The Travels of Sir John Mandeville

“And since the land of Greece is the nearest country that varies and is discordant in faith and writing from us and our faith, I have therefore put it in here so that you may know the differences between our belief and theirs. For many men desire to hear of unfamiliar things.”

When discussing the Byzantine Empire (often conflated with Greece due to geographical and cultural overlap), Mandeville explains the text’s framing as a travel guide, which partially explains its popularity. The 14th-century European interest in foreign cultures and belief systems endeared Mandeville’s work to readers. Notably, Mandeville describes the Orthodox Byzantines as “discordant in faith” from his presumed readers, revealing the specifically Roman Catholic lens through which he interprets the world generally and Christianity specifically.

“In Babylon [Cairo] is a fine church of Our Lady; she sojourned there eight years when she fled out of the land of Judea for fear of King Herod.”

When Mandeville first describes Cairo, he references a notable church and the appearance of this location in the Bible. Mandeville interprets the world through a lens of religion, which leads him to focus on the cultural significance of an area instead of its geography and demonstrates The Interplay of Religion, Folklore, and Reality in the Medieval Mind.

“Some men say that they are the tombs of some great men in ancient times; but the common opinion is that they are the Barns of Joseph, and they find that in their chronicles.”

Mandeville here shows a concern for proving that Christian tradition is the best tool for explaining the world. He notes that the non-Christian explanation for the pyramids does not have the same evidence as his explanation, which he links to historical records to prove the truth and importance of Christianity.

“For Christ desires not that it should long remain in the hands of traitors or sinners, Christian or otherwise.”

Mandeville references a supposed divine sanction against sinners holding Jerusalem. He uses this to explain both the fall of the Crusader states (and tacitly condemn the flaws Mandeville also sees in contemporary Western Europe) and his hope that soon Jerusalem will revert to Christian hands. He seeks to both critique and inspire hope for the future.

“[W]e thought it was the more reasonable that we Christians should do as much worship and honour to God as unbelievers did.”

Mandeville here brings up a claim that recurs frequently: the impropriety of non-Christians behaving more devoutly than Christians. His repeated complaints about this suggests it deeply distresses him, presumably because it undercuts Christianity’s claims to be the one true religion.

“The water of this sea is very bitter and salt, and if the earth is watered with it it becomes barren and never bears crops.”

Mandeville’s depiction of the Dead Sea is demonstrative of the mix of reality and fiction in his text. The Dead Sea’s salt content does make it unsuitable for sustaining most life. However, his claims of boats sinking on it are false, as objects on the sea are more buoyant than they otherwise would be.

“For your priests do not serve God properly by righteous living, as they should do. For they ought to give less learned men an example of how to live well, and they do the very opposite, giving examples of all manner of wickedness.”

The sultan’s criticism of Europe is notable, as it shows Mandeville’s adherence to the medieval division of society into three branches: those who fight, those who work, and those who pray. The last of these, the priests, were meant to be responsible for the moral upkeep of Europe, but Mandeville, speaking through the sultan, evidently thought they were failing in this.

“It seemed to me then a cause for great shame that Saracens, who have neither a correct faith nor a perfect law, should in this way reprove us for our failings, keeping their false law better than we do that of Jesus Christ.”

Here Mandeville explicitly states the purpose of including his conversation with the sultan. By placing his criticisms of Europe in the mouth of one who “should” be Christian Europe’s bitter enemy (but, Mandeville suggests, is in fact noble and pious in his own way), Mandeville seeks to increase his critique’s impact by making readers feel ashamed.

“But she said that he was asking for the undoing and the destruction of his order, because of the great pride in his riches and the great trust he put in his purse.”

At the Castle of the Sparrowhawk, Mandeville mentions a Knight Templar whose greed brought his order to ruin. The destruction of the Knights Templar occurred early in the 14th century due to claims of corruption and anti-Christian behavior. Mandeville gives this downfall a supernatural origin and draws an anti-greed message from it, in keeping with his overall claims about the harmful turn Western Christendom has taken.

“About idols, they say that the ox is the holiest animal, and the most useful, on earth, for it does much good and no evil.”

Mandeville’s discussion shows the good and rational ideas that he thinks bring many to idol worship. Believing in the good of an ox is reasonable, but by making it an idol, people honor the wrong thing—the ox as itself divine instead of God for making the ox.

“I, John Mandeville, saw this well and drank of it three times, and so did all my companions. Ever since that time I have felt the better and healthier, and I think I shall do until such time as God in his grace causes me to pass out of this mortal life.”

