Exploring the Truths and Fabrications of Sir John Mandeville

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville presents a unique and nuanced perspective of the Eastern World during the time of the Crusades. By critically analyzing the still-unknown author’s depictions of the Eastern lands and their peoples, I demonstrate that it is possible to gain a deeper understanding of the status of Christianity during the late 14th century. The Travels comments upon the concepts of Eastern religions and cultural practices in a way that is remarkable and surprising — instead of reacting to such topics with hostility or aggression, the likely-Christian author of The Travels is willing to learn from those who hold to spiritual faiths outside his own. In recounting the painstaking details of his fictional travels, ‘Sir Mandeville’ created a literary work of art that would become a definitive authority amongst travel manuscripts for some two hundred years after its original publication.


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Abstract The Travels of Sir John Mandeville presents a unique and nuanced perspective of the Eastern World during the time of the Crusades. By critically analyzing the still-unknown author's depictions of the Eastern lands and their peoples, I demonstrate that it is possible to gain a deeper understanding of the status of Christianity during the late 14th century. The Travels comments upon the concepts of Eastern religions and cultural practices in a way that is remarkable and surprisinginstead of reacting to such topics with hostility or aggression, the likely-Christian author of The Travels is willing to learn from those who hold to spiritual faiths outside his own. In recounting the painstaking details of his fictional travels, 'Sir Mandeville' created a literary work of art that would become a definitive authority amongst travel manuscripts for some two hundred years after its original publication.

Introduction to the Text
Before delving too deep into the complexities of The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, I believe it prudent to include a brief and comprehensive introduction to the text itself.
Many aspects of The Travels remain shrouded in mystery, despite dedicated modern research on the text and its implications. The modern critical consensus strongly indicates that this piece, which is itself a medieval travel guide, was written between the years 1356 and 1366. However, complexities arise as soon as we begin to consider the author of the piece. The given name of the text's author is 'Sir John Mandeville.' Mandeville claims to be "an English knight" who "travelled from 1322 to 1356" and recorded his adventures for posterity in the years following his excursions to the Eastern world (Moseley 10). However, this is a problematic claimthere is no proof that 'Sir Mandeville' ever existed, much less wrote a book detailing his travels to the Eastern world. In fact, nearly all of the research that has been done on The Travels agrees on the point that Sir John Mandeville was himself a fabrication of literary creativity.
This brings us to a second crucial pointthe nature of the text itself. Sir Mandeville may not have existed in the physical world, but what of the travels he describes in his text? Did the author of the text truly experience the events he details in his book, or are they just as falsified as the image of Mandeville himself? The answer to this question is more complex than one may first imagine. Elements of the text which would be laughably false to the modern reader are paired alongside intricate details of cities and medieval geography that are as close to the truth as any other source of that time period. As such, it is impossible to discount the entire text as a bizarre fabrication of the Eastern world, for many of the purported elements of the Eastern world within are likely true.
The subtle layers of truth and deception woven into this travel piece allow for the creation of a literary masterpiece of rare genius and creativity. In order to appreciate the wondrous and mystical experiences of Mandeville, one must be willing to delve deep into the realms of possibility, plausibility, and factualitythus letting hunger for knowledge drive them on a series of travels of their own.

