface of the earth. In his geographical chapters he was content to serve up little more than a distinctly slipshod compendium of Solinus, and he shows no interest in the new geographical information about the East which had become available during his lifetime. 7 The other factor inhibiting the growth of ethnography was the medieval predilection for history. While the science of astrology was a part of the pagan inheritance, the Bible taught that historical events were the medium through which God’s purposes in the world were revealed to men. Just as the events of the Old Testament led up to the Incarnation, so those of the Christian era were preparing the ground for the Second Coming; the key to the true meaning of history lay in the proper interpretation of the scriptures. According to this view, the most important facts about a race or nation were not the empirical data belonging to ethnography but the signs indicating its predestined role in the divine plan. Thus the identification of the Arabs with the descendants of Abraham’s bondswoman Hagar, and of Islam with one of the persecutions of the Church foretold in the Book of Revelation was enough to satisfy the curiosity of most Christians and discouraged

166

69

70

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search of an audience closer investigation except by a very few. Hence the extraordinary ignorance and fantasies concerning Islam found in all but a handful of Western writings on the subject in the medieval period. The attribution of idolatry to the persecutors of the Church came naturally to those whose ideas derived from the Old Testament rather than more direct evidence concerning the actual beliefs and practices of Moslems. However, the medieval concentration on narrative history did not lead to the total exclusion of ethnographical and geographical material. Although the vast majority of medieval chroniclers make little or no attempt to set the scene for the events they narrate, some, generally those with evident literary culture and ambitions, do try to provide something, however brief, by way of introduction to the peoples and places with which they are concerned. The stimulus may have come from Cicero’s definition of historia as calling for both chronological arrangement and geographical representation, or from the very short account of Africa in Sallust’s Jugurtha, though it is notable that the strictly ethnographical information as opposed to legendary history provided by this very polished writer amounts to very little. 8 The summary description of the world which prefaces Orosius’ Historia adversus paganos was probably more influential, especially in the early Middle Ages, when Paul the Deacon took up the tradition and the remarkably full description of Britain in Bede’s History of the English Church provided an example to be followed by a string of chroniclers of British affairs from the Anglo-Norman period onwards. The humanistic culture of the twelfth century threw up a small number of outstanding examples, notably in the chronicles of Otto of Freising and William of Tyre; only in the case of Gerald of Wales, however, did this lead so far as to the creation of ethnographic monographs able to stand on their own account, independent of the chronicles they were devised to introduce. In the Descriptio Hiberniae and his more meaty description of Wales, Gerald was inspired by traditions going back to Nennius and Bede and recently revived by a clutch of twelfth-century chroniclers, especially his arch-enemy Geoffrey of Monmouth. 9 Another local tradition seems to have been started by the eleventhcentury historian of the church of Hamburg, Adam of Bremen, who provided his readers with quite an extensive description of the Scandinavian and Baltic lands and peoples, including particu-

167

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses larly objective accounts of Norway and the still pagan Swedes which were clearly based on first-hand information. Helmold, the priest of Bosau who carried Adam’s history of the Baltic missions down to c. 1172, went a step further in recording in considerable detail the idols of the pagan Slavs and the rites with which they were worshipped, showing a very different attitude to that of Bede, who, as is well known, said as little as he could about the religion of his pagan ancestors. Helmold’s treatment of the inhabitants of the pagan cult centre of Rügen is particularly sympathetic; for him they excel in the natural virtues of hospitality and respect for parents, and no poor or beggars are found among them. Obviously this picture is somewhat idealised, yet it is clearly based on genuine observation and not on mere literary convention . 10 Despite these honourable exceptions, the prevailing attitudes among the Western intelligentsia in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries present a striking contrast. On one side was an openness to alien ideas which allowed the assimilation of Greek and Arab philosophy and science on a scale never equalled before or since, on the other a remarkably restricted knowledge of the surface of the earth and its inhabitants, including the areas and peoples from which these ideas were derived. It has frequently been noted that the Crusades did remarkably little to widen the geographical horizons of Western Christendom. The writings of the Arab geographers aroused little interest in the West, outside the court of Roger II at Palermo, where the existence of a cultured Arabic-speaking element provided a unique environment for the Sicilian Moslem geographer Idrisi. New information concerning the Levant was very slow in filtering into Western consciousness, as accounts of the Holy Places continued to lean heavily on timehonoured authorities. There was little attempt at a serious understanding of the Moslem societies with which the West was in direct contact, while for the lands beyond the Mediterranean coasts literary traditions atrophied and fantasy ran riot, quite unchecked by any fresh first-hand experience. Thus a hazy and romanticised vision of India was diffused through the various versions of the Alexander legend widely read at this time, which generated an atmosphere in which the spurious letter of Prester John with all its marvels could gain wide circulation and credence . 11 Of China and the Far East not even a vision remained in the Western mind, the common belief that the mouth of the Ganges marked the easternmost point of the world land mass leaving literally no room for 168

71

72

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search of an audience them, so that the significance of the silk-making Seres recorded by Pliny was entirely lost. No doubt the animosities engendered by the Holy Wars made any deep penetration of Asia or Africa very difficult for Europeans, although it is clear that the coasts were regularly frequented by merchants and pilgrims. That it was not the physical difficulties of travel so much as a lack of interest on the part of the churchmen who constituted the learned element in Western society at this time is suggested by the apparent indifference to the discoveries in the N orth Atlantic brought about by the Vikings. Although the chronicler Adam of Bremen had made a workmanlike attempt to relate this new information to what he found in his ancient authorities, it was not until the mid-thirteenth century that brief notices on Iceland and Vinland entered the mainstream of European knowledge through the widely diffused encyclopaedia of Bartholomew the Englishman, written, significantly enough, in Germany . 12 That an intelligent and well-read man like William of Malmesbury could for a moment imagine that the Wends and Letts of the Baltic were the last surviving pagans left in the world shows the degree to which Western thinkers could become boxed into the narrow world of Latin Christendom, cut off from the rest of the globe by the hostile ranks of Islam . 13 The degree of ignorance and prejudice prevailing not only among scholars but also among those in a position to inform themselves at first hand can be seen from two texts belonging to around the time of the Fifth Crusade of 1218—21. The first is a letter attributed to the patriarch of Jerusalem written in response to a request from Innocent III concerning the lands, customs and strength of the Agarenes. W hat we find is little more than a genealogy of the descendants of Saladin with lists of the territories subject to each, together with a sketchy account of Islam full of the most crass errors such as the allegation that Mohammed is worshipped as God. That it was widely copied in the West only goes to show the dearth of information at this time. Moreover, if it really was destined for the papal curia, it suggests an alarming ignorance among those responsible for planning the Eastern policies of the Church; virtually the only information in the letter which may have been of immediate practical use is some notes on the diplomatic protocol of the courts of the sultan and caliph . 14 The second text is much longer and more ambitious, being in 169

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses intention a description of the whole Eastern world, including its natural wonders as well as its people. The traditional attribution of this work to Jacques de Vitry, a leading Western prelate who spent nearly nine years in the Levant as Bishop of Acre, has been questioned; while the factual information it contains turns up in other writers and was probably common knowledge among the crusaders, the tone and prejudice of the tract seem entirely consistent with those expressed in the undoubtedly authentic letters of the bishop. 15 It opens with the usual prejudiced account of the life of Mohammed and an outline of the character of Islam and its historical expansion. There follows an extensive survey of the Eastern peoples known to the writer, including the Latin crusaders, each defined almost exclusively in religious terms. The oriental Christian Churches are measured by the yardstick of proximity to Catholic doctrine and friendliness towards the Latins; most are found wanting, but the most intemperate invective is aimed at the Levantine Jews. Islamic sects, on the other hand, are described quite objectively or even, as with the Assassins, sympathetically as potential allies of the crusaders. The subject then shifts without explanation to some notable features of the climate and geography of the Holy Land and then, by way of a discussion of the biblical rivers of Paradise, to the wonders of the East as recorded in Pliny, Solinus and the Alexander legend. After a ramble among the flora, fauna and precious stones of India, the book ends with a comprehensive survey of the monstrous races which, although no one is obliged to believe in them, are cited on the authority of St Augustine as examples of the wonderful works of God. The shortcomings of this, the most extensive description of the Orient to be attempted by a medieval European before the midthirteenth century, clearly demonstrate the weaknesses of Latin ethnography at that time. Contemporary information extends no further than what could be picked up by hearsay in the Crusader states; beyond lies only the timeless Orient described by the ancient writers, full of monsters and wonders. Even within the area where his facts are reasonably accurate, the writer shows himself incapable of even a modicum of detachment; everything is judged from a rigidly Western point of view. Finally, the lack of plan, so that topics follow one another without any logical connections, confirms the author’s ignorance of any genre of ethnographical writing. Indeed, the preface, which looks like an addition by

170

73

74

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search o f an audience a later hand, seeks to justify the numerous digressions on the ground that they will provide suitable exempla for sermons. It seems that during the 1220s and ’30s the extreme ethnocentricity of the West was beginning to be modified by a renewed sense of Christian mission which required at least some understanding of the views and culture of those who were to be converted. The new stirrings of missionary enterprise were caught up and focused by St Dominic and St Francis, whose Orders gave to the Latin Church a mobile force of dedicated men of a kind which it had largely lacked since the days of the Celtic saints and their followers. 16 Whether in time this movement would of itself have resulted in the development of ethnographic writings will never be known, for in the event the eastward movements of a handful of missionary friars met up with a westward flood of nomadic warriors spreading death and destruction on an unparalleled scale. The warlike expansion of the Mongols had begun in Central Asia under Chingis Khan some twenty years before the Fifth Crusade, and the first rumours of their conquests had been sent on to the West by the crusaders at Damietta in 1220-21. For the next twenty years, as the Mongol advance washed westward like successive waves of the sea, reports and cries for help of increasing urgency reached the leaders of the West, and the first hazy picture of the new people, distorted by legend, hopes and fear, was gradually sharpened and defined. Finally, in 1241-42, the Mongols cut through the last screen of non-Catholic peoples and struck directly at Latin Christendom. Displaying a grasp of grand strategy quite beyond any Western general at the time, the Mongol Subedei sent one army through southern Poland into Silesia, where it inflicted a bloody defeat on the German and Polish forces; meanwhile the main prize, Hungary, was invaded from at least four directions and by the spring of 1242 had been completely overrun, leaving King Bela a refugee at Trogir in Dalmatia, while Mongol patrols were probing the region of Scutari in Albania. The Mongol challenge was the most dangerous and alarming threat which medieval Europe ever had to face. Compared with the Tartar whirlwind, the Turkish menace was recurring pressure experienced over decades and centuries, giving both sides time to get used to each other; even the Viking, Saracen and Magyar invaders of Europe in the tenth century followed time-honoured

171

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses ways and did not threaten total destruction. Militarily, the Western reaction was pathetically inadequate and Christendom was saved from further attack not by its own efforts but by disunity among the enemy. Intellectually, the Western response was much more impressive. The slaughter in Poland and Hungary jolted the West, which was already becoming more aware of other peoples, into a vigorous reconnaissance of the new enemy who might conceivably be converted into a new ally. By 1253 some half-dozen first-hand descriptions of Mongol society were in circulation, and by the end of the century Europe’s horizon had been extended to China and in a sketchy manner even to South-east Asia, while a mass of new information on India had been added to the stock unchanged since antiquity. This was an opening up of the world second only to that of the early sixteenth century and, as in the later period, the discoveries of the pioneers elicited a mixed response. Christian readers had to adjust to hearing of pagan peoples who could not be written off as barbarians but whose way of life was a challenge to their own. There was a natural reluctance to abandon or seriously modify a world-picture which had an immense weight of pagan and Christian authority behind it. That the process of reassessment and reorientation which began so bravely eventually petered out must be attributed to the closing off of the eastern approaches following the break-up of the Mongol empire. By the last quarter of the fourteenth century the doors to the East had closed, and for the next hundred years the flow of new information was reduced to a trickle and ethnography became a stagnant pond. Here we are concerned not with the geographical frontier opened up by the explorers but with the frontier of literacy extended by the written record of their achievements. During the second half of the thirteenth century, Western ethnography was aroused from its semi-dormant state and emerged for a time as an autonomous, objective and even scientific genre. The opening stage of the first European discovery of Asia began in March 1245 when Innocent IV, who had summoned a General Council to meet later in the year, commissioned the Umbrian Giovanni di Pian di Carpine and the Lombard Ascelin papal envoys to the Tartars and the other nations of the Orient. Starting out soon after, the Dominican Ascelin headed for Persia, which was later to become a mission field for his Order, but he got no further than Armenia;

172

75

76

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search o f an audience after a disastrous interview with the Mongol general Baiju, he returned in the autumn of 1248. Meanwhile Giovanni had led a small party of fellow Franciscans over 3,000 miles from eastern Europe to the chief Mongol camp near Karakorum in the heart of Asia, returning via Hungary, Poland and Germany to report to the Pope early in November 1247. The findings of this expedition were naturally a matter of intense concern in eastern and central Europe, and even before the friars reached Lyons at least two reports were in circulation, a very brief one from the pen of Giovanni’s companion Benedict the Pole and a longer one, known as the Tartar Relation, apparently based on a verbal account by Benedict and taken down by another Polish friar who signed himself C. de Bridia. Giovanni’s own report, which is much more detailed and systematic than that of his assistant, had been compiled by November 1247; a revised edition containing minor additions and a long final chapter giving a narrative of the journey was completed some time later. The record of Ascelin’s embassy written by his companion Simon of St Quentin is no longer extant, but lengthy excerpts which probably give a fair impression of its character are to be found in the last three books of Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum Historiale. The last of these early reports on the Mongols comes from the hand of the Flemish Franciscan William of Rubruck, who in 1253 journeyed to Karakorum with the heroic aim of converting the Mongol leaders to Catholic Christianity and bringing spiritual consolation to the Christian slaves and refugees within their empire. Unlike the papal envoys, William did not enjoy official status, which brought him many problems, and his report to his sovereign, Louis IX, though very full and vivid, reflects the more narrowly religious aims of his mission. 17 All these writings made some addition to Western knowledge of the customs and history of the Mongols, but as contributions to ethnography the reports of Giovanni di Pian di Carpine stand in a class of their own. The Tartar Relation, it is true, contains valuable extra information on the history of the Tartars, but Benedict’s ethnographic material, clearly derived from a common set of notes, is, except on a few specific points, no more than a pale shadow of Giovanni’s. The same kind of interest in historical rather than ethnographic facts is reflected in the Simon of St Quentin extracts in Books XXXI and XXXII of the Speculum

173

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses Historiale. Carpini, on the other hand, devoted only one out of his nine chapters to the history of the Tartars; Y storia Mongalorum, the title of one of the best manuscripts of his work, must not be understood in its modern sense. Moreover, chapter V, de imperio, is undoubtedly the weakest in the book, presumably because Giovanni did not trouble to seek out the more reliable sources that other Western reporters found. It was into this chapter that Carpini inserted his account of the monstrous races and other wonders deeply entrenched in Eastern and Western tradition alike. William of Rubruck was even less of a historian than Carpini, except in the sense that he wrote a historical account of his own mission. The travel story, which for Giovanni was literally an afterthought, justified on the grounds that it gave him the opportunity to authenticate his work with the names of witnesses and informants, provided the central theme of William’s report, for which the ethnographic material was no more than an essential background. In any study of the technique of Western missions or the evolution of dramatic narrative, William of Rubruck would occupy an honourable place; his observations are extraordinarily sharp and he was, one feels, spiritually if not quite intellectually every bit the equal of Carpini. But he did not seek to be an ethnographer; it is very probable that he had read the Ystoria Mongalorum and did not wish to compete. 18 Carpini’s aim to provide a primarily ethnographic account of the Mongols stands out at once from the plan of his report. The main chapter headings are set out by Giovanni immediately after a short prologue, and the material is further subdivided at the beginning of each chapter. I. The land {de terra) (a) Location {de situ) (b) Landscape and products {de qualitate) (c) Climate (aer) II. Peoples (de hominibus) (a) (b) (c) (d) (e)

Physical characteristics (forma personarum) Marriage (coniugio) Clothing (de vestibus) Housing (de habitaculis) Material culture (de rebus)

174

77

78

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search of an audience III. Religion (de ritu) (a) (b) (c) (d)

Belief and worship (de cultu) Taboos (de his que credunt esse peccata) Divinations, auguries and auspices Funeral rites

IV. Morals (de moribus) (a) (b) (c) (d)

Good Bad Legal customs (de consuetudinibus) Diet (de cibis)

V. History of Mongol conquests (de imperio) VI. Military institutions (a) Formations (de ordinatione acierum) (b) Weapons and armour (de armis) (c) Tactics (de astuciis) VII. How they make peace, viz. conditions of political domination, tribute, taxation, condition of subject peoples VIII. How they may be opposed (militarily) IX. The provinces through which we passed— narrative of journey (omitted in first edition) This plan appears at first sight so rational and even obvious that it is worth underlining that no other medieval writer adopts it or anything like it; even in the accounts derived from Benedict the Pole it is only discernible in an implicit and attenuated form. Another instance which might seem to impair the unique quality of Giovanni’s report turns out on close inspection to reinforce it. The headings of sixteen chapters of Book X X X of the Speculum Historiale bear a considerable resemblance to those of the Ystoria Mongalorum; although no author is acknowledged in the encyclopaedia, these chapters have generally been ascribed to Ascelin’s companion, Simon of St Quentin. However, a considerable part of the content of these chapters is in fact taken from Carpini either word for word or in close paraphrase. The remainder either relates to the Mongol conquest of Persia, lending weight to the attribution to a member of Ascelin’s party, or reads suspiciously like an elaboration of some of Giovanni’s material by someone of no

175

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses great intelligence and commonplace prejudices, and possibly no direct knowledge of the East at all. 19 This leaves only one parallel in medieval ethnographic literature which could have given a starting point for Carpini. This is the Descriptio Kambriae of Gerald of Wales, which also proceeds from the physical characteristics of the land to the moral and religious qualities of the people. The division of mores into good and bad by both writers is perhaps too obvious to be significant, but Gerald’s last chapters on how this people (the Welsh) may be conquered and governed and how they may resist conquest do prefigure Giovanni’s chapters VI, VII and VIII in a way which may not be entirely coincidental. Any influence there may have been can only have been at a superficial level, for the chapters in question differ profoundly both in content and in tone. In seeking the origins of the plan of the Ystoria Mongalorum, a more promising line of enquiry leads in the direction of the diplomatic report or relatio, which is what Giovanni’s book really is. As we shall see in the next chapter, in the later Middle Ages the diplomatic report did begin to exert a literary influence outside bureaucratic circles and move towards the autonomy it achieved with Machiavelli and the Venetian relazioni.20 However, there is not a shred of evidence for this development taking place before the publication of the Ystoria Mongalorum; the reports of Liutprand of Cremona’s missions to Constantinople in the tenth century stand alone, and their narrative form and rhetoricalmoralistic tone place them in a world apart from the dispassionate scientific approach of Carpini. The earliest medieval instructions to ambassadors were very prosaic affairs, little more than a bare list of questions to which the report gave brief factual answers. One would expect the turmoil and terror created by the Mongol expansion to raise specific questions about them in Western minds, and in the second-hand reports which reached the West in the years leading up to the Council of Lyons we find that the more elaborate were constructed round a more or less explicit set of questions. For example, from the letter of the Hungarian Dominican Julian, who returned towards the end of 1237 from an abortive mission to his pagan kinsmen still living in Asia, it is clear that his main concern was to track down the origins of the Mongols with a view to discovering their destined role in world history. He is inclined to believe that they are descendants of Ishmael, though he also re-

176

79

80

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search of an audience ports the opinion that they are the Midianites defeated by Gideon as reported in the Book of Judges. Taking this line in preference to alternative theories which linked them to the Christian champion Prester John or the Three Kings in the Epiphany is Julian’s way of saying that they boded ill for Christendom. There is some ethnographic material in his report, but it is relatively thin, being divided between a fantasised description of the Khan’s golden palace which owes a good deal to the apocryphal Letter of Prester John and a surprisingly detailed and down-to-earth account— the first of many— of the organisation and tactics of the Mongol armies. 21 In the letter of a Hungarian bishop to William of Auvergne, Archbishop of Paris, written early in 1241, the picture becomes a little clearer. His information had been obtained through the cross-examination of two spies captured by agents of the King of Hungary, and the bishop records some of his questions. ‘I asked where their land was,’ he began, and the answer satisfied him that the Mongols could be identified with the tribes of Gog and Magog who had broken out of the mountain barrier behind which they had been confined, according to the Alexander legend. The answers to his next question, de fide, convinced him that they believed in nothing. Once again, the most substantial information obtained related to military organisation and tactics. Of slightly later date but marking a considerable advance in knowledge is the letter of Ivo of Narbonne, based on the interrogation of a mysterious Englishman who had served in the Tartar host for a considerable time before his capture. Here at last the questioning shifted from the obscure problem of origins and concentrated on morality and religion (de moribus et superstitione), physical appearance, patria and mode of fighting. As one would expect from the experience of the informer, the most meaty part of his account concerns military matters while that relating to religion is much more vague; however, the Englishman was the first to remark on the lack of violence and deception within the tribe, though he attributed it solely to the fear of draconian punishment exacted by their leaders. 22 Last and most valuable in reflecting the kind of questions being asked in papal circles around the time of Giovanni’s departure for eastern Europe is the report of a certain Archbishop Peter ‘of Russia’ to the Council of Lyons (June-July 1245). The inter-

177

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses view, conducted through interpreters, was based on a comprehensive questionnaire which strongly calls to mind some of the chapter headings of the Y storia Mongalorum. The first question, de origine, reflects the Western fixation with origins, a matter which Giovanni, in so far as he considered it at all, relegated to his fifth chapter, de imperio. Closer to Giovanni’s approach is the separation of matters of belief, de modo credendi, from matters of worship, de ritu; between the two come some miscellaneous data under the heading of ‘way of life’ {de forma vivendi). The archbishop was relatively poorly informed on military matters {de fortitudine) and fell back on reported prophecies when asked about the Mongols’ future intentions. The last three questions were very specific and practical: how they observe treaties, how they receive ambassadors and how they cross rivers and seas. One hopes that for their peace of mind the answer to the penultimate question, benigne, was transmitted to Giovanni and his party before they left for Asia.23 In fact there is no way of knowing which, if any, of these reports were available to Carpini, but even if he had them all at his elbow there can be no doubt that in the Ystoria Mongalorum both the data and their organisation were transformed and raised from the level of rapportage to that of science. While the longest of these reports amounts to no more than a couple of pages, the Ystoria is a monograph of some 20,000 words, or 13,000 if one excludes the narrative chapter IX. Moreover, this amplificatio was achieved not, as so often with medieval writers, by the addition of rhetoric, moralising or digressions, but by a build-up of facts arranged strictly according to a declared plan. It is this which divides the Ystoria from its nearest rival, the Descriptio Kambriae of Gerald de Barri, which achieves its 14,000 words by the inclusion of lists of features probably taken from a map, as well as anecdotes, moralisation and other padding of the kinds beloved of medieval preachers. Giovanni was an accomplished preacher but knew when to leave sermonising alone; the most striking characteristic of his approach to the Mongols was his avoidance of any kind of rhetoric or moralisation and his scrupulous objectivity. This stands out most clearly in Carpini’s treatment of Mongol religion. For medieval Christians it was axiomatic that belief, worship and morality were inextricably linked in such a way that in the West the enforcement of uniformity of belief had long

178

81

82

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search of an audience been an unquestioned norm; nor did the standpoint of medieval Islam differ radically in this respect. The encounter with Mongol society, which did not share these assumptions, was therefore profoundly challenging and disturbing. Characteristically, Giovanni goes straight to the heart of the matter. ‘They believe in one God,’ he says, ‘maker of all things visible and invisible and the giver of all good things in this world as well as hardships; however, they do not worship him with prayers or praises or any kind of ceremony.’ (The Tartar Relation, which follows the Ystoria closely here, cannot resist adding, ‘as is fitting’.) Having then described the objects, rites and ceremonies connected with other deities and concerned with the fertility of herds and flocks, Giovanni concludes that ‘since they have no law concerning the worship of God they have up to now, we understand, compelled no one to deny their faith or religion’ except for the Russian duke Michael of Chernigov, whom they put to death for the partly political crime of refusing to bow to an image of Chingis Khan. Thus the religious tolerance of the Mongols, which puzzled less intelligent observers and deeply scandalised the writer of the ethnographic chapters in the Speculum Historiale, is seen to follow quite naturally from their thought system. Taking another leap, Giovanni recognises that the Mongols also have certain taboos— he uses the morally neutral word traditiones where other observers speak of superstitiones and the Tartar Relation says they act ex terrore patrum— whose observance is obligatory for all although no religious or moral rationale is put forward for them. Thus to stick a knife into a fire, touch arrows with a whip or pour food or drink on the ground is punishable by death. But to kill men and invade the territories of others, to take the property of other peoples in any kind of unjust way, to commit fornication, revile other men and act against the commandments and prohibitions of God is accounted no sin amongst them.24

When Giovanni turns from the religion to the social customs of the Mongols, it is with some sense of shock that we find him beginning with an account of their good qualities. Here was a man who had seen the devastation of eastern Europe and the shattering of the Franciscan communities which he had spent at least fifteen years of his life building up, with the murder of many of the brothers, who was yet able to recognise that the invaders were

179

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses obedient to their rulers, peaceful, law-abiding, compassionate and cheerful among themselves, so that they do not brawl even on the frequent occasions when they are drunk. Certainly these good qualities are far outweighed by the bad, which, Giovanni claims, are so many that it would be impossible to write them all down. But, as far as they go, they are genuine virtues which have been observed rather than drawn from a literary topos, and there is no attempt, as in other accounts, including the Tartar Relation, to devalue them by attributing their observance solely to fear of drastic punishment. Giovanni’s standards of good and bad are, of course, his own and not those of the Mongols; however, at no point does he allow his judgements to cloud the clarity of his observations. For example, his account of the marriage customs of the nomads, which included polygamy, levirate marriage and a minimal definition of incest, is entirely devoid of the kind of moral indignation found in Gerald de Barri concerning the Welsh or in Bede concerning the pagan Anglo-Saxons’ much slighter deviations from the Christian norms. Giovanni’s good sense also emerges from his treatment of Mongol diet. While the lack of the most elementary hygiene and the consumption of anything that could be eaten— Giovanni says that he saw them eat lice and mice— was a lot for any European to stomach, this did not lead the friar to an unqualified acceptance of accounts of Mongol cannibalism. The nomads of the steppes had a reputation for eating human flesh which went back at least as far as Pliny, and the terror inspired by the Mongol onslaught had bred the most exaggerated reports; Simon of St Quentin (if it was he) said that they devoured human flesh like lions. In the face of so much wild rumour, Carpini simply asserts that the Mongols will eat human flesh in cases of necessity, as when supplies ran out in a campaign against the Kitayans.25 For his account of the military organisation and tactics of the nomads Giovanni had— if he needed it— a considerable body of Western reporting to draw on. On this subject the Ystoria surpasses other reports mainly in the meticulous detail of the description— for example, of the various types of arrowr used by the Mongols with dimensions in terms of grains of barley, or the precise way in which their armour was designed and made. It was this chapter which John Boyle described as being written ‘with an acuteness of observation which would do honour to a modern

180

83

84

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search o f an audience military attaché’. After this, the chapter dedicated to how the Mongols should be opposed seems a little weak, mainly because Giovanni felt, probably rightly, that too specific advice from a mere friar would be counterproductive when it reached the ears of Western military experts. He therefore omitted a most useful piece of advice which nevertheless found its way into the Tartar Relation, namely that, in combat with nomad horsemen, Western generals should place their archers in front of the army, a counsel still current in Poland as late as the seventeenth century for operations against the Krim Tartars. On the other hand, Carpini’s remarks are always based on up-to-date intelligence and observation which put them in a different class from much more academic military manuals based on the third-century treatise of Vegetius, which continued to dominate the field long after Giovanni’s time. Indeed, no comparable study of the problems of opposing the Turks is known to have been made in the medieval West, the treatise of George of Hungary printed around 1480 being comparatively lightweight on this aspect, despite its being the fruit of twenty years’ captivity among the Turks.26 While the physical achievement of Carpini’s journey has received due recognition, the contribution of the Ystoria Mongalorum to Western science has, with one or two honourable exceptions, largely escaped notice, especially, it must be said, by Italians.27 Yet in his setting out of the social customs of a nomadic people in relation to their environment and material culture, describing the religious beliefs and practices of a people as yet hardly touched by a historic faith and delineating in close detail the military equipment and organisation of the horsemen of the steppes, Giovanni raised Western ethnography from the feeble state represented by Jacques de Vitry to a level hardly surpassed until the present century. His report represents a leap into modernity for which the preceding ambience provides little or no preparation. Unfortunately, while a little is known of Giovanni’s personality and career within the Franciscan order, his intellectual training and background remain totally obscure. Nothing is known of his family or early life, the idea that he was an exact contemporary and early companion of St Francis being no more than a conjecture based on the fact that the village from which he took his name was no more than twenty miles from Assisi. Be that as it may, it is clear that by 1221, when he is first mentioned in the

181

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses records, Giovanni was already one of the leading members of the rapidly expanding Franciscan community. He is the first named among the twenty-six friars hand-picked by Caesar of Speyer at the General Chapter of that year to spread the work of the Order into Germany, and he appears in positions of authority— Guardian of Saxony and Minister Provincial of Germany— during the next two decades, always in northern Europe, except for a three-year term as Provincial in Spain in 1230-32. To his contemporary Giordano da Giano, chronicler of the Order in Germany, Giovanni was something of a hero: a fat man given to riding a mule for humility’s sake and a great ‘dilator’ of the Order in Germany, Bohemia, Poland, Norway and Denmark. He mothered the brethren, we are told, as a hen does her chickens, and energetically defended Franciscan interests before kings and princes.28 Fra Salimbene, who met Carpini after his return from Asia, fills out the picture a little, calling him affable, spiritual and learned, often a harsh critic of those in authority; he commends Giovanni for refusing to exploit his position as papal legate by demanding excessive presents and hospitality. From these accounts it is easy to see why Giovanni was chosen, despite his age and physique, for a difficult diplomatic mission with a spiritual dimension; what both writers missed was the intellectual power demonstrated in the Ystoria, seeing only an able preacher and speaker.29 The text of the Ystoria provides singularly few clues to the intellectual background of the author. It is entirely devoid of learned apparatus, the only authority cited being Isidore of Seville on the monstrous races. There is hardly an echo of the Vulgate, which is remarkable in the writings of a priest. The language is the ecclesiastical Latin of the period without the slightest ornamentation or rhetoric, though not without feeling; the admission that the party left for Central Asia ‘with many tears, not knowing whether we went to death of life’ and that on their return they were greeted by the citizens of Kiev ‘as if we had risen from the dead’ makes a point simply and directly. The tone is, if anything, reminiscent of an administrative report, carried over perhaps from assessments of the state and prospects of the Order in the various frontier provinces into which the author had introduced Franciscan missions.30 The apparent simplicity of the Ystoria is, of course, deceptive; the casting of a mass of detailed observations into an ordered and balanced account whose plan is made to appear

