Author: Adam Hall

When trying to understand the confusing account of John Mandeville’s fantastic journey, it can be helpful to use a map from the period. The Mappa Mundi found in Hereford cathedral is useful for this purpose, being composed roughly contemporaneously with Mandeville’s The Book of Marvels and Travels. The writer of the Travels never actually visited the places he wrote about, and surely was working from sources similar to the Hereford Mappa Mundi. Putting both documents in conversation with each other, as well as a modern map, reveals several things about the mentality of people in the Middle Ages. The Hereford map distorts distance, heavily favoring the holy land and giving it prime place in the Christian worldview, as opposed to modern maps which aim for accuracy. The map also includes mythic and other classical knowledge, acting as a collection of information on what one can find in certain locations where modern maps tend to emphasize geography.

The Hereford Mappa Mundi, as well as Mandeville’s Travels, are thoroughly influenced by the Christian worldview of their respective makers. One can easily see this in how the Mappa Mundi presents geography and distance. The holy land takes up an absolutely massive amount of space, almost as big as Europe, which far outstrips its actual size in reality. Hereford’s Mappa Mundi does not pretend to give an accurate size, instead emphasizing the region’s importance within the Christian imagination. Supporting this is the Mappa Mundi’s subject matter. The world is covered in stories from the Bible, such as Noah’s Ark resting on Mount Ararat, the path Moses took the Israelites, and the centerpiece of Jesus’ Crucifixion on Mount Calvary. No wonder then that the Levant, the location of most of the Bible’s contents, takes up so much importance and space. Mandeville’s Travels does something similar. Throughout the book, its author is focused on the religious nature of the places he describes. From recounting miracles and informing readers about where to find relics, to when possible recalling the actual places certain biblical events took place, such as where to see the burning bush or where Jesus performed certain miracles. When in the holy land itself, this is the majority of Mandeville’s descriptions.

Also, both place Jerusalem in the center of the world, with the Hereford Mappa Mundi doing so in a quite literal sense. Mandeville agrees with this interpretation, describing in his section on India how that city is at the center of the world and travelers from everywhere else must climb up towards it. In his cosmology Jerusalem is both the center and at the highest point in the world to which all others ascend. Mandeville finds validation about this in a passage from Psalms where David says ‘God wrought salvation in the midst of the Earth,’ which he, and other Christians as evidenced by the Hereford map, took literally. This is a departure from modern maps. Jerusalem is not the center of the world, nor are our maps covered in Biblical allusions. Modern maps seek to emulate distance as accurately as possible to aid navigation, shrinking the holy land from its prominent place to a small bit of land on the Mediterranean. Despite this modern maps, as a necessity of projecting a sphere in 2D, must include some distortion. The popular Mercator projection has been criticized for making Europe seem far bigger than it is, and places like Africa smaller. Even though the overt Christian bias has been removed, mapping still requires a choice of what parts of the world to emphasize.

Along with Biblical stories, both the Hereford Mappa Mundi and Mandeville’s Travels include references to classical knowledge and myth. Mandeville’s travels on the map would take him past the ancient city of Troy, and the Labyrinth on Crete. In the book he similarly makes reference to ancient figures like Hermes Trismegistus and Hippocrates, as well as recounting fantastic stories about monstrous heads that destroy cities and maidens turned into dragons. Similarly, both include many of the monstrous races said to live in the terra incognita such as the Sciopodes and Blemmyes reported by ancient sources like Pliny the Elder. This allows both works to serve an encyclopedic purpose, acting as a collection of knowledge about the world for their audiences which, as evidenced by their similarities, were quite similar. Modern maps, on the other hand, eschew this. Most commonly they emphasize strictly geographical information, such as terrain features, distances, and the like as opposed to the catalogue of places, lore, and creatures that populate the world.

