Everything about Giovanni Da Pian Del Carpine totally explained
Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, or
John of Plano Carpini or
John of Pian de Carpine or
Joannes de Plano (c.
1180-
1252) was one of the first Europeans to enter the court of the Great
Khan of the
Mongol Empire and the author of the earliest important Western work on northern and
central Asia,
Rus, and other regions of the
Tatar dominion.
Life before the journey
He appears to have been a native of
Umbria, where a place formerly called Pian del Carpine, but now
Magione, stands near
Perugia, on the road to
Cortona. He was one of the companions and disciples of his countryman Saint
Francis of Assisi, and from sundry indications can hardly have been younger than the latter. Joannes bore a high repute in the Franciscan order, and took a foremost part in the propagation of its teaching in northern Europe, holding successively the offices of warden (
custos) in
Saxony, and of provincial (
minister) of
Germany, and afterwards of
Spain, perhaps of
Barbary, and of
Cologne.
He was in the last post at the time of the great
Mongol invasion of eastern Europe and of the disastrous
Battle of Legnica (
9 April 1241), which threatened to cast European Christendom under the leadership of the Great
Khan of the
Mongol Empire,
Ögedei Khan. The dread of the Tatars was, however, still on men's mind four years later, when Pope
Innocent IV despatched the first formal Catholic mission to the
Mongols; partly to protest against the latters' invasion of Christian lands, partly to gain trustworthy information regarding
Mongol armies and their purposes; behind these there may have lurked the beginnings of a policy much developed in latter time - that of opening diplomatic intercourse with a power whose alliance might be invaluable against
Islam.
Joannes's travels
At the head of this mission the pope placed Friar Joannes, at this time certainly not far from sixty-five years of age; and to his discretion nearly everything in the accomplishment of the mission seems to have been left. He was provided with a letter from the Pope to the Great Khan,
Cum non solum, becoming a
papal legate. Joannes started from
Lyon, where the pope then resided, on
Easter day (
16 April 1245), accompanied by another friar, one Stephen of Bohemia, who broke down at
Kanev near
Kiev, and was left behind. After seeking counsel of an old friend,
Wenceslaus, king of
Bohemia, Joannes was joined at
Wrocław by another
Minorite,
Benedykt Polak, appointed to act as interpreter.
The onward journey lay by Kiev; the Tatar posts were entered at Kanev; and thence the route ran across the
Nepere to the
Don and
Volga (Joannes is the first Westerner to give us the modern name of these rivers). Upon the last named stood the Ordu or camp of
Batu, the famous conqueror of eastern Europe, and the supreme Mongol commander on the western frontiers of the empire, as well as one of the most senior princes of the house of
Genghis Khan. Here the envoys, with their presents, had to pass between two fires to remove possible injurious thoughts and poisons (section X), before being presented to the prince (beginning of April
1246).
Batu ordered them to proceed onward to the court of the supreme khan in
Mongolia; and on Easter day once more (
8 April 1246) they started on the second and most formidable part of their journey
so ill, writes the legate,
that we could scarcely sit a horse; and throughout all that Lent our food had been nought but millet with salt and water, and with only snow melted in a kettle for drink. Their bodies were tightly bandaged to enable them to endure the excessive fatigue of this enormous ride, which led them across the Jaec or
Ural River, and north of the
Caspian Sea and the
Aral to the
Jaxartes or Syr Darya (
quidam fluvius magnus cujus nomen ignoramus, "a big river the name of which we don't know"), and the Muslim cities which then stood on its banks; then along the shores of the
Dzungarian lakes; and so forward, till, on the feast of St
Mary Magdalene (
22 July), they reached at last the imperial camp called Sira Orda (for example Yellow Pavilion), near
Karakorum and the
Orkhon River, this stout-hearted old man having thus ridden something like 3000 miles in 106 days.
Since the death of
Ögedei Khan, the imperial authority had been in interregnum.
Güyük, Ögedei's eldest son, had now been designated to the throne; his formal election in a great
Kurultai, or diet of the tribes, took place while the friars were at Sira Orda, along with 3000 to 4000 envoys and deputies from all parts of Asia and eastern Europe, bearing homage, tribute and presents. They afterwards, on the 24th of August, witnessed the formal enthronement at another camp in the vicinity called the Golden Ordu, after which they were presented to the emperor.