182

85

86

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search of an audience natural and even inevitable represents a literary and intellectual achievement of a high order, and one not to be repeated in Western ethnography for several centuries to come. By his journey Giovanni extended the frontier of knowledge, but the Ystoria pushed back one of the frontiers of Western literacy. II

The search for relevance: Marco Polo and Marignolli

The signs are that neither the Ystoria Mongalorum nor its author was properly appreciated by contemporaries. Giovanni di Pian di Carpine was, it is true, rewarded by Innocent IV with the bishopric of Antivari (now Bar), but this obscure see seems to have brought Giovanni nothing but trouble until his death in 1252. As for the Ystoria, after the initial flurry of interest, it seems to have largely dropped out of sight as the Mongol menace receded, to judge by the survival of only eleven manuscripts scattered over nearly as many countries.31 True, its incorporation into one of the last books of Vincent of Beauvais’s encyclopaedia meant that it remained accessible, though only in an abbreviated form. The treatment of the Ystoria by the editor of the Speculum Historiale is a valuable indicator of contemporary interests. The bulk of Book XXX chapters 1 -5 4 is taken up with an account of Mongol history drawn in the main from Simon of St Quentin, with the narrative chapters V and IX from the Ystoria inserted complete at more or less appropriate points. The aim was clearly to produce from the two sources the best possible history of the Mongol dynasty and conquests and the two Western embassies to them, and Giovanni’s ethnographic chapters make their appearance quite heavily abridged, simply to provide an introduction to the narrative. There is some rearrangement of material but the editor does not, with one exception, seriously distort the original; however, the balance between description and narrative is roughly reversed, with the latter assuming a dominant position. The radical distortion arises from the omission of the first four sections of chapter III of the Ystoria, de cultu, which deal with the Mongols’ belief in a supreme god and their tolerance of other faiths; the effect, whether intended or not, is to get rid of a major challenge to Western assumptions by making Mongol religion appear to be no more than a set of taboos, rites and divinations. A paraphrase of the missing sections

183

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses does in fact appear in an earlier book of the Speculum Historiale, mixed in with a lot of very dubious material which, by exaggerating the barbarity of the Mongols, would probably confirm a comforting sense of moral superiority in the average Western reader.32 The fate of other ethnographic writings about the Mongols suggests that the dilution of this element in the Ystoria was not an isolated phenomenon but represents a lack of interest which was quite general. The excellent report of William of Rubruck, which should, one would have thought, have been of absorbing interest to any cleric concerned about the conversion of the heathen, has survived in only four manuscripts, all of them in England, where interest was stimulated by the citation of William as an authority on Asia in Roger Bacon’s Opus Majus c. 1267.33 The Tartar Relation has been found in a single manuscript which did not come to light until 195 7.34 Another apparently outstanding ethnographic treatise of the period has fared even worse. Li escris des faits des Tatars, attributed to the Dominican David of Ashby, who was the go-between of the papacy and Edward of England and the Mongol Ilkhans of Persia Hulegu and his son Abaka between 1260 and 1275, was a fairly substantial work of eight manuscript pages in French. The chapter headings suggest a purely ethnographic content, being concerned with ecology, material culture and warfare, an impression strengthened by the way the text was illustrated with seven line drawings of Mongol tents, bows, siege devices and the like. This looks like a work which, albeit on a more restricted scale, takes up something of Carpini’s rigorous approach. Unfortunately it is not possible to be certain, since we have only a brief description of this text, which was buried in the middle of a volume of French poetry destroyed in the Turin library fire of 1904.35 That a treatise of such originality, which should have been of vital importance to Prince Edward as he planned his crusade and may have been presented to the General Council of 1274, could so completely vanish suggests that thirteenth-century ethnographers were facing an uphill task in interesting readers in their findings, even when these promised to be of immediate practical use. The Mongol stimulus had served to bring Western ethnography to life but in the long run it had failed to conjure up readers. For a readership which refused to be weaned from narrative, the rigorously scien-

184

87

88

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search of an audience tifie approach attracted only a passing interest. Something more was needed. The establishment of ethnography on the literary map in a shape it was to retain until the end of the Middle Ages was the work of Marco Polo. The first writing of this kind by a layman in the vernacular, his was no mere tract but a full-length book of some 130,000 words which described not only the Mongols but also the greater part of mainland Asia and, together with the more sketchy accounts of the East Indies and the east coast of Africa as far south as Madagascar, it changed the shape of the world for literate Europeans. The size and wealth of China, which had been no more than a rumour for Carpini and Rubruck, was exposed in so unambiguous a manner that the belief that the mouth of the Ganges marked the eastern limit of the land mass was bound to be challenged for any reader not totally blinded by ancient science. The book’s success seems to have been immediate and was certainly lasting. It survived in more than 130 manuscripts, as against the mere eleven of the Ystoria Mongalorum, and while the earlier accounts of the Mongols were not, so far as is known, translated into any vernacular, Marco Polo was soon translated from the original Franco-Italian into Venetian, Tuscan, Latin and more literary French, and before the end of the fifteenth century had appeared in almost every written language in Europe, not excluding Catalan, Czech and Irish. Although the Latin version of Fra Pepino of Bologna, whom we have already met as the author of a pilgrim book, was with its fifty manuscripts by far the most copied, suggesting a strong interest among the clergy to whose needs it was clearly tailored, the wide diffusion of vernacular texts proves its appeal to the ‘emperors and kings, dukes, marquises and counts, knights and bourgeois’ who are urged in its opening sentence ‘to take this book and have it read’ to them. It was, however, a manuscript of Pepino’s Latin translation which came into the hands of Christopher Columbus, an event, it may be said, which changed the history of the world, for it was the goldenroofed palaces of Cipangu, which existed nowhere except in the pages of Polo, which lured the three little ships into the unknown Atlantic.36 It is disconcerting to think that this world-shaping book owed its existence to a series of accidents and coincidences. When the three Polos— M arco, his father Nicolô and his uncle Maffeo—

185

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses came home to Venice in 1295 after twenty-four years in the East, there is no sign that their homecoming attracted any more attention than the return of the two elder Polos from a previous voyage had in 1269. The unforgettable story of the Polos’ return derives from an unreliable oral tradition recorded by Ramusio in the sixteenth century; contemporary records are silent. There is no evidence that any of the three had got round to setting down their experiences in writing until, three years later, Marco found himself in need of something to pass the time while he was a prisoner-ofwar in Genoa. Even then, nothing might have been done had it not been for the intervention of a writer of third-rate French prose romances named Rustichello of Pisa, who happened to be in the same prison and to whom, by his own account, Marco was persuaded to dictate what he had learned of the world in the course of his extraordinary career. This reluctance to write was anything but exceptional; of the scores and perhaps hundreds of Western merchants and craftsmen whom modern research has uncovered who took advantage of the pax Mongolica to travel far beyond the confines of Christendom, not one set down an account of any kind which has survived, until the time of Nicolo de Conti in the mid-fifteenth century, who had, as we shall see, his own compelling reasons to do so and, like Marco, had the services of an interlocutor and amanuensis.37 True, the duration and variety of M arco’s eastern experiences were probably unique, but this only created additional problems. Having left his native land at the age of seventeen and passed by far the greater part of his adult life in the polyglot world of the Mongol empire, where he learned four oriental languages and must have conversed with such Westerners as he met who were not of his own family in a hotchpotch of Romance dialects, Marco was probably incapable of writing fluently in any Western language, particularly as Venetian was not yet a literary language when he left and had made little progress in that direction by the time of his return. His education must, at best, have been that of a merchant, consisting mainly of business mathematics and no more than the rudiments of Latin. In his book he shows no sign of having read any Western literature except the Romance of Alexander, hardly an adequate preparation for the daunting task of presenting his exotic material to an almost totally unprepared Western audience.

186

89

90

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search of an audience It was Rustichello who, with all his shortcomings— even his French vocabulary is sometimes inadequate, causing him to fall back on Italian with disconcerting effect— managed to blend the Venetian’s raw experience with the familiar literary techniques of the prose romances in such a way as to attract a wide readership among clergy and laity alike. It is easy for the modern reader to resent Rustichello and suspect him of distorting M arco’s message, but a cleric would certainly have censored more. There was a real affinity between their minds and together Marco and Rustichello created an amalgam of fact clothed in the language of fiction which amounted to a new literary genre.38 A crucial decision, which must have been among the first to be agreed between the authors, was that the book should be written not as romance— that is to say, a personal account of the Polos’ travels and experiences— but as science, that is, an objective description of lands and provinces according to their geographical position. Thus, of the various titles attached to the work in the different manuscripts, it is Le Divisament dou Monde, the Description of the World, which expresses the intentions of the authors best. M arco was so successful in concealing where his eye-witness knowledge gave way to hearsay that some of the details of his travels will never be known. To do this, Marco seems to have made use of maps and charts such as those he mentions in connection with the eastern Indian Ocean; in particular, his grasp of the relative positions of the provinces of Central Asia is so good as to make it likely that he had access to a diagrammatic map of the kind which there is good evidence the Mongols used to comprehend their enormous empire.39 The nearest we come to a travel book is the brief outline of the comings and goings of the Polos which serves as a prologue; here, as in the case of Carpini, the purpose is to provide validation for the rest of the book. Our final judgement as to what kind of book Marco wrote is bound up with our idea of what kind of man we think he was. In his prologue M arco projects a very specific picture of himself. While it is clear that Nicolo and Maffeo are merchants, Marco is portrayed in courtly terms as a jeune bachaler who is handed over by his father to become the vassal of the Great Khan. Having, we are told, rapidly acquired a knowledge of four languages, M arco was employed by the Khan on embassies to distant parts

187

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses of the empire over a period of seventeen years, gaining great favour through his practice of bringing full reports not only of the business in hand but also of the customs and strange usages of the countries he had visited. Although it is nowhere stated that these reports were written, the reader is surely meant to understand that the information they contained will make a substantial contribution to the chapters which follow. The picture of Marco as a diplomat and official in the Tartar administration, albeit in a rather less exalted position than he would have us believe, was the one accepted by the distinguished editor of the earliest version of the Divisament and was pushed to an extreme point in the well-known book of Leonardo Olschki.40 However, it was challenged in an important article by F. Borlandi, published in 1962, who sought by a new approach to revive the older view of M arco as a merchant writer, and his conclusions have found support from other scholars such as A. Carile.41 Borlandi pointed out that there is spread through the Divisament a mass of information of special interest to merchants— not only on products and markets but on methods of manufacture, problems of travel and security and even some quite technical data on currencies and exchange rates. This material is exactly of the kind found in the so-called merchant handbooks produced in the West, and this led Borlandi to postulate such a handbook written by Marco which was the chief source of the greater part of the Divisament. He sees Rustichello translating this text, cutting out the more technical data which could, as Carile quaintly says, ‘disconcert a reader without a specialised interest in economic history’, while urging Marco to fill out each section with as much colourful and curious detail as he could, and where this was insufficient, filling in himself with off-the-peg battles and speeches. It is obvious even from a cursory reading that many of the chapters of the Divisament are constructed on a fairly uniform plan as if in response to a standard questionnaire and that some data of this kind can be found in Western merchant handbooks. The weakness in Borlandi’s thesis is that, with one primitive exception, all the known merchant handbooks are considerably later in date than the Divisament, let alone the Polos’ departure for the East. More decisively, every one of them, up to and including those of the mid-fifteenth century, is a far less homogeneous piece of writing than that attributed to Marco Polo. They are

188

91

92

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search of an audience all quite undistinguished compilations of disparate materials, some relating to weights, measures and currencies, some to types of merchandise, and the rest made up of miscellaneous matters which defy generalisation.42 However, none of them contains anything about political arrangements, religion, social customs, flora and fauna, or marvels, all of which are prominent in every part of the Divisament. Finally, apart from one or two celebrated itineraries, there is singularly little geography in the handbooks except, that is, in Da Uzzano (1440), which incorporates a portolan (navigation guide) in toto. W hat Borlandi’s thesis demands is that Marco, besides being the most travelled man of his time, also had the ability to synthesise information collected from across half the world, creating by himself and without the aid of precedents a more highly evolved handbook than was ever to appear in the medieval West. It is surely more plausible to think that Marco was telling the truth, and that his questionnaire evolved to meet the needs of his Tartar masters who wished to be informed not only about matters of political and economic concern but of the curiosities and marvels of the world, and especially of the territories which had fallen in so short a space of time into their hands. The Mongols were interested in commodities and commerce not as participants but as tax-gatherers. It is true that Marco does not always present his information from the point of view of the rulers and their revenues; often he speaks from the standpoint of the merchant who must pay his taxes and avoid loss through confiscation or bandits.43 But this may be accounted for by considering M arco’s informants. Almost everywhere he was cut off by language from the mass of the subject population, and his contacts were therefore restricted to the mobile classes of administrators and merchants who used the linguae francae of Mongol, Persian and Turkish which Marco knew. Nor should the influence of his kinsmen and the other Latin merchants scattered through the Orient be discounted. Marco often speaks like a merchant because he lived among merchants, but his book reflects the wider interests of the empire’s rulers, concerned with anything which could be turned to advantage and having the security and leisure to indulge in pure curiosity and an ennui which craved for wonders. Like the Ystoria Mongalorum, the Divisament dou Monde can be regarded as a work of ethnography based upon diplo-

189

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses made experience. The distance between them can be most easily gauged by a comparison between what each has to say about the Mongols; although this amounts to only a fairly small part of the Divisament it has exceptional importance as the centrepiece of what is essentially a description of the world from the Mongol point of view. A difference of approach is immediately apparent. While Carpini concentrates what he has to say under each topic, Polo and Rustichello seek to alternate history and ethnography, narrative and description, in order to provide variety for their readers. They introduce the Mongols with an account of their history which provides an oasis of narrative after a long survey of the provinces of Central Asia; it also serves to cover up the deficiencies of M arco’s knowledge of Karakorum, which he never visited. M arco’s version of the early history of the tribe is more notable for its readability than for its accuracy, concentrating on the heroic figures of Chingis Khan and the legendary Prester John to such an extent that the list of the succeeding Khans is garbled and one is omitted altogether, the main interest at this point being the ceremonial surrounding their funerals.44 This leads on to the finest ethnographic chapter in the book, which with admirable brevity covers all the main topics dealt with by Carpini.45 Marco is at his best when he can pick up visual details, some of which were unrecorded by Carpini, for example the transhumance of the tribesmen from the steppes to the mountains and their small twowheeled carts. He also manages to impart a flavour of narrative— of drama, even— to his account of their military institutions, beginning with their martial qualities of obedience and endurance, moving on to the mobilisation and provisioning of their armies before he presents their tactics in battle and brings them to final victory. The easy conversational style makes the lack of a logical plan seem entirely natural. His words reflect a surface glitter but in deeper matters he is soon out of his depth. This shows most clearly in his treatment of Mongol religion. He concentrates on their felt idols, whose name he gets wrong, while their high god is dismissed in a single sentence which has survived in only one of the several versions of the Divisament,46 There is no mention of their taboos or methods of purification. Their bad qualities, which Carpini thought were too many to write down, are passed over in

190

93

94

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search of an audience silence; the only hint that he is conscious of presenting an idealised picture comes when M arco explains that he has spoken of the customs of the droit Tartars but that they are now mout enbatardi. Marco retails this judgement, which he no doubt got from his informants, without fully registering what it implies; some 200 pages later, when he comes to deal with the Tartars of north-west Asia, he remarks that they observe the Tartar law, which is mout bestiaus, although they observe it in the manner of Chingis Khan. He then repeats almost word for word some of what he has previously said about their idols, but concludes, T hey live like beasts.’47 It is, however, the description of Kubilai Khan, his court and palaces, which constitutes the high point of M arco’s account of the Mongols and indeed of his book as a whole. It is in essence a classic depiction of a ruler, beginning with his ancestry and military skill, leading on to his physical appearance and family life, then to his public life, recreations and internal policies, and finally to examples of his munificence. However, in order to provide variety and relief, these elements are interleaved with a narrative of Kubilai’s wars against his uncle Nayan and the great set-piece descriptions of the Khan’s palace and the planned city of Taidu.48 As one would expect, literary influences attributable to Rustichello are particularly marked in these passages, the wars conforming to Western feudal conventions, while Taidu has much in common with the ideal cities of contemporary French literature. The barbaric splendour of Kubilai Khan’s palace, on the other hand, comes over remarkably well, especially considering the degree to which the fabulous palace was a favourite topos in Western literature; here Rustichello’s words succeed in conveying something of the deep visual impression which the court and its setting made on the young Venetian. The portrait of Kubilai himself, however, is that of an ideal monarch, serene, all-powerful and allwise, and no mention is made of his usurpation of the throne, the rebellions and defeats he suffered, or of his frequent drunkenness. Although Marco duly indicates the instruments of the Khan’s government such as the revenues, the paper currency, the roads and the postal system, he shows no insight into the realities of power within the empire, politics for him being a simple matter of loyalty to the Khan or of treason. The information contained in the Divisament could not but

191

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses present a challenge to the received ideas of any Western reader, but the temptation to read into it a deliberate critique of European ways should be held in check by two considerations. M arco’s relative ignorance of the West at the time of writing must be borne in mind. Also the obvious desire of the authors to please their readers makes the adoption of such an approach unlikely. M arco’s total identification with the interests of the Mongol rulers must be seen as a concomitant of his seventeen years in their service and not as a deliberate stance to provoke his Western audience. European rulers may have been moved to envy the wealth and discipline of the Mongol state, but the book gave no lead at all on how this desirable state could be emulated. Although the Divisament was much read in crusading circles, it offered no guidance on how the cause of Christendom might be furthered in the East; indeed, the fate of the only two Christian rulers given any prominence must have been profoundly discouraging. According to M arco, Prester John had been crushed by Chingis and his kingdom incorporated into the empire, while the Mongol Christian Nayan had been totally defeated by Kubilai; the stories of Kubilai’s sympathetic interest in Christianity which follow do little to make up for these painful examples of the failure of the Christian God to help his own.49 It was in the area of religion rather than politics that the Divisament carried a message which was at least potentially disturbing to Western convictions. The Polos were, among other things, go-betweens between Kubilai and the papacy and there is nothing to suggest that Marco ever compromised in the least his formal adherence to Catholic Christianity. However, to make him some kind of Western missionary, as Olschki does, is to go far beyond the evidence, which suggests, rather, that the Venetian’s understanding of Christianity shared the same superficiality which we find in his accounts of other religions. With regard to Moslems, the Divisament displays the same blind antipathy which is a commonplace of the Western chansons de geste; they are invariably ‘Saracens’ ‘who adore M ohammed’. The practices of Far Eastern religions, on the other hand, had a fascination for Marco, and many pages of the Divisament are devoted to them, yet the fundamental beliefs of their devotees interested him so little that he seems to have believed that they were all manifestations of a single faith whose founder was Sakyamuni Burkan (Buddha).50

192

95

96

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search of an audience It is asceticism, the common currency of medieval religions, which excites his admiration as well as his curiosity. His account of the Brahmins and Yogis whom he encountered in western India was by far the fullest and most sympathetic available to Western readers, and the Yogis’ defence of total nudity on the grounds of their complete innocence of sins of the flesh, and their way of proving the steadfastness of novices by exposing them to the blandishments of temple maidens, must have raised in the minds of reflective readers the disturbing possibility of virtuous lives lived without the aid of Christian grace.51 However, the easy, conversational tone of the Divisamenty which includes several spicy accounts of sexual mores calculated to appeal to the same tastes as were later to be served in full measure by the Decameron, must have militated against readers entertaining serious thoughts for long. It must be significant that a striking passage where the Khan defends Mongol tolerance in matters of religion and accuses Christ of pride in his jealous intolerance of other gods is found only in a contemporary compendium, having presumably failed to find or hold its place in any extant complete manuscript of the book.52 The Divisament has many glaring faults, particularly of organisation and language, yet it proved immediately and lastingly attractive to a wide and varied circle of readers, and so, by itself, it conjured into existence a genre of popular ethnology where virtually none had existed before. For all its potential as a guidebook or merchant handbook, there is absolutely no evidence that it was ever used as such, while for crusaders, among whom it certainly circulated, very little was of practical relevance and what little there was reduced almost to vanishing point as the Mongol empire disintegrated and ceased to count as a potential ally or enemy of the Christian West.53 As its relevance for possible action faded, it was inevitable that the Divisament should come to be esteemed more and more exclusively for its entertainment value; the emphasis on marvels is epitomised by the alternative titles of II Milione and Le Livre des Merveilles under which it circulated. Oriental travellers of the next generation, notably Jordan de Severae and Oderico da Pordenone, also tended to dwell on marvels, though they also recorded a considerable quantity of sound ethnographic fact. W ithout a sprinkling of wonders it is hard to see how the genre could have been kept alive.

193

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses The Divisament could not have achieved its immense success in pushing back the frontier of Western literature without the harmonious teamwork of Marco and Rustichello. Yet their decking out of ethnography in the colours of romance heightened the everpresent danger of regression into a world of fantasy untrammelled by any regard for truth. The Polos were honest reporters who were sometimes mistaken or misled but who did not deliberately set out to deceive their readers, except perhaps concerning the importance of the services they personally rendered to the Mongol rulers. But it needed only a bold charlatan with a gift for narrative, which Rustichello lacked, and an instinct for what the Western reader wanted to hear, which Marco did not have, to exploit the literary vein which they had tapped. Such a one was the mysterious Mandeville, who, though he drew on other sources for his material, undoubtedly owed his runaway popularity to the vogue first set by the Divisament. He was not the first imaginary intercontinental traveller but he was by far the most gifted and successful. His book was translated into all the major European languages and has survived in more than 300 manuscripts; its popularity continued far beyond the introduction of printing and the discovery of America. Yet it has still to be shown that any of it was based on personal observation; almost all the ethnographic data can be traced to books readily available in the West.54 He had a genius for adapting, moulding and bringing to life the dry bones of other men’s recorded experiences but his blatant disregard for truth in the interests of a good story place him among the romancers rather than the ethnographers. And since, although his identity remains in dispute, no one has claimed that he was an Italian, his relevance to the theme of this chapter would seem to be slight. He is, however, worth pursuing a little further for some light he throws on an aspect of Marco and ethnographic literature in general. Beside the vein of wonder and delight which gives the Travels their charm, there is a more serious, religious strain which, one assumes, must also have contributed to their popularity. In the first place, and in marked contrast to the Divisament, Mandeville’s book contains many expressions of conventional piety and indeed some in which one senses a kind of deep Christian feeling. But at the same time we find a certain detachment from the Western

194

97

98

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search o f an audience Church and its dogmas and recurrent criticisms of failures to live out Christian standards in the author’s own society in Europe. For example, his description of the Eastern Christians to be encountered in the Holy Land is clearly based on that of Jacques de Vitry, yet it is clean of all the dismissive contempt which disfigures his source and indeed Mandeville adds a temperate explanation of the scriptural grounds by which the Jacobites justify their practice of confession only to God, even though in the end he is not won over by their argument. Again, his account of Mohammed and Islam is mainly drawn from the eccentric William of Tripoli and faithfully reproduces his minimisation of the differences between the two creeds by which he bolsters his absurd claim that large numbers of Moslems are ripe for conversion to Christianity. Mandeville chooses to follow this up with a clearly invented conversation in which the sultan denounces to the author the sinful lives of European Christians as reported to him by his spies. If Mandeville’s conclusion: It seemed to me then a cause for great shame that Saracens, who have neither a correct faith nor a perfect law, should in this way reprove us for our failings, keeping their false law better than we do that of Jesus Christ

was in his time becoming something of a commonplace, it nevertheless gains considerable force from the setting in which it is so effectively placed. Once more, when Mandeville has finished recounting the virtuous ascetic life of the Brahmins, which he derived directly or indirectly from some version of the Alexander legend, he makes explicit the implied challenge to the Christian dogma of the necessity of grace. And even if these people do not have the articles of our faith, nevertheless because of their good faith that they have by nature and their good intent, God loves them well and is well pleased with their manner of life, as he was with Job . . .

Finally, in almost the last paragraph of his book, Mandeville asserts the common ground shared by Christians and Eastern ‘idolaters’, claiming that ‘there is no people which does not hold some articles of our faith; even if they are of divers beliefs and creeds, they have some good points of our truth’. W rapped as it was in the appealing package of the Travels, this challenging and

195

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses tolerant message was brought before the eyes of a Western reader who would otherwise have passed it by.55 The fate of a bona fide traveller with knowledge of the Orient who, though by no means an accomplished writer, tried to relate his experiences to topics of interest in the West serves to underline that even in the second half of the fourteenth century, when friars’ Eastern yarns had become sufficiently notorious to be satirised in the Decameron, there was still no great demand for authentic information about distant lands. Giovanni Marignolli was a Florentine Franciscan of good family who was sent on a papal mission to the Great Khan in 1338. His travels, accomplished over the next ten or eleven years, were comparable in extent with those of M arco Polo himself. Journeying through Central Asia, he reached Pekin in 1342, from where he returned, like Marco, by sea via India and Hormuz c. 1347-49, including a visit to the mysterious kingdom of Saba, probably to be identified with either Sumatra or Java, on the way. He was probably back in Europe by 1350 and certainly by 1353; again like Marco, he seems to have been in no hurry to put his experiences in writing. It was only in 13 5 5 -5 8 , when he reluctantly put together his universal and Bohemian chronicle at the behest of Charles IV, whose chaplain he had become, that Giovanni inserted his notices of Eastern travels where they are to be found, in Yule’s delightful phrase, embedded like unexpected fossils in a mudbank.56 This, however, is not quite fair to Giovanni, most of whose remarks bring his Eastern knowledge to bear on specific and often controversial points for the informed Western reader. As one would expect, Giovanni had much more book learning than Marco, though he could not match the Venetian’s universal curiosity and acute observation. He tried to reconcile his observations with a conventional world-view in which science was inextricably mixed with religion. Fundamental was his placing of the Earthly Paradise forty Italian miles off the coast of Ceylon, which made the southernmost point of India, Cape Comorin, the ‘Horn of the W orld’ where Marignolli set up a commemorative pillar which may have stood until the eighteenth century. He was neither the first nor the last learned writer to become hopelessly confused trying to trace the four rivers of Paradise; on the other hand, his suggestion that Adam and Eve wore leaves, not skins, and followed the vegetarian diet still favoured by the holy ascetics of

196

99

100

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search of an audience Ceylon was not unreasonable, given his premises. He tapped local traditions to confirm his idea that the Flood had not reached Ceylon, which fitted in with his identification of the aboriginal Veddahs with the children of Cain.57 On the other hand, his observation that by crossing the Gobi desert the Mongols had shown the torrid zone to be passable, thus disproving Aristotle, belonged to pure science, as perhaps did his well grounded arguments against the existence of monstrous races as opposed to occasional deformed individuals, in which he backed his own observations against the authority of St Augustine and many others.58 Like other Western Christians, Giovanni found much that was admirable in Eastern ascetics, comparing their practices favourably with those of European religious; his story of the Brahmin whom he converted, though it raises doubts in the modern reader, would, one imagines, have been immensely encouraging to those who had heard of these exemplary holy men through well-known Alexander legend. He sensibly urged that tithes should not be imposed on converts.59 Although he was confident enough in his Latin faith to engage in a knock-down disputation with the Patriarch at Constantinople on his way out, his experiences during his mission broadened his mind to the extent that he could admit that not only Jews, Tartars and Saracens but also many Eastern Christians regarded the Catholics as ‘the worst of idolaters’ with some justification, considering the horrendas sculpturas to be found in so many Latin shrines, like the tomb of St Adalbert in Prague!60 The ability, if only for a moment, to see their own Church as it appeared to outsiders was one thing shared by Marco Polo, Mandeville and Marignolli. In Marco, however, it was the natural and almost unconscious result of spending so many years in the polyglot and pluralist world of the Khan’s service. Marignolli seems to have had his eyes opened by his world-wide travels, Mandeville by reading at home. Although we cannot be sure they belonged to the same generation, it is probable that they wrote at about the same time and reflect a more sensitive, less blindly self-righteous attitude to the non-Latin world, brought on, we may suggest, by the traumas of the mid-fourteenth century. Both were writers who sought to make their accounts of exotic places and peoples relevant to the minds of their contemporaries. There the similarities end. Mandeville, the consummate narrator and

197

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses liar, found an audience and influenced the European view of the world for several centuries; Marignolli’s observations were buried apparently unnoticed in his bulky three-part chronicle until exhumed, some half-century after it had appeared in print, by an early twentieth-century scholar. It would be a long time before serious ethnography won an assured place among the genres of learned literature in Latin Europe. Ill

The emergence of merchant ethnography

The Ystoria Mongalorum and the Divisament dou Monde were destined to remain the two peaks of medieval ethnography, their pre-eminence unchallenged by anything written in the Christian West in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The relative stagnation of ethnography compared with the considerable advances in other kinds of writing during this period highlights the importance of external stimuli and opportunities for extra-European travel. The progressive break-up of the Mongol empire, culminating in the establishment of the xenophobic Ming dynasty in 1368, together with widespread political instability in the Moslem world, made for a return towards something like the restricted contacts between Christendom and other cultures which had obtained in the twelfth century. As we have seen from the pilgrim books, access to the fringes of Asia was not difficult in itself, but departures from the established trading and pilgrimage routes threatened incalculable dangers with little prospect of gain of any kind. The establishment of Turkish power in the Balkans from 1354 set the Christian frontier rolling slowly but inexorably back, turning Budapest and Vienna from springboards into bastions; the catastrophic decay of Constantinople, whose fate hung by a thread for more than half a century before its fall in 1453, made Western access to the Black Sea precarious long before its eventual closure to Christian shipping in the 1490s. Westward, it is true, the land and particularly the seas were brighter if only because the Moslem flank could be turned by a south-western extension of the shipping routes in the western Atlantic; however, this required major advances in navigational techniques which were not consolidated until well into the fifteenth century. In this hostile climate, it is remarkable that the tender growth of Western ethnography did not die away altogether. As it was, while

198

101

102

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search of an audience the older branches became dormant and disfigured by parasitic fantasies, the new shoots were few and dwarfish though full of promise for the future. It did not help that the main innovatory intellectual movement of the age, the reorientation of classical studies known as humanism, proved ambivalent in so far as ethnography was concerned. The chief interest of the period centres on the slow emergence of ethnographic accounts written by merchants, together with the development of the travel story as a central theme in ethnographic writing. The first significant step towards merchant ethnography since the dictation of the Divisament is represented by the brief monograph De Canaria, which covers no more than a couple of sides of the manuscript known as the Zibaldone Magliabechiano. Since the manuscript is acknowledged to be in the hand of Giovanni Boccaccio, and the quite well polished Latin of this particular item reveals the characteristic style of the man of letters, the immediate authorship of the De Canaria presents no problems. However, an introductory note claims that the text is based on certain letters from Florentine merchants resident in Seville dated 17 December 1341 which must have been in the vernacular; as all trace of the original letter form has been eliminated, it is clear that Boccaccio did more, and possibly considerably more, than produce a straightforward translation of the letters in front of him. Furthermore, examination shows that the De Canaria was made up from at least two elements, the basic one being a report on a voyage of exploration to the Canary Islands under the patronage of the King of Portugal, which was supplemented by answers to questions put by an unknown interrogator to one of the captains, a certain Niccoloso da Recco of Genoa. As no other account of this expedition has survived, the factual basis of the De Canaria is to all intents and purposes authorless, rather as if Rustichello had written the Divisament without revealing his dependence on the experiences of Marco Polo. Somewhere behind this intriguing little tract can be detected at least one mind of considerable originality and force, but it is impossible to say whose it was.61 As it stands, the De Canaria is made up of two intertwining themes. First there is a straightforward narrative of the voyage to the Canaries, touching on matters concerning navigation, topography, soil and climate, and actual and potential products such as would be of prime interest to the merchant community in Europe.