Mapping Mandeville’s journey on Modern and Medieval maps reveal different things based on different purposes. Medieval maps like the Hereford Mappa Mundi are repositories of various information including Biblical and ancient stories and the various peoples inhabiting far away places. Mandeville’s Travels serves a similar function for the prospective pilgrim to Jerusalem, meaning the two synergize well. Modern maps, on the other hand, emphasize geographical accuracy above all. Tracing Mandeville’s travels on a modern map allows one to see things like how far it would take to get from point a to point b or how difficult the terrain would be to traverse. Doing so on the Hereford Mappa Mundi allows one to see what Mandeville thought he would encounter on that journey, and just how central the pilgrimage was to the Christian mind.

Modern Map of Mandeville’s Travels:

Link to Mandeville’s Travels on the Hereford Mappa Mundi:

In The Book of Marvels and Travels, Sir John Mandeville describes Mt. Sinai and its surrounding area in detail. Eager to court an audience of would be pilgrims, he reports on the popular pilgrimage destination of St. Catherine’s monastery on the mountain. He gives a short description of the monastery itself and its inhabitants, and quickly moves on to relating fantastic stories about the place. For instance, Mandeville says that the monks’ supply of oil for their lamps and food comes from birds miraculously bringing olive branches to the remote monastery. This, he says, shows how holy the place is and that if birds make pilgrimage there in honor of St. Catherine, so too must humans. Mandeville also claims that each monk has a lamp which both foretells their own death as well as choosing the next abbot when one dies. The bones of St Catherine too are miraculous. Apparently they exude a substance similar to oil or balm, but blacker. Mandeville assures his readers that many more relics are on display. All these stories emphasize the holiness of St. Catherine’s monastery, showing how miracles abound in its vicinity because of the many relics stored there.  The point of this emphasis is to promote pilgrimage. Religious travelers were on the look out for any holy site to pay homage, and Mt. Sinai and its monastery seem to be prime locations. Mandeville, surely working from earlier descriptions of the place, reinforces the holy reputation of this location for his readers who were looking to fill their itineraries.

Another theme in Mandeville’s description of Mt. Sinai is its Biblical history, and connection to Moses in particular. Of primary importance is the location of the Burning Bush which the prophet saw and could still be seen in the monastery of St. Catherine, but there are many more. At its gate is the spring Moses made with his staff, and even the route Mandeville describes from Egypt is purportedly the same one which Moses and the Israelites  took. Walking in these footsteps surely deepened a pilgrim’s faith and increased the spiritual desires which prompted their travels. Interestingly, Mandeville says that in this region travelers must know Latin before the local language, showing that to him this is Christian territory not Muslim. Its famous monastery serves as an outpost of Christendom and Europe by extension (never mind the actual ethnic composition of the monks). Mt. Sinai itself has many sites relating to Moses. Moses’ Chapel stands where the prophet hid when he saw God, the rocks of which still bear his outline. Nearby is the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments, and where he fasted for forty days and forty nights. Mandeville wants his audience to think of Moses’ stories when reading about Sinai. Again this can be explained by his audience. For people traveling so far and risking so much, a trip to Mt. Sinai allowed them to see all these important sites from the Bible in a relatively concentrated area. Following in the footsteps of Moses, an important Biblical character, shows great piety, and being in the presence of such holy sites only deepened such piety.

Sir John Mandeville’s description of Egypt, the longest description he has given to anywhere, is quite interesting. He still maintains his steady flow of biblical references, of places to which pilgrims might be interested in visiting, but here he also seems interested in adding more ethnographic and historical detail, either sourced from previous accounts or simply invented whole cloth. The subject of the Sultan of Egypt takes up much of his description. He tells that this Sultan rules over five kingdoms (Egypt, called Canopat, Jerusalem, Syria, Aleppo, and Arabia) and provides references to previous rulers or places to help ground this information for his audience. Mandeville then goes on to list the Sultanate’s line of succession, though most of the names he gives are garbled, such as Melechinasser. He also adds references his European audience would be familiar with, such as which European king fought which Sultan, Richard the Lionheart and Saladin for example. Mandeville wants his audience to follow his story, so giving them context for a list of foreign rulers in a land they are completely unfamiliar with aids in one’s understanding of the exotic locations discussed.