Defining "Sir John Mandeville," Why That Matters, and the Christian Crusades
In all forms of text, it is important to weigh the objectives of the author in shaping their giveaways as to the religious nature of the author are woven into the piece; consider, for example, when Sir Mandeville claims proudly that "Jerusalem is in the midst (center) of the world" (122). Though it could indeed be argued that this claim is sparked by a relative lack of accurate geography in the given time period, it is telling that the writer of the piece chooses the Holy City of the Christian world as the centerpiece of his world.
To understand the nature of the authorship of this manuscript is to get a glimpse into why it was written, and who the target audience of the piece likely was. Mandeville presents himself as a complexity that defies conventional explanation. On the one hand, there is the hardened knight who calls for a Crusade to retake Jerusalem from its current occupiers -"now have the heathen men held that land in their hands forty year and more; but they shall not hold it long, if God will" (Mandeville 50). Despite this outraged call to action, Mandeville expresses a subtle yet profound disdain for the "hypocrisy, greed, and ignorance of Christian princes and priests" (Greenblatt 29). Stephen Greenblatt explores this unique contradiction in his work Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World and dubs Mandeville "the knight of non-possession" (Greenblatt 28). Throughout the course of his travels, Mandeville is tempted by offers of extraordinary wealth, marriage, and land, and he refuses every temptation that is put before him.
It is by no accident that the writer creates a narrative whereby Mandeville must resist his urges to attain power and prominence.
In this regard, Mandeville serves as a highly effective literary foil to the authorities of the Christian world. As kings, lords, and the authorities of the Church seek to gain influence through their contributions of men and materials to the Crusades against Islam in the Middle East, Mandeville is presented as a warrior who seeks to fight for the ideal of Christianity. As such, he seems highly unwilling to advance his own status through the simple act of performing his duties as a loyal adherent of the Christian faith. Faith, Mandeville suggests, should be its own reward.
Mandeville claims to have served the Sultan of Babylon "in his wars against the Bedoynes" and matter-of-factly describes how the Sultan "would have arranged a rich marriage [for him] with a great prince's daughter, and given me many great lordships if I had forsaken my faith and embraced theirs; but I did not want to" (59). This sentence rings with significance, captured so briefly in six simple words: but I did not want to. Mandeville, whomever his identity may be in reality, would prefer to die a humble Christian than a wealthy, influential traitor to his faith. It is unlikely that the majority of contemporary Christians of the time period would have shared this selfless and noble spirit.
The long-lasting series of Christian Crusades began when Pope Urban II offered to absolve the sins of all Christian warriors who participated in a war to retake the Holy Land from its primarily Muslim 'occupiers.' With a proclamation of "Dues vult" (God wills it), Pope Urban kickstarted a series of conflicts that would span the space of nearly two hundred yearsthe traditionally accepted timeline for the duration of The Crusades is 1095 -1291 C.E. (with several small-scale 'Crusades' and conflicts occurring through the 15 th century). 3 The opening stages of the First Crusade tell a story of abject failure and desperation.
Masses of unarmored, poorly armed, and desperate peasants and low-ranking knights set off for Many of the Christian monarchs, rulers, and royals who committed forces to the Crusades seemingly did so in order to gain worldly power, riches, and influence in the Eastern realms. Few managed to gain the riches and powers they expected to win in the East, of course. However, swayed by Pope Urban's promise of total absolution, the Crusaders committed atrocities against the lands they ravished, targeting native Muslim and Jewish populations with ruthless efficiency.
The leaders of the Crusades convinced their followers that they "were the army of God 'fighting for Christ,' their casualties [were] martyrs, their success assured because 'God fights for us'" (Tyerman 27). Undeniably, some of the Crusaders believed that they were performing the work of God in their invasion of the Holy Land. However, just as many prominent commanders during the Crusades used the conflicts as a means of acquiring territory and worldly prestige - of the Turkish people who had "in their frenzy invaded and ravaged the churches of God" (Tyerman 27). Any level of violence against the occupants of the Eastern world was seen as acceptable, any atrocity committed against non-Christians was permissible, and the pillaging of entire cities was encouraged.
With the composition of The Travels occurring nearly two hundred and fifty years after the conclusion of the most successful and noteworthy Crusades, the contradiction between Mandeville's tolerant attitude towards the inhabitants of the Eastern world and his support of the figure in a time period where such an attitude seems to be remarkably out of place.