199

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses Secondly there is an enquiry into the material and social culture of the Canarians, which goes far beyond the practical needs of the explorers and potential settlers, showing a disciplined curiosity and a genuine interest in ethnography far exceeding that of any European writer since the time of Carpini and Rubruck. Despite the formidable handicap of complete ignorance of the Canarian language and the absence of interpreters, the ethnographer behind the De Canaria managed to convey a remarkably perceptive sketch of the Canarians and their customs. The data were collected in two stages: first through observation of the Canarians in their natural habitat and second through the careful study of the behaviour of four Canarian captives brought back to Europe, including experiments designed to test their knowledge and understanding. For example, the extreme simplicity of their material culture— most obviously exemplified by the near nudity of all categories of the population— was further explored by offering the captives money of gold and silver, spices, gold necklaces, closed vessels and swords, it being concluded from their reactions that the use and value of all these things were unknown to them. However, these primitive features did not lead the ethnographer to dismiss the Canarians as mere savages. He comments on their agility, courage and strength and deduces from their behaviour a ready intelligence and humane social customs, revealing himself as an Italian by his comment that they are more domestici than many Spaniards. Differences in rank are shown by deference and distinctions in clothing, mutual trust and lawfulness (fides et legalitas) by the way they divide food equally among themselves. When a landing party breaks into some Canarian houses, the excellent workmanship of the stone walls and wooden roofs is noted, as is also the plain domestic shrine with a single idol which was carried off back to Lisbon. Finally, in what seems like a last attempt to break the language barrier and learn something of the thoughtworld of an unknown people, the ethnographer recorded their words for numbers up to sixteen, which show, he remarks, that like us they place the units before the tens. Whoever was the creative force behind this precociously scientific report, it is impossible to give much of the credit to Boccaccio. Unless we believe him to have been capable of wholesale fabrication, it is hard to see how he can have done more than add some highlights to the account which came into his hands. His knowl-

200

103

104

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search of an audience edge of the literary tradition concerning the Fortunate Islands, for which he need have looked no further than Solinus and Isidore, may have led him to give the Canarians a slight air of primitive innocence harking back to the legendary Golden Age, though this is not so much as hinted at. M ore recognisably Boccaccian is the description of the idol as a male nude figure holding a ball, the pudenda decorously concealed by palm leaves for all the world like a Roman sculpture; a fascination with the material remains of antiquity can be seen in Boccaccio’s romance Filocolo. This and the faint echoes of the primeval world of the Ninfale Fiesolano link the De Canaria with the stage in Boccacio’s development, prior to the Black Death, when he was seeking exotic settings in which to locate his imaginative fictions. To this period belongs his interest in maps and the tales of travelling merchants which, as is well known, provided the background for so many of the stories in the Decameron,62 By the time he came to enter the De Canaria into the Zibaldone, probably around 1353, Boccaccio’s interests had taken a decisive turn away from imaginative literature in exotic or realistic settings towards an exclusive preoccupation with the world of literature, mainly classical, seen in its intellectual and geographical contexts. As a running notebook which he kept c. 1351 -5 3 , the Zibaldone Magliabechiano charts this shift of interest from novellistica to humanism; although the contents are very mixed, the bulk is made up of various compendia of world history, tracing in broad sweeps the rise and fall of empires down to around the time of Boccaccio’s birth. Of the three main authorities, Riccobaldo da Ferrara, Paolino M inorita and the Armenian Hayton, the last two had attempted to incorporate new information concerning Central Asia and the Mongols but there is not the slightest sign that this aspect was of any special interest to Boccaccio.63 Indeed, by the time he began his literary gazetteer De montibus, silvis, fontibus, etc. around 1355—57, Boccaccio had retreated so far from an interest in the modern world that he omitted any material derived from Paolino or Hayton as well as from Marco Polo, whose book he does not seem to have known. This is consistent with the avowed aim of the De montibus, which was to serve as a guide to literature rather than life, containing entries on the main topographical features mentioned in classical and Arthurian literature in the same way as his De Genealogia Deorum provided

201

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses a reader’s guide to classical mythology. As a result, the world portrayed in the De montibus is essentially that of Solinus or Dante, almost untouched by the thirteenth-century opening up of Asia. The only significant exception is the discussion of whether the Caspian is a gulf or a landlocked lake, which seems to betray the influence of Rubruck or of a map based on his testimony.64 Thus we find in Boccaccio’s later years the same withdrawal from the facts of contemporary geography and ethnography which is to be found in Petrarch’s Itinerarium Syriacum. Petrarch’s passing interest in the Canaries, which are mentioned once in his letters and once in the De vita solitaria, clearly arose from his reading about the Fortunate Islands rather than from any serious concern with contemporary exploration.65 Although Boccaccio is not known to have cited the De Canaria in his subsequent writings, except on a quite trivial point in his commentary on Dante’s Comedy, its inclusion in the Zibaldone ensured that it remained accessible at least to a small circle of Florentine scholars of the next generation when the leadership in classical studies passed to the chancellor Coluccio Salutati. While it raised no echo in the writings of Salutati himself, it made its mark on two of his satellites. It was quoted by Domenico Silvestri in his little-known De Insulis et earum Proprietatibus, written between c. 1385 and 1406 as a continuation of the De montibus,66 and by Domenico Bandino of Arezzo in his encyclopaedic Fons Memorabilium Universi, compiled between about 1374 and 1418.67 It can be no coincidence that these same two writers are almost unique among the scholars of their generation in quoting extensively from Marco Polo’s Divisament, showing that they regarded it as a work of science rather than romance. Thus, although sadly crowded out of the main track of humanist studies in this period, geography and ethnography managed to hang on at the fringes until they were briefly brought back to the centre by a series of chances which had nothing to do with the triumphant march of humanist studies and their professional practitioners in early fifteenth-century Italy. Nicolô de’ Conti was a Venetian of good family who set out from Damascus in 1414 in a search for wealth and adventure which took him not only to the spice-bearing coasts of India known to Europeans since the thirteenth century but far beyond, to Burma, Sumatra, Java and possibly even Borneo. No doubt,

202

105

106

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search of an audience like other merchant travellers of the period, he would have left no permanent record of all this had he not, on his return to Christendom by way of Cairo, been driven to feign his conversion to Islam in order to travel freely through the territories of Mameluke Egypt. To relieve this weight on his conscience he sought absolution from the Pope, who at the time of his return in 1439 was attending the General Council in Florence. Eugenius IV was a fellow Venetian with a strong interest in the East, and he imposed on Nicolô an unusually constructive penance: that he should dictate his experiences to a papal secretary who was none other than the humanist scholar Poggio Bracciolini. The subjectmatter thus forced on his attention aroused Poggio’s natural intelligence and curiosity to the extent that he took over Nicolo’s report to serve as the fourth book of his De Varietate Fortunae, published in 1447.68 We are thus faced with the now familiar problems of double authorship; like the partners in a commenda contract, there is a stans who stays at home and writes and a tractans who travels but who does not communicate with us direct. In this case, however, we are considerably helped by the way in which Poggio records his questions and the answers they elicit in a separate section, which allows some insight into his preoccupations and interests. Nicolo emerges as an observer with similar interests and abilities to those of Marco Polo. He is good at describing animals (elephants, rhinoceros, flying squirrels) and useful plants (mangoes and breadfruit). He seems to enjoy describing exotic social customs like the refined sexual pleasures of the Burmese or suttee, which he mentions more than once, but he shows no real understanding of oriental society or religion. Poggio, as befitted a humanist, tried to enliven the account by forging links with the world of antiquity. So we find an account of the capture of elephants which comes straight from Pliny, and the religious rites of the orientals are compared with those of the ancients. Poggio was also interested in the Brahmins, made respectable by their association with Alexander the Great, seeking with obvious self-interest to build them up into a sect of philosopher kings, able to foretell the future by geomancy. His questions are most constructive, however, when he gets out from under the weight of his classical preoccupations, as when he probes the oriental substitutes for the Mediterranean staples of bread and wine, elicits information

203

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses about ship construction and navigation, and records Nicolo’s recollections concerning oriental money, writing and measurements of time. Despite these flashes of insight, Nicolo’s report is notable mainly for the increased geographical data it brought to the West, while the ethnographic data are relatively thin and poor. Nevertheless, it seems to have aroused some interest among the reading public, at least twenty-eight manuscripts of the De Varietate having survived from the fifteenth century, of which thirteen are of Book IV alone.69 This suggests a greater interest in genuine travel literature than had been evident since the 1330s. By the mid-fifteenth century curiosity about the wider world was on the increase in the West, and not only in the studies of Western scholars. After decades of patient trial and experiment, the Portuguese had at last mastered the science of oceanic navigation and by sailing down the west coast of Africa had turned the left flank of the Islamic barrier which had barred European access to sub-Saharan Africa. In 1 4 4 1 -4 2 they reached Cape Verde and brought back their first cargoes of gold and slaves. The spotlight shifted from the east, where the disastrous defeat of the Crusade of Varna in 1444 finally sealed the fate of Constantinople. For a brief spell, while the Portuguese sailed the ships Italians wielded the pen. It was in West Africa that Italian merchant ethnography finally came of age. The letter which the Genoese Antonio Malfante sent home to his partner Giovanni M ariono from the Saharan oasis of Touat in 1447 seems to be the first surviving merchant letter containing an appreciable ethnographic element; it must have been unusual in its time, otherwise it is hard to see why it should have been copied into a Tuscan manuscript which also contains some letters of Cicero, the letter of Prester John and Poggio’s account of the travels of Nicolô de Conti. As is to be expected in a merchant’s letter, Antonio retails information about local products (nothing but dates) and trading conditions for the main items of merchandise: gold, salt, copper and grain. Also predictable are the lists of oases with their distances in days and the rumours of a great river, said to be the same as the one in Egypt, reflecting the age-old tradition of a connection between the Niger and the Nile. On the other hand, Antonio’s comment that as the only Christian in the area he excites a good deal of curiosity from the inhabitants

204

107

108

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search o f an audience shows a degree of self-awareness rarely set down in writing in this period, and it may have been this feeling of being a pioneer which prompted him to include brief remarks on some of the peoples he had seen which went beyond what would be of immediate practical use. His description of Touat as a settlement made up of eighteen castra (Pcompounds), each with a lord who protects residents and strangers, and his brief sketch of the white-skinned people he calls Philistines who keep their mouths covered at all times, do not amount to very much, but in their context they herald the beginning of a new era.70 M alfante’s letter can be seen as the curtain-raiser to Alvise Ca da M osto’s Navigationi, the first substantial travel story by a Western merchant containing more than immediately useful inform ation.71 Based on notes (memoriali) made during two voyages in the western Atlantic in 1455 and 1456, but not written up until 1463, the Navigationi contain a full but hardly technical account of the routes, winds, harbours, rivers and products encountered in Madeira, the Canaries and the African coast from Senegal to Guinea. Unlike previous writers, Alvise has no inhibitions in speaking of himself and his motives, which were gain and curiosity. ‘My journey inland,’ he tells us at one point, ‘was no less to see and learn new things than to receive my payment.’ Typical is his desire to eat elephant meat, which he found tough and tasteless, because he thought that no one of his city had done so before. We no longer have to guess at the writer’s reactions to new races of men, diverse languages, customs and faiths, for they are all made explicit. The sub-Saharan lands ‘can be called another world’ which Ca da Mosto seeks quite consciously to comprehend by imposing names, seeking interpreters, recording impressions. With Alvise consciousness of self brought with it a heightened consciousness of others. Unlike the travellers to the Orient, the European navigators of the Atlantic enjoyed an obvious superiority in wealth and technology over the peoples they discovered. This was to lead all too soon to the most brutal forms of aggression and exploitation. But in the 1450s the Portuguese were still only feeling their way, dependent on the goodwill of native chiefs. Ca da Mosto shows no sense of racial superiority and a remarkable ability to see himself and his companions through the eyes of the Africans, recording without condescension their amazement at

205

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses such things as sailing ships, cannon, candles and bagpipes. He suggests that the Saharan peoples are only able to comprehend the European caravels as some kind of bird or fish and are therefore utterly baffled by the mobility which they confer on the white men, who were already beginning to raid the coasts for slaves. Ca da M osto’s freedom from cultural arrogance may have had something to do with his lack of book learning, which made his ethnography unsystematic but shrewd and fresh, unclouded by the usual ethnocentric traditions of the West. His picture of the pagan Canarians is much less idyllic than that suggested by the De Canaria. The brutal warfare he reports may have been stirred up by European contact, but he is also uncharacteristically dismissive of Canarian religion, which he thought consisted of the worship of heavenly bodies and what he calls ‘nuove fantasie di idolatría’. It is likely that his attitudes were influenced by those of his informants, since he did not remain long enough on the islands to form an independent impression. His view of the desert peoples whom he calls Azanaghi is, by contrast, undoubtedly first-hand, though mainly taken up with matters relating to trade. The dislike he expresses of these people seems to have acted as a barrier to deeper understanding. No such problem impeded his observation of the West African negroes, whom he found more congenial, despite the delicate problems posed by establishing relations with peoples whose first direct European contacts were only five years old. His description of the land and its products expresses wonder and delight as well as the practical detail we have come to expect from merchant sources. Where Ca da Mosto shows his true mettle as an ethnographer is in the way he probes the foundations of African political systems. He could see that the power of the chiefs, which seemed so absolute, had to be maintained in a culture with a primitive economy without money or writing. Ceremonial and personal retinues were essential props but the real basis, he thought, was the family system whereby chiefs would plant out their wives in royal villages throughout their territories. The Venetian also sensed that religion was an important factor; the Mohammedanism of many of the chiefs does not seem to have repelled him and, although his belief that he could have converted the Senegalese king Buodomel to Christianity was almost certainly unfounded, his insight that the king could not change his religion without losing

206

109

110

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search of an audience his state shows a realism largely lacking in the thirteenth-century European observers of the Mongols. Ca da Mosto achieved in a few months a deeper understanding of West African society than Marco Polo gained of the Mongols over twenty years; moreover, he did not need the services of a Rustichello to set his views down in writing. With him we have reached the threshold of the ethnography of the great age of discovery. The pattern which has emerged from this survey of medieval ethnography shows many points of contrast with that of the pilgrim literature. In ethnography the secular achievement of the friars was much greater and came earlier, but it was followed not by gradual consolidation and development, but by a long spell c. 1350—1450 in which original observation lay in the doldrums, ended only by the slow and halting emergence of merchant writers at the very end of our period. Undoubtedly, changing circumstances outside Christendom had a lot to do with this; after the acute fears and hopes raised by the Mongols, the incentives and opportunities for cross-cultural contacts were much more closely restricted, particularly in the century after 1350. The proliferation of manuscripts, including those of the imaginative Mandeville, suggests that interest in ethnography may have been increasing during that time, particularly among the laity, so that Bracciolini and Ca da M osto did not need to struggle to find readers in the way that Marco Polo and Marignolli had done. In the broad context of the expansion of Western literacy this chapter has demonstrated the height of achievement attainable in exceptional circumstances by the scientific spirit of the thirteenth century in Carpini’s Ystoria Mongalorum, and the long gestation required before merchant writers in the vernacular were able to make their mark in an area where they would seem at first sight to have enjoyed every advantage. It is a salutary reminder that friars could be more open-minded and merchants more blinkered than one might expect. APPENDIX Bibliographical note Since this chapter was written a number of relevant publications have appeared, though they do not make necessary any significant modification of the author’s arguments. I have also mentioned some older works of importance, to which Hyde did not refer in his notes.

207

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses On Prester John, C. F. Beckingham, The Achievements o f Prester John , London, 1966, and ‘The quest for Prester John’, B.J.R.L., LXII, 1980, 291-310, both reprinted in his Between Islam and Christendom, London, 1983, are valuable discussions; and B. Hamilton, ‘Prester John and the Three Kings of Cologne’, in H. Mayr-Harting and R. I. Moore (eds.), Studies in Medieval History presented to R. H. C. Davis, London, 1985, is stimulating. An engagingly eccentric book, to be enjoyed rather than believed, is L. N. Gumilev, Searches for an Imaginary Kingdom: the Legend o f the Kingdom o f Prester John, Cambridge, 1987. There is a recent study of the Fifth Crusade: J. M. Powell, Anatomy o f a Crusade, 1213—1221, Philadelphia, 1986. An illuminating general account of medieval knowledge of and exploration in Asia (and elsewhere) may be found in J. R. S. Phillips, The Medieval Expansion o f Europe, Oxford, 1988. For a recent survey of the Mongols and their conquests, see D. O. Morgan, The Mongols, Oxford, 1986. The finest book on Chinggis (Genghis) Khan, P. Ratchnevsky, Cinggis Khan sein Leben und Wirken, Wiesbaden, 1983, has now been translated into English by T. N. Haining as Genghis Khan: his Life and Legacy, Oxford, 1991. There is now, for the first time, an outstanding biography in English of Chinggis’s grandson Qubilai: M. Rossabi, Khubilai Khan: his Life and Times, Berkeley, Cal., 1988. A good popular survey of the Mongol invasion of Europe is J. Chambers, The Devil's Horsemen: the Mongol Invasion o f Europe, 2nd edn, London, 1988, and interesting light is shed on the European reaction by P. Jackson, ‘The crusade against the Mongols (1241)’, Journal o f Ecclesiastical History, XLII, 1991, 1-18. The mysterious Englishman who turns up in the letter of Ivo of Narbonne is the subject of G. Ronay, The Tartar Khans Englishman, London, 1978, a book which has the melancholy distinction of being possibly the worst ever published on the Mongols— a title for which the competition is keen. G. G. Guzman has published three articles on Simon of Saint-Quentin: ‘Simon of Saint-Quentin and the Dominican mission to the Mongol Baiju: a reappraisal’, Speculum, XLVI, 1971, 232-49; ‘Simon of SaintQuentin as historian of the Mongols and Seljuk Turks’, Medievalia et Humanística, III, 1972, 155—78; ‘The encyclopedist Vincent of Beauvais and his Mongol extracts from John of Plano Carpini and Simon of SaintQuentin’, Speculum, XLIX, 1974, 287-306. The 1929 edition of Carpini, Rubruck and the other Franciscan travellers by A. van den Wyngaert, which was used by Hyde, remains in general standard; but van den Wyngaert’s text of Carpini has been superseded by that of E. Menestô in Giovanni di Pian di Carpini, Storia dei Mongoli, ed. P. Daffinà et al., Spoleto, 1989. This also contains an Italian translation by M. C. Lungarotti and other contributions of varying importance. The best

208

111

112

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search o f an audience English translation of Carpini, though largely unannotated, is in C. Dawson (ed.), The Mongol Mission, London, 1955, reprinted as Mission to Asia, New York, 1966, 1979. There is a new and extensively annotated translation of Rubruck: The Mission o f Friar William o f Rubruck: his Journey to the Court o f the Great Khan Môngke, 1253-1255, trans. P. Jackson, ed. P. Jackson and D. O. Morgan, London, Hakluyt Society, 1990. The editors would probably dissent from Hyde’s opinion of the relative merits of Carpini’s and Rubruck’s accounts. There is also a good French translation of Rubruck by C. and R. Kappler: Guillaume de Rubrouck, envoyé de saint Louis. Voyage dans Vempire mongol, Paris, 1985. P. Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo, 3 vols., Paris, 1959-73, is fundamental to the study of the best-known traveller in the Mongol empire. A convenient edition of an early English version of the most dubious of them, Sir John de Mandeville, is available in the World’s Classics series: Mandeville’s Travels, ed. M. C. Seymour, London, 1968. There is also a modern version in paperback: The Travels o f Sir John Mandeville, trans. C. W. R. D. Moseley, Harmondsworth, 1983. There is now a study of ‘Asia’s Marco Polo’, the one citizen of the Mongol empire who is known to have left a substantial account of his journeys in the opposite direction: M. Rossabi, Voyager from Xanadu: Rabban Sauma and the First Journey from China to the West, Tokyo and New York, 1992. D. O. Morgan Notes 1 See above, chapter six. 2 R. W. Southern, Western Views o f Islam in the Middle Ages, Cambridge, Mass., 1962; N. Daniel, Islam and the West: the Making o f an Image, Edinburgh, 1960; id., The Arabs and Medieval Europe, London and Beirut, 1975; id., Heroes and Saracens: an Interpretation o f the Chansons de Geste, Edinburgh, 1984; B. Z. Kedar, Crusade and Mission: European Approaches towards the Muslims, Princeton, N.J., 1984. For Ricoldo see U. Monneret de Villard, II Libro della peregrinazione nelle parti d’oriente di frate Ricoldo de Montecroce, Rome, 1948, and Daniel, Arabs and Medieval Europe, 215, 2 4 3-5 ; William of Tripoli, ‘De statu Saracenorum’, in H. G. Prutz, Kulturgeschichte der Kreuzzüge, Berlin, 1883, 573-98. 3 C. R. Beazley, The Dawn o f Modern Geography, 3 vols., London, 1897-1906, I, 243-73, a work which, since medieval ethnography has been regarded as a non-starter, provides some sort of introduction to the topic.

209

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses 4 G. Boas, Essays on Primitivism and Related Ideas in the Middle Ages, Baltimore, Md, 1948, a pioneering study with texts and commentaries; J. B. Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought, Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1981, exhaustive; Bruno Roy, Έη marge du monde connu— les races des monstres’, in G. H. Allard, Aspects de la marginalité au moyen-âge, Montreal, 1975, 71-80, short but stimulating. 5 The Cosmographia o f Bernardus Silvestris, New York, 1973, 76. 6 Honorius Augustodunensis, De Imagine Mundi, Migne, P.L., CLXXII, coll. 115—88, the seminal work of the early twelfth century, set the pattern by devoting about five times more space to cosmography than to descriptive geography; Gallia gets eleven lines, Britannia ten. For the vernacular tradition see C. V. Langlois, La Connaissance de la nature et du monde au moyen-âge, Paris, 1911, and C. Segre in H. R. Jauss, Grundriss der romanischen Literatur des Mittelalters, Heidelberg, 1970, VI, 141-2. 7 P. Toynbee, ‘Brunetto Latini’s obligations to Solinus’, Romania, XXIII, 1894, 62-77. 8 Cicero, De oratore, Book 2, 6 2 -3 ; Sallust, Bellum Iugurthinum, 17, but note the apologetic tone in which the author promises to dispose of the subject. 9 Giraldus Cambrensis, Topographia Hiberniae and Descriptio Kambriae, ed. J. F. Dimock, Opera, V, VI, R.S., London, 1867. For a penetrating study of Gerald and his background see R. Bartlett, Gerald o f Wales, 1146-1223, Oxford, 1982. 10 Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum, ed. G. Waitz, Script. Rer. Germ., 2, 153-90; Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum, ed. B. Schmeidler, Script. Rer. Germ., 32, Leipzig, 1909, 211-14. 11 G. Cary, The Medieval Alexander, Cambridge, 1956; R. Wittkower, ‘Marvels of the East’, /.W.C.7., V, 1942, 159-97; F. Zarncke, Der Priester Johannes, reprinted from Abhandlungen der Sachsischen Gesellschaft, 7th ser., VIII, 1879, Hildesheim and New York, 1980. 12 Gesta Hammaburgensis, 182-8; Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De Proprietatibus Rerum, Nuremburg, 1471, Book XV, s.v. Winlandia and Yslandia; the entry on Thule is, however, taken straight from Isidore and Bede. 13 ‘Vindelicos et Leuticos . . . ceterosque populos Suevis conterminos, qui usque hanc diem soli omnium mortalium paganos superstitiones anhelant; nam Saraceni et Turchi Deum creatorem colunt. . . ’ (Gesta Regum, ed. W. Stubbs, R.S., London, 1887-89, 230-1.) 14 This letter in various versions is found inter alia in Roger Wendover and Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. H. R. Luard, R.S.,

210

113

114

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search of an audience London, 1872-83, II, 399-400; Riccardo da San Germano, Chronica, ed. C A. Garufi, R.I.S., new ser., VII, ii, 1937, 5 6 -9 ; Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis, in Bongars, Gesta Dei per Francos, Hanover, 1611, II, 1125; Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Historiale, XXXI, 54. 15 Historia Orientalis, ed. Bongars, II, 1047-114; similar material but less complete in Oliverius de Colonia or Paderborn, Historia Damiatina, ed. H. Hoogeweg, Bibliotek des Litterarischen Vereins in Stuttgart, CII, 1894, 264—6. Cf. the remarks on Eastern sects in Jacques’s letter of 1216—17, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, Leyden, 1960, 8 3 -9 , 9 5 -7 . See A. D. von den Brincken, Die ‘Nationes Christianorum Orientalium5 in der Verstàndnis der Lateinischen Historiographie, Cologne, 1973. 16 J. Richard, La Papauté et les missions d’Orient au moyen-âge, Rome, 1977, does not entirely supersede G. Soranzo, Il papato, VEuropa cristiana e i Tartari, Milan, 1930. See also I. de Rachewiltz, Papal Envoys to the Great Khans, London, 1971. 17 G. A. Bezzola, Die Mongolen in abendlândischer Sicht, Berne, 1974, puts these accounts into perspective. The best edition (but see the bibliographical note on this chapter) of Carpini, Benedict and Rubruck is A. van den Wyngaert, Sinica Franciscana: Itinera et Relationes Fratrum Minorum j I, Florence, 1929, 27—332, and of the Tartar Relation, Hy storia Tartarorum, ed. A. Onnerfors, Berlin, 1967, though that of G. D. Painter in R. A. Skelton et al., The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation, New Haven, Conn., and London, 1965, 19-106, is perhaps more accessible. The relevant chapters from Vincent of Beauvais have been edited by J. Richard, Simon de St Quentin, Histoire des Tartares, Paris, 1965. 18 For a more positive view of William see F. Fernandez-Armesto, ‘Medieval ethnography’, Journal o f the Anthropology Society o f Oxford , XIII, 1982, 275-86. 19 Soranzo’s suggestion, II papato, 118, that there may have been a Dominican forgery aimed at keeping up with the Franciscans would seem to fit these chapters very well. 20 See below, chapter eight. 21 Ed. H. Dôrrie, ‘Drei Texte zur Geschichte der Ungarn und Mongolen’, Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Gottingen, Phil.-Hist. Klasse, 6, 1956, 165-82. For indispensable commentary see D. Sinor, ‘Un voyàgeur du XlIIe siècle: le dominicain Julien de Hongrie’, Bulletin o f the School o f Oriental and African Studies, XIV, 1952, 589-602. 22 Both letters in Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, VI, 7 5 -6 , and IV, 270—7; the former also in the Waverley Annals, ed. Luard, Annales Monasticae, R.S., London, 1864-69, II, 324. See J. J. Saunders, ‘Matthew Paris and the Mongols’, Essays in Medieval History presented to Bertie

211

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses Wilkinson, ed. T. A. Sandquist and M. R. Powicke, Toronto, 1969, 116-32. 23 Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, IV, 386-9, and the Burton Annals, Annales Monasticae, I, 271-5. The identity of Archbishop Peter remains obscure; for a plausible explanation see Richard, La Papauté et les missions, 67, η. 10. 24 Ystoria Mongalorum, ed. Wyngaert, 3 6-41; cf. Tartar Relation, ed. Painter, 3 9-42, and Speculum Historiale, XXIX, chapter 84. 25 Ystoria Mongalorum, 45—51; Speculum Historiale, XXIX, chapter 77. 26 Ystoria, 76-101; J. A. Boyle, T/;e Mongol World Empire, London, 1977, 7; M. Plezia, ‘Das taktische Kapitel der Neuentdeckten “Historia Tartarorum” Philologus, 115, 1971, 234-9. 27 In addition to Boyle, cited above, the judgement of George Sarton is unusually perceptive: ‘An account of Tartar manners and history which is excellent and indeed unsurpassed in medieval times,’ Introduction to the History o f Science, Washington, D.C., 1931, II, 640. 28 Chronica Fratris Jordani, ed. H. Boehmer, Collection d’Etudes et de Documents sur l’Histoire Religieuse et Littéraire du Moyen-âge, VI, Paris, 1908, 21-58 (for specific references see index), is, as supplemented by the editor’s notes, virtually the sole source for Carpini’s life before the Tartar mission. Additional notices in J. B. Freed, The Friars and German Society in the Thirteenth Century, Cambridge, Mass., 1977, 26 ff. (for specific references see index). It may be significant that Giovanni was relieved of his office in Saxony in 1239 at the same Chapter General where the notorious Brother Elias was deposed; Boehmer could find no further notices of him from that time until 1245. F. Risch, Johann de Plano Carpini, Leipzig, 1930, 39, claims that Giovanni is named as head of the Order in Cologne in a papal letter of 1241, but the rest of his account of Giovanni’s life does not inspire confidence. 29 Salimbene de Adam, Crónica, ed. G. Scalia, 2 vols., Bari, 1966, 297—8, 305—6. In view of the persistent tradition that Giovanni was born in 1182, the same year as St Francis, it is worth underlining that there is absolutely no evidence of his age, except for the presumption that he was a priest and therefore at least thirty years of age in 1221. This would put him in his later fifties at the time of his mission; that he was sixty-four when he set out for Karakorum is beyond belief. 30 ‘C’est le style d’un clerc habitué aux affaires et qui ne vise qu’à informer et à convaincre par les précédés éprouvés. . . ’ (Jean de Plan Carpin, Histoire des Mongols, trans. J. Becquet and L. Hambis, Paris, 1965, 12.) 31 To the seven manuscripts collated by van den Wyngaert (Cambridge, Vienna (two), London, Oxford, Paris and Turin) must be added

