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Full Description
The devastation of Hungary and Poland by the Mongols in 1241-2 prompted Pope Innocent IV to dispatch embassies to the invaders, remonstrating with them and urging them to accept Christianity. The papal envoys were Friars - members of the two recently founded Mendicant Orders, the Franciscans and Dominicans, who were beginning frequently to serve as instruments of papal policy. Their reports represent the first detailed and largely accurate testimony produced by European Christians about a people, hitherto virtually unknown in the West, who had become masters of much of Asia.
Early Missions to the Mongols (1245-1248) thus focuses on a watershed period in the relations of the Christian West with this new and formidable pagan power. It comprises translations of Pope Innocent's letters, together with the limited information available to the papacy prior to 1245; the menacing replies brought back by the Friars; and their reports, which include narratives of their journeys and accounts of the Mongols and their vast empire. The translations are accompanied by introductory material setting the documents in their historical context and by a full commentary.
The volume will be of interest not only to students and scholars working on the history of the Mongol empire, but also to those concerned with the early development of the Mendicant Orders, papal policy towards the non-Christian world, the relations between sedentary and nomadic societies in the Middle Ages, and the discovery by the Christian West of distant and extensive regions previously shrouded in myth and fantasy.
Contents
General Introduction: The Rise of the Mongols and their Westward Campaigns of 1241-4
Section I: Intelligence Available to the Papal Curia by March 1245
Introduction
1. The Dominican Friar Julian to the Papal Legate in Hungary (1237/8)
2. King Béla IV of Hungary to Pope Gregory IX (18 May 1241)
3. A Hungarian bishop's account of his interrogation of two Mongol scouts (c. 1239)
4. King Béla IV to the Curia (19 Jan. 1242)
5. The nobility, clergy and people of Hungary to the Curia (2 Feb. 1242)
6. Tractatus de ortu Tartarorum: the interrogation of the Russian 'Archbishop' Peter (1244/5)
Section II: The Initiatives of Pope Innocent IV
Introduction
7. Pope Innocent IV to the Patriarch of Aquileia (21 July 1243)
8. Excerpt from Niccolò da Calvi, Vita Innocentii IV
9. Pope Innocent IV to the king and nation of the Mongols: Dei patris immensa (5 March 1245)
10. Pope Innocent IV to the king and nation of the Mongols: Cum non solum (13 March 1245)
Section III: The Papal Missions
Introduction
11. The Hystoria Tartarorum of C. de Bridia (the 'Tartar Relation')
12. The Ystoria Mongalorum of John of Plano Carpini
13. Benedict the Pole, Relatio
14. Salimbene's encounters with Carpini
15. Abstract of the report of André de Longjumeau
16(a). Excerpts from Vincent de Beauvais, Speculum Historiale
16(b). Excerpts by Vincent de Beauvais from the Historia Tartarorum of Simon de Saint
Quentin
Section IV: Responses and Aftermath
Introduction
17. al-Manṣūr Ibrāhīm, prince of Ḥimṣ, to Pope Innocent IV ([22-31] December [1245])
18. Ultimatum of the Qaghan Güyüg to Pope Innocent IV (November 1246)
19. The Nestorian cleric Simeon Rabban Ata to Pope Innocent IV (1247/8)
20. Pope Innocent IV to Baiju Noyan (22 November 1248)