The great khan Güyük refused the invitation to become
Christian and demanded that the Pope and rulers of Europe should come to him and swear allegiance to him. It wasn't till November that they got their dismissal, bearing a letter to the pope in Mongol, Arabic and Latin, which was little else than a brief imperious assertion of the khan's office as the scourge of God. Then commenced their long winter journey homeward; often they'd to lie on the bare snow, or on the ground scraped bare of snow with the traveller's foot. They reached Kiev on
10 June 1247. There, and on their further journey, the Slavonic Christians welcomed them as risen from the dead, with festive hospitality. Crossing the
Rhine at
Cologne, they found the pope still at
Lyon, and there delivered their report and the khan's letter.
Not long afterwards Friar Joannes was rewarded with the archbishopric of
Antivari in
Dalmatia, and was sent as legate to
Louis IX. The date of his death may be fixed, with the help of the Franciscan
Martyrology and other authorities, as
1 August 1252; this resilient old man lasted five full years after the hardships of his journey.
His books
He recorded the information that he'd collected in a work, variously entitled in the manuscripts
Ystoria Mongalorum quos nos Tartaros appellamus ("History of the Mongols, which we call Tartars"), and
Liber Tartarorum, or
Liber Tatarorum ("Book of the Tartars [orTatars]"). This treatise is divided into eight ample chapters on the country, climate, manners, religion, character, history, policy and tactics of the Tatars, and on the best way of opposing them, followed by single (ninth) chapter on the regions passed through. The book thus answers to its title.
The title is quite significant insofar as it calls attention to the fact that the Mongols were not identical to the Tatars. In fact, the author mentions that the Mongols were quite offended by the fact that they were referred to by this name: Tatars had been vanquished by them in several campaigns around
1206 and had since then ceased to exist as an independent ethnic group.
The "Tartar Relation" (Ystoria Tartarorum)
A manuscript of a variant of the
Ystoria, written by Minorite friar C. de Bridia, perhaps based on Joannes's lectures, appeared on the art market in the
1950s and was purchased for
Yale University. This
Tartar Relation describes Joannes's journey, including some detail that didn't make it into his own written account. The manuscript is perhaps most known because it was bound with a manuscript of
Vincent of Beauvais' popular encyclopedia
Speculum historiale and a spurious map on vellum, the notorious "
Vinland map"- no such map is included with a second, older Ystoria/Speculum manuscript volume found more recently.
Contents of Ystoria Mongolorum
Like some other famous medieval itineraries it shows an entire absence of a traveller's or author's
egotism, and contains, even in the last chapter, scarcely any personal narrative. Joannes wasn't only an old man when he went cheerfully upon this mission, but was, as we know from accidental evidence in the annals of his order, a fat and heavy man (
vir gravis et corpulentus), insomuch that during his preachings in Germany he was fain, contrary to Franciscan precedent, to ride a donkey. Yet not a word approaching more nearly to complaint than those which we've quoted above appears in his narrative.
His book, both as to personal and geographical detail, is inferior to that written a few years later by a younger brother of the same Order, Louis IX's most noteworthy envoy to the Mongols,
William of Rubruck or Rubruquis. But in spite of these defects, due partly to his conception of his task, and in spite of the credulity with which he incorporates the Oriental tales, sometimes of childish absurdity, from which William is so free, Friar Joannes'
Ystoria is in many ways the chief literary memorial of European overland expansion before
Marco Polo. Among Joannes's more innovative recommendations was the development of light cavalry to combat Mongol tactics.
It first revealed the Mongol world to Catholic Christendom; its account of Tatar manners, customs and history is perhaps the best treatment of the subject by any Christian writer of the Middle Ages. We may especially notice, moreover, its four name-lists of the nations conquered by the Mongols; of the nations which had up to this time (1245-1247) successfully resisted; of the Mongol princes; and of the witnesses to the truth of his narrative, including various merchants trading in Kiev whom he'd met. All these catalogues, unrivalled in Western medieval literature, are of the utmost historical value.
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