212

115

116

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search of an audience Wolfenbüttel, cited by van den Wyngaert in addenda, 577; Luxemburg, described by D. Sinor, ‘John of Plano Carpini’s return from the Mongols— new light from a Luxemburg manuscript’, Journal o f the Royal Asiatic Society, 1957,193-206, and the Lvov MS noted by P. Pelliot, Recherches sur les Chrétiens d’Asia Centrale et d’Extrème Orient, ed. J. Dauvillier and L. Hambis, Paris, 1973, 14. [Sixteen pre-sixteenth-century manuscripts are listed in the 1989 Spoleto edition (see Bibliographical note above), 100—4.] 32 Speculum Hist., XXIX, chapter 72. For doubts concerning the authenticity of these chapters see above, note 19. 33 Wyngaert, ed. cit., 158-9. 34 Skelton, The Vinland Map, cit. note 17 above, 2 -1 6 . 35 A. Scheler, ‘Notices et extraits de deux manuscrits français de la Bibliothèque royale de Turin’, Bibliophile Belge, 3rd ser., II, 1887, 1-33; C. Brunei, ‘David d’Ashby, auteur méconnu des Faits des Tartares’, Romania, LXXIX, 1958, 39-4 6 . For further light on David see G. Borghezio, ‘Un episodio delle relazioni tra la Santa Sede e i Mongoli’, Istituto di Studi Romani, Atti del IV Congresso Nazionale di Studi Romani, Rome, 1938, I, 319-31; J. Richard, ‘Le début des relations entre la Papauté et les Mongols de Perse’, Journal Asiatique, 273, 1949, 2 9 1 -7 , and B. Roberg, ‘Die Tartaren auf dem II Konzil von Lyon’, Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum, V, 1973, 241-302. 36 Fundamental to any study is L. F. Benedetto, II Milione, Florence, 1928, an edition of the earliest French text, with a full introduction; for the Toledo MS Z, not known to Benedetto, see Marco Polo, The Description o f the World, ed. A. C. Moule and P. Pelliot, 2 vols., London, 1938, reprinted New York, 1976. (For Fra Pepino see above, 185.) 37 See below, 2 02-4. 38 Benedetto, ed. cit., introduction, xiii—xxvii; id., ‘L’art de Marco Polo’, Mélanges Hoepffner, Paris, 1949, 313-26. 39 ‘Selonc que se treuve en la mapemondi des mariner de cel mer’; ‘Selonc que moistre le conpas e la scriture de sajes mariner que usent en cel mer de Ynde,’ (Milione, ed. cit., 176, 209.) For Mongol maps of the period see J. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Cambridge, 1954- , III, 554 and fig. 240. 40 Marco Polo's Asia, Berkeley and Los Angeles, Cal., 1960. 41 F. Borlandi, ‘Alie origini del libro di Marco Polo’, Studi in onore di A. Fanfani, ed. G. Barbieri, Milan, 1962, I, 105-47; A. Carile, ‘Territorio e ambiente nel “Devisement dou Monde” ’, Studi Veneziani, I, 1977, 13-36. 42 A note indicates that the author intended to treat the genre of mercantile handbooks elsewhere. 43 Compare Marco’s description of Kinsai and Zaitun, where he

213

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses speaks of the revenues due to the Khan, especially from the salt tax, which has led to the suggestion that he may have been employed as a collector (Milione, 152-3, 159), with passages on currencies and exchange rates (e.g. 115-16, 119, 123, 127), horse-trading (pp. 2 5 -6 , 180, 214), spice prices (pp. 143, 155) or piracy (pp. 200, 205), which seem to reflect the merchants’ point of view. 44 Milione, 5 0 -3 ; Olschki, Asia, 318-26. 45 Milione, 5 3 -7 . 46 ‘Dicono esservi il Dio sublime e celeste, al quai ogni giorno col turribolo et incenso non domandan altro, se non buon inteletto et sanità.’ (Milione, 54, n. (a), found in Ramusio’s version only.) This could be a sixteenth-century interpolation; the thurible and incense are suspicious. 47 Milione, 230-1. 48 Ibid., 66-100. 49 Milione, 7 0 -1 , n. (a), a discussion between the Khan and his advisers on the merits of Christianity, Judaism, Islam and idolatry in which the Khan concedes the moral superiority of Christianity but refuses to embrace the faith because of the wonder-working and worldly successes of the adherents of other religions. This passage would be valuable evidence if only one could be sure of its authenticity, but once again it is found in the Ramusian version only and sixteenth-century contamination cannot be ruled out. 50 Marco’s observations on Eastern religions are reviewed in Olschki, Asia, 211-98. 51 Milione, 189-92. 52 ‘Bene confitentur in Tartaria Christum dominum esse, tamen dicunt ipsum dominum superbum quare non vult esse cum aliis diis, sed vult esse dominus super omnes alios mundi.’ (Ibid., p. 14, n. (b).) The passage comes from the Imago Mundi of Jacopo d‘Aequi, Bibi. Ambrosiana, MS D. 526; see Benedetto, introduction, cxciii-cxcviii. 53 For Marco MSS see Benedetto, introduction, passim', of the many there described, none would seem to have been of unmistakably merchant provenance, while the preponderance of aristocratic owners is very marked, especially among the French versions. 54 G. F. Warner (ed.), The Buke o f John Maundeuill, Westminster, 1889, gives the French and English texts with notes on the sources which leave little room for any first-hand observation by Mandeville. Warner believed the true author to have been Jean de Bourgogne; for more recent attempts to vindicate Sir John see M. Letts, Sir John Mandeville: the Man and his Book, London, 1949, and J. W. Bennett, The Rediscovery o f Sir John Mandeville, New York, 1954. 55 The Buke, ed. Warner, 70, 146, 154. 56 Chronicon Boemorum, ed. J. Emler, Fontes Rerum Bohemicarum, Prague, 1882, III, 492-604; ethnographic passages only in Wyngaert,

214

117

118

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES Ethnographers in search of an audience 524-60. English translation with introduction and commentary in H. Yule, Cathay and the Way Thither, revised H. Cordier, Hakluyt Society, 2nd ser., 37, London, 1914, 175-269. Another version, with additional biographical details in Golubovich, Biblioteca bio-bibliografica, III, 35 0 9, and IV, 253-309. A different point of view is presented in A. D. von den Brincken, ‘Die Universal-historischen Vorstellungen des Johann von Marignola O.F.M. Der einzige mittelalterliche Weltchronist mit Fernost kenntnis’, Archiv fiir Kulturgeschichte, 49, 1967, 297-339. 57 Chronicon, ed. Emler, 497—8, 501, 505. 58 Ibid., 495, 508-9. 59 Ibid., 502 -5 , 509-10, 513. 60 Ibid., 495, 512. 61 The text of the De Canaria has been published by M. Pastore Stocchi, ‘II “De Canaria” boccaccesco e un locus deperditus nel “De Insulis” di Domenico Silvestri’, Rinascimento, X, 1959, 146-56; see also G. Padoan, ‘Petrarca, Boccaccio e la scoperta delle Canarie’, Italia Medioevale e Umanistica, VII, 1964, 263-77. 62 For Boccaccio’s interest in travel and maps see J. K. Hyde, ‘Real and imaginary journeys in the later Middle Ages’, B.J.R.L., LXV, 1982, 125—47 (particularly 134—9). A link with the theme of primitive innocence found in the chapter on Ceres in De Claris Mulieribus has been noted by Pastore Stocchi, ‘Il “De Canaria” ’, 152. 63 A. M. Costantini, ‘Studi sullo Zibaldone Magliabechiano’, Studi sul Boccaccio, VII, 1973, 21 -5 8; T. Hankey, ‘Riccobaldo of Ferrara, Boccaccio and Domenico Bandino’, J.W.C.I., XXI, 208-26. 64 There is no modern edition of De Montibus and the old editions are unpaginated. The Caspian is entered twice, once in the section de lacubus and again de diversis nominibus maris. For Boccaccio’s sources see M. Pastore Stocchi, Tradizione medievale e gusto umanistico nel ‘De Montibus3, Padua, 1963. 65 Epistolae Familiares, III, 1,3 ; De Vita Solitaria, ed. G. Martellotti, La letteratura italiana: storia e testi, VII, ed. G. Mattioli et al., Milan and Naples, 1955, 522-4. 66 P. G. Ricci, ‘Per una monografía su Domenico Silvestri’, and R. Weiss, ‘Nota per una monografía su Domenico Silvestri’, Annali della Scuola Normale di Pisa, XIX, 1950, 13-24, 199-201; Domenico Silvestri, ‘De Insulis et earum Proprietatibus’, ed. C. Pecoaro, Atti Accad. di Scienze, Lett, e Arti di Palermo, 4th ser., XIV, 1953-54, 1-319. 67 Unedited. See A. T. Hankey, ‘Domenico di Bandino of Arezzo, 1335-1418’, Italian Studies, XII, 1957, 110-28; eadem, ‘The library of Domenico di Bandino’, Rinascimento, VIII, 1957, 177-207, and ‘The successive revisions and surviving codices of the Fons Memorabilium Universi’, Rinascimento, XI, 1960, 3 -4 9. 68 No modern edition; reprint from the Paris edition of 1723 in

215

CONTEXTS AND GENRES Literacy and its uses Poggius Bracciolini, Opera Omnia, II, ed. R. Fubini, Turin, 1966. English translation in R. H. Major, India in the Fifteenth Century, Hakluyt Society, 1st ser., 22, London, 1857. 69 F. Surdich, in D.B.I., 22, 459. 70 Text with French translation, C. de la Roncière, La Découverte de VAfrique au moyen-âge, Cairo, 1925-27, 151-8; English translation ed. G. R. Crone, The Voyages o f Cadamosto, Hakluyt Society, 2nd ser., 80, London, 1937, 85-90. 71 G. B. Ramusio, Delie navigationi e viaggi, I, Venice, 1563, 9 6 111b (reprinted Amsterdam, 1970, and Turin, 1978).

216

119

4 Continental Drift: Prester John’s Progress through the Indies Bernard Hamilton

The legend of Prester John was shaped by the imagination of western Europeans involved in the crusading movement. As the focus of Muslim power in the near east shifted from Iraq to Egypt, so too did the Priest King’s centre of power shift from Asia to Africa. But this was not a straightforward process. It was complicated by political events in the world beyond Islam which the West did not know how to interpret, and equally by western scholars’ very imperfect grasp of world geography. I intend to explore these factors. Most educated people in twelfth-century western Europe believed that the Apostles had literally carried out the Lord’s command and preached the Gospel to all nations. They accepted as authentic the account of this given in the Apostolic History of the pseudo-Abdias, a work dating from the sixth century, which purported to have been written in the first century.1 There was thus a general expectation that Christians would be found in all parts of the world, and this was reinforced during the twelfth century when the Franks in the Crusader States met a wide variety of oriental Christians who had come on pilgrimage to the holy places.2 Some of them came from lands beyond Islam and claimed that there were independent Christian states in those regions. Among these visitors was Archbishop John of ‘India’ who in 1122 came to the court of Pope Calixtus II, where he gave a colourful account of the power and riches of the Christians who guarded the shrine of the Apostle Thomas. Reports of his visit were popular and circulated widely.3 The West was therefore already familiar with the concept of powerful Christian rulers

122

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 238

Prester John

living in distant parts of Asia before the first account of Prester John reached them. In 1145 Otto of Freising, while visiting the court of Pope Eugenius III, met Bishop Hugh of Jabala from the crusader principality of Antioch. Hugh told him how a Christian ruler, John King and Priest, whose realm was ‘in the extreme east beyond Persia and Armenia’, had attacked the easternmost lands of Islam a few years earlier.4 Hugh did not invent this information: it was based on the attack which the Qara-Khitai had made on the lands of Sultan Sanjar in 1141,5 but this unknown aggressor, who shared with the crusading West an hostility to Islam, was transmuted by the Catholic world into a powerful Christian ruler. Prester John symbolized the hopes which western Christians in the twelfth century derived from the certain knowledge that there were in the lands beyond Islam Christian communities who might potentially be useful allies, and those hopes were focused on the region where allies were most needed, the lands to the east of Mosul, whose Zengid rulers were threatening the Crusader States. It is no coincidence that Prester John first appeared in 1145, a few months after the holy city of Edessa had fallen to Zengi of Mosul. This was the first serious loss of territory which the Franks in the East had suffered, and so severe was the psychological shock to western Christendom that it led to the preaching of the Second Crusade.6 In the third quarter of the twelfth century a letter, purportedly written by Prester John to the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenus, began to circulate in western Europe. In it the Priest King gave more information about the extent of his kingdom: Our Magnificence rules in the Three Indies, and our land extends from the furthest India, in which the body of St. Thomas the Apostle is laid to rest, and stretches through the desert towards the sunrise, and returns westwards to the deserted [city of] Babylon beside the tower of Babel.7 Twelfth-century scholars found difficulty in integrating the information they received about Prester John and other eastern Christian rulers with what they knew about the rest of the world. Charles Buckingham has wisely said: It is, in fact, easy and often tempting to underestimate geographical knowledge in medieval Europe ... The blemish in so many medieval geographical works and even personal narratives of travel is that reliable information is mingled with the utterly fabulous.8 The world-picture of educated western people in the central Middle Ages in regard to those regions which they could not visit was derived partly from classical writers, some of whom were known only through the Latin encyclopaedists of late antiquity. These accounts were of varying quality, and

MYTHS the Mongols, and the Ten Lost Tribes 239 some of them, like the work of Solinus and the pseudo-Callisthenes’ Life of Alexander, were completely fabulous.9 The other chief sources of information were the Bible and the writings of the Church Fathers. The resulting composite picture was in some ways very confusing. The boundary between Asia and Africa was conventionally represented as running from just west of Alexandria due south to a point on the shore of the great ocean which encircled the three continents. Egypt and the lands immediately to the south of it were therefore part of Asia. 10 A typical western view of the world in the central Middle Ages is that given in the Otia Imperialia which the English scholar Gervase of Tilbury wrote for the Emperor Otto IV (+1218). On the authority of the pseudo-Abdias, Gervase supposed that there were three Indias: India Superior, evangelized by St. Bartholomew; India Inferior, evangelized by St. Thomas; and India Meridiana, ‘which borders on Ethiopia’, evangelized by St. Matthew. 11 The name Ethiopian was normally given by medieval writers to all the inhabitants of trans-Saharan Africa. As Wittkower has pointed out, the ancient Greeks had believed that there were two races of Ethiopians, for the Odyessy speaks of the Ethiopians as: A race divided, whom with sloping rays The rising and descending Sun surveys. 12 Gervase carried this further and divided them into three groups: the Ethiopians known as Hesperi lived in the far west, to the south of Morocco; those known as Garamantes lived in central Africa to the south of Tripolitania; while the third group of Ethiopians, the Indians, lived in the east of southern Africa. It is not clear whether in Gervase’s view the Indian Ethiopians were identical with the inhabitants of the Third India, India Meridiana, or merely lived in a country contiguous to theirs. 13 The Bible did not particularly inhibit geographical speculation. Since the earth is a globe, the cartographical convention, inspired by the prophet Ezekiel, 14 of placing Jerusalem at the centre of the earth is no more arbitrary than that of running the meridian through Greenwich. But Christian scholars had to reach decisions about the courses of the four rivers of Paradise. These were the Euphrates, the Hiddekel (invariably identified as the Tigris), the Pison (usually thought to be the Ganges), and the Gihon, of which Genesis says ‘the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia’, which was identified with the Nile . 15 It was universally agreed that, as scripture revealed, they all had a common source in the Earthly Paradise, and it was generally supposed that each of them then ran underground and emerged at a different place. 16 Gervase, like some earlier writers, believed that the Nile emerged in the far west, near mount Atlas, and that it therefore encompassed ‘the whole land of Ethiopia’ as Genesis stated, that is all three Ethiopias, by

123

124

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 240

Prester John

running to the south of the Sahara from west to east through trans-Saharan Africa, and that it then turned north into Nubia and entered Egypt. 17 Estimating the geographical locations of oriental rulers in a world in which there were three Indias and three Ethiopias and four rivers of Paradise, the courses of only two of which were even approximately known, was a challenge to conscientious scholars. Among them was a monk of Cluny who was writing a continuation of Richard of Poitiers’ Chronicle in c. 1172. He has this to say of the Christians of Asia: ... beyond the lands of the Medes and Persians and the Macedonians there are Christian kings ... For their fame indeed has reached us. They make war on the pagan peoples of those regions. The King of Avesguia and the King of the Nubians, as we have heard, do the same. 18 The kings who live ‘beyond the lands of the Medes and Persians’ is clearly a reference to the realm of Prester John, even though he is not named, since it repeats a phrase used by Otto of Freising, and the plural kings may refer to the seventy-two client rulers whom Prester John had modestly claimed in his Letter were subject to him . 19 Cerulli has suggested that the King of Avesguia should be identified with the King of Abasgia, that is Georgia.20 This is likely because the Bagratid state in the twelfth century was expanding southwards into the Saljuq sultanate of Baghdad, a fact of which the Franks in the northern Crusader States were certainly aware. 21 Nubia, in accordance with medieval continental divisions, was also accounted an Asiatic kingdom. The information about it which reached Cluny presumably resulted from the protectorate which King Amalric of Jerusalem had briefly established over Egypt in 1167-8, when a Frankish garrison and resident had been stationed in Cairo. 22 There were in fact two Sudanese Christian states at this time: Makuria, which extended from Aswan to the fifth cataract, and Aiwa which lay further to the south.23 The Cluny chronicler is less well-informed about Africa: We so seldom receive even scanty news about the Kings of Morocco ... Numidia, Libya, Cyrene and Ethiopia, that we are virtually in complete ignorance about what is happening there. The reason for this is that Christianity has been driven from those lands by the false teaching of Mahomet, and ... those people have cut themselves off from the Roman Empire and from the Christian faith. 24 By Ethiopia the writer almost certainly understood the whole of trans-Saharan Africa (the Three Ethiopias of Gervase of Tilbury). The West, of course knew that Christianity had once spread in this ill-defined region. The New Testament recorded the conversion of the treasurer of Queen Candace of

MYTHS the Mongols f and the Ten Lost Tribes 241 Ethiopia, 25 while the pseudo-Abdias related how St. Matthew had preached to the Ethiopians with great success, and concluded his account: ‘And so all the provinces of the Ethiopians are filled with Catholic churches until the present day’ . 26 In addition Rufinus had recorded the missionary work of Sts. Frumentius and Aedesius, traditionally considered the Apostles of Ethiopia. 27 But it did not follow from this that there were still large numbers of Christians in those regions more than a thousand years later, any more than there were in the once-Christian lands of north Africa. But the Cluny monk’s lack of information suggests that there was no established Ethiopian presence in the holy places while the Franks ruled Jerusalem in the twelfth century.28 Despite the problems of geographical reference, the evidence implies that in the twelfth century Prester John’s kingdom was perceived as being situated in the far East, ‘beyond the lands of the Medes and Persians’. Although in his Letter the Priest King claimed to rule the Three Indies, it seems clear from the text that his power was centred in eastern Asia. The westernmost boundary of his kingdom was the Tigris valley, where he had first made himself known in Hugh of Jabala’s account, but his dominions stretched indefinitely east ‘towards the rising of the sun’, and south to southern India where the Apostle Thomas was buried .29 As I have argued elsewhere, the Prester John legend gained momentum during the struggle between Frederick Barbarossa and Alexander III, but after that had ended went into abeyance for a time.30 The last twelfth-century reference to Prester John is the letter written to him by Alexander III in 1177 which is, in my view, a piece of anti-imperial polemic.31 When the army of the Crusader Kingdom was defeated by Saladin at Hattin in 1187 and Jerusalem was lost, no reference was made to Prester John in any western source. Indeed, the West seems to have been confident of its ability to regain the Holy Land without the help of any eastern Christian rulers, even the powerful King of Georgia. 32 It was only the failure of the combined armies of England, France and the Empire to win back Jerusalem during the Third Crusade which led future crusaders seriously to consider the possibility of forming alliances with eastern Christians. The first steps towards implementing this policy may be seen when in 1198, as part of the preparation for the western emperor’s crusade, the Armenian Church entered into union with Rome and Leo the Rupenid was crowned King of Cilicia by Henry VPs chancellor, Conrad of Hildesheim. 33 But it found its fullest expression at the time of the Fifth Crusade. As Jean Richard has pointed out, Innocent III at the start of his reign asked the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem for a report on the state of the Islamic world. This is preserved by James of Vitry, who incorporated it in the unfinished third section of his Historia Orientalis which deals with the Fifth Crusade. It is noteworthy that the patriarch only gave information about eastern

125

126

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 242

Prester John

Christians living either under Frankish or Aiyubid rule.34 But Innocent looked more widely for allies, and in 1211 asked the powerful King George IV of Georgia to extend his protection to the Crusader States.35 The Pope also established good relations with the Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria, Nicholas,36whose representative attended the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 at which the Fifth Crusade was planned.37 This connection did not prove as helpful as Innocent may have hoped it would be, because the Orthodox population of Egypt was minuscule and was found chiefly in Alexandria. The most powerful Christian leader there was the Coptic Patriarch, since he had jurisdiction not only over most of the Christians of Egypt, but also over the Copts of Nubia and the Church of Ethiopia. The more northerly Nubian kingdom, Makuria, was theoretically Orthodox in religion, and may during Innocent’s reign have been so in practice, even though it was often obedient to the Coptic Patriarch in the Middle Ages.38 For according to Robert of Clari, when the Fourth Crusade reached Constantinople in 1203 they found there the King of Nubia who had come to the city on pilgrimage during the reign of Alexius III and wished to go on to Rome and to St. James of Compostella. He is never mentioned again, so he may not have survived the sack of the city, but his presence there suggests that it would have been possible for the Pope to communicate with the Kings of Nubia about the forthcoming crusade had he wished to do so.39 Yet Innocent made no effort to establish such contact and it is possible that he was prejudiced by the report of Frederick Barbarossa’s ambassador, Burchard of Strasbourg, who had visited Saladin in Cairo in c. 1175: Egypt abounds in parrots which come from Nubia. Nubia is some twenty days’ journey distant from Cairo and is a Christian land which has a king, but its people are uncivilised and the country is wild.40 This information, which presumably comes from a Muslim source, did not make Nubia sound attractive as an ally to the Catholic West. In 1215 James of Vitry was appointed Bishop of Acre and instructed by Innocent to prepare the Latin East for the arrival of the Fifth Crusade.41 James tried to find out as much as he could about the oriental churches, and in the spring of 1217 wrote to friends at Paris: I believe that there are more Christians than Muslims living in Islamic countries. The Christians of the Orient, as far away as the land of Prester John, have many kings, who, when they hear that the crusade has arrived, will come to its aid and wage war on the Saracens. He also related how he had met a merchant who claimed to have visited the

MYTHS the Mongols, and the Ten Lost Tribes 243 realm of Prester John and who reported that the king and his subjects had recently been converted from Nestorianism to the Jacobite Church. 42 This letter shows that the Christian world had not forgotten Prester John, even though he did not occupy a very central place in western thought at that time.43 It is arguable that when the council of crusading leaders, of whom James of Vitry was one, decided in 1218 to implement the decision of the Fourth Lateran Council and attack Egypt, they saw this as part of a grand panChristian crusade in which the eastern Christian rulers would play a part. Their long stay in Egypt from 1218-1221 certainly gave them the opportunity to learn much more about African Christianity.44 At an early stage they made contact with the local Christian community in the area around Damietta. They were almost certainly Copts, but the crusader clergy could not establish any links with the Coptic hierarchy, partly because of the war, but also because no new patriarch had yet been appointed to succeed John VI who had died in 1216.45 Before the capture of Damietta in November 1219, the pope’s legate, Cardinal Pelagius, was shown a copy of the prophecy attributed to Hannan son of Agip. This was written in Arabic and seems to have been an update of the work of a ninth-century Nestorian scholar, Hunain Ibn Ishak. Because of its contents I am inclined to think that this copy had been produced by the Copts, although this is by no means certain. 46 The updated part gave a general account of the crusades, including the conquests of Saladin, and then related that an army would come from the West, led by a tall man with a lean face, which would conquer Damietta and occupy Egypt. It went on to tell how a king would then come from beyond the mountains and capture Damascus, while the King of the Abissi would invade Arabia, attack Mecca and scatter the bones of Mahomet.47 The name Abissi is only found in two manuscripts, but Paul Pelliot has collated all the known manuscripts of this text and has shown that Abissi is the correct reading and refers to the Abyssinians. It therefore relates to the true kingdom of Ethiopia, not to the imaginary Ethiopian kingdoms of transSaharan Africa.48 At the time of the Fifth Crusade Ethiopia was ruled by kings of the Zagwe dynasty who were beginning to consolidate their power, and after centuries of isolation the kingdom was making an impression once again on its Islamic neighbours.49 Saladin is said to have given the Ethiopians a chapel in the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem after he captured the city. 50 If this tradition is true, it would indicate Saladin’s awareness of the importance of Ethiopia, and that may have resulted from his overlordship of the Yemen as much as from his role as protector of the Coptic Church. In 1219 Ethiopia was ruled by King Lalibala who was chiefly responsible for creating an African Zion, consisting of replicas of the chief sanctuaries of Jerusalem in the form of great churches hewn from the living rock .51 An

127

128

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 244

Prester John

indication of the impression which Ethiopian power was making on all the peoples living around the Red Sea is afforded by the German pilgrim Thietmar, who visited Sinai at about the time that the Fifth Crusade was in Egypt. He describes how from the top of the mountain: I saw a certain land beyond Egypt whose inhabitants are called Yssini. It is completely Christian ... It is their belief that they could reach Cairo in a short time and in such numbers that if each of them carried away one stone not a single stone of Cairo would remain. And these Christians always fight the Egyptians and the Saracens wherever they can.52 The reference in the Prophecy of Hannan son of Agip to the King of the Abissi must have seemed self-evident to the eastern Christians who had presumably written that part of it. King Lalibala would attack Arabia and march on Mecca, for that was what his predecessor, the Christian King of Axum, had done in the sixth century, a fact alluded to in the Koran.53 The legate took the prophecy very seriously, for he identified himself as the tall man with the lean face: he had a Latin translation made which he sent to Western Europe where it was widely circulated.54 But the name Abissi meant nothing to Catholic Christians. When the Prophecy was copied in the West, some scribes thought that the term referred to the Devil, the lord of the Abyss; while one copyist conjectured, a trifle wildly, that Abissi might be a misreading for Calabria and thus relate to Frederick II king of Sicily who had indeed taken the cross.55 Even Oliver of Paderborn, who was present in Egypt, thought that the passage referred to a ‘certain King of the Christian Nubians’, and although this was not formally incorrect, it showed no understanding of the extent and importance of the Ethiopian kingdom.56 Yet although there was general uncertainty about the identity of the King of the Abissi, in all other ways the Prophecy seemed authentic. Damietta fell in 1219 as it had foretold,57 and in 1220 George IV of Georgia wrote to the crusader leaders undertaking to mount an attack on the Aiyubids in northern Syria, thereby fulfilling the prophecy that help would come from a king from beyond the mountains.58 It is perhaps significant that no contemporary thought that the king from beyond the mountains might be Prester John.59 The crusader leadership does not seem to have thought at all seriously about the Priest King until a message from Bohemond IV of Antioch reached James of Vitry at Damietta in the early months of 1221. The prince reported how spice merchants coming from the East had brought him a written account of the deeds of David, King of the Indies, who was commonly called Prester John, but who in fact was the Priest King’s great-grandson. He sent a copy of the Arabic text to James who had a Latin translation made. Only this Latin version has been preserved and it

MYTHS the Mongols, and the Ten Lost Tribes 245 may contain glosses added by the translator. James considered this report so important that he immediately sent copies to Pope Honorius III, Leopold Duke of Austria, the Chancellor of the University of Paris and various of his friends. 60 This Relatio de Davide told how David had attacked the Great King of Persia and captured Bukhara, Samarqand, Ghazna, Khurasan and all the former lands of Sultan Sanjar. As Jean Richard has shown, this work is an early and independent account of the rise of the Mongol Empire in western Asia, ending with the campaign of Chinggis Khan and the Mongol horde against the Khwarazm Shah in the years 1219-21. Richard surmises that it was not written for a Frankish audience, although some additions may have been made to the original text for the benefit of Prince Bohemond, and he also notes that since we only know the Relatio in the Latin translation made for James of Vitry, this text may contain glosses added by the translator.61 A passage in the Relatio de Davide should have given James of Vitry pause for thought, since it described how David had defeated a Georgian army because ‘although they were Christians they had been confederate with the Saracens’ . 62 For George IV, the Resplendent, had corresponded with Innocent III and pledged himself to support the Fifth Crusade by attacking the Aiyubids from the north . 63 That part of the Relatio was true. The Mongols had invaded Georgia in 1220, and although they did not occupy the country at that stage, inflicted such a crushing defeat on Georgian forces that the latter were no longer in a position to aid the crusaders. 64 James may have disregarded this passage in the Relatio because he received what he had every reason to suppose was reliable confirmation of the document as a whole. The Sultan of Egypt and sent a group of Frankish prisoners-of-war to the Caliph of Baghdad as evidence that he had a serious war on his hands and could not second troops to defend the eastern frontiers of Islam against the Mongols. The Caliph presented those prisoners to Chinggis Khan, hoping perhaps to impress on him that his vassals were powerful enough to defeat great western armies. However, if that was his intention his ploy was used against him, for Chinggis Khan, realising that the Franks were fighting the Muslims just as he was, sent the prisoners under safe-conduct to Antioch, from where they came to rejoin the crusade at Damietta. 65 Since, because of language problems, they can only have had a very imperfect idea of who their benefactor had been, it seemed reasonable to the crusader leadership to assume that he was indeed King David, commonly called Prester John, as the Relatio claimed. Moreover King David ruled over the same area as Prester John was said to have done by Otto of Freising, ‘the extreme East beyond the lands of Armenia and Persia’. James of Vitry’s quite logical misconception about him was compounded by the eschatological fervour of Cardinal Pelagius. The Eastern Christians in Damietta were evidently encouraged by the

129

130

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 246

Prester John

enthusiasm with which the legate had responded to the Prophecy of Hannan son of Agip, and in 1221 they presented him with another prophecy written in Arabic, The Book of Clement. This purported to have been written by St. Clement of Rome and to record prophecies made by St. Peter himself.66 It is an Apocalypse of Peter, an ancient apocryphal book, which could be regularly updated: although the text used by Pelagius has not been preserved, Pelliot has drawn attention to two thirteenth-century recensions of the Apocalypse which are closely related to it.67 The legate was impressed by this work, which apparently dated from the apostolic age, and commissioned a translation. While confirming in part what the earlier prophecy had foretold, the Book of Clement went further: the fall of Damietta would mark the beginning of the total collapse of Islam, which would be completed by the arrival of two kings, one from the East and the other from the West, who would meet in Jerusalem in a year when Easter fell on April 3rd.68 In the legate’s view this prophecy merited treating as a top priority. Damietta had fallen; and the King from the West was clearly the Emperor Frederick II whose arrival at Damietta was imminently expected.69 The King from the East was equally clearly King David, about whom James of Vitry had just received such encouraging news. Moreover, Easter would fall on 3 April in 1222 and then not for another eleven years.70 The logic of this seemed inescapable to the cardinal: if Jerusalem was to be restored to Christian rule by Easter 1223, then the crusade should not hesitate to play its part in bringing this about by marching on Cairo immediately. Pelagius therefore assembled the army and either had the Book of Clement read to them in translation, or else, as Pelliot suggests, had a sermon preached to them about the prophecy.71 In either case, he persuaded the crusade to set out for the south on 17 July 1221. His decision to ignore the timing of the Nile floods led to the surrender of the army to the Sultan of Egypt a few weeks later.72 The Book of Clement had proved a false guide. Neither the King from the West, Frederick II, nor the King from the East, King David alias Chinggis Khan, came to Jerusalem in 1223 when Easter fell on April 3rd. Indeed in 1222 Chinggis Khan withdrew his army from Khwarazm and returned to Mongolia, leaving the mystery of Prester John unresolved.73 But this did not in any way diminish western belief in the existence of Prester John. Chinggis Khan’s attack on eastern Islam in 1219-22 had really occurred and had, as the leaders of the Fifth Crusade were aware, affected the policies of the Aiyubids.74 Since the crusaders believed that Chinggis Khan was King David, the possibility of an alliance with Eastern Christians against Islam became even more attractive than it had previously been. Moreover, the long stay of the Fifth Crusade in Egypt had made the Catholic authorities more aware of the strength of Coptic Christianity.

