by Caroline Stone (see Chinese translation)
The great Mongol invasions of Eastern Europe and the disastrous battle of Liegnitz in 1241 led Pope Innocent IV to decide that a mission must be sent east to find out more about the Mongols and their aims. Friar John of Plano Carpini (Piano Carpini, near Perugia), then some 65 years old, was put in charge and essentially everything was left to him. The work which he wrote in Latin on his return, the Historia Mongolorum quos nos Tartaros appellamus (‘A History of the Mongols, whom we call Tartars’) is divided into sections on the lands, climate, manners, religion, character, history, policies and tactics of the Mongols, and the best ways of opposing them. It is one of the major sources for the Mongol world at the time. (See a list of his alternative names.)
Friar John set out from Lyons in April 1245. It was a formidable journey. ‘We were so ill’, he writes, ‘that we could scarce 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.’ Nevertheless, he managed to ride roughly 3,000 miles in just 106 days.
Since the death of Ögödei Khan, there had been an interregnum and a quraltai (council) of the tribes had been called to elect a successor. Between 3,000 and 4,000 envoys were present at this great meeting. On 24 August 1245, the formal enthronement of Ögödei’s successor Güyük took place, and in November the European contingent received their dismissal. They returned to Europe bearing a letter to the Pope in Mongol, Arabic and Latin. Its main message was that the Great Khan should be considered as a scourge sent by God.
In June 1247, John and his companions reached Kyiv. He was rewarded with an archbishopric in Dalmatia, but seems not to have lived for long to enjoy it. It was probably there that he set down his Historia Mongolorum. The book is unpolished and lacks personal details, but is full of interesting information and was considered by a 19th-century scholar from Mongolia to be remarkably accurate, particularly given the haste in which it was collected.
A certain Friar Salimbene, who met John of Plano Carpini in 1247, described him thus: ‘He was a clever and conversable man, well lettered, a great discourser, and full of a diversity of experience . . . He wrote a big book about the Tattars (sic), and about other marvels that the had seen, and whenever he felt weary about telling about the Tattars, he would cause that book of his to be read, as I have often heard and seen.’
