In the Kingdom of Manzi we find ourselves in a rather strange spot. Literarilly speaking. Sir John Mandeville, as we will continue to call him, has, so far in the adventures we’ve talked about together, confined himself almost entirely to his own Christian faith. This is due, of course, to his incorporeal nature. Meaning that he is not real. These are the writings of a monk, and now, we get to hear him talk about animals and feasts! He’s not even racist about it! I know! He even, believe it or not, has a conversation. I’m so excited.

He’s not even weird about poor people or other religions’ beliefs about the soul! We can see this in his interaction with a monk, whom I want to assume is Buddhist, given his belief in the reincarnation of the soul and how the life that you lived shapes your next life. He observes their feeding of the animals with the monastery scraps, and he listens and asks questions respectfully. This is delightful.

“The monk said that these animals are the souls of dead men, the gentle and attractive animals being the souls of aristocrats and gentlemen, and those that are ugly being the souls of commoners. I asked him if it would not be better to give these leftovers to poor men than to these animals. He replied that there are no poor men in that country, and, even if there were people who needed alms, it would be better to give it to these souls which suffer their penance there and may not go out and seek food, unlike people who have the knowledge to find food and the capacity to work.” (88)

This quote is interesting because it shows how Sir John Mandeville is able to recognize that poor men are more deserving than beasts, which is great. Leads to a big question: where are all of the disabled people? Does this monk define disabled people as people? He says that people have the knowledge and capacity to work, and yes, most do, but not everyone is able-bodied. My hope is that they’re being accommodated and given good jobs, but sadly, I’m faced with a more likely option. The monk who is writing this work considers a perfect city to be one without any disabled people. We can also observe the classism that the monk exhibits in the assigning of souls to animals, or animals to souls? It is not entirely clear. What is clear is that beauty is linked to morality as well as to class. This gives us the question: in this system of morality, are a person’s actions and character determined by their class, or is their class determined by their character? The more important question is: are we supposed to buy this correlation between class and character? On the surface, the answer is no. The person doing the talking is a monk of a non-Christian religion who is talking about reincarnation, which is not recognized by Catholic doctrine. Looking deeper, the fact that this didn’t actually happen leads me to believe that we are supposed to buy it. A Buddhist monk didn’t say this; a monk created a knight and another monk and put them into conversation. If Sir John Mandeville doesn’t respond, it isn’t due to his lack of a witty retort; the monk has all the time in the world to think of a fiery comeback, it is because the monk is choosing to have him leave this point entirely unchallenged. Also, considering we are very much in the days of kings and queens, it seems to me as if we should be buying it.

 

So long and thanks for all the fish,

Gev, the Scaled Scorch