MYTHS the Mongols y and the Ten Lost Tribes 247 Two of the senior clergy on the Fifth Crusade, Oliver of Paderbom and James of Vitry, both of whom were to become cardinals, later wrote systematic accounts of what they had been able to discover about oriental Christians. They considered this relevant to the planning of future crusades. When Oliver drafted the final part of his history of the Fifth Crusade at some time before his death in 1228, he included a long excursus about the varieties of eastern Christianity which makes up about a tenth of the entire book.75 This includes the following passage, almost certainly based on information supplied by the Egyptian Copts: Beyond Leemannia, Ethiopia holds very broad lands and has an innumerable Christian population, partly under Christian kings and partly under the rule of the Saracens. Here are the Nubians who are joined in the sacrament of the altar and in other ... divine offices [to the Jacobite Church] . 76 Ethiopia is correctly located, since Leemannia is the Yemen,77 but Oliver is unable to distinguish it clearly from the Sudanese Christian kingdoms. James of Vitry, Bishop of Acre, who lived in the Latin East until 1228,78 obtained a clearer picture, presumably from talking with Jacobites in the Crusader States, which he inserted in his Historia Orientalis: Some [Jacobites] live among the Saracens, but others live in their own region, without contact with the infidel; that is to say, in Nubia, which shares a frontier with Egypt, and in a great part of Ethiopia and all the regions as far as India. This area contains more than forty kingdoms, so they say . . . 79 In this passage James uses the term India to mean the Third India, which is what we should call the Horn of Africa. It should be noted that he does not attempt to identify these extensive Christian realms with the Empire of Prester John. On the contrary, as a result of Chinggis Khan’s campaigns, James had no hesitation in placing Prester John’s kingdom in the East and in stating that he was a Nestorian: There are other nations ... in the greater part of India, who are called Nestorians ... specially those who live in the land of the most powerful prince whom the common people call Prester John. They are all Nestorians and so is their king. 80 The identification which the leaders of the Fifth Crusade had made between the armies of Chinggis Khan and those of Prester John was shown to be untenable when in 1240-2 the Mongol general Batu conducted his Great Raid on Catholic Europe. 81 This did not prove that Prester John did not exist, it

131

132

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 248

Prester John

merely showed that he was not the Great Khan of the Mongols, and many of the western envoys who went on diplomatic and fact-finding missions to the court of the Great Khans, and many of the merchants and missionaries who followed them, were also concerned to find the Priest King and were certain that they were looking for him in the right direction. John of Piano Carpini, Innocent IV’s envoy to the Great Khan Güyük in 1246-7, reported that one of Chinggis Khan’s sons had conquered Lesser India, and had then attacked Prester John’s realm of Greater India to the south, but had been driven back by the Prester’s use of Greek fire.82 In his view, therefore, Prester John was still ruling in the Second India, which had not yet been explored by travellers from the West. This was a minority opinion. William of Rubruck, the Dominican envoy of St. Louis, who visited the court of the Great Khan Mongke at Karakorum in 1253-4, rightly concluded that there had been two independent Christian tribes in the steppes of Asia before Chinggis Khan’s day, the Naimans and the Keraits. He inferred that Prester John had been the Khan of the Naimans and that his brother, Une Khan, had been ruler of the Keraits, and that Chinggis Khan, having initially been subject to Une Khan, had subsequently annexed all the lands of the two brothers. William has this to say of the Prester John of Asia: [he was] a mighty herdsman and the ruler over a people called the Naiman, who were Nestorian Christians ... The Nestorians called him King John, and only a tenth of what they said about him was true. For this is the way with the Nestorians who come from these parts: they create big rumours out of nothing.83 His opinion was shared by many later travellers from the West to the Mongol Empire with this modification, that the Khan of the Naimans was forgotten, and Prester John was identified exclusively with Une Khan, ruler of the Keraits (Une being a Mongol form of Wang, the Chinese title meaning universal, bestowed on the Kerait Khan as an honorific).84 Marco Polo, who lived in the Empire of Kublai Khan for almost twenty years, from c. 1273-91, told how Chinggis Khan had once been subject to Une Khan, or Prester John, but had made war on him in c. 1200: ‘Prester John was killed in that battle and from that day forward loses all his land, while Chingis Kan (sic) ... goes conquering it always and making it subject to his rule.’85 Marco claimed to have met a descendant of Une Khan, George, King of the Ônggüts, a tribe who lived on the edge of the Gobi Desert to the west of Canbalik, or Peking, and were subject to the Mongol Great Khan.86 Although some scholars have doubted whether Marco Polo really visited China at all, and have sought to prove that his work is a pastiche of information garnered from travellers who had,87 the existence of King George of the Ônggüts is beyond dispute. John of Monte Corvino, a Franciscan missionary who reached China in c. 1294 and

MYTHS the Mongols, and the Ten Lost Tribes 249 later became first Catholic Archbishop of Peking, described in a letter how: A certain King [George] ... of the sect of the Nestorians, who was of the family of that great king who was called Prester John of India, attached himself to me in the first year that I came here, and was converted by me to ... the Catholic faith. He received minor orders and served, wearing the sacred vestments, when I celebrated Mass. 88 Thus in the view of some well-informed people the vast dominions of John King and Priest had by the end of the thirteenth century been reduced to the small nomad realm of George King and Acolyte. Friar Odoric of Pordenone, who travelled in the Mongol Empire of China in the 1320s, located Prester John in roughly the same area: a Christian ruler living some fifty days’ journey to the west of Cathay, though, he adds, ‘not one hundredth part is true of what is told of him as if it were undeniable’.S9 He is the last writer to locate Prester John in Asia, apart from armchair travellers like Sir John Mandeville, who based themselves on earlier written sources. 90 In his letter to the Emperor Manuel Prester John had claimed that he ruled in the Three Indies. He was clearly not to be found in the First India, much of which now formed part of the Mongol Empire, but the Second India, which comprised the southern part of the Indian subcontinent, was not under Mongol rule, and it was thus possible to suppose, as John of Piano Carpini had done, that the Priest King was still ruling there. The creation of the Mongol Empire, stretching from southern Russia to China and south to the Persian Gulf, made it possible for western Christians for the first time since the rise of Islam to journey freely in further Asia, and to visit the Second India. Marco Polo, who travelled home by the sea-route from China to Persia in 1290-1, visited south India and saw the tomb of St. Thomas, which in his Letter of c.1165 Prester John had claimed was the chief shrine of his Empire. 91 Marco agreed that the Apostle’s relics had thaumaturgie properties, but in all other ways the shrine lacked the splendour which Prester John, and before him Archbishop John of India, had claimed for it. There are no men there at all and few merchants, nor do merchants come there, because there is no merchandise that they could take away from i t ... the place is solitary and much out of the way ... yet ... out of devotion for the holy body many Christians and also many Saracens come there on pilgrimage. 92 Catholic missionaries who visited South India a generation later and were able to explore it more fully than Marco Polo had done found Nestorian communities on the Malabar coast but no great Christian rulers. 93 None of the travellers mentioned even the possibility that this might be the kingdom of Prester John.

133

134

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 250

Prester John

There remained the Third India, which would now be called the Horn of Africa. During the last quarter of the thirteenth century a strong Christian power emerged there. In 1270 there was a change of dynasty in Ethiopia and the new rulers emphasized their legitimacy by styling themselves Solomonic. Their founder, the Emperor Yekuno-Amlak (1270-85), began to push southwards into the Muslim sultanate of Shoa and to seek to gain control over the chief trade routes into the Horn.94 Marco Polo, who gathered information about the lands bordering on the Indian Ocean during Yekuno-Amlak’s reign, knew something of this. He speaks of ‘the great province of Abyssinia which is Middle India’ and of the war waged by its Christian ruler against the Sultan of Aden.95 But he made no attempt to identify the emergent Christian power with that of Prester John, traditional ruler of the Third India. One reason for this may have been that because Polo and other western travellers had first-hand knowledge of the Indian Ocean they were aware how remote the Third India was from the First and Second Indias. Even in the twelfth century when the Prester John legend first developed some people in the West had known this. Between 1116-38 Plato of Tivoli translated the astronomical tables of al-Battani into Latin, and among the information these gave was the fact that the Indian Ocean ‘extends from the land of the negroes to the extreme limits of India, a distance of 8,000 miles’.96 Plato’s translation may not have been widely known at the time, but by the fourteenth century two other Latin translations had been made of the work and it had become more accessible to scholars.97 After the Mongols had established themselves in Persia western knowledge of the Indian Ocean ceased to be entirely theoretical: western people could travel there and thus form some idea of the distance separating southern India from the Horn of Africa. It must therefore have been evident to scholars in the fourteenth century, as it may not in most cases have been in the twelfth, that the Third India was very remote from the other two, and that it would be fanciful to regard them as parts of a single kingdom. Marco Polo and his contemporaries had stopped looking for the Priest King. They seemed satisfied with the explanation given by visitors to the court of the Great Khan, that Prester John had once ruled in Mongolia but had long been dead. Indeed, in the late thirteenth century there seemed no need for Prester John any more. The Great Khans of the Mongols were not Christian, but they extended complete toleration to Christians, while many of their leaders had Nestorian wives or mothers.98 The Great Khan Kublai had a Christian mother and encouraged Western Christians to enter his service, while his successors allowed a Catholic hierarchy to be established in China.99 Kublai’s nephew Abaqa, Il-Khan of Persia, was equally friendly to the West: Latin missionaries worked freely in his dominions.100 There seemed a real possibility that parts of the Mongol empire might be converted to the Catholic faith, and,

MYTHS the Mongols, and the Ten Lost Tribes 251 moreover, it was also possible for Western missionaries to travel freely from Mongol territory to the lands of southern Asia and to work there . 101 In these circumstances, when Islam appeared weak, the West did not feel in need of reassurance and no attempt was made to revive a belief in Prester John. But this Catholic optimism faded as the thirteenth century drew to a close. The last crusader outposts on the Syrian mainland fell to the Mamluks in 1291, and then in 1295 Ghazan, the new Il-Khan of Persia, embraced Islam . 102 Although this did not in itself bring the Mongol-Christian alliance to an end, and although Catholic missions continued to work in the Il-Khanate, 103 this did reduce the likelihood of Persia’s becoming a Catholic country. It was against this background of Islamic revival that belief in Prester John also began to revive. The stimulus, as Charles Beckingham has shown, was an Ethiopian embassy which reached the West in c.l310.1(* Ethiopia needed allies in its fight against the Islamic powers, and King Wedem Ra’ad (12991314) sent an embassy of thirty Ethiopians to ‘the King of the Spains’. I would suggest that this title may refer to James II, King of Aragon. The Ethiopians would have learned about Europe from the Egyptian Copts, and from an Egyptian point of view James II would have seemed one of the most important Christian rulers at that time, for he controlled Majorca and Sicily, and Catalan merchants traded regularly in the ports of Egypt. 105 The Ethiopians came, we are told, to offer the king aid against the infidels. This can only mean that they were proposing an alliance against the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt. Our information about this delegation is limited: they went to Avignon and had an audience with Pope Clement V, and then went to take ship from Genoa, where they were held up for many days by bad weather. Giovanni da Carignano, the Rector of St. Mark’s church there, talked to them about their country, but tantalizingly we only have a brief résumé of his report, contained in a collection of chronicles published in Venice in 1483. We cannot therefore be certain whether he identified the King of Ethiopia with Prester John or whether that was a gloss added by his fifteenth-century editor. 106 Wedem Ra’ad’s successor, Amda-Sion (1314-44), embarked on a highly successful programme of conquest. By 1332 he had secured direct control over the termini of the chief trade routes in the Horn and, because of the increased wealth which this gave him, was able to impose his suzerainty over the seven Islamic princes of the Horn of Africa, although not, it would appear, over the ports. 107 The Abuna Jacob, head of the Ethiopian Church, undertook a policy of evangelization in the newly conquered provinces, founding monasteries and building churches there. 108 Amda-Sion made a great impression on the Muslim world: news of his victories travelled along the trade routes of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean and, of course, grew in the telling. A contemporary Arab historian, al-Umari, wrote of him: ‘It is said

135

136

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 252

Prester John

that he has ninety-nine kings under him and that he makes up the hundred’.109 Western travellers still had access to the Indian Ocean at this time, and were therefore in a general sense aware of these developments. Whether or not they considered that Amda-Sion was Prester John, some of them were in no doubt about the value of an alliance with this emergent Christian power. Notable among them was the Dominican William Adam, author of the treatise De modo Saracenos extirpandi. In 1322 he became Archbishop of Sultaniyah, head of the Catholic Church in Persia,110but before that he had visited Socotra off the coast of Arabia, which he discovered had an entirely Christian population, and he saw what a useful naval base it would be, if western shipwrights were willing to go to the Persian Gulf and construct a small fleet. Using Socotra as a base such a fleet could seize Aden and blockade the Red Sea, thereby causing great economic damage to Mamluk Egypt. He stayed in Socotra for nine months and wanted to travel on with some of his brethren to preach in Ethiopia. He knew where it was - beyond a range of mountains on the west shore of the Red Sea -,111 but does not tell us whether he succeeded in reaching it, and Charles Beckingham is wise in cautioning us that though he may have done so we cannot assume that he did.112 Shortly after this, in 1324, another Dominican missionary, Jordan Catalani of Sévérac, Catholic Bishop of Quilon in South India, wrote a Book of Marvels, a travel book about Asia. Book IV is concerned with India the Less, or North India, Book V with India the Greater, or South India, and Book VI with the mysterious Third India. From various indications which he gives it seems clear that Jordan used this term to refer to the Horn of Africa. He admits that he had not been there himself, but had heard of its many marvels ‘from trustworthy persons’. It was, indeed, a remarkable country: There be dragons in the greatest abundance, which carry on their heads the lustrous stones which be called carbuncles ... But all the regions round about watch for the time of the dragons and when they see that one has fallen, they wait for seventy days and then go down and find the bare bones of the dragon, and take the carbuncle which is rooted in the top of his head, and carry it to the emperor of the Aethiopians, whom you call Prester John.113 Jordan is the first Western writer who is known for certain to have identified Prester John with the King of Ethiopia.114 The identification would have seemed clear to this well-educated, if surprisingly credulous, Dominican: the King of Ethiopia fulfilled the essential criteria; he was a Christian; he lived in the Third India; and just as in the thirteenth century Prester John had been called King David, so this king claimed descent from David’s son, Solomon.115 Jordan’s view soon gained general acceptance in the West and in 1339 Angelino Dulcert, working in Majorca, placed the realm of Prester

MYTHS the Mongols, and the Ten Lost Tribes 253 John in the Horn of Africa on his world map. 116 It is arguable that the West wanted to be convinced about the existence of Prester John at this time as the Islamic revival continued to gain strength. For in 1322, two years before Jordan Catalani wrote, the Il-Khan Abu Sa‘id made peace with the Mamluk Sultan, thus finally ending the dream of a joint Christian-Mongol attack on Syria which would lead to the recovery of the holy places. 117 As the fourteenth century progressed Christendom seemed once more to have become embattled in an increasingly hostile world. The Catholic mission in China collapsed because the problems of distance proved insoluble once the pax mongolica had broken down. 118 At the same time the Ottoman Turks began their advance in eastern Europe and had reached the Danube by 1393.119 Any hope which the West might have retained about unknown oriental Christian princes who might challenge the power of Islam received a death-blow with the rise to power of Tamerlane (1369-1405), who was a Muslim, brought much of Asia under his rule, and in his early years felt contempt for Christians. 120 In these circumstances the awareness that there was a great Christian king in Africa beyond the lands of the Mamluk Sultan must have been a comfort to Catholic Christendom. Nevertheless, concerted action between the King of Ethiopia and the rulers of the West was in practice almost impossible to achieve. The Ethiopians found no particular difficulty in making contact with western Europe. They had a long tradition of pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where from at least the time of Saladin they had a monastic community in Jerusalem which served the church of the Holy Sepulchre. 121 They reached Palestine through Egypt, and the Mamluk government made no attempt to hinder these journeys, but there was nothing to prevent the Ethiopians, after they had prayed in Jerusalem, from venturing further afield. By the middle of the fourteenth century they had a settlement in Cyprus, and by the later fifteenth century they had come to Italy in sufficient numbers to establish small communities in Venice, Rome, and perhaps Florence too . 122 The Ethiopians believed that it would be possible to join with the Western powers in a concerted attack on Egypt. They were certainly capable of invading Egypt: al-Maqrizi relates how King Dawit I of Ethiopia (1380-1412) at the start of his reign attacked the province of Aswan. 123 A fifteenth-century account claimed that King Saifa-Ar’ad (1344-72) had led an army against Egypt in c. 1365 to co-ordinate with Peter of Cyprus’s attack on Alexandria; 124 this is possible though unproven. In any case no concerted action could have been taken because King Peter’s army only occupied Alexandria for a fortnight. 125 Western Europeans found it very difficult to reach Ethiopia. There were two possible routes they could use. The first, by way of the Persian Gulf and Socotra, which William Adam had tried to promote, became virtually unusable

137

138

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 254

Prester John

during the later fourteenth century for two reasons. First, the growth of Ottoman power in Asia Minor and the Mamluk annexation of Cilicia in 1375 made it difficult for western travellers to reach Persia except by way of Trebizond.126 Secondly, the collapse of the U-Khanate and the rise of Timur’s Islamic empire in Persia after 1370 discouraged western Christians from using the ports of the Persian Gulf.127 The other route led through Egypt, and the Mamluk government was concerned to keep it closed to western travellers. A western visitor to Egypt in the fourteenth century reported sadly that: the Christians of Ethiopia would willingly have communicated with us Latins, but the Sultan of Cairo never lets a single Latin pass into their country, lest they should enter into a treaty to make war against him.128 Moreover, the extension of Mamluk influence in the Sudan gave them even greater control over this route. In 1272 war broke out between the Mamluk Sultans and the Christian Kingdom of Makuria, which bordered on Egypt above Aswan, and this resulted in the Mamluks’ installing a friendly king there in 1276. Thereafter rival factions sought Egyptian support for their candidates and Makuria lost much of its independence. The Mamluks do not seem to have made a deliberate attempt to subvert Christianity there, but some of the candidates whom they supported were Muslims, and the last Christian ruler was deposed in 1323.129 Although much of the population continued to profess the Christian faith, indeed a Christian principality survived at Dotawo until the end of the fifteenth century,130 politically Makuria had become a Muslim state. The southern kingdom of Aiwa remained Christian into the late fifteenth century, but was greatly weakened during much of its later history by incursions of nomads from the Red Sea hills who coveted its grazing lands.131 The end of Christian political dominance in the Sudan did not, of course, mean the immediate collapse of the Christian religion there,132 but it did mean that the West no longer had any potential allies there. People in the West knew how to get to Ethiopia: in the reign of Dawit I an itinerary was drawn up in Florence giving instructions about how to travel from Venice to Axum. The route went from Venice to Rhodes, Cyprus, Ramla, Jerusalem, Cairo, and then followed the route which the abunas took when they set out for Ethiopia.133 Some western rulers wished to respond positively to Ethiopian overtures for an alliance. Among them was Henry IV of England, who before he became king had been an enthusiastic crusader.134 He wrote to ‘Prester John, the powerful and magnificent prince, King of Abyssinia’, who at that time would have been Dawit I, expressing a desire for closer cooperation between them.135 It is not known whether this letter was ever received, although some intrepid voyagers claimed to have found their

MYTHS the Mongols, and the Ten Lost Tribes 255 way to the land of Prester John in the first half of the fifteenth century. When Bertrand de la Brocquière visited Constantinople in 1433 he met a Neapolitan called Pietro, who claimed that he had gone to Ethiopia in 1430 as part of an embassy from the Duc de Berry, that he had taken an Ethiopian wife and that he intended to go back there again. 136 In 1450 Pietro Rombulo, who claimed to be an ambassador from the King of Ethiopia to Alfonso the Magnificent of Aragon, came to Naples, where he met a Dominican scholar, Pietro Ranzano, who was writing a universal geography, and told him how he had lived in Ethiopia for over forty years and had been used by the king as his ambassador to the courts of China and India. Most scholars seem to think that Rombulo really had visited Ethiopia because of the quality of the information which he gave to Fr. Ranzano, although he almost certainly told some tall stories as well. 137 Nevertheless, such western contacts with Ethiopia, if authentic, were haphazard: at the Council of Florence in 1441, when Eugenius IV wished to discuss union with the Ethiopian Church, he had to channel negotiations through the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria and members of the Ethiopian community in Jerusalem, 138 since he knew of no reliable way of reaching the king and the abuna directly. 139 In the fifteenth century a possible new route to Ethiopia was investigated by the Portuguese. When they began to explore the west African coast one of their main hopes was to make contact with Prester John . 140 As Charles Beckingham has explained in another essay in this volume, they considered that the Priest King’s realm was much more extensive than it really was and began inquiring for news of him as they explored the west coast of Africa . 141 This may, of course, have been a relic of the medieval belief that Ethiopia comprised all the African lands to the south of the Sahara. King John of Portugal was very impressed when an embassy from Benin visited his court in 1486 and gave him news of what he believed to be Prester John’s kingdom. Not surprisingly this turned out to be based on a misunderstanding, but it acted as a catalyst to persuade the king to try to reach Ethiopia from the known direction in east Africa. The envoy chosen was Pêro da Covilhâ: there is no doubt that he reached his goal, although it took him several years to do so, because he was still there when a new Portuguese embassy arrived in 1520. He had accomplished his mission successfully but had not been allowed to leave. 142 But by the time Covilhâ reached Ethiopia the empire had lost much of its greatness. In the second quarter of the fifteenth century there was a resurgence of Muslim power in the Horn of Africa and after the death of the Emperor Zar’a Yaqob in 1468 Ethiopia’s hold over the former Muslim provinces began to weaken. This decline in military power was accentuated by a period of minorities and disputed regencies. 143 In these circumstances it is not altogether surprising that Covilhâ’s arrival should have met with so

139

140

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 256

Prester John

negative a reaction. The Portuguese were still exploring the west coast of Africa and were in no position to help the empire. Matters changed when in the early sixteenth century the Portuguese, having circumnavigated Africa, began to establish bases in the Indian Ocean. In 1507 they captured Socotra and threatened Muslim shipping in the gulf of Aden.144 It was probably news of this which persuaded the Empress Helena, regent for the child-king Lebna Dengel, to send an embassy asking King Manoel of Portugal for aid. But negotiations were slow, for they had to be conducted through the court of Lisbon, and it was not until 1520 that a new mission arrived led by Dom Rodrigo de Lima.145 It met with a cool reception, partly because the young king had grown up and scored a brilliant victory over his Muslim enemies in 1516,146but also perhaps because the Portuguese had withdrawn their garrison from Socotra in 1511 and had failed in their attempt to storm Aden in 1513, so that they looked less useful as allies.147 The mission stayed in Ethiopia until 1526. One of its members, Fr. Francisco Alvares, wrote a very full account of his experiences, which was published with the title The Prester John of the Indies.148 Prester John’s kingdom was no longer elusive, but the reality did not have the splendour with which the European imagination had endowed it. It did not even have very much power any longer. Lebna Dengel spumed the Portúguese mission, which he sent away in 1526 with polite letters of friendship to the King of Portugal, the Viceroy of Goa and the pope, but with no proposals for an alliance.149 Yet later in that same year the Imam of Adal, ruler of the strongest Muslim state in the Horn, declared a jihad against Christian Ethiopia. In 1529 the Imam’s forces scored a notable victory and much of the country was overrun, even Axum being sacked by the Muslims. Lebna Dengel held out in the extreme north of his dominions and in 1535 appealed to the Portuguese for help.150 This did not arrive in his lifetime, but in 1541 a company of Portuguese soldiers, led by Christopher da Gama, and bringing with them an artillery train, reached the beleaguered Ethiopians: with their aid the forces of Islam were driven back and the Imam of Adal was killed in 1543.151 Prester John’s ravaged kingdom had appropriately been saved by the heirs of the crusaders. Appropriately, because Prester John was in part a product of the thoughtworld of the crusades.152 He symbolized the hopes of embattled Christians that they were not alone in their fight against powerful Islamic enemies; that in other parts of the world there were strong Christian rulers who would help them. In the course of four centuries the seat of the Priest King’s authority had moved from ‘the extreme East’ to the deep south, the lands of Ethiopia beyond Nubia. By the time accredited western envoys reached him they found that he had lost most of his power, but by then they were no longer so anxious to find a Christian ally in Asia, for the Indian Ocean and the whole of coastal

MYTHS the Mongols, and the Ten Lost Tribes 257 Africa, not to mention central and south America, was controlled by the Catholic rulers of Portugal and Spain. Catholic missions, spearheaded by the Society of Jesus, believed that they could convert the non-Islamic peoples of Asia and Africa to their faith. The West no longer stood in need of help from oriental Christian rulers. The age of crusading was drawing to a close and there was no place for Prester John in the world of Tridentine triumphalism.

141

142

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 258

Prester John

Notes 1

Fabricius, J. A. ed. (2 edn, 1719) Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha, Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti, Hamburg.

2

E.g., the list in John of Würzburg, Descriptio Terrae Sanctae, c.27, de Sandoli, S. ed. (1980), Itinera Hierosolymitana Crucesignatorum (saec. XII-XIII), Jerusalem, II, p. 290.

3

See Essay I in this volume.

4

‘... ultra Persidem et Armeniam in extremo oriente’, Otto of Freising, Chronica, sive historia de duabus civitatibus, vii, 33, in Hofmeister, A ., ed. (1912) Monumenta Germaniae Historica Sciptores [henceforth MGH SS] rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum, Hanover, p. 366.

5

Abu 1-Fida, Annals, A.H. 536, extracts ed. with French trans., Reinaud, M. (1872) Recueil des Historiens des Croisades [henceforth RHC], Historiens Orientaux [henceforth Or], Paris, I, p. 25.

6

Segal, J.B. (1970) Edessa, the Blessed City, Oxford, pp. 243-8.

7

Zamcke, éd., ‘Der Priester Johannes’, p. 910, section 12, Essay II of this volume.

8

Beckingham, C.F., ‘The Achievements of Prester John’, pp. 19-20, Essay I of this volume.

9

Solinus, Collectanea rerum memorabilium, Mommsen, T. ed. (1895) Berlin; Beazley, C. R. (1897) The Dawn of Modern Geography, London, I, pp. 243-73; for the complex textual history of the pseudoCallisthenes and its derivatives see Carey, G. (1956) The Medieval Alexander, Cambridge.

10

Wright, J.K. (2 edn, 1965) The Geographical Lore of the Time of the Crusades, New York, pp. 298-9.

11

Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia, II, iii, Leibnitz, G. G. ed. (1707-10) Scriptores rerum Brunsvicensium, Hanover, I, p. 911; cf. Pseudo-Abdias, Fabricius, éd., II, pp. 402-742.

12

Wittkower, R. (1942) ‘Marvels of the East’, Journal of the Warburg

MYTHS the Mongols, and the Ten Lost Tribes 259 and Courtauld Institutes, 5, p. 161, n. 4, citing Odyssey, I, 23; cited by me in the translation of Alexander Pope, The Odyssey of Homer, Mack, M. ed. (1967), London, pp. 30-1. 13

‘Aethiopes ... quorum tres sunt populi: Hesperi, Garamantes et Indi. Hesperi sunt occidentes Garamantes Tripolitani ...; Indi orientales.’ Gervase of Tilbury, II, xi, loe. cit., I, p. 919.