Mandeville’s occasional references to personal experience are included to reinforce the veracity of his claims. By stating that he has seen things like the well firsthand, he frames his stories as reliable. The idea that the well’s water has had lingering, tangible effects on Mandeville’s body also shows the interplay of the physical and spiritual that is typical of the work.

“And truly they suffer so much pain and mortification of their bodies for love of that idol that hardly would any Christian man suffer the half—nay, not a tenth—for love of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The devotion of these idol worshippers, while from Mandeville’s perspective improper and misdirected, is itself praiseworthy. Mandeville compares their willingness to sacrifice themselves with Western Christians’ lack of devotion to again criticize his contemporaries. The idol worshippers’ “false” beliefs lead them to greater acts of service than Christians’ “true” belief does.

“They scorn other folk who go clothed; for they say that God made Adam and Eve naked.”

Here Mandeville presents what he suggests is an improper interpretation of Christianity. The nakedness of these people, justified with reference to Adam and Eve, is an action that would be seen as indecent by Mandeville’s audience and therefore shows the boundaries of “proper” behavior.

“For it is a commonplace that Jerusalem is in the middle of the earth; it may be proved thus.”

Mandeville, and most European thinkers of the time, believed Jerusalem to be at the center of the Earth. He presents a theological argument for this in the Prologue and here tries to reinforce this with “scientific” proof. This demonstrates Mandeville’s interest in showing Christianity’s centrality to reality.

“With this preparation the Jews once thought to have poisoned all Christendom, as one of them confessed to me.”

While Mandeville generally avoids overt judgments of other cultures, he displays clear antisemitism throughout the book. His claim that Jewish people are planning the downfall of Christianity is one example of this. This view is demonstrative of the general prejudice against Jewish people in medieval Europe.

“There are many different kinds of people in these isles. In one, there is a race of great stature, like giants, foul and horrible to look at; they have one eye only, in the middle of their foreheads. They eat raw flesh and raw fish.”

Here Mandeville goes through a long list of strange-looking peoples; this passage describes a group that resemble the cyclops of Greek myth. The fantastical anatomy of some of the groups Mandeville describes is key to Medieval Depictions of the Exotic and the Other. The inclusion shows that medieval people believed there could be widely divergent races in distant lands, which influenced the accounts of explorers.

“This city gives each year to the Great Khan fifty thousand cumans of gold florins.”

The massive tribute that Yangchow gives the khan every year is typical of Mandeville’s descriptions of East Asia. It is presented as a land of unimaginable wealth and luxury, which increased European interest in exploration and colonization of this area.

“But the stateliness of the Khan himself and of other lords who sit with him is noble and royal, surpassing that of all earthly men.”

Mandeville repeatedly shows the power of the Mongol khan. This serves both to increase interest in the book, as medieval readers were interested in the strength of distant rulers, and underscore that Christians were not the rulers of the world (as, Mandeville implies, they should be).

“So it is a great pity that he does not believe properly in God.”

The khan is described as not only powerful but also noble and tolerant of Christianity. However, he does not himself believe in Christianity and engages in non-Christian practices such as having multiple wives. Mandeville repeatedly mourns this fact, as it decreases the global strength of Christianity and comparatively increases the strength of Islam.

“It strikes me that this miracle and others like it should move Christian folk to have more devotion towards God than they do nowadays; for without doubt, if there were not so much wickedness and sin amongst Christian men they would be sovereign lords of the world.”

The Land of Darkness is one of the marvels that Mandeville uses to communicate a moral. Here, that moral reinforces the message that devotion to God leads to worldly success.

“Nevertheless I said to them that it did not seem a very great marvel to me, for in my country, I said, there were trees which bore a fruit that became birds that could fly.”

Mandeville references an English myth of geese coming from fruit, showing that supernatural occurrences were not an exclusively “foreign” occurrence to medieval Europeans. The bounds of possibility were broader in the medieval mind than in the modern.

“This Emperor has under his rule seventy-two provinces, each one ruled by a King. These kings have other Kings under them, and all are tributary to Prester John.”

By describing Prester John ruling kings and sub-kings, all of whom pay tribute to him, Mandeville quickly conveys the extent of Prester John’s power. He uses a metric his audience would be familiar with (the power of a king) as a basis and builds upon this. It is the same method that he uses to describe the khan’s rule.

“But good Christian men, however, who are firm in the faith, can enter that valley without great harm.”

The Vale Perilous is a geographic feature that acts as a test of faith. Mandeville’s conflation of “good Christians” with “people who are not greedy” (and who therefore ignore the riches present in the vale) shows that Mandeville considers this trait central to Christianity.