Author: hrbekm (Page 2 of 2)

Sir John Mandeville describes a traveller’s journey from the countries of Western Europe to Constantinople by listing the locations passed through along the way. According to him, one can begin by going through Germany and then Hungary. From there, one travels along the River Danube, through Belgrade, and crosses the River Maritsa. Then one travels, presumably by land, through Pechenegs to Greece and through several cities thereafter until arriving at Constantinople. Mandeville does not include the practical aspects of this journey, and would be hard-pressed to do so considering his narrative is entirely fictional.

Once the narrative settles for a moment in Constantinople, Mandeville takes care to describe the city as beautiful, noting its important monuments, the religious relics located there, and some of the surrounding physical geography. Regarding the physical aspects of the city, he says it has strong walls and three corners. He describes it as a city surrounded by water, noting the strait running through it. He also notes that there are a number of islands nearby in addition to three large mountains — Olympus, Athos, and a third one that he does not name.

In the city, he describes the church dedicated to St. Sophie, praising its beauty. Here he focuses in particularly on the statue of the Emperor Justinian in front of the church, reporting that there used to be an apple in the statue’s hand, and its disappearance symbolizes the loss of a once expansive empire. The statue’s other hand is raised pointing west in a purported gesture of threat towards sinners. This detail seems also to be symbolic on Mandeville’s part of the conflict between the Orthodox Christianity of the East and the Roman Catholic Church dominating the West. This conflict is elaborated elsewhere in Mandeville’s section on Constantinople, when he states on page 12 that “All people in the land of Greece are Christian, but it’s a very different faith from ours.” After this sweeping statement of distinction, Mandeville proceeds to tell the story of a conflict between the Roman Pope and the Orthodox patriarch, then enumerate the theological and practical differences between these two branches of Christianity.

Mandeville also notes several religious relics located in Constantinople, including a nail from the Cross of Christ among other items associated with his Crucifixion, a piece of Christ’s crown of thorns, and the bodies of several saints. He uses his mentions of the nail and the crown as opportunities to go on long, meticulously-detailed tangents about aspects of Christ’s life and death. Mandeville is writing throughout his descriptions of Constantinople with the clear purpose of communicating certain theological perspectives.

This theological discussion emphasizes primarily the differences between Orthodox and Roman Catholicism. When he lists the specific ways they vary in their views and practices, it comes across as a reaffirmation of the perceived ‘correctness’ of the Western Christian tradition in contrast to the strangeness of the Greek tradition. However, in context with the rest of Mandeville’s narrative, the intention for this comparison seems to go beyond an expression of xenophobia. There is a factually incorrect but symbolically significant arrangement within the text, wherein Western Europe and the land of Prester John are placed equidistant from Jerusalem. It is debatable what this positioning means for Mandeville’s perception of his own homeland’s spirituality. Is Western Europe closer to or farther from what Mandeville thinks Christianity is supposed to be? Does its symbolic location on the globe represent a spiritual distance? Judging from his descriptions of the Christianity practiced in Constantinople, Mandeville seems simultaneously to be highlighting Western Europe’s purity of belief and their spiritual isolation, symbolized by their physical distance from a Holy Land not in the possession of Christians.

Mandeville goes to great lengths in his writing on India to describe unusual sights and peoples there. He begins his section on India by describing an awe-striking physical feature of the land: diamond growth. It is explained that these precious stones can be found in icy rocks, sea rocks, and in mountainous areas, implying that the land of India as Mandeville perceives it varies in climate and topography. Also described in this passage are the mystical properties of the diamonds — bringing courage and good health to those who carry them. It is interesting that this passage on diamonds serves as an introduction of sorts to the land India, as it is representative of Mandeville’s focus throughout the following chapter on the marvelous and incredible things to be found there.

He mentions the Indus River as a geographical feature of India, taking particular note of the 30-foot long eels he claims reside in it. Elsewhere he mentions an Indian island infested with dragons and snakes and other dangerous wild beasts. These details contribute to a theme of exoticizing India within the text. Mandeville puts particular effort into describing the people he claims reside in India and its “islands,” highlighting physical appearances as well as cultural practices that stand in contrast to the familiar world of medieval Western Europe.

The peoples Mandeville lists are generally portrayed as peculiar or revolting through the traits he emphasizes. He describes more than one cannibalistic culture, and more than one culture in which wives are killed if their husbands die before them. He describes the people of an island he called Lamuri, who wear no clothing and do not practice marriage — however, even here women are a good to be “shared” among men. He notes people from an island he calls Sumatra, who brand their faces with hot irons. With the partial exception of cannibalism, Mandeville does not appear to be noting these things for the purpose of denouncing them from any moral position. Rather, he presents them as if the reader will naturally perceive them as absurd or amazing, and marvel at his portrait of a mystical Asian land.

Mandeville does describe some people as explicitly evil, including one group who train dogs to kill their enemies, and another group who drink human blood and refer to it as “god.” Conversely, he describes one group as highly moral and faithful. This appears in a particular section in the chapter on India in which he simply lists the peoples he purports to have encountered for their physical peculiarities. He describes a group of people who have dogs’ heads and wear nothing but loincloths, but are highly intelligent and do not cause harm to others. They are good fighters and devout in their religious faith. In this list of physically abnormal people, he also includes people with one eye in the middle of their foreheads who only consume raw meat, headless people with eyes and mouths on their chests, people with both male and female sex organs, faceless people, very small people, and people with lips big enough to hide their whole faces from the sun.

Through these details, Mandeville’s imagined version of India becomes a place remarked chiefly for its strangeness. As he never actually travelled there, this account offers nothing in terms of anthropological value. But it does reflect the conception of far-off Eastern/Asian lands in the educated Western European mind of the Middle Ages. This is especially significant considering Mandeville interpreted other sources to come up with his image of India, and was likely writing to appeal to an audience that he knew wanted to read about oddities from what they perceived as a mystical, exotic, and inconceivably far-off place.