14

The Biblical justification for this was Ezekiel, 5, v.5.

15

Genesis, 2, w . 10-14. This identification is found in Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, I, 3, Thackeray, H. St. J. ed. and trans. (1930), London, I, pp. 18-20.

16

Wright, op. cit., pp. 27-8, 72.

17

Gervase of Tilbury, II, iii, loc. cit., I, p. 911.

18

Richardi Pictaviensis Chronica; Waitz, G. éd., MGH SS, XXVI, p.

19

‘Septuaginta duae provinciae serviunt nobis ... et unaquaeque habet regem per se...’, Zamcke, ‘Der Priester Johannes’, p. 910, section 13, in Essay II of this volume.

20

Cerulli, E. (1943) Etiopi in Palestina, Rome, I, pp. 37-40.

21

Richard, J. (1955) ‘Quelques textes sur les premiers temps de l’église latine de Jérusalem. 2. Les Géorgiens de Jérusalem et le patriarche Gibelin’, Recueil Clovis Brunei, II, Paris, pp. 423-6. Frankish knights fought in the armies of David II of Georgia in 1121, Walter the Chancellor, Bella Antiochena, II Bellum, Articulus XVI, iv, in RHC, Historiens Occidentaux, [henceforth Occ\ V, p. 131; Toumanoff, C ‘Armenia and Georgia’, in Hussey, J.M ., ed. (1966) Cambridge Medieval History, IV (Part I), pp. 623-5.

22

Prawer, J., trans. Nahon, G. (1969) Histoire du royaume latin de Jérusalem, Paris, I, pp. 436-7.

23

84. ‘The Macedonians’ is probably a reference to the successor states of Alexander’s empire in Bactria.

Adams, W.Y. (1977) Nubia, London, pp. 459-71.

143

144

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 260

Prester John

24

Richardi Pictaviensis Chronica, MGH SS, XXVI, p. 84

25

Acts, 8, w . 26-39.

26

Omnes quoque provinciae Aethiopium ecclesiis repletae sunt Catholicis, usque in hodiernum diem.’ Fabricius, éd., I, p. 668.

27

Ullendorff, E. (3 edn, 1973) The Ethiopians, Oxford, pp. 96-7. See also the discussion of Rufinus’s text by Thelamon, F. (1981) Paiens

et Chrétiens au IVe siècle. L'apport de V"Histoire Ecclésiastique" de Rufin d ’Aquilée, Paris, pp. 37-83.

28

Cerulli, op. cit., I, pp. 8-19, 27-30

29

‘...et transit terra nostra ab ulteriore India, in qua corpus sancti Thomae apostoli requiescit, per desertum et progreditur ad solis ortum, et redit per declivum in Babilonem desertam iuxta turrim Babel’. Zamcke, ed., ‘Der Priester Johannes’, p. 910, Section 12, in Essay II of this volume.

30

Hamilton, B., ‘Prester John and the Three Kings of Cologne’, Essay VIII in this volume.

31

Zarncke, ‘Der Brief des papstes Alexander III an den Priester Johannes’, Essay IV of this volume.

32

Ralph Niger, who discussed the problems facing the crusade, did not consider the possibility of finding allies among the eastern Christian powers, Radulfus Niger, De re militari et triplici via peregrinationis lerosolimitane, Schmugge, L. ed. (1977), Beitrage zur Geschichte und Quellenkunde des Mittelalters, 6, Berlin.

33

Hamilton, B. (1978) ‘The Armenian Church and the Papacy at the time of the Crusades’, Eastern Churches Review, 10, pp. 70-3.

34

James of Vitry, Historia Orientalis, Bk. Ill, Bongars, J. ed. (1611) Gesta Dei per Francos, Hanover, pp. 1125-9.

35

Regesta Innocentii HI, Bk. XIV, no. lxviii, Migne, J.P. ed., Patrología Latina [henceforth PL], 216, col. 434.

36

Pontificio Commissio ad redigendum codicem iuris canonici

MYTHS the Mongols, and the Ten Lost Tribes 261 orientalis, Fontes, series III [henceforth CICO], II, Acta Innocentii papae III (1198-1216), ed. T. Haluscynski (Vatican City, 1944), pp. 363-5, 410-11, nos. 128, 181.

37

Ibid., p. 481; Hefèle, C.J. (1913), ed. and trans. Leclercq, H., Histoire des Conciles, Paris, V(ii), p. 1318.

38

Adams, Nubia, pp. 445-7.

39

Robert de Clari, c.liv, La conquete de Constantinople, Lauer, P. ed. (1924) Paris, pp. 54-5.

40

Burchard of Strasburg, De statu Egypti, c.4, de Sandoli, ed., Itinera II, pp. 402-4.

41

Powell, J.M. pp. 26-7.

42

Les Lettres de Jacques de Vitry (1160/70), évêque de Saint-Jean d ’Acre, Letter II, Huygens R.B.C., ed. (1960), Leiden, pp. 95-6.

43

I have found no mention of Prester John in a Christian source since Alexander Ill’s letter of 1177, see Essay IV in this volume.

44

The most recent account of the Fifth Crusade is Powell, Anatomy of

45

Sawirus Ibn Mukaffa, History of the Patriarchs of the Egyptian Church, trans. Khater, A. and Khs-Burmeister, O.H.S. (1970)

Anatomy of a Crusade, 1213-1221, Philadelphia,

a Crusade.

Publications de la Société d ’Archéologie Copte, Textes et Documents, XII, Cairo, vol. Ill (II), pp. 203-4. 46

Pelliot, P ., ‘Deux passages de "la prophétie de Hannan fils d’Issac"’, pp. 73-81, Essay V in this volume.

47

‘La Prophétie de Hannan le fil Yssac’, Róhricht, R. ed. (1879) Quinti Belli Sacri Scriptores Minores, Publications de la Société de l ’Orient Latin, Série Historique, II, Geneva, pp. xli-xlviii, 205-28.

48

Pelliot, op. cit., pp. 82-9

49

Tamrat, T. (1972) Church and State in Ethiopia 1270-1527, Oxford,

145

146

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 262

Prester John pp. 53-64.

50

The late evidence, which may well be based on an authentic tradition, is discussed by Cerulli, op. cit., I, pp. 33-7.

51

Gerster, G., trans. Hosking, R. (1970) Churches in Rock. Early Christian Art in Ethiopia, London, pp. 85-108.

52

Magister Thetmarus, Iter ad Terram Sanctam, c.24, de Sandoli, éd., Itinera, III, p. 288.

53

Ullendorff, The Ethiopians, p.54; ‘Hast thou not seen how thy Lord dealt with the army of the Elephant? Did he not cause their strategem to miscarry?’ Sura CV, The Koran.

54

Annales de Dunstaple, ann. 1220, Rôhricht, R. ed. (1882) Testimonia Minora de Quinto Bello Sacro, Publications de la Société de VOrient Latin, Série Historique, III, Geneva, p. 65.

55

This is the reading of Paris MS BN fr. 25247, ed. Rôhricht, Quinti Belli Sacri Scriptores Minores, p. 213; cf Pelliot, op. cit., pp. 84-5.

56

Oliver of Paderbom, Historia Damiatina, c.35, Hoogeweg, O. ed. (1894) Die Schriften des kôlner Domscholasters, spateren Bischofs

von Paderbom und Kardinal-Bischofs von S. Sabina Oliverus, Bibliothek des Litterarischen Vereins in Stuttgart, CCII, Tübingen, p. 232.

57

Powell, op. cit., pp. 158-73.

58

Oliver of Paderbom, op. cit., c. 35, pp. 232-3.

59

Pelliot, op. cit., pp. 85-9

60

James of Vitry, Letter VII, pp. 134-53, (text of the Relatio pp. 1419).

61

J. Richard, ‘The Relatio de Davide as a source for Mongol history and the legend of Prester John’, Essay V in the present volume.

62

‘quia, cum essent Christiani, confederad erant cum Sarracenis’. James of Vitry, Letter VII, p. 147.

147

MYTHS the Mongols, and the Ten Lost Tribes 263 63

See notes 35 and 58 above.

64

In 1236 the Mongols made Georgia tributary and it effectively became part of their empire, de Hartog, L. (1989) Genghis Khan, London, pp. 117-8; Toumanoff, op. cit., CMHIV (I), pp. 625-6.

65

James of Vitry, Letter VII, pp. 149-50.

66

Ibid., pp. 152-3; Oliver of Paderbom, op. cit., c.56, pp. Pelliot, op. cit. pp. 92-7.

67

Ibid., pp. 95-6.

68

‘Additur preterea de duobus regibus, quorum unus asseritur venturus ab Oriente, alius ab Occidente Jerosolimam in illo anno, quo pascha erit tertio die Aprilis.’ Oliver of Paderbom, op. cit., c. 56, p.259.

69

Ibid., c. 54, pp. 256-7; Van Cleve, T.C. (1972) The Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, Oxford, pp. 147-8.

70

Capelli, A. (2 edn., 1930) Cronología, cronografía e calendario perpetuo, Milan, p. 60

71

James of Vitry, Letter VII, p. 153; Pelliot, op. cit., p. 94, n. 2.

72

Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, pp.

73

Ratchnevsky, P. trans. Haining, T.N. (1991) Genghis Khan, Oxford, pp. 133-40.

74

The Aiyubid Empire comprised also Syria and northern Iraq and the capacity of the Aiyubid princes to unite against the crusaders was determined by the effects of the Mongol invasion of Khwarazm.

75

Oliver of Paderbom, op. cit., cc. 59-69, pp. 261-7.

76

Ibid., c. 62, p. 264.

77

Cerulli, op. cit., I, pp. 49-52.

78

Hamilton, B. (1980) The Latin Church in the Crusader States, London, pp. 253-7.

258-9;

185-90.

148

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 264

Prester John

79

James of Vitry (1597) Historia Orientalis, c. 76, Douai, p. 144.

80

‘Sunt alie nationes ... in maiori parte Indie habitantes. Hos ... Nestorianos appellant ... et maxime illos qui in terra potentissimi Principis, quem presbyterum Ioannem vulgus appellat, commorantur. Hi omnes Nestoriani sunt cum Rege suo ...’, ibid., c. 77, pp. 148-9.

81

Morgan, D. (1986) The Mongols, Oxford, pp. 136-41; Chambers, J. (1979) The Devil’s Horsemen, London.

82

Iohannes de Plano Carpini, Ystoria Mongalorum, c. V, 12, ed. Wyngaert, A. van den (1929), Sínica Franciscana, I. Itinera et relationes fratrum minorum saeculi XIII et XIV, Quaracchi-Firenze, p. 59.

83

The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck, c. xvii (2), Jackson P.

84

Saunders, J.J. (1971) The History of the Mongol Conquests, London, p. 57.

85

Marco Polo: the Description of the World, Moule, A. C. and Pelliot,

86

Ibid., I, p. 449.

87

Critchley, J. (1992) Marco Polo's Book, Aldershot, pp. xi-xii. Marco’s credibility is a central theme of the whole book.

88

Iohannes de Monte Corvino, Epistola II, 4, ed. Wyngaert, op. cit., I, p. 348.

89

The Travels of Friar Odoric of Pordenone, c.44, trans. Yule, H., revised edn, Cordier, H. (1913) Cathay and the Way Thither, //,

(trans) with Morgan, D. eds. (1990), Hakluyt Society, 2nd ser. no. 173, London, p. 122. Latin text, Itinerarium Willelmi de Rubruc, c. xvii, 2, 3, ed. Wyngaert, op. cit., I, pp. 206-7.

P. eds. (1938), London, I, p. 166.

Hakluyt Society, 2nd ser., XXXIII. London, pp. 244-6. Latin text, B. Odoricus de Portu Naonis, Relatio, c. XXXII, ed. Wyngaert, op. cit., I, p. 483.

90

Sir John Mandeville, The Travels, c.30, trans. Moseley, C.W.R.D. (1983), Harmondsworth, pp. 167-72.

MYTHS the Mongols, and the Ten Lost Tribes 265 91

On this shrine see Neill, S. (1984) A History of Christianity in India, London, I, pp. 30-6, 48-9, 71-2, 75-8.

92

Marco Polo, Moule and Pelliot, eds., I, pp. 397-8.

93

Richard, J. (1977) La Papauté et les missions d ’Orient au Moyen Age (XIIle-XVe siècles), Rome, pp. 190-2.

94

Tamrat, Church and State, pp. 66-8, 119-29.

95

Marco Polo, Moule and Pelliot, eds., I, pp. 434-6.

96

Plato of Tivoli (1645) De Scientia Stellarum, Bologna, p. 24; I have not been able to consult this work which I know through the citation in Wright, Geographical Lore, p. 281.

97

The work was also translated by Robert of Chester, and in the late thirteenth century a new translation was made for Alfonso X of Castile, Gabrieli, F. (1970) ‘The Transmission of Learning and Literary Influences to Western Europe’, in Holt, P.M., Lambton, A.K.S., Lewis, B., eds. The Cambridge History of Islam, II, pp. 855, 864.

98

Dauvillier, J. (1983) ‘Les provinces chaldéennes "de 1‘extérieur" au Moyen Age’, ‘ Guillaume de Rubrouck et les communautés chaldéennes d‘Asie centrale’, Histoire et institutions des Églises orientales au moyen âge, Variorum, London, Essays I, VI.

99

On Kublai’s mother, Sorghaghtani Beki, Rossabi, M. (1988) Khubilai Khan, Berkeley, pp. 11-14; on his patronage of westerners, ibid., pp. 147-52. For the Catholic missions, Richard, La Papauté, pp. 14456.

100

Ibid., pp. 98-120; Richard, J. (1977) ‘Chrétiens et Mongols au Concile: la papauté et les Mongols de Perse dans la seconde moitié du XHIe siècle’, Colloques internationaux du C.N.R.S., no 558, Paris, pp. 32-44.

101

Richard, La Papauté, pp. 167-95.

102

Morgan, The Mongols, pp 160-3.

149

150

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 266

Prester John

103

Richard, La Papauté, pp. 106-20.

104

Beckingham, C.F., ‘An Ethiopian Embassy to Europe c. 1310’, Essay X in this volume.

105

Bisson, T.N. (1986) The Medieval Crown of Aragon, Oxford, pp. 946.

106

Beckingham, ‘Ethiopian Embassy’, pp. 337-9, Essay X in this volume.

107

Tamrat, Church and State, pp. 132-45.

108

Ibid., pp. 174-98.

109

Cited by Tamrat, T. (1984) ‘The Horn of Africa: the Solomonids in Ethiopia and the States of the Horn of Africa’, in D.T. Niane, ed., UNESCO General History of Africa, Paris, London, Berkeley, IV, p. 435.

110

Richard, La Papauté, pp. 170-80.

111

William Adam, De modo Saracenos extirpandi, Kohler, Ch. ed. (1906) RHC, Documents Arméniens, Paris, II, pp. 521-55.

112

Beckingham, C .F ., ‘The Quest for Prester John’, p. 297, Essay XIV in this volume.

113

Jordan Catalani, The Wonders of the East, VI, 3 trans. Yule, H. (1863), Hakluyt Society, 1st ser, London, p. 42; Latin text, Mirabilia Descripta, Cordier, H. ed. (1925), Paris, p. 119.

114

Seen. 106 above.

115

The rulers of Ethiopia claimed descent from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. This was the theme of the country’s epic, the Kebra Nagast, written down in its present form in the early fourteenth century. English translation, Wallis Budge, E.A. (1922) The Queen o f Sheba and her only son Menyelek, London; Ullendorff, E. (1968) Ethiopia and the Bible. The Schweich Lectures for 1967, Oxford, pp. 74-8, 130-45.

MYTHS the Mongols, and the Ten Lost Tribes 267 116

Crawford, O.G.S. (1958) Ethiopian Itineraries, c. 1400-1524, Hakluyt Society, 2nd series, No. 109, Cambridge, p. 213.

117

Morgan, The Mongols, p. 173.

118

Richard, La Papauté, pp. 152-6.

119

Taeschner, F. (1966) ‘The Ottoman Turks to 1453’, CMH, IV(I), pp. 761-6.

120

Manz, B. (1989) The Rise and Rule o f Tamerlane, Cambridge.

121

Cerulli, op. cit., I, pp. 31-199.

122

Tamrat, op, cit., UNESCO History of Africa, IV, p. 451.

123

Cited by Tamrat, Church and State, p. 255.

124

This account was given to Bertrand de la Brocquière in 1432 by a Neapolitan called Pietro: ‘His reports of Ethiopia during the reign of Yishaq (1413-30) are remarkably authentic’, Tamrat, Church and State, p. 254.

125

Edbury, P. W. (1991), The Kingdom o f Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191-1374, Cambridge, pp. 161-70.

126

Ayas in Cilicia had been the chief point of entry to the Il-Khanate for western travellers before the Mamluk conquest.

127

On the collapse of the Il-Khanate see Boyle, J.A ., (1968) ‘The collapse of the Il-Khanid State’, The Cambridge History o f Iran, V, pp. 413-17; the damage caused by the campaigns of Timur and his reputed hostility towards Christians certainly inhibited western travellers in the later fourteenth century, though as Richard has shown, in the last years of his reign ‘Tamerlan lui-même paraissait-il disposé à en revenir à la tolérance des souverains musulmans qui l’avaient précédés dans les anciens empires mongols de Perse et de Djagatai.’ La Papauté, p. 258.

128

Cited by Tamrat, op. cit., UNESCO General History o f Africa, IV, p. 452.

151

152

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 268

Prester John

129

Adams, Nubia, pp. 525-9.

130

Ibid., pp. 531-6.

131

Ibid., pp. 536-9.

132

‘The Twilight of Christianity’, ibid., pp. 539-44.

133

Crawford, Ethiopian Itineraries, pp. 28-39.

134

Housley, N. (1992) The Later Crusades, Oxford, pp.355, 400-1.

135

Hingeston, C.F. ed. (1860) Royal and Historical Letters during the reign of Henry the Fourth, no. CXLVII, Rolls Series, London, pp. 421-2.

136

Crawford, Ethiopian Itineraries, p. 9; Schefer, Ch. ed. (1892) Le voyage d ’outremer de Bertrandon de la Broquière, Paris, pp. 142-3.

137

Crawford, op. cit., pp. 5-8; Tamrat, Church and State, pp. 264-6.

138

Gill, J. (1959) The Council of Florence, Cambridge, pp.

139

In 1526 King Lebna Dengel informed Clement VII that one of the pope’s predecessors had sent a ‘book’ to Zar’a Ya’qob who was king at the time of the Council of Florence. This might have been a copy of the Bull of Union. Tamrat, Church and State, pp. 266-7.

140

Boxer, C.R. (1969) The Portuguese Seaborne Empire 1415-1825, London, pp. 19-20.

141

Beckingham, volume.

142

Beckingham, ‘The Quest for Prester John ’, pp. 306-8, Essay XIV in this volume.

143

Tamrat, Church and State, pp. 268-96.

144

Pereira da Costa, J. (1973) ‘Socotorá a o dominio portugués oriente’, Revista da Universisade de Coimbra, 23, pp. 323-71.

322-7.

C.F., ‘Prester John in West Africa’, Essay XI in this

no

MYTHS the Mongols, and the Ten Lost Tribes 269 145

Beckingham C.F. and Huntingford, G.W.B. eds. (1958) The Prester John of the Indies, Hakluyt Society, 2nd ser., Nos. 114, 115, Cambridge, I, pp. 2-5.

146

Trimingham, J. Spencer (1952) Islam in Ethiopia, London, pp. 83-4; on the problems of the date see Beckingham and Huntingford, Prester John, I, p. 16.

147

Pereira da Costa, op. cit., n. 144 above.

148

See n. 145 above.

149

Beckingham and Huntingford, op. cit., I, pp. 4-5.

150

Trimingham, Islam, pp. 84-7.

151

Tamrat, H. (1977), ‘Ethiopia, the Red Sea and the Horn’, Cambridge History of Africa, III pp. 170-7, 181-2.

152

He was, of course, more than that. He also became an important part of the literary imagination of Western Europeans; cf. Langlois, Ch. V. (1927) ‘Les merveilles du Prêtre Jean’, in La vie en France au moyen âge, III, La connaissance de la nature et du monde d'après des écrits français à Vusage des laïcs, Paris, pp. 44-70.

153

5 The Medieval West and the Indian Ocean: An Oneiric Horizon Jacques Le Goff

The medieval West knew nothing of the real Indian Ocean. As late as the mid-fifteenth century, the Catalonian mappemonde in the Biblioteca Estense in Modena shows utter ignorance of the Indian Ocean.1 On the planisphere of Fra Mauro of Murano (1460), the east coast of the Persian Gulf "no longer has the form of land."2 Despite his use of Marco Polo, Martin Behaim's globe of 1492 shows no knowledge of India. South Africa, Madagascar, and Zanzibar are depicted on it in extravagant and fantastic form. We must await the first Portuguese discoveries before geographical—or, rather, coastal—knowledge of the Indian Ocean begins to take shape. The most important date is 1488, the year of Diaz's return to Lisbon. There is still a good deal of fantasy in Doctor Hamy's Carta navigatoria auctor incerti (1501-2), but its map of eastern Africa is very good. The portolano-mappemonde of Caneiro Januensis (1503) is much more precise.3 On the whole, knowledge of the Indian Ocean begins with Africa—and the Portuguese— in contrast with medieval dreams, which turned primarily toward Persia, India, and the islands. Nevertheless, there had been some progress in the fifteenth century.4 This was due primarily to the rediscovery of Ptolemy, who, unlike the ignorant Roman geographers who were the main source for medieval cartographers, knew the Indian Ocean fairly well. Ptolemy's rediscovery dates from 1406 but bore fruit only with the introduction of printing. The earliest printed editions I have been able to locate in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris are from Vicenza (1475), Rome (1478 and 1490), Bologna (1482), and Ulm (1482 and 1486). The work was not always put immediately to good use, however, as Martin Behaim's globe indicates, although he did in fact use the Ulm editions.

156

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 190

H I G H CULTURE A N D P O P U L A R CULTURE

Ultimately, the most important advance in the fifteenth century was that certain scholars abandoned the Ptolemaic view—for Ptolemy entombs a certain precision of detail in a monumental overall error—of a closed Indian Ocean, actually considered as a river, the circular river-ocean. Some writers have pointed out the famous passages on this subject—w ithout practical consequences, however—by Pierre d'Ailly in his Imago Mundi and by Pius II in his Cosmographia.5 The first medieval map to show an open Indian Ocean was that of Antonin de Virga (1415).6 Not until Martellus Germanus' m appemonde (1489)7 was the notion—accepted by Martin Behaim, for example—of an open Indian Ocean adopted, however. The opening of the Indian Ocean not only marked the end of a long period of ignorance but also destroyed the very basis for the myth of the Indian Ocean in the medieval mentality. The portolano had come close to making a breach in the closed world dreamed of by the medieval West in its oneiric Indian Ocean. Jurgis Baltrusaitis has given a good description of the mental revolution caused by the portolano, which "upset the bases" of cartography and, in the same stroke, the whole view of the world. "Instead of spaces enclosed w ithin a narrow circle, endless vistas came into v ie w .. . Instead of the regular, stable boundaries of continents which the imagination could stock at will w ith cities and countries of uncertain location, the outlines of coasts began to develop around fixed points . .. The whole aspect of the earth suddenly changed . " 8 As we have seen, however, the portolanos long neglected the Indian Ocean and had scarcely shaken its mythical completeness. The fecundity of the myth lay in the belief in a mare clausum, which made the Indian Ocean a repository of dreams, myths, and legends for the medieval mentality. This sea was the medieval W est's closed world of oneiric exoticism, the hortus conclusus of an Eden in which raptures and nightm ares were mixed. Once its wall had been pierced, the dream evaporated. Before we sketch the views of the closed oneiric horizon, it is important to raise a few questions concerning this medieval ignorance, without presum ing to answer them. The medieval West did have contacts w ith the Indian Ocean. Merchants, travelers, and m issionaries reached its shores . 9 Some, including Marco Polo, had written about it. Why did the West so stubbornly refuse to take notice of what it really was? First of all, despite such excursions, which were more the work of individuals than collective undertakings, the Indian Ocean was effectively closed to Christians. Arabs, Persians, Indians, and Chinese, to name only the most important groups, had made it a private preserve.

157

MYTHS The Medieval West and the Indian Ocean

191

The few W esterners who reached it almost always approached from the north by land routes, not to m ention those who missed it, as it were, passing to the north on the Mongolian road, the sometimescut umbilical cord of East-West relations during the Middle Ages. Psychological taboos must have played a role for some missionaries and merchants: the fear of revealing what m ight be considered a commercial secret in a trade that was full of such secrets, and lack of interest in geographical facts which were negligible in comparison with spiritual truths. Even someone as exceptional in culture and "scientific spirit" as John of Monte Corvino is disappointing. In contrast to men of the Renaissance, medieval men did not know how to look but were always ready to listen and believe all they were told. In the course of their travels, they soaked up any num ber of marvelous tales and believed that they had seen what they learned, on location no doubt, but nonetheless by hearsay. Already stuffed with legends taken for true before their departure, they carried their m irages with them, and credulous imagination materialized their dreams in surroundings disorienting enough to make them even more natural daydreamers than they were at hom e . 10 Finally, we may ask ourselves what those who seemed to know the Indian Ocean best, like Marco Polo, really knew about it. W hen he reaches India "m ajor," in the area of Madras on the east coast, his narrative ceases to have the character of a genuine travel diary and becomes a systematic, traditional, bookish description. Westerners were suspicious of the strange types of boat they found, particularly the sewn boats, which seemed fragile to them, and so were deterred from hazarding a feared sea . 11 To go even farther, we might ask ourselves what the Arab geographers knew of the Indian Ocean. W estern writers and merchants sometimes turned to them for information. Their descriptions, too, are frequently full of fables and demonstrate ignorance of the facts. It is quite possible that the Indian Ocean was a forbidden and unknown world for the Arabs as well, at least for their scholars. Thus it may be that this potential source of information only reinforced the illusions of W esterners . 12 Where did the medieval West get its idea of the Indian Ocean? Its sources were mediocre Hellenistic-Latin ones and legendary writings. Antiquity experienced a brief "critical" period w ith regard to legends about the Indian world, what Rudolf W ittkower calls "an enlightened interlude." This incredulous line of thought is represented principally by Strabo, who did not hesitate to call those who had written on India before him liars . 13 Aulus Gellius was later to proclaim his disgust with fables, which he thought offered nothing

158

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 192

HIGH CULTURE AND POPULAR CULTURE

of aesthetic or moral value.14 Ptolemy himself, despite the more scientific character of his geographical method and a better knowledge of cartographic detail, had been unable to counterbalance the pseudo-science which derived largely from Indian epic poetry. This poetry held that myths were the essence of reality and knowledge. In the degenerate form of the merely picturesque or gimcrack, such mythical scientific poetry would saturate the imagination of the medieval West.15 Here we must hasten to point out that two great Christian spirits belong, more or less, among this small group of skeptics, in order to make clear how little their "skepticism" met with response in the Middle Ages. Saint Augustine, concerned with the problem of justifying an anthropology based on Genesis, was troubled by the possibility that in India monstrous men existed whose place in the posterity of Adam and Noah was difficult to account for, but he does not rule out the possibility that in them God created models of the same sort of freaks that we see among ourselves, which we are tempted to attribute to a shortcoming in His wisdom. Eight centuries later, Albertus Magnus hesitates to comment on deeds and creatures whose existence he has not seen for himself.16 In his Historia Naturalia, on the other hand, Pliny the Elder had accepted all the fables concerning India and for centuries provided the sanction of "scientific authority" for belief in India as a world abounding in marvels.17 Even more than Pliny, Gaius Julius Solinus, author of one of those digests which, in the late Empire, inaugurated medieval culture, was to serve as inspiration for medieval ramblings about the Indian Ocean and its surroundings with his mediocre Collectanea rerum memorabilium, written during that wreck of a third century from which the first debris of Greco-Roman culture emerged.18 Its authority was reinforced when it was used by one of the leading Christian rhetoricians of the early fifth century, Martianus Capella, who was until the twelfth century the great master of the "liberal arts" in the medieval West.19 In addition, there were the fantastic writings attributed to some great name, whose authorship medieval credulity was willing to accept with neither examination nor doubt. These fueled the Indian sector of a pseudo-science which displayed a predilection for drawing on apocryphal literary sources. For example, there is the letter of a certain Fermes to the emperor Hadrian "on the marvels of A sia," which probably dates from the fourth century, based on a lost Greek original, and which purports to recount a trip in the Orient.20 Between the seventh and tenth centuries, three treatises of a similar sort, including an Epistola Premonis regis ad Traianum Imperatorum lent credence in the West to the theme of the mirabilia Indiae.21 The

159

MYTHS The Medieval West and the Indian Ocean

193

apocryphal correspondence concerning India and its miracles also drew upon the Letter from Alexander to Aristotle which was in circulation around 800 and the correspondence betw een Alexander and Dindym us . 22 Lastly, the Indian myth acquired a new character in the twelfth century in the person of Prester John, who was supposed to have sent a letter to the Byzantine emperor Manuel Comnenus in 1164.23 In all this fictional literature, we m ust set aside a special place for a romantic set of adventures which endowed the theme of Indian marvels w ith extraordinary prestige. One of the adventure cycles most admired by the W estern public was devoted to the medieval Alexander, a legendary hero, who, by a slight alteration of history, appropriated the whole vast area of miraculous India. The Indian myth took a romantic turn with the adventures and exploits im puted to the explorer king w ith the insatiable curiosity who sounded the depths of the earth, the forests, the seas, and the skies. He turned medieval science fiction from geographic marvels and picturesque teratology to adventure in the sense of a quest for marvels and m onsters . 24 He also led the medieval West to rediscover the original Greek sources for the India of fable. It was not so much the Indica, composed in the early fourth century B.C. by Ctesias of Cnidus, who had been the physician to the king Artaxerxes Mnemon in Persia , 25 as the treatise w ritten by Megasthenes around 300 B.C. that was at the bottom of all the ancient and medieval fables concerning India's marvels. Sent as ambassador to Sandracottus (Chandragupta) at his court in Pataliputra (Patna) on the Ganges by Seleucus Nicator, Alexander's heir in Asia, Megasthenes there learned of and embellished the mythical tales and fables which for eighteen centuries would make India the marvelous world of Western dream s . 26 Medieval writers in the West made no hard-and-fast distinctions between scientific or didactic literature and fiction. All these genres incorporated Indian marvels. Throughout the Middle Ages, these marvels would contribute a standard chapter to the encyclopedias in which a whole line of scholars sought to hoard up the W est's treasure in knowledge. After Martianus Capella, first among them was, of course, Isidore of Seville, who devoted a paragraph to India and its miracles in each relevant article of his Etymologiae.27 Rabanus M aurus' great Carolingian encyclopedia De universo borrows from Isidore's text and adds allegorical interpretations as well as the amazing m iniatures of manuscript 132, illuminated around 1023 at Monte Cassino. These illustrate the monsters of India alongside realistic scenes in which some authors claim to see one of the earliest representations of technical equipm ent in the medieval W est . 28 In the Imago Mundi attributed to Honorius Augustodunensis, there is

