The First Noteworthy Westerner to Meet the Mongols...

5fish

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 28, 2019
Messages
10,626
Reaction score
4,544
Here is the first westerner to write meet about the Mongols leaders and the journey started to Easter 1245...


Giovanni da Pian del Carpini, English John of Plano Carpini, (born c. 1180, Pian del Carpine?, near Perugia, Umbria [Italy]—died August 1, 1252, Antivari [Bar], Dalmatia?), Franciscan friar, the first noteworthy European traveler in the Mongol empire, to which he was sent on a formal mission by Pope Innocent IV. He wrote the earliest important Western work on Central Asia.

Here is...


At the somewhat advanced age of 65, John of Plano Carpini, an Italian Franciscan Friar, was one of the first Christian men to travel east on a religious and diplomatic mission. His journey was harrowing and lengthy, and his ability to travel such a distance without injury is made all the more impressive when one considers Christopher Dawson’s candid description of him as ‘an elderly clergyman who was extremely fat and in poor health.’ Sent by Pope Innocent IV, the goal of Carpini’s mission was to convince the Great Khan of the Tatars to convert to Catholicism and to encourage him to keep a peaceful relationship between his empire and the Church.


Here is... Ystoria Mongalorum is the report he wrote...


The Ystoria Mongalorum is one text that is part of a much wider literary genre known as medieval travel literature. This genre began under religious influences and with a fascination for everything foreign. It slowly became dominated by ‘the hunger for information’ in the thirteenth century, from which John of Plano Carpini’s account emerged. Medieval travel literature is an interdisciplinary subject that is difficult to define, however in broad terms it is a genre that covers pilgrimage and crusade accounts from the Holy Land and across Europe, diplomatic and missionary journeys to Asia and the Far East, and even some fictitious narratives set all over the known world. In 1253, excerpts from Carpini’s Ystoria made their way into the Speculum Historiale, an encyclopaedia of travel writings compiled by Vincent of Beauvais. The Speculum Historiale circulated widely throughout the next few centuries and was an extremely popular collection of reference works in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Ystoria survives today in thirteen manuscripts, nine of which contain the first edition and four of which contain the second, revised edition.
 

5fish

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 28, 2019
Messages
10,626
Reaction score
4,544
Here is a video on his travel...

 
Top