Mandeville also writes about the Sultan’s power and court. For example, he claims that the Sultan has three wives (one of which must be a Christian) and can have as many lovers as he pleases, and that he can “lead more than twenty thousand soldiers out of Egypt, and more than fifty thousand soldiers out of Syria, Turkey, and other realms subject to him. These passages must be his invention. How could a person who has never even seen Egypt know how many soldiers he can raise or how his court operates? Mandeville keeps up his persona, though, even claiming that he was a mercenary for the Sultan for a long time. He ads that the Sultan wanted him to marry a local princess and thus abjure his faith, but he refused. This, along with the Sultan’s Christian wife, displays Mandeville’s attitude that the Islamic world poses a sexual challenge to Christians that must be resisted.

A lot of his information about Egypt comes from the Bible and related Christian writings and lore. He identifies the pyramids as “Joseph’s Barns,” a reference to the book of Genesis where Joseph has grain stored for the coming seven years of famine. The association of the pyramids and Joseph’s Barns was long established in Christian writing, and Mandeville repeats what he has read about to his own audience. Interestingly, he notes that some people say the pyramids are tombs, though Mandeville rejects this as baseless. He throws out the correct explanation to reaffirm the commonly held Christian belief about Egypt. Mandeville also borrows information from more secular sources. He regurgitates a story about the phoenix which is said to come to a temple in the city of Heliopolis to regenerate, which he took from a popular description of the mythical animal in a Bestiary. He also provides an ‘Egyptian’ alphabet which shows at least some awareness of Coptic. Mandeville’s description of foreign places is predicated on what information he had access to in Europe, demonstrating his genuine scholarship and curiosity, though to a point. He may be interested in distant places, but not enough to actually ensure what he is writing down is correct. He is willing to trust the established authorities (such as the Bible and previous Christian authors) and in so doing repeats their misinformation to a whole new audience.

After leaving Constantinople, the next place John Mandeville describes in detail is the island of Cyprus. Mandeville, writing for the benefit of prospective pilgrims, for the most part maintains his religious focus when describing the island. He informs his readers that there is an archbishop at Nicosia, along with four others in the region. Along with this he says that in Cyprus there is the Hill of the Holy Cross of the good thief Dysmas, along with the burial sites of St Sozomenos, an ecclesiastical historian, and St Hilarion, and that St Bernard was born near the city of Famagusta on the island. Pilgrims using Mandeville’s book as a guide for their own journeys would surely find such information useful, as they were on the look out for places to display their piety. Mandeville even warns pilgrims that the locals advertise that they have half of the Holy Cross upon which Jesus was crucified, but it is a fraud and that they sin by saying so.

Mandeville does, however, include more practical and secular information about Cyprus as well. In fact, the first thing he says about the island is that a variety of grapes which start red and turn white after a year grow there, and that these grapes are “…utterly translucent and have the best scent.” Descriptions of local produce like this have not been mentioned before, so it is interesting that he would want to include it here. Mandeville also informs us that the city of Famagusta has an excellent harbor and that “…Christians, Saracens, and people of all nations live there.” It is interesting to note how matter of fact the zealous Mandeville talks about the island’s Muslim inhabitants. On top of this he describes how the Cypriots hunt with papiouns, a type of big cat similar to a leopard though modern scholars do not know what it could actually be. Mandeville also reports that Cypriots eat on the ground in massive ditches dug for that purpose up to the knees. He says this is because it keeps food more fresh in the hot climate of the island, though when foreigners come for great feasts they set up tables for them, but would prefer eating on the floor.