160

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 194

HIGH CULTURE AND POPULAR CULTURE

one chapter De India , not counting the Indian references in the chapters Paradisus, De Monstris , and De Bestiis.29 James of Vitry drew on these sources for his Historia Orientalis, which shows that Christian scholars of the Holy Land continued to rely on the W estern storehouse of knowledge, in this case the Epistola Alexandri , rather than use written or oral Eastern sources.30 All the thirteenth-century encyclopedists used Indian myth: Walter of Metz, in his Imago Mundi , which was translated into English, French, and Italian until the end of the Middle Ages;31 Gervase of Tilbury, who borrowed heavily from the Letter from Fermes to Hadrian32 for his Otia Imperialia, written around 1211 for Otto IV; Bartholomew the Englishman, who relied on Solinus, whose De proprietatibus rerum would enjoy success until the beginning of the seventeenth century;33 Thomas of Cantimpre, whose De natura rerum was translated into Flemish at the end of the thirteenth century by Jacob Maerlant and into German in the m id-fourteenth century by Conrad von Megenberg;34 Brunetto Latini, in his Treasury , from which Dante may have taken his references to India;35 Vincent of Beauvais, who treats the subject on three occasions, once in the Speculum naturale and twice in the Speculum historiale.36 The late Middle Ages would perpetuate and supplem ent the Indian myth. In his imaginary trip around the world, Mandeville introduced a new "Indienfahrer," Ogier the Dane, whose exploits rival Alexander's.37 The Gesta Romanorum , a collection of fables and moralizing stories used as a source by preachers, extended Indian fantasy to those who listened to serm ons,38 and Pierre d'Ailly, in his Imago Mundi of 1410, assembles in one chapter all that is known about the Mirabilia Indiae.39 The success of this literature was increased by the illustrations in many of the m anuscripts, which sometimes spilled over into sculpture, as shown by num erous works of art, of which the most famous and impressive is the tympanum at Vézelay.40 This is not the place for a digression into an iconography that would take me far from my subject and competence, but it will be useful to make a few remarks about these images. First, their abundance shows how much the marvels of India inspired Western imagination; the sculptors and miniaturists, better than their written sources, depicted the whole range of fantasy and dream which the Middle Ages lavished on these marvels. An imaginary world, it was to be a favorite theme for the exuberant medieval imagination. Iconographie studies are also useful for showing the complexity of the various artistic and literary traditions that combined in a myriad of ways to produce the Indian inspiration of the medieval W estern m ind, an effect that went far beyond the few major influences and central lines.41 Perhaps it would be revealing to single out, from

161

MYTHS The Medieval West and the Indian Ocean

195

among the confused mass of contaminations, two distinct inspirations, two divergent interpretations of Indian marvels in medieval ideology and aesthetics. First, we have the tendency that Rudolf W ittkower calls "geographical-ethnological," and which seems to me to refer to a universe of myth and folklore, to a conception of India as anti-nature and of its marvels as "counter-natural" phenom ena . 42 Stamped w ith the seal of Greco-Roman paganism, this conception belongs, I think, primarily to a prim itive, savage store of material. It may be connected w ith that medieval anti-hum anism which inspired the most impressive artistic creations of the western Middle Ages. Opposed to this notorious interpretation, a more "rational" tendency sought to domesticate the Indian marvels. This tendency had come down from the naturalistic interpretations of Saint Augustine and Isidore of Seville, for whom the marvels were merely special, extreme cases of natural phenom ena and hence a part of the natural and divine order; this led to an allegorization and particularly a moralization of the marvels. Under the influence of the Physiologus , the bestiaries, particularly from the twelfth century on, thus gave a meaning to Indian extravagances, which tended to strip them of their scandalous power. The pygmies were symbols of humility, giants of pride, dog-headed men of quarrelsome people, and so on, thus reducing such freaks to representatives of the ordinary run of m ankind. The process of domestication continued by way of an evolution which transformed mystical allegories into moral allegories and ultimately degraded them to the level of social satire. In a fifteenth-century m anuscript from the Liber de monstruosis hominibus by Thomas of Cantimpre (Bruges Cod. 411), we find the fabulous Indian races dressed as Flemish burghers . 43 From both points of view, the Indian Ocean was a mental horizon, the exotic fantasy of the medieval West, the place where its dreams freed themselves from repression. To explore this ocean, then, is to recognize an important dim ension of the period's mentality and sensibility, visible in many aspects of its art and one of the principal storehouses of its im agination .44 Before we go on to sketch the oneiric map of India as seen from the medieval West, we still have to ask ourselves what land it was whose shores were washed and whose marvels were protected by the Indian Ocean. Along this coastline, which, for W esterners, seems to have run w ithout major irregularities from Africa all the way to China, three sectors, three Indias, were usually singled out. India Major, which includes the largest part of our India, was flanked by an India Minor extending from the north of the Coromandel Coast and including the southeast Asian peninsulas on the one hand, and by a Meridional India including Ethiopia and the southwest Asian coastal

162

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 196

HIGH CULTURE AND POPULAR CULTURE

areas on the other.45 The interesting connection—or confusion—is the one which linked Ethiopia and India and made a single marvelous world of East Africa and southern Asia, as though the Queen of Sheba had given her hand to Alexander rather than to Solomon. This may be seen clearly in the legend of Prester John. At first he was supposed to be located in what is properly called India, but he was nowhere to be found in Asia and was finally transferred during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to Ethiopia. In 1177, Pope Alexander III had sent his physician Philip to the O rient carrying, in vain, a letter addressed to Johanni illustri et magnifico Indorum regi.46 Despite such hesitancy, however, W esterners were certain of one thing: the world of marvels lay to the east, in the Orient. Only Adam of Bremen would attempt to transplant the mirabilia Indiae to the northern world.47 In the first place, the medieval West dreamed of a world of riches in India. Impoverished W estern Christendom—latinitas penuriosa, Alan of Lille called it—thought the Indian Ocean abounded in riches, was swamped in a flood of luxury. This dream settled mainly on the islands, the innumerable "fortunate isles" which were supposed to be the pride of the Indian Ocean, a sea dotted w ith a myriad of islands. "In this India sea," Marco Polo had written, "there are twelve thousand seven hundred islan d s. . . No man alive can tell the true story of all the isles of the Indies . . . They are the best, the flower of India."48 Christian symbolism surrounded these islands w ith a mystical aura by using them as an image for saintliness, keeping the treasure of their virtues intact despite the battering waves of tem ptation on all sides.49 The islands were said to produce luxury goods: precious metals and stones, fine woods, spices. These were so abundant that, according to Marco Polo, from May to July in the kingdom of Coilum (the Indian coast southwest of Malabar), pepper was harvested continually: "they load it loose onto vessels as we do w heat."50 The kingdom of Malabar was blessed with such "enormous quantities" of pearls fished from the sea that its king went naked, covered from head to toe w ith nothing but pearls, "a hundred and four of the largest and most beautiful" on his neck alone.51 Some islands were made of solid gold or silver, such as the isles of Chryse and Argyre. The "best" of all these islands, m eaning the largest and richest, was Taprobane, or Ceylon. Thus the oneiric horizon reflects the psychological repercussions of the very structure of medieval trade; for the West was an importer of precious products from far-off places, which it thought of in part as real, in part fantastic, in part commercial. W ith this dream of riches was connected another, of fantastic exuberance. The lands of the Indian Ocean were believed to be

163

MYTHS The Medieval West and the Indian Ocean

197

populated by fantastic men and animals, a world full of monsters of both kinds. As Honorius Augustodunensis put it, "There are m onsters there, some of which belong to the hum an species, others to the several animal species . " 52 These dream creatures enabled the western imagination to free itself from the mediocrity of the fauna actually to be found in its own world and to discover the inexhaustible creativity of Nature and God. There were men whose feet were turned around; dog-headed men who barked, lived well beyond the normal life span, and whose skin turned black in old age rather than white; m onopodes who shaded themselves w ith their raised foot; cyclops; headless men w ith eyes on their shoulders and two holes in their chest for nose and mouth; men who lived on the scent of a single kind of fruit and died if they could not smell it . 53 It was a surrealistic anthropology, comparable to something from Max Ernst. Besides these m onstrous men, fantastic beasts pullulated. Some were constructed of bits and pieces, like the bestia leucocroca, which had the body of an ass, the hindquarters of a deer, the breast and thighs of a lion, the hooves of a horse, a large forked horn, a broad m outh which went from ear to ear and emitted an almost hum an voice; others had hum an faces, like the mantichora, w ith three rows of teeth, a lion's body, scorpion's tail, blue eyes, a blood-red cast, a whistling voice like a serpent's, faster on the ground than a bird in flight, and anthropophagous to boot . 54 A poor and lim ited world formed for itself an extravagant combinatoric dream of disquieting juxtapositions and concatenations. The irony was that these monsters often served as screens betw een man and the riches he glimpsed, dreamed of, and desired: the dragons of India guarded treasures of gold and silver and kept men from coming near. The dream expanded to a vision of a world where a different kind of life was lived, where taboos were eliminated or exchanged for others. The weirdness of this world produced an im pression of liberation and freedom. The strict morality imposed by the Church was contrasted w ith the discomfiting attractiveness of a world of bizarre tastes, which practiced coprophagy and cannibalism ; 55 of bodily innocence, where man, freed of the modesty of clothing, rediscovered nudism 56 and sexual freedom; and where, once rid of restrictive monogamy and family barriers, he could give himself over to polygamy, incest, and eroticism . 57 Going farther still, medieval man dreamed of the unknow n and the infinite, of cosmic fear. The Indian Ocean became the mare infinitum, the entry to the world of storms, to Dante's terra senza gente. Here, however, W estern imagination ran up against the limits of w hat was ultimately a closed world, its dreams going around in circles w ithin it. On the one hand it encountered the walls that confined, for the

164

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 198

HIGH CULTURE AND POPULAR CULTURE

time being, the Antichrist and the dam ned races of the earth, Gog and Magog; it came upon its own apocalyptic destruction. On the other hand, it discovered a mirror image of itself, an upside-dow n world; it was turned back in on itself by the anti-world of which it dreamed, the oneiric and mythic archetype of the antipodes.58 There remained no choice but to be satisfied with tranquil, virtuous, reassuring dreams. Thus we have the Catholic dream of the Indian Ocean. Its tempests could not prevent the apostles from carrying the gospel to the Orient. Saint M atthew was supposed to have converted meridional India, Saint Bartholomew upper India, and Saint Thomas, especially, lower India, where medieval Christians pursued one more mirage in searching for his tomb. A lost Christian was said to be awaiting his Western brothers on the shores of the Indian Ocean. This dream gave rise to Prester John, who was to be given a semblance of reality by the discovery of the Nestorian comm unities. From Gregory of Tours to William of Malmesbury, Henry of Moringen, and Caesarius of Heisterbach, apostolic India would haunt Christian imaginations. It was Far Western Christendom that made one of the earliest attempts to open friendly relations w ith Far Eastern Christendom: in 883, King Alfred of England sent Bishop Sigelmus on a voyage toward Christian India.59 The shores of the Indian Ocean were the favorite object of missionary dreams. Even the more realistic Marco Polo carefully noted down which peoples were pagan, Moslem, Buddhist, or Nestorian, as so much useful information for the great undertaking. This Christian dream had a still more prestigious goal: to find the way into the Earthly Paradise. For it was indeed on the borders of India that medieval Christendom thought this Eden was located. From it flowed the four rivers of paradise which Christians identified with the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Ganges (under the name Pison), and the Nile (under the name Gihon). Most medieval cartographers, beginning with the monk Beatus on his famous map from the second half of the eighth century, carefully noted the location of Paradise on India's borders.60 Here, too, however, a more pagan dream frequently supplanted the Christian one. The Earthly Paradise of India then took the form of a primitive world enjoying its Golden Age, the dream of a happy and innocent hum anity prior to original sin and Christianity. Perhaps the most curious aspect of the Indian myth in the medieval West was that of a world of noble savages. From the Commonitorium palladii in the late fourth century to Roger Bacon's Opus majus and Petrarch's De vita solitaria, the theme of the virtuous peoples of the Indian Ocean underw ent continual development. The Alexander cycle dwells in-

165

MYTHS The Medieval West and the Indian Ocean

199

diligently on "virtuous Ethiopians" and "pious Brahmins." Although their piety m ight bear some resemblance to a certain Christian evangelism, it was distinguished by the absence of all reference to original sin and by the rejection of all social and ecclesiastical organization. Thus the Indian dream culminated in a hum anism hostile to all civilization and to all religion other than natural religion . 61 We have reached the end of our rapid excursion through the oneiric universe projected by medieval Western man onto the world of the Indian Ocean. Ultimately, this sea was conceived as an antiM editerranean, a place contrasted w ith the familiar world of civilization and rationalization. At this point we may ask ourselves whether the contradictions we have noted in the Indian dream are merely those inherent in any oneiric universe. To return to a distinction suggested above, I would be tem pted to see two opposing systems of thought, two opposing mentalities and sensibilities, frequently found, moreover, in combination. On the one hand we have a tendency toward the domestication and exorcism of marvels, which were brought w ithin reach of the W estern m ind by being associated with a familiar universe. This tendency Christianity reinforced through the influence of its allegorical explanations. Tailored for instructional use, the India thus moralized might still inspire desire or fear, but it was primarily sad and saddening. The lovely substances are now mere allegorical baubles, and the poor monsters, created for edification, as well as the unfortunate race of wicked men w ith large lower lips who rank just above the monsters in the scheme of things, all seem to repeat the verse in Psalm 140 that they personify: "malitia labiorum eorum obruat eos . " 62 Tristes tropiques . . . On the other hand, we have not left the ambiguous world of marvels which captivate and frighten at the same time. The psychic complexes of primitive mentalities have been transferred onto the plane of geography and civilization . 63 Barbarism both attracts and repels. India is the world of men w ith an incomprehensible language, men denied articulate and intelligent speech, and even the possibility of utterance. This is the m eaning of the "m outhless" Indians which some have foolishly sought to identify w ith one or another Himalayan tribe . 64 During the Middle Ages, moreover, the West and India held each other in contempt. Since the time of Greek antiquity, monoculism had been the symbol of barbarousness in the West, and for medieval Christians India was populated w ith Cyclops. We can imagine the surprise of the fifteenth-century traveler Niccolô de Conti when he heard Indians say they were quite superior to Westerners because those men from the West had only one eye, unlike themselves, two-eyed and hence w ise . 65 W hen Westerners

166

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 200

HIGH CULTURE AND POPULAR CULTURE

dreamed of motley Indians, half men and half beasts, were they not merely projecting their own complexes onto these fascinating and disquieting monsters? Homodubii. . . 66 N

ot e

The Celtic world was another oneiric horizon for the medieval West. Clerical culture colored it strongly, however, w ith Eastern influences. Indian myths invaded the Arthurian legend. Cf. Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages , edited by R. S. Loomis (Oxford, 1959), pp. 68-69, 130-31. I have not treated the problem of possible Indian influences on the fabliaux, which was raised by Gaston Paris on 9 December 1874 in his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France, 'O rien tal tales in French literature of the Middle Ages" (in La Poésie du Moyen Age , 2e série [Paris, 1895]), based on the works of the great nineteenthcentury German orientalists (particularly T. Benfey, Pantsch at antra: Fünf Bûcher indischer Fabeln, Marchen und Erzahlungen aus dem Sanskrit iibersetzt [Leipzig, 1859]). On this debate, cf. Per Nykrog, Les Fabliaux (Copenhagen, 1957).

167

MYTHS Notes to Pages 186-190

341

T h e M e d ie v a l W es t a n d t h e I n d i a n O c e a n In a d d itio n to th e sources cited below , I have particularly relied on the rem arkable and w ell-illustrated article of Rudolf W ittkow er, "M arvels of the East: A Study in the H istory of M o n sters," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942), 159-97, w hich also treats the Renaissance, even th o u g h th is stud y focuses prim arily on iconograp hy an d at tim es offers different in te rp re ta tio n s from m y ow n. Since the p a p er on w hich th is article is b ased w as first read (Venice, S eptem ber 1962), a d issertatio n by H. Gregor, Das Indienbild des Abendlandes (bis zum Ende des 13. Jahrhunderts) , W iener D issertationen aus dem G ebiete d e r G eschichte, (Vienna, 1964), has appeared. In the introd uctio n (p. 5), th e autho r defines h is subject as follows: "In d ie n ist schon für die A n tike auf G ru n d sein er fem en Lage m eh r ein O bjekt d er P han tasie als d er realen B eobachtung g e w e s e n . . . D er sch reib en de M ônch, d er gelehrte A bt, sie w aren in ihrem W issen u b e r d iesen Teil d er Erde auf das angew iesen, w as die an tiken A utoren erzâhlten. U n d v on d iesen oft k uriosen B erichten angeregt, w u rd e in ih rer Vorstellung Ind ien zu m W u n d erlan d schlechthin, in dem d ank sein er G rosse, seines Reichtum s u n d des fruchtbaren Klimas alies m oglich w ar, w as sich auf dieser W elt denken làsst". I w ould add th at, b y m eans of the m in ia tu re and sculpture, as well as scientific, didactic, rom antic, an d hom iletic literature, the im age of India p en etrated m edieval w estern society q u ite broadly an d w as n o t lim ited to an educated audience. It th erefore fu rnishes evidence of the collective psychology and sensibility.

1. Medieval cartography is the object of a vast literature. We pay homage to the pioneer work of the Polish historian Joachim Lelewel, La Géographie du M oyen Age, 5 vols. (Brussels, 1853-57) and an atlas (1849), and cite the following useful works: K. Miller, M appae Mundi: 1895-1898 ; F. Pulle, "La cartografía antica dell'India," Studi italiani di filología indo-iranica 4r-5 (1901-5). J. K. Wright, The geographical lore of the Time of the Crusades (New York, 1925); R. Uhden, "Zur Herkunft und Systematik der mittelalterlichen Weltkarte," Geographische Zeitschrift 37 (1931), 321-40; A. Kammerer, La mer Rouge, I'Abyssinie et l'Arabie depuis l'Antiquité, vol. 2, Les guerres du poivre: Les Portugais dans l'océan Indien et la mer Rouge au XVIe siècle, Histoire de la cartographie orientale (Cairo, 1935); G. H. T. Kimble, Geography in the Middle Ages (London, 1938); J. O. Thomson, H istory of Ancient Geography (Cambridge, 1948); L. Bagrow, Die Geschichte der Kartographie (Berlin, 1951). According to Kimble (p. 145), the only treatise on geography prior to the great discoveries which seems even vaguely aware of voyages in the Indian Ocean is the Tractatus optimus super totam astrologiam by Bernard of Verdun (cf. 1300). On the Catalonian mappemonde from the Biblioteca Estense, cf. Kammerer, p. 348. 2. Kammerer, p. 350. 3. Ibid., pp. 362, 354 ff.,369-70, 387-89. 4. Cf. F. Kunstmann, Die Kenntnis Indiens im 15. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1863). 5. Cf. Kimble, pp. 211 ff. The Pierre d'Ailly text is in chapter 19 of the Imago Mundi edited by E. Buron (Paris, 1930). Here is the text of Pius II, cited by Kimble, p. 213: "Plinius nepotis testimonio utitur qui Metello Celeri Gallie pro consuli donatos a rege Sueuorum Indos astruit qui ex India commercii causa navigantes tempestatibus essent in Germaniam arrepti. Nos apud Ottonem (Otto of Freising) legimus sub imperatoribus teutonicis Indicam navim et negociatores Indos in germánico littore fuisse deprehensos quos ventis agitatos ingratis ab orientali plaga venisse constabat. Quod accidere minime potuisset si ut perisque visum est septentrionale pelagus innavigabile concretumque esset a columnis herculeis Mauritanie atque Hispanie et Galliarum circuitus totusque ferme Occidens hodie navigatur. Orientem nobis in-

168

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 342

n o t e s

το

pa g e s

190-193

cognitum cum religionum atque impiorum diversitas tum barbaries immensa reddidit. Veteres tamen navigatum et Oceano qui extremas amplectitur terras a suis littoribus nomina indiderunt. .. Straboni multi consentiunt. Ptolemeus plurimum adversatur qui omne illud mare quod Indicum appellatur cum suis sinibus Arabico, Persico, Gangetico et qui proprio vocabulo magni nomen habet undique terra concludi arbitratus est." 6 . Cf. Kammerer, pp. 353— 54, and F. von Wieser, Die Weltkarte des Antonin de Virga. 7. Kammerer, pp. 354 ff. 8 . Jurgis Baltrusaitis, Reveils et prodiges: Le Gothique fantastique (Paris, 1960), p. 250. 9. Cf. R. Hennig, Terrae Incognitae , 2d éd., 4 vols. (Leyden, 1944r-56); A. P. Newton, Travel and Travellers of the Middle Ages (London, 1926); M. Mollat, "Le Moyen Age," in Histoire universelle des explorations, ed. L. H. Parias, vol. 1 (Paris, 1955); J. P. Roux, Les Explorateurs au M oyen Age (Paris, 1961); R. S. Lopez, "Nuove luci sugli Italiani in Estremo Oriente prima di Colombo," in Studi Colombiani 3 (Genoa, 1952), and "L'extrême frontière du commerce de l'Europe médiévale," Le M oyen Age 69 (1963). 10. Cf. Wittkower, p. 195, n. 1, which mentions the medieval statues of New College, Oxford, in which the students' reading of the mirabilia mundi is discussed. Cf. also Roux, pp. 138 ff, in a chapter improperly entitled "Des yeux ouverts sur l'inconnu." 11. Cf. L. Olschki, L'Asia di Marco Polo (Florence, 1957). On the Venetians' distrust of the Indian Ocean boats, cf. p. 17, and on the change of the character of Marco Polo's narrative, pp. 31-32. 12. Concerning the amazing resemblance between the fabulous India of the manuscripts of Kazwin (in particular, the Cod. Arab. 464 of Munich from 1280), cf. Wittkower, p. 175. On what Western scholars borrowed from Arab works that were more astrological and magical than scientific, cf. R. Lemay, "Dans l'Espagne du XIIe siècle: les traductions de l'arabe au latin," Annales, E.S .C ., 1963, pp. 639-65. 13. Strabo, II, 1, 9. 14. Aulus-Gellius, Noctes Atticae IX, 4. 15. Cf. E. L. Stevenson, Geography of Claudius Ptolemy (New York, 1932). 16. On the text of Saint Augustine, De civitate Dei XVI, 8 : "An ex propagine Adam vel filiorum Noe quaedam genera hominum monstrosa prodiderint," cf. Wittkower, pp. 167-68. Albertus Magnus (De animalibus XXVI, 21) states, in connection with the gold-seeking ants of India, "sed hoc non satis est probatum per experimentum." 17. Pliny states (Historia naturalis VII, ii, 21) "praecipue India Aethiopumque tractus miraculis scatent." 18. The Collectanea rerum memorabilium of Solinus were published by Mommsen (2d ed. Berlin, 1895). 19. Martianus Capella's geography may be found in the sixth book of De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, devoted to geometry. 20. Published by H. Omont, "Lettre à l'Empereur Adrian sur les merveilles de l'Asie," in Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Chartes 24 (1913), 507 ff, based on the Ms. Paris B.N. N ouv. acq. lat. 1065, ff°s. 92 v°-95, from the ninth century. 21. The first two treatises, Mirabilia and Epistola Premonis regis ad Traianum Imperatorem, have been published by M. R. James, M arvels of the East: A Full Reproduction of the Three Known Copies (Oxford, 1929). The third, De monstris et belluis, was published by M. Haupt in Opuscula 2 (1876), 221 ff. 22. These texts have been published by F. Pfister, Kleine Texte zum Alexanderroman, Sammlung vulgàr-lateinischer Texte, 4 (1910). W. W. Boer has put out a new critical edition of the Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem (The Hague, 1953). 23. All sources concerning Prester John have been collected by F. Zamcke in Abhandlungen der phil.-hist. Klasse d. kgl. sachs. Gesell. d. Wiss. 7 and 8 (1876-79). Cf. Henning, no. 13, III, chap. 115; L. Thorndike, A H istory of Magic and Expenmental

169

MYTHS Notes to Pages 193-194

343

Science (London, 1923) 2, 236 ff. C.-V. Langlois, La Vie en France au M oyen Age III, La connaissance de la nature et du monde (Paris, 1927), pp. 44-70. L. Olschki sees in the

Letter of Prester John a text concerning a political utopia. "Der Brief des Presbyters Johannes/' Historische Zeitschrift 144 (1931), 1-14, and Storia letteraña delle scoperte geografiche (1937), pp. 194 ff. I have been unable to consult Slessarev Vsevolod, Pñester John (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1959). 24. From the abundant literature on the medieval Alexander, I single out three recent, fundamental books: A. Abel, Le Roman d'Alexandre, légendaire médiéval (Brussels, 1955); G. Cary, The Medieval Alexander (Cambridge, 1956), and D. J. A. Ross, Alexander histonatus: A Guide to Medieval Illustrated Alexander Literature, Warburg Institute Surveys, 1 (London, 1963). 25. J. W. McCrindle, Ancient India as Described by Ktesias the Knidian (Westminster, 1882). 26. E. A. Schwanbeck, Megasthenis Indica (Bonn, 1846). 27. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. W. M. Lindsay (London, 1911), chaps. 11,12, 14, 16, 17. Cf. J. Fontaine, Isidore de Seville et la culture classique dans XEspagne wisigothique , 2 vols. (Paris, 1959). 28. Rabanus Maurus, De universo or De rerum naturis, 8 ,12, 4,17,19. Migne PL 111. Amelli, Miniature sacre e profane dell'anno 1023 illustranti VEnciclopedia medioevale di Rabano Mauro (Montecassino, 1896). A. Goldschmidt, "Friihmittelalterliche illustrierte Enzyklopadien," Vortrage der Bibliothek Warburg, 1923-24. Lynn White Jr., 'Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages" Speculum 15 (1940). 29. Migne, PL 172, I, 11-13. 30. Historia Orientalis, chaps. 86-92. 31. Cf. Wittkower, p. 169, n. 5. 32. Cf. James, n. 25, pp. 41 ff. 33. Cf. Wittkower, p. 170, n. 1. The Indian marvels are discussed in the De proprietatibus rerum in chaps. 12, 15, 16-18. 34. Cf. Wittkower, p. 170, nn. 8 and 9. 35. Cf. ibid., n. 2. On Dante, cf. De Gubernatis, "Dante e l'India," Giornale della Società Asiatica Italiana 3 (1889). 36. The Indian passages may be found in book 31, chaps. 124-31 (in particular, following Solinus and Isidore), in the Speculum naturale; and, in the Speculum historiale, a chapter "De India et ejus mirabilibus" (1, 64) and a long passage (4, 53-60), "De mirabilibus quae vidit Alexander in India," taken from the Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem.

