Mandeville's Travels

[2] He traversed by way of Turkey (Asia Minor and Cilicia), Tartary, Persia, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, Libya, Ethiopia, Chaldea, the land of the Amazons, India, China and many countries in the region.

[5] The greater part of these more distant travels, extending from Trebizond to Hormuz, India, the Malay Archipelago and China, and back to western Asia, has been appropriated from the narrative of Friar Odoric (1330).

[8] At a very early date the coincidence of Mandeville's stories with those of Odoric was recognized,[8] insomuch that a manuscript of Odoric which is or was in the chapter library at Mainz begins with the words: "Incipit Itinerarius fidelis fratris Odorici socii Militis Mendavil per Indian; licet hic ille prius et alter posterius peregrinationem suam descripsit".

Many fabulous stories, again, of monsters, such as Cyclopes, sciapodes, hippopodes, anthropophagi, monoscelides, and men whose heads did grow beneath their shoulders; of the phoenix and the weeping crocodile, such as Pliny has collected, are introduced here and there, derived no doubt from him, Solinus, the bestiaries, or the Speculum naturale of Vincent de Beauvais.

[13][unreliable source] Some more recent scholars have suggested that Mandeville's Travels was most likely written by Jan de Langhe [fr], a Fleming who wrote in Latin under the name Johannes Longus.

[14] Jan de Langhe was born in Ypres early in the 1300s and by 1334 had become a Benedictine monk at the abbey of Saint-Bertin in Saint-Omer, which was about 20 miles from Calais.

Some French manuscripts, not contemporary, give a Latin letter of presentation from him to Edward III of England, but so vague that it might have been penned by any writer on any subject.

[4] It is added that, having had the misfortune to kill an unnamed count in his own country, he engaged himself to travel through the three parts of the world, arrived at Liège in 1343, was a great naturalist, profound philosopher and astrologer, and had a remarkable knowledge of physics.

[4] And in the last chapter, he says that in 1355, on returning home, he came to Liège, and being laid up with old age and arthritic gout in the street called Bassesavenyr, i.e. Basse-Sauvenière, consulted the physicians.

That one came in who was more venerable than the others by reason of his age and white hairs, was evidently expert in his art, and was commonly called Magister Iohannes ad Barbam.

Moreover, a manuscript of the French text extant at Liège about 1860 contained a similar statement, and added that the author lodged at a hostel called "al hoste Henkin Levo": this manuscript gave the physician's name as "Johains de Bourgogne dit ale barbe", which doubtless conveys its local form.

St Albans also had a legend, recorded in John Norden's Speculum Britanniae (1596) that a ruined marble tomb of Mandeville (represented cross-legged and in armour, with sword and shield) once stood in the abbey; this may be true of "Mangevilayn" or it may be apocryphal.

[4] There is also an inscription near the entrance of St Albans Abbey, which reads as follows:Siste gradum properans, requiescit Mandevil urna, Hic humili; norunt et monumental moriLo, in this Inn of travellers doth lie, One rich in nothing but in memory; His name was Sir John Mandeville; content, Having seen much, with a small continent, Toward which he travelled ever since his birth, And at last pawned his body for ye earth Which by a statute must in mortgage be, Till a Redeemer come to set it free.

A cursory comparison of this with Mandeville leaves no doubt that the latter has followed its thread, though digressing on every side, and too often eliminating the singular good sense of the German traveler.

In addition to those already mentioned, he alleges that he had witnessed the curious exhibition of the garden of transmigrated souls (described by Odoric) at Cansay, i.e., Hangzhou.

[29] He and his fellows with their valets had remained fifteen months in service with Kublai Khan, the Emperor of Cathay in his wars against the King of Manzi, or Southern China, which had ceased to be a separate kingdom some seventy years before.

Mandeville, while swelling the wonders of the tale with a variety of extravagant touches, appears to safeguard himself from the reader's possible discovery that it was stolen by the interpolation: "And some of our fellows accorded to enter, and some not.

And when they had said so, upon the gracious trust of God and of them, we caused mass to be sung, and made every man to be shriven and houselled; and then we entered fourteen persons; but at our going out we were but nine".

[8] In referring to this passage, it is only fair to recognize that the description (though the suggestion of the greatest part exists in Odoric) displays a good deal of imaginative power; and there is much in the account of Christian's passage through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, in John Bunyan's famous allegory, which indicates a possibility that Bunyan may have read and remembered this episode either in Mandeville or in Hakluyt's Odoric.

Even the great Moorish traveller Ibn Battuta, accurate and veracious in the main, seems—in one part at least of his narrative—to invent experiences; and, in such works as those of Jan van Hees and Arnold von Harff are examples of pilgrims to the Holy Land whose narratives begin apparently in sober truth, and gradually pass into flourishes of fiction and extravagance.

In his account of that country, though the series of the Comanian (of the Bahri dynasty) sultans is borrowed from Hetoum down to the accession of Mel echnasser (Al-Nasir Muhammad), who came first to the throne in 1293, Mandeville appears to speak from his own knowledge when he adds that this "Melechnasser reigned long and governed wisely".

[30] Mandeville, however, then goes on to say that his eldest son, Melechemader, was chosen to succeed; but this prince was caused privily to be slain by his brother, who took the kingdom under the name of Meleclimadabron.

[31] Mandeville, again, in some passages shows a correct idea of the form of the earth, and of position in latitude ascertained by observation of the pole star; he knows that there are antipodes, and that if ships were sent on voyages of discovery they might sail round the world.

[31][clarification needed] The first English translation direct from the French was made (at least as early as the beginning of the 15th century) from a manuscript of which many pages were lost.

C. 280 in the Bodleian appends to the Travels a short French life of St Alban of Germany, the author of which calls himself Johan Mandivill[e], knight, formerly of the town of St Alban, and says he writes to correct an impression prevalent among his countrymen that there was no other saint of the name: this life is followed by part of a French herbal.

[31] To Mandeville (by whom de Bourgogne is clearly meant) Jean d'Outremeuse[i] ascribes a Latin "lappidaire selon l'oppinion des Indois", from which he quotes twelve passages, stating that the author (whom he calls knight, lord of Montfort, of Castelperouse, and of the isle of Campdi) had been "baillez en Alexandrie" seven years, and had been presented by a Saracen friend with some fine jewels which had passed into d'Outremeuse's own possession: of this Lapidaire, a French version, which seems to have been completed after 1479, has been several times printed.

From the treatise on herbs a passage is quoted asserting it to have been composed in 1357 in honour of the author's natural lord, Edward III, king of England.

[31] Tanner (Bibliotheca) alleges that Mandeville wrote several books on medicine, and among the Ashmolean manuscripts in the Bodleian Library are a medical receipt by John de Magna Villa (No.

Herein he describes himself as Johannes de Burgundia, otherwise called cum Barba, citizen of Liège and professor of the art of medicine; says that he had practised forty years and had been in Liège in the plague of 1365; and adds that he had previously written a treatise on the cause of the plague, according to the indications of astrology (beginning Deus deorum) and another on distinguishing pestilential diseases (beginning Cum nimium propter instans tempus epidimiate).