Because Mandeville is an invented character and did not actually go to Cyprus, it is difficult to tell if any of the information he relays is true. The strange eating custom could be something the author heard from someone else and believed it, but just as easily be something he decided would be fun to make people believe. The fact scholars have no idea what a papiouns is, and that Mandeville claims Cypriots use these animals which he says are larger than lions to hunt is too strange to believe. Which begs the question of what he gains from making this up? He seems to sincerely want people to be informed about the pilgrimage route and where to stop on the way by the fact he warns readers where frauds are, but his own fraudulent information seems to work against this stated goal. This disconnect continues down to smaller details: usually light on the practicalities of travel, he claims Cyprus is nearly 500 miles from Rhodes. No it isn’t, the distance is much closer to 300 miles. It may be an innocuous detail, but it seems strange to me that he feels the need to include such a detail when he never has before, and it is just plain wrong.

The first place Sir John Mandeville describes at length on his journey to the Holy Land is the city of Constantinople and the surrounding lands belonging to the Byzantine Empire. Mandeville seems mainly concerned with religion; the first thing he notes about the city is the Hagia Sophia, which he misidentifies as dedicated to St. Sophie. Outside, he describes an equestrian statue of the Emperor Justinian which he says used to hold an apple but had since fallen off, mirroring how the Byzantine Empire had lost much of its territory.  Mandeville moves on to describe the many relics housed in Constantinople, such as one of the nails that held Jesus on the Cross and half of the crown of thorns which he says was actually made of sea rushes. In this passage, Mandeville takes long asides to inform the reader on various bits of lore about these relics. He says the Cross was made from four different kinds of wood, that the other half of the crown is in Paris, and more. Along with relics, Mandeville recounts the many saints that are buried in the city such as St Anne, St John Chrysostom, and St Luke. Aside from these Religious matters, he details other buildings in Constantinople, such as the city’s walls, cisterns, and beautiful palace which he says is for jousting.

Along with Constantinople, Mandeville talks about other parts of Greece. He lists many islands such as Chalcis and Lemnos, as well as the famous mountains of Olympus and Athos, the latter of which he claims is so high that no animals can live there and ink never fades. His account is also punctuated with lore from Ancient times. He says that nearby to Constantinople is a plain where the city of Troy used to be, makes note of Aristotle’s tomb at Stagira to which people worship like he were a saint, and tells of an inscription supposedly made by Hermes Trismegistus.

On the subject of the people living there, Mandeville simply says that “There are many languages spoken and nations obedient to the Emperor, to wit Turcopoles, Pechenegs, and Cumans, and Thrace and Macedonia (of which Alexander was king), and many others. The ethnographic detail that most interests him is the differences between Catholicism and Greek Orthodoxy, which he says is very different. He says that Greeks believe the Holy Ghost only proceeds from the Father, that they do not venerate the Pope as Christ’s vicar on Earth and are scornful of any attempt to get them to, and that they practice lent and other feasts and sacraments differently. Mandeville makes sure to note that corruption is not limited to the Western Church, as scandals like simony take place.

Because this section of the book is framed as a pilgrimage, and that he claims that he especially wishes for people that want to go on one to read it, it is no wonder that Mandeville is so preoccupied with religion in his description of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire. A prospective pilgrim would read the work with an eye to what places they could stop and worship at, and those that could only go on pilgrimages by reading such works would be grateful of the descriptions and the details of Christian lore that Mandeville sprinkles throughout. The differences in Western and Eastern Christianity would also be of interest to his religiously motivated audience, not just himself. He is also clearly writing for a literate audience, who would be familiar with his references to the Trojan War and Aristotle. As he notes, Greece is the first region where cultural and religious differences are quite visible, which he says is intriguing for many people to learn about. This anthropological curiosity overrides other concerns, with Mandeville silent on the physical aspect of travel aside from listing cities one passes on the journey. He does not describe how long he spent, where he stayed, the food, etc. Mandeville simply is not interested in describing them.