Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages by Dan Jones

Author:Dan Jones [Dan Jones]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781789543551
Publisher: Head of Zeus Ltd
Published: 2021-09-02T04:00:00+00:00

Some of the medieval travellers who struck out into new lands in the thirteenth century kept accounts of their travels. So today we can still glimpse life in the Mongol realms through their eyes. Among them were a Flemish Franciscan called William of Rubruck, who went east from Constantinople in 1253, visited Mongolia and returned to the crusader state of Tripoli in 1255. A generation later came the Venetian merchant Marco Polo, who stayed away far longer wandering far and wide and remaining in the land of the khans for a quarter of a century. But the pioneer among this intrepid group – the globetrotter who wrote the first western account of life on the ground among the Mongols – was an Italian friar turned clergyman who went by the name of Giovanni da Pian del Carpine.

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GIOVANNI DA PIAN DEL CARPINE SET out to visit Mongolia in 1245. He departed from the papal court, then temporarily at Lyon in France. And he was carrying letters from Pope Innocent IV, calling on the great khan to desist from attacking Christian lands and consider converting to Christianity, since ‘God was seriously angered’ by his actions. 27 This was a hopeful mission, and perhaps a futile one. But del Carpine pursued it despite great hardship along the way, and his reward was a tale for the ages.

To get to Mongolia, del Carpine travelled initially through Prague and Poland and on through the lands of the Rus’ towards Kiev. Five years previously the Mongols had laid the city waste: around 90 per cent of its inhabitants were killed and most of its important buildings burned to the ground. It was a mere shadow of a place when del Carpine arrived. But there was no doubt of the dominant power in the region. Each prince of the Rus’ whose territory del Carpine entered directed him nervously towards the travelling court of the Mongols’ supreme western military commander, Batu, a grandson of Genghis Khan, whose blessing he would need to travel any further. Del Carpine was also repeatedly told that the only way to get on in the Mongol world was to appeal to that people’s innate love of gifts and consumer goods. He and his attendants carried with them fat sacks of Polish beaver pelts with which they glad-handed all who demanded tribute.

Del Carpine met Batu at Easter-time in 1246. The encounter was a learning experience, to say the least. Before the westerners even entered the camp they had to go through the thirteenth-century’s equivalent of airport security: del Carpine and his companions were told to walk between two large fires so that ‘if you plan any evil for our lord, or if you bring any poison, the fire will carry it away.’ 28 They were warned in dire terms not to step directly on the threshold of Batu’s audience tent, since the Mongols considered this such bad luck that they would execute anyone who did it. When presented to Batu, del Carpine found him wise and judicious, but scary.

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