Jacques Paviot

England and the Mongols (c. 1260?1330)*

As regards the Mongols, our knowledge of their history, of their customs, of their way of life, our relations with them, England presents an interesting case. We do not know the extent of the material lost on the Continent, but, in this (for the Mongols) remote corner of Europe, (in places safe from their devastation) documentation is to be found. A monk of Saint Albans, the chronicler Matthew Paris who died in 1259, is an important source. He was the only person to preserve Ivo of Narbonnes confession (which reveals that an Englishman was one of the first envoys of the Mongols to King Bela of Hungary), the report of Bishop Peter of Russia given at the council of Lyons in 1245 and information about Andre of Longjumeaus mission after the council. Incidently, twice at the end of his Chronica Majora , in an entry for the year 1257, Matthew Paris refers to a manuscript concerning ‘ Tartarorum immunditias, vitam (spurcissimam) et mores (…) necnon et Assessinorum furorem et superstitionem ’. It is the same work which is mentioned by John of Oxnead, in his Chronka under the year 1258, as a written command ( mandatum scriptum ) sent to Simon de Montfort, containing letters the length of a Psalter, and entitled De vita et moribus Tartarorum (…) et de eorum fortitudine etguerra, et de adquisitionibus which was to be found in the book of Additions. Unfortunately this work has not survived. (Nevertheless it is tempting to see here a mention of William of Rubrucks report of his journey, which has the form of a letter and which was written in 1257, but which has little information about the Assassins. Later another Englishman, the Franciscan friar Roger Bacon († 1294) met William of Rubruck and became interested in the Mongols.)

Burgundy and the Crusade

By comparison with what happened elsewhere, above all in Italy, in connection with crusading in the fifteenth century, Burgundy appears as a repository of an older idea of crusade.1 The crusading tradition in the house of the Valois dukes of Burgundy, seen by many as the heralds of the crusade in the fifteenth century, had been founded by Philip the Bold at the end of the fourteenth century. It was born out of the agreement between Philip,2 Louis duke of Orleans, Philip’s nephew and the brother of King Charles VI of France, and John of Gaunt duke of Lancaster, to lead such an expedition, following the truce of Leulinghem between France and England, in the Hundred Years War.3 The trio subscribed to the Zeitgeist, since such individuals as Leo V, former king of Lesser Armenia,4 Robert Le Mennot, known as ‘L’Ermite’,5 and Philippe de Mezieres,6 were calling on Richard II of England and Charles VI of France to lead a new crusade to liberate Jerusalem.7 From that perspective, it was possible to view the expedition planned by the dukes as a passagium particulare, and that of the kings as a passagium generale.