37. Cf. A. Bovenschen, Die Quelle fur die Reisebeschreïbung des Johann von Mandeville (Berlin, 1888). Mandevilles Reise in mittelniederdeutscher Ubersetzungen, ed. S. Martinsson (Lund, 1918). In John of Mandeville, we hear the echo of the adventures of Sinbad the Sailor, partly drawn from the same sources (esp. Pliny and Solinus). On the theme of the explorers of the Indian Ocean in medieval Moslem literature, cf. the edition by Eusebe Renaudot, Anciennes relations des Indes et de la Chine de deux v o y ageurs mahométans (Paris, 1718), and C. R. Beazley, The D aw n of M o d em Geography (London, 1897) 1, 235-38, 43&-50. 38. Cf. Grasse, Gesta Romanorum (Leipzig, 1905), and H. Oesterley, Gesta Romanorum (Berlin, 1872), pp. 574 ff. On the Indian exempla in medieval moral literature, cf. J. Klapper, Exempla, Sammlung mittellateinischer Texte, 2 (Heidelberg, 1911). 39. Pierre d'Ailly, Imago Mundi, ed. E. Buron (Paris, 1930), "De mirabilibus Indiae," pp. 264 ff. 40. On the iconography of the mirabilia, besides Wittkower's article, see two admirable works by J Baltrusaitis, Le M oyen Age fantastique: Antiquités et exotismes dans l'art gothique (Paris, 1955), and Reveils et prodiges: Le M oyen Age fantastique (Paris, 1960). It is still possible to read E. Mâle, L'Art religieux du XIIe siècle en France, 6 th ed. (Paris,

170

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 344

n o t e s

το

pa g e s

194-197

1953): "La géographie du XIIe siècle. La tradition antique. Les fables de Ctésias, de Megasthène, de Pline, de Solin sur les monstres. La colonne de Souvigny, tableau des merveilles du monde. Le tympan de Vézelay et les différents peuples du monde évangélisés par les apôtres," p. 321 ff. On the tympanum at Vezelay, see A. Katzenellenbogen, "The Central Tympanum at Vezelay/ 7 A rt Bulletin, 1944, and F. Salet, La Madeleine de Vézelay (Melun, 1948). 41. On the iconographie and stylistic filiations in the miniatures of the mirabilia Indiae of the early Middle Ages, especially the Byzantine influences, cf. Wittkower, pp. 172-74. 42. Cf. ibid., p. 117. 43. Cf. the texts cited by Wittkower, p. 168, nn. 2 and 4. "Portenta esse ait Varro quae contra naturam nata videntur; sed non sunt contra naturam, quia divina voluntate fiunt." (Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae XI, iii, 1), and "Portentum ergo fit non contra naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura. Portenta autem, et ostenta, monstra, atque prodigia, ideo nuncupantur, quod portendere, atque ostendere, mostrare, atque praedicere aliqua futura videntur" (ibid., 2). A folio from the Cod. 411 of Bruges is reproduced in Wittkower, fig. 44a, p. 178. 44. See esp. the works of J. Baltrusaitis, cited n. 40. 45. On the three Indias, cf. e.g., Gervase of Tilbury, O tia Imperialia, ed. F. Liebrecht (Hannover, 1856) 1, p. 911, and H. Yule, Cathay and the W a y Thither (London, 1914) 2, pp. 27 ff, and J. K. Wright, The Geographical L o re . . . , pp. 307 ff. 46. Cf. Wittkower, p. 197, and Jean de Plan Carpin, Histoire des M ongols , ed. J. Becquet and L. Hambis (Paris, 1965), n. 57, pp. 153-54. 47. Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae, book 4 passim, esp. chaps. 12, 15, 19, 25 (MGHf SS 7, and B. Schmeidler, M G H , SS, R. G. ed 2, 1917). Adam transplants the monstrous races of India to Scandinavia. Cf. K. Miller, M appae mundi 4,18. 48. Marco Polo, La Description du Monde (with the reproduction of miniatures from Ms. fr. 2810, Paris, BN entitled Le Livre des Merveilles), ed. L. Hambis (Paris, 1955), p. 292. 49. Rabanus Maurus, De universo, Migne PL 111, chap. 5, "De insulis": "Insulae dictae, quod in sale sint, id est in mari positae, quae in plurimis locis sacrae Scripturae aut ecclesias Christi significant aut specialiter quoslibet sanctos viros, qui truduntur fluctibus persecutionum, sed non destruuntur, quia a Deo proteguntur." 50. Marco Polo, p. 276. 51. Ibid., p. 253. Here is how the isles of gold and silver appear in Pierre d'Ailly's Imago Mundi (chap. 41, "De aliis insulis Oceani famosis"): "Crise et Argire insule in Indico Oceano site sunt adeo fecunde copia metallorum ut plerique eas auream superficiem et argenteam habere dixerunt unde et vocabulum sortite sunt." 52. De Imagine Mundi, Migne, PL 172, chaps. 11-13, cols. 123-25. The sentence cited is the beginning of chap. 1 2 . 53. "Ut sunt ii qui aversas habent plantas, et octonos simul sedecim in pedibus digitos, et alii, qui habent canina capita, et ungues aduncos, quibus est vestis pellis pecudum, et vox latratus canum. Ibi etiam quaedam matres semel pariunt, canosque partus edunt, qui in senectude nigrescunt, et longa nostrae aetatis tempora excedunt. Sunt aliae, quae quinquennes pariunt: sed partus octavum annum non excedunt. Ibi sunt et monoculi, et Arimaspi et Cyclopes. Sunt et Scinopodae qui uno tantum fulti pede auram cursu vincunt, et in terram positi umbram sibi planta pedis erecti faciunt. Sunt alii absque capite, quibus sunt oculi in humeris, pro naso et ore duo foramina in pectore, setas habent ut bestiae. Sunt alii juxta fontem Gangis fluvii, qui solo odore cujusdam pomi vivunt, qui si longius eunt, pomum secum ferunt; moriuntur enim si pravum odorem trahunt" (ibid., chap. 1 2 ). 54. Let alone giant serpents that could swim the Indian Ocean, we are told that "Ibi est bestia ceucocroca, cujus corpus asini, clunes cervi, pectus et crura leonis,

171

MYTHS Notes to Pages 197-199

345

pedes equi, ingens cornu bisulcum, vastus oris hiatus usque ad aures. In loco dentium os solidum, vox pene hominis. . . Ibi quoque Mantichora bestia, facie homo, triplex in dentibus ordo, corpore leo, cauda scorpio, oculis glauca, colore sanguinea, vox sibilus serpentum, fugiens discrimina volat, velecior cursu quam avis volatu, humanas carnes habens in usu.. . . " (ibid., chap. 13). 55. "On this island are the most marvelous and most wicked people in the world. They eat raw flesh and all manner of filth and are guilty of the worst cruelties. For there father eats son and son father, the husband eats his wife and the wife her husband" (Les voyages en Asie au XIVe siècle du bienheureux frère Odoric de Pordenone, religieux de saint François. Recueil de voyages et de documents pour servir à l'histoire de la géographie depuis le XIIIe jusqu'à la fin du XVIe siècle 10, ed. Henri Cordier [Paris, 1891], chap. 19, p. 237, "De l'isle de Dondiin"). 56. "On this island (Necuveran, i.e., Nicobar), they have neither king nor lord but are like wild animals. And I tell you that they go completely naked, both men and women, and cover themselves with nothing at all. They have carnal relations like dogs in the street, wherever they may be, completely shamelessly, and respect no one; the father does not respect his daughter, nor the son his mother, and everyone does as he pleases and is able. They are a lawless people." Marco Polo, p. 248). This theme is combined with that of innocence, the golden age, and the "pious" brahmins, which I shall speak of below. E.g., "We go naked," say the ciugni, a special category of brahmins of Malabar, "because we want nothing from this world, because we came into this world without clothing and naked; and if we are not ashamed to show our member, it is because we commit no sin with it" (ibid. p. 269). 57. "It is the honest truth that this king has five hundred wives, and I mean brides, because, I tell you, as soon as he sees a beautiful lady or maid, he wants her for himself and takes her for his wife. And in this kingdom, there are some very beautiful women. And what is more, they make themselves up beautifully on their faces and their whole bodies" (ibid., p. 254). And further, e.g., "These little virgins, as long as they stay little virgins, have such firm flesh that you cannot squeeze it or pinch it anywhere. For a small coin, they'll let a man pinch them as much as he wants . . . On account of this firmness, their breasts do not hang down at all, but stand straight out in front. There are plenty of girls like that throughout the kingdom" (ibid., p. 261). 58. On Gog and Magog, cf. A. R. Annderson, Alexander's Gate, and Magog and the Inclosed Nations (Cambridge, Mass., 1932). On the antipodes, cf. G. Boffito, "La leggenda degli antipodi" in Miscellanea di Studi storici in onore di Arturo Graf (Bergamo, 1903), pp. 583-601, and J. Baltrusaitis, Cosmographie chrétienne dans l'art du Moyen Age (Paris, 1939). 59. E. Tisserant, Eastern Christianity in India (London, 1957); U. Monneret de Villard, "Le leggende orientali sui Magi evangelistici," Studi e Testi 163 (1952); J. Dahlmann, Die Thomaslegende (Freiburg-in-Brisgau, 1912); L. W. Brown, The Indian Christians of St. Thomas (Cambridge, 1956). The passage from Gregory of Tours may be found in the Liber in gloria martyrum 31-32 (MGH, SRM, 1). On the pilgrimage of Heinrich von Moringen to India around 1200, cf. Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum, dist. VIII, cap. LIX, and R. Henning, Terrae Incognitae (Leyden, 1936-39) 2, 380 ff. On the embassy of Sigelmus, cf. William of Malmesbury, De gestis regum anglorum libri quinque, coll. Rerum britannicarum medii aevi scriptores, 90, ed. W. Stubbs, 1 (London, 1887), 130, and Henning, 2, 204r-7. 60. On the Earthly Paradise, cf. L. I. Ringbom's basic work Paradisus Terrestris: Myt, Bild och Verklighet (with a summary in English and abundant illustrations). 61. Cf. R. Bemheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages: A study in Art, Sentiment, and Demonology (Cambridge, Mass., 1952). The brahmins were the inspiration of an abundant literature, both in the Middle Ages (since the De moribus Brachmanorum by Pseudo-Ambrosius: in Migne PL 17) and in modem historiography. Cf. H. Becker, Die

172

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 346

N O T E S TO PA G E

199

Brahmanen in der Alexandersage (Konigsberg, 1889); F. Pfister, "Das Nachleben der Uberlieferung von Alexander und den Brahmanen/' Hermes 76 (1941); G. Boas, Essays on Primitivism and Related Ideas in the Middle Ages (Baltimore, 1948), and H. Gregor, Das Indienbild . . . , pp. 36-43. Petrarch wrote "Illud importunae superbiae est quod se

peccatum non habere confirmant. . . Placet ille contemptus mundi, qui iusto maior esse non potest, placet solitudo, placet libertas qua nulli gentium tanta est; placet silentium, placet otium, placet quies, placet intenta cogitatio, placet integritas atque securitas, modo temeritas absit; placet animorum aequalitas, unaque semper frons et nulli rei timor aut cupiditas, placet sylvestris habitatio fontisque vicinitas, quem ut in eo libro scriptum est quasi uber terrae matris incorruptum atque integrum in os mulgere consueverant/' It is important to link this myth of the Indian Earthly Paradise to the numerous marvels which recur traditionally among the mirabilia Indiae: the fountain of youth in which Prester John bathed six times, by virtue of which he was already more than five hundred years old; the trees whose leaves were always green; theriaca, a panacea for all ailments; the immortal phoenix; the unspotted unicorn, etc. It was in India that the Middle Ages located the sun tree and the moon tree, talking trees that pronounced oracles and played an important role in alchemy (they are indicated on the table of Peutinger, the cards of Ebstofer and of Hereford; cf. C. G. Jung, Psychologie und Alchimie , 2d ed. (Zurich, 1952), pp. 105 and 321). To these marvelous trees, Solinus added the table of the sun, the Ethiopian magi sitting around it, their plates constantly refilled by miraculous means—a myth that was a precursor of Never-Never Land, in which it is easy to see the obsession with food of a world haunted by hunger. Finally it should be noted that, in contrast with the myth of a primitive, forested India prior to the corruptions of civilization, we also find a myth of a populous and suburbanized India (five thousand large cities and nine thousand nations according to Solinus, 52, 4). 62. Cf. Wittkower, p. 177. With Emile Mâle (p. 330), we should observe that the monstrous races of India represented on the tympana of Vezelay and other churches represented the physical and moral degradation of humanity after the original sin, as a twelfth-century poet explains (Histoire littéraire de la Prance 1 0 , 8 ). 63. Cf. Sigmund Freud, "Mythologische Parallele zu einer plastichen Zwangsvorstellung, Internationale Zeitschrift fur arztliche Psychoanalyse 4 (1916-17) (cited by Wittkower, p. 197, n. 7). In literary dreams in the medieval West, of course, the monsters, especially the dragons and griffins that abound in India, represent the dreamer's enemy. Can we ask whether the army of ferocious and fantastic beasts that attack the Frankish troops in Charlemagne's nightmare (Chanson de Roland , lines 2525-54) and that are supposed to be the soldiers of the "Emir of Babylon," is not really the fantastic world of India sweeping down on Christendom? Cf. R. Mentz, Die traume in altfranzosischen Karls- und Artus-Epen (Marburg, 1887), pp. 39 and 64-65; K. J. Steinmeyer, Untersuchungen zu r allegorischen Bedeutung der Traume im altfranzosischen Rolandslied (Munich, 1963), and J. Gyory's note in Cahiers de Civilisation médiévale 7 (1964), 197-200. To the theme of the cosmos in medieval literature ("Le cosmos, un songe," Annales Universitatis Budapestinensis, Sectio philologica 4 [1963]) Gyory has applied a method which I think is close to the one I am applying here to the geographical and ethnographic myth of India. 64. H. Hosten, "The Mouthless Indians," Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 8 (1912). 65. Niccolô Conti, who traded in India, China, and the Sunda Isles from 1419 to 1444, had to become a Moslem in order to carry on his business. When he returned to Europe, he asked the pope to grant him absolution, and as penitence the pope required him to write an account of his travels. Cf. M. Longhena, Viaggi in Persia, India e Giava di Niccolo de' Conti (Milan, 1929), p. 179; Poggio Bracciolini, Historia de varietate fortunae, lib. IV; Henning, Terrae Incognitae 4, 29 ff., and Wittkower, p. 163, n. 5.

173

MYTHS Note to Page 200

347

66. "Homodubii qui usque ad umbilicum hominis speciem habent, reliquo corpore onagro similes, cruribus ut aves. . . " (legend on a manuscript of the Mirabilia Indiae, London, British Museum, Tiberius B V, f° 82 v°, from around the year 1000; cf. R. Wittkower, loc. cit., p. 173, n. 1).

6

Marco Polo and the Pictorial Tradition of the Marvels of the East Rudolf Wittkower I.

I

Storia letteraria delle scoperte geografiche, and again in Marco Polo’s Precursors, Professor Leonardo Olschki demonstrates convincingly that patterns of thought arising from the literary conception of Asia current in Europe determined the character and structure of Marco Polo’s Milione. Asia was for Marco Polo a fabulous land of wonders, as it had been for Europeans from Alexander the Great’s days onwards; wonders he set out to find and wonders he certainly did find. On the other hand, he was a keen and accurate observer and in this respect, on the whole, far in advance of other travellers of his period. He had, of course, one inestimable advantage over contemporary travellers, quite apart from his many uncommon qualities: when he began his journey he was still so young that neither his thought nor his power of observation was dulled by habit; and although he was keyed up to notice the extraordinary rather than the ordinary, most of the strange tales he had to tell have a factual basis and are often eye-witness reports. His comparative freedom and independence of perception led to incredulity in his readers, and this is not quite as astonishing as it may appear. Our own ways of assessing facts, of thinking and seeing are divided by a deep gulf from those of the Middle Ages; but the species homo sapiens has not changed. As with the people of 700 years ago, our thoughts and ideas follow patterns familiar to us through tradition, education, cultural setting and all kinds of conventions, and as with the people of the Middle Ages we only understand, are willing to notice and to see what we know and believe in. We need not wonder, therefore, that there were people who regarded Marco Polo — as Friar Jacopo of Acqui informs us — as N His

176

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES

a liar and impostor. They were not prepared to believe him because many of his stories transgressed the expected pattern. According to Jacopo of Asti, he was asked by his friends before his death to correct the Book by removing everything that went beyond the facts. To which his reply was that he had not told one-half of what he had really seen. As far as I am aware, no such doubts were expressed in their days about the veracity of Friar Odoric’s stories, or those of the notorious impostor, Sir John Mandeville, although they would appear to us much more fanciful than those reported by Marco Polo. Odoric and Mandeville were more readily accepted because they pretended to have seen marvels which people expected to hear of, marvels with which they were familiar through their encyclopedias, their geographical, scientific and historical literature and, above all, their romances. It is probably not far from the truth that many readers of Marco Polo’s Milione endeavoured to re-translate into the accustomed pattern of marvels relatively sober reports which they could not relate to known « facts » and which therefore required some corrective adjustment. How can we prove that this really happened ? It would not be easy for the literary historian, but the art historian can do it, and most of the following remarks will be concerned with this problem. Amongst the many Marco Polo manuscripts there is only one with a large and splendid cycle of illuminations; namely, the well known codex 28x0 of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, written at the beginning of the 15th century for John the Fearless, Duke of B u r g u n d y . I t is mainly the illustrations of this manuscript that will be used to supply an answer to our question. There are revealing discrepancies between text and illustrations. The latter tend to interpret and even « correct » the text so as to harmonize it with traditional conceptions. Marco Polo himself could never obliterate the visual recollections stored up in his memory. But his method of dealing with them is very different from that of the illustrator. A few examples may show where his own and his illustrator’s ways part. When Marco described the rhinoceros in Sumatra, the horn immediately evoked associations. He calls the animal «unicorn », but states explicitly that this ugly beast has nothing in common with the unicorn which, 156

MYTHS

Fig .

i

F ig . 2

177

178

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES

Fig . 3

Fig . 4

MYTHS

179

according to «our stories », is caught in the lap of a virgin. ^ How could he be so sure that the two species of unicorns were utterly different ? Clearly, he must have seen and remembered pictorial representations. The story of the unicorn which can only be caught when lulled to sleep on a virgin’s bosom appears first in the Physiologus, the late antique handbook of animal tales with Christian allegorical interpretations, and from there it migrated into Bestiaries, into the sculptural decoration of churches, into pictures and tapestries: it became one of the most widely current symbols of Christ’s incarnation. No wonder, therefore, that the story of the unicorn as well as pictures came to Marco Polo’s mind; they must have been similar in character to the early 13th-century illumination shown in figure i .4) And although his description of the animal was coloured by literary tradition — he relates as true the Chinese legend of the rhinoceros’ prickly tongue — his discrimination between the pictorial and the real «unicorn » proves that his critical sense was not marred by traditional imagery. The artist of codex 2810 did not illustrate Marco’s passage about the rhinoceros-unicorn, but otherwise he was rather generous in studding his pictures with the customary type of unicorns. A characteristic example is his illustration of Marco Polo’s description of the Indian Kingdom of Eli which —the latter informs us—teems with lions and other wild beasts.6) The artist interpreted the passage by showing steep and desolate rocks enlivened by lion and fox, swan, boar and bear — and, most conspicuously in the centre, a unicorn (fig. 2). Not a word about unicorns in the text ! But when attempting to translate into tangible visual language the generic term «wild beasts » the artist not unexpectedly thought of the unicorn — for the West the fierce beast par excellence, which could only be caught by the stratagem I have mentioned. Thus by placing the « emblem » of the rearing unicorn in the centre of the page, the meaning of the scene was most strongly and most vividly conveyed to every reader. A parallel case is that of the Roc. When describing Madagascar, Marco Polo relates the miraculous story of the giant bird which is so large and powerful that it makes short work even of elephants.8) It can seize an

157

180

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES

elephant in its talons and lift it into the air. This exhibition of strength is a crafty device, for the Roc lets the elephant fall to the ground and then preys upon its carcase. This legend has its mythological origin in the Indian solar bird Garuda, and the transformation of the cosmological Garuda into the monstrous Roc can be traced and its migration followed from India through Persia to the Arab world, where the Roc even made its way into scientific literature. 9> In contrast to the mid-i4th century traveller Ibn Batuta who, while sailing in the Chinese Seas, asserts to have seen the Roc, Marco Polo truthfully reports that his informants were people in Madagascar. When he heard about the bird, interesting associations came to his mind : he immediately thought of griffins — and, in fact, he called the bird « griffin ». The passage is extremely revealing, for he refers to representations : “ One knows ”, he says, “ that these birds are not such as we represent them in pictures, half birds and half lions. Those who have seen them declare that they are like enormous eagles. ” Thus again, as in the case of the unicorn, traditional images are called up from memory and rejected without much ado. There cannot be any doubt that Marco Polo had seen in Venice representations of griffins. The 12th-century relief of Alexander’s journey to the sky on the front of S. Marco, facing the Piazzetta dei Leoni, comes immediately to mind (fig. 3). In addition, there is another relief with a conspicuous representation of griffins in the same façade. It hardly needs recalling that their number is legion inside medieval churches. In this context it is perhaps even more important that Byzantine and oriental silks and tapestries reached Venice in great numbers, and a recurrent motif of their decoration is a griffin lifting a bull in its talons (fig. 4).Io) When illustrating Marco Polo’s text, the artist seems to have been ill at ease (fig. 5).Il} The bird near to the beholder may be regarded as an attempt to conform with the text, for although not attacking the elephants in the foreground, it shows eagle-like features. But further back appears the forepart of a real griffin with its prey in its beak. The illustrator cunningly hid the lower part of the bird so as not to contradict Marco Polo’s explicit statement. Now the Paris manuscript also contains, amongst 15 8

MYTHS

Fig . 5

Fig . 6

181

182

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES

Fig . 7

Fig . 8

MYTHS

183

other texts, that of Sir John Mandeville’s travels. The author talks about the Roc, this time in Bactria. And like Marco Polo he calls it griffin without, however, doubting, as Marco Polo did, its mythological composite shape. It is evident that Mandeville, in contrast to Marco Polo, complied with notions readily accepted in the West. It is griffins, according to him, which carry to their nests a horse with rider or a pair of oxen yoked together. The artist happily returned to a large-scale specimen of the traditional classical griffin (fig. 6) and showed, facing him, a classical centaur, for, according to Mandeville, centaurs also live in Bactria.12) There are cases where Marco Polo’s observations seem to have been blurred by recollections of imagery. He describes how a fearful type of serpent is haunting the Chinese province of Caragian, a reptile of enormous size, with jaws wide enough to swallow a man and with teeth sharp and large.I3) It has been surmised, probably correctly, that he is talking about crocodiles.14) But his description of these formidable beasts goes wrong. They have, he informs us, only two short legs near the head with claws similar to a falcon or a lion. This account was evidently coloured by visual reminiscences. He must have had at the back of his mind the familiar type of dragon, oriental in origin, but forming part of western iconography from the early Middle Ages onwards. This westernized oriental monster could be seen, before Marco left Venice, not only in such manuscripts as Bestiaries, but also innumerable times in the pictorial and sculptural decoration of churches, in portals and capitals, pavements and mosaics. The traditional dragon invariably has wings similar to those of bats. Marco correctly omitted mention of this fantastic feature when he compounded visual recollections of dragons with first or second hand information about crocodiles. The artist must have felt that he had to correct this omission (fig.y).I5) He juxtaposed prominently in the foreground a traditional winged dragon and a wingless one, probably in order to comply with Marco’s description. To allow some latitude of choice he added at the right border a four-footed winged specimen. Moreover, he gave his winged dragons tails with snakes’ heads, a feature not at all warranted by Marco Polo’s

159

184

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES

report. This is again a kind of hieroglyph, to which medieval people readily responded: it indicated quite exceptional fierceness and wickedness. The ultimate source for this monstrous formation may have been the Greek Chimaera (fig. 8). To a Christian, a serpent-tailed winged monster evoked associations with the Basilisk, the symbol of the Antichrist.l6) Of the negro population of the Andaman Islands Marco Polo had the lowest possible opinion. In fact, even in Yule’s days they were still living in a state of complete barbarism.1?) Marco Polo assures us that these people have heads, eyes and teeth resembling those of dogs.l8) This may have been a good description, but can one doubt that it was influenced by images of cynocephali which he had ample opportunities of seeing in Venice ? From Ctesias’ days on — i. e. since the 4th century B. C. — people with dogs’ heads belonged to the unchallenged stock of Indian marvels. No wonder then, that our artist represented what everybody expected to see — a dog-faced race — thus turning Marco’s analogy into a plain statement of fact (fig. 9).I9) Moreover, by showing nicely tamed the wild, cannibalistic race of the text, the artist made it easy for the medieval spectator to visualize the private life of dog-faced men who behaved so much like Europeans. In connection with the cynocephali another story should be mentioned. Marco Polo gives a clear report of Indian Yogi. He talks of their ascetic life and mentions that they walk about stark naked. Then follows the remark that they worship the ox and wear as a kind of emblem a small ox of brass or bronze over the forehead. zo> It was Friar Odoric who combined this story with the cynocephali. In his fantastic version it is the dog-faced people living in an island near India who worship the ox, “ wherefore they always wear upon the forehead an ox made of gold and silver, in token that he is their god. ” 2τ~ > The Paris manuscript also contains Odoric’s illustrated text and in his picture (fig. 10) 22) the artist makes the story again palatable and credible to western eyes by representing familiar incidents : a king walking with his body-guard and men haggling over the price of corn. Naturally, Sir John Mandeville cribbed this story from 16 0

MYTHS

Fig . 9

F ig . io

185

186

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES

F ig .

ii

F ig . 12

MYTHS

187

Odoric, and through illustrated Mandeville manuscripts and printed editions 2s) it reached a wide public far into the 15th and 16th centuries. This success was due to the fact that an originally sober report had been transmuted and assimilated to the expected pattern of eastern marvels. The relation between text and picture is not always as clear and simple as in the cases so far discussed. No more than a few hints can here be given. Marco Polo tells us that in a place probably to be located in the region of the Altai mountains an incombustible material is won “ of which one makes salamander. ” The truth is, he reports, that the salamander is not a beast as people allege, but a substance. The story that the serpent-like creature salamander (or for that matter any animal) can live in fire he declares to be fabulous nonesense.24) But this story has a venerable pedigree. Aristotle writes that the salamander extinguishes fire;25) and through the Physiologus and the Bestiaries the legend was disseminated in Christian Europe. The artist’s illustration to Marco Polo’s antitraditional exposition is rather surprising, for he represents an old man on a pyre surrounded by flames without being burned by them (fig. 11).26) The connection with the text is anything but obvious. One may argue that the man might be protected by a salamander shirt. But a more likely explanation offers itself. In Christian allegorical thought the salamander typifies the righteous man, who is not consumed by the fire of luxury and lust. Thus the prophet Isaiah says of the just man: “ When thou walkest through fire thou shalt not be burned.” 2?> Some such current ideas may have crossed the artist’s mind. Moreover, recollections of illustrated Alexander romances with which, as we shall see, our artist was conversant, seem to have stimulated him. It is even probable that he used as prototype for his composition an Alexander romance illustration of the kind reproduced in figure 12, showing in an entirely different context a man tied to a post and surrounded by leaping flames.28) The most revealing relation between text and picture occurs where Marco Polo talks about the inhabitants of Siberia. He only mentions that they are a very wild race.29) The illuminator shows three specimens of this race (fig. 13) : 3°) one a headless man with the face placed between the 161

188

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES

shoulders, the second a man who is lying on his back lifting his one leg with its outsize foot, and the third a one-eyed giant with club and shield. Are these strange creatures fanciful inventions by the artist ? Far from it: he depicted representatives of well-established fabulous races of the East which every reader expected to find in a work about Asia. If Marco Polo was satisfied with the generic denomination «wild race », he was probably not fully or correctly informed — so the artist might have argued — and the picture had to put this right. Here you see, the reader was told, what wild races in the Far East look like. Somewhere amongst the 84 illustrations of the text such a picture had to appear. By contrast to Marco Polo, Mandeville enumerates, of course, all the marvellous races of the East one by one, nor does he forget the people who have their faces in their breasts. This gave the artist an opportunity for a more detailed anatomical statement (fig. 14) and it appears that this race, quite sensibly, has also faces in their backs. In all the examples so far given Marco Polo’s acumen is remarkably penetrating, but that does not mean that there are not pure flights of fantasy in his work. One such case may here be mentioned although it was not illustrated. In Sumatra Marco found a race of tailed men.*2) His information is rather detailed; the tail is similar to those of dogs, but without hair; the people live wild in the mountains. It is unlikely that he intended to describe apes, as has been suggested. Somewhere else he clearly discriminates between man and beast. There is a reference in the land of Comari to “ great apes of such build that they have the appearance of men ”, an extraordinarily acute statement. In fact, this passage is the first intimation by a European that the difference between man and anthropoid ape had been noticed. For the next 250 years that knowledge was lost again. On the other hand, wild men with tails were a stock feature of classical and medieval literature. Marco Polo’s description of this race derives, however, from pictorial rather than literary sources. Ctesias, in the 4th century B. C., had already located in India men with tails “ like those of satyrs in pictures ’V 4) and Marco Polo had ample opportunity of seeing them in Bestiaries and allied representations. One 162

MYTHS

F i g . 13

F i g . 14

189

190

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES

F i g . 15

F i g . 16

MYTHS

191

such late 12th-century Bestiary illustration, in which ape and tailed man («satyr») are juxtaposed, is shown in figure 15.3s) It may be added that tailed men always had a peculiar attraction for travellers, as imaginary observations and reports right into the 19th century prove. ^ The few examples which have here been given may have helped to clarify the points indicated at the beginning of this paper. We see Marco Polo activating, as the occasion arose, the stock of imagery deposited in his memory; unbiased to a remarkable degree, he compares his actual experience with, and often rejects, the traditional image; but sometimes the traditional image colours or even submerges his true impressions. The same sort of thing happens not only to every one of us in the course of our daily routine, it even happens — as would be easy to show — to experimental scientists whose whole raison d’être depends on accurate observation. Quite different from Marco Polo’s was the approach of the illuminator. No medieval artist aimed at a descriptive illustration of a text. As a rule he addressed his public through exemplars, models which circumscribed or contained in a single picture a whole complex of notions and ideas; and it is the strength of the medieval position that these pictorial exemplars were subject to only very slow changes. Being accustomed to the visual language of exemplars fixed by long tradition, the medieval reader on his side did not expect a literal text illustration, but rather visual clarification in terms familiar to him. 5?) A further example may throw light on this point. Tower-carrying elephants were the signet or pictorial formula for an eastern battle-scene ever since Alexander’s battle against Porus. In a late 14th-century French Histoire Universelle this memorable event is illustrated by three elephants, suggesting many more; they are placed to the left, away from the hand to hand fight on the right (fig. i 6) . 38) When illustrating the battles of the Great Khan, our artist used precisely the same formula (fig. quite unconcerned whether Marco Polo in the particular context mentioned elephants or not. He even reduced the number of elephants to one, a kind of emblem which the spectator immediately understood in all its implications. 163

192

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES 2.

We have already indicated that the notions medieval people associated with the East were derived from a broad tradition with many ramifications. It was this venerable tradition dating back to pre-Alexander days that made the man of the Middle Ages regard the East as the land of marvels.4o) And although this tradition was considerably modified in the course of the last five or six hundred years, it remained essentially alive, and is breaking down only now, in the age of Asia’s awakening. (In western eyes the notion of Asia is nowadays associated with fear rather than with marvels). Ctesias was the first to have stamped India, above all, as the land of marvels. The store of eastern marvels was greatly added to by Megasthenes, who was sent as ambassador to India by Seleucis Nicator, heir to Alexander’s Asiatic empire. Encyclopedias, cosmographies and natural histories of the 12th and 13th centuries go back, without any considerable variations, through Rabanus Maurus, Isidore of Seville, Solinus and Pliny to those two Greek writers, Ctesias and Megasthenes, who had given a literary form to an even older tradition. The broad stream of scientific and pseudo-scientific writing was accompanied by a steady flow of visual material. It is almost certain that Solinus’ uncritical, but immensely influential Collectanea, written in the third century A. D., were illustrated; and so was Rabanus Maurus’ 9thcentury encyclopedia. A richly illustrated 13th-century Solinus survives in the Ambrosiana,4l) and the marvels shown here repeat a visual tradition of a thousand years’ standing (fig. 18). Similarly, the 11th-century Rabanus Maurus at Montecassino42) gives a delightfully naive visual catalogue of the whole marvel material. In addition to such compendia, which found a continuation even in 15 th and 16th century prints — as a page from Konrad of Megenberg’s Book, ° f Nature ( 1 4 7 5 ) may s h ° w (fig* *9) — there exist a number of early illustrated texts which are entirely devoted to the marvels of the East. The earliest of these seems to go back to the 4th century A. D .4?) It is written in the form of a letter addressed to the Emperor Hadrian, and claims to be the report of a journey to the remote East. In all these treatises the

'

164

'

MYTHS

F i g . 17

F i g . 18

193

MEDIEVAL ETHNOGRAPHIES

o