Elements of Exaggeration, Truth, and Religion Within the Travels
Mandeville offers particularly accurate and striking descriptions of physical places. Take The text, even had it been read to a historic audience of medieval citizens, would likely still have induced immediate recognition with its overt references to the Christian faith and practices.
Mandeville mentions a certain species of deadly "trees that bear venom, against the which there is no medicine" (126). It is nearly impossible not to therefore consider the serpent that deceived Eve into eating from the Tree of Knowledge, thus banishing humanity from the Garden of Eden. Or what of a mystical isle that Mandeville encounters where "there is a great marvel, more to speak of than in any other part of the world... for all manner of fishes, that be there in the sea about them, come once in the year" (Mandeville 128)? The concept of 'plenty' and the idea that nature is enough to sustain both the body and the soul are clearly on display here. However, this supposedly "real place" can once again be connected back to the Bible, when Jesus meets his first disciples. Jesus "said to Simon, "Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch." … When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break" (Luke 5:4,6). Both in the Biblical story and in Mandeville's own account, the natural world is shown to sustain the works of men possessed of faith and goodwill.
Mandeville is hardly subtle in his comparison of the mystic isle and Jesus's miracle, either. "For because that [the king of the isle] multiplieth so the world with children, therefore God sendeth him so the fishes of diverse kinds of all that be in the sea" (Mandeville 129).
These exaggerations seem to be relatively harmless, as they seem to serve to highlight the appeals of remaining loyal to the Christian faith. However, not all of Mandeville's descriptions deal specifically with the places he encounters over the course of his worldly adventures. He also touches upon the people he meets and experiences he has in the Eastern world. As in the rest of his travel guide, aspects of his remembrances are based upon apparently true accounts of the East, whereas others are fully fabricated.
A particularly striking experience that Mandeville describes relates to the dangers associated with the Vale Perilous, where "the valley is full of devils and always has been, and men say it is an entrance to Hell" (173). He continues on to describe the enormous quantities of temporal riches hoarded in the valley, in the form of gold and silver, which convinced "many men [to] come and go into that valley" (173). Those that succumb to the vice of greed "are strangled by devils," thus earning the punishment of death for their prioritization of worldly resources (173). The punishment for the crime does not distinguish between the religion of the thief, as the "subsequent punishment" falls upon "Christian and non-Christian" alike (Verner 141). Mandeville subtly slips a piece of social commentary into this description of his travelsin his passages dealing with the Vale Perilous, he seems to implicitly claim that "trade is good but materialism is evil" (Verner 142). Those who do not take from the treasures of the Vale Perilous may leave the valley unscathed, whereas those who take even the most inexpensive coin are killed for their actions.
Mandeville takes a clear interest in the people he encounters in the East. He describes a place whereby "men of that country when their friends be sick they hang them upon trees, and say that it is better that birds, that be angels of God, eat them, than the foul worms of the earth" (Mandeville 129). No other historian of that time period seems to have recorded a civilization that would hang those members of their community who fell ill (whilst still alive). The closest practice to this that is remotely comparable is a contemporary custom, in some areas of the Philippines, whereby the dead are buried in hanging coffins nailed to the sides of cliff faceswhilst being most certainly already dead (see Image 2 for reference). In this surprising claim, Mandeville curiously chooses to connect the image of birds with religion. Birds seem to represent the freedom and air of unpredictable wildness inherent in the natural world. They fly, free, across the sky without earthly restraints to weigh them down -which is quite possibly what Mandeville was considering when he connected them with the idea of angels. However, this metaphor is a rather gruesome one, when it is fully considered. The supposed 'angels' are literally devouring the 'sick friends' of the isle Caffolos, which is most likely not the visual one would first think of when thinking of either angels or birds.
The depictions in Mandeville's travels continue along an ever-more-strange line as he reaches the isle of Milke, where he encounters a race of men that "delight in nothing more than for to fight and to slay men" (Mandeville 130). These berserkers are "behoveth that every of them shall be accorded drink of other's blood," which is a strange and disturbing habit to say the Mandeville drops the following description into the text: "Merchants bring children there to sell… those that are plump they eat; those that are not plump they feed up and fatten, and then kill and eat them" (127). With this revelation, the reader realizes that the "Cannibals are not merely sadly mistaken about scripture but are genuinely evil," as they see nothing wrong with consuming the flesh of the innocent (Verner 147). Mandeville's grim depiction of the Cannibals seems to hint at "the difficulty of constructing societal guidelines from Biblical principles" (Verner 147). The Cannibals of Lamory genuinely believe that their actions are divine and in good service to Christian beliefs. Thus, Mandeville seemingly expresses the belief that the acknowledgement and rigorously structured following of scripture can have serious unintended consequences.
Not all of the races that Mandeville encounters during the course of his travels have such strong secular or religious attachments. Some of the men and women that Mandeville encounters are sufficient in their strangeness, while others are so 'evil' and 'monstrous' that Mandeville simply offers the most simplistic descriptions of their appearances and practices.
In terms of the former, Mandeville gives extremely brief descriptions of some of the peoples one may encounter in the Eastern isles. Upon one island are "people whose ears are so big that they hang down to their knees," in the next isle are "people who walk on their hands and their feet like four-footed beasts," and in yet another isle is a race of people who "have only one foot, which is so broad that it will cover all the body and shade it from the sun" (Mandeville 137). A visual depiction of some of these fantastic peoples can be found in Figure 3. Mandeville offers neither endorsement nor judgement upon these diverse peoples. Rather, the reader is left to enjoy the entertaining account upon the bizarre traits of the island dwellers, with no pressure to make a snap judgement regarding morality, religion, or 'goodness.' However, Mandeville also introduces numerous races of island dwellers that are clearly meant to be seen as depraved and evil. One of the peoples that Mandeville encounters 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" (137). In similar fashion to the depraved Cannibals of Lamory, these giants eat the flesh of humans, in addition to raw fishquestionable dietary decisions, to be certain. In another region are "headless men whose eyes and mouths are on their backs," and "there are in another place folk with flat faces, without noses or eyes" (Mandeville 137). On a surface level, it may seem as though these islanders are similar to those mentioned above, in that they simply have physical deformities that set them apart from normal men and women. However, the peoples that Mandeville does not express judgement upon have mutations that benefit them in some waythe men and women with large ears have finely attuned senses of hearing, the people with only one foot can use it to shade themselves from the sun, and so forth. In striking comparison, the cannibal giants, headless people, and flat-faced people benefit not from their transfigurations. Rather, they are "cursed," which may indicate a carry-over from Mandeville's original source materials, "in which an odd physical shape was sufficient to imply an equally hideous soul" (Verner 149). It is clear that the reader is meant to regard these specific islanders with immediate horror and disdain, despite the brevity of their inclusion in the travel piece.
To study the entirety of Mandeville's Eastern encounters would be a daunting The Travels remain to this day an undeniably complex account of the Eastern world and all of the wonder, beauty, and mysteries contained within the region. The lasting impact that they had in shaping the adventures of other explorers of the time period cannot be ignored -The Travels maintained cultural relevance long after the mysterious 'Mandeville's' death, and still serve to instill curiosity and wonder in readers up to the present day.

Exploring The Theologies of The Travels
As briefly mentioned earlier, Mandeville sets himself apart from the prevailing theological mindset of the Crusading era in many noteworthy ways. Mandeville's text serves to "provide the untraveled faithful with a vicarious pilgrimage, allowing them to call to mind those spatially and temporally distant places, persons, and events known to them from sacred history" given that the author of the travel piece likely did not see any of the places he describes, this goal comes across as particularly ironic (Higgins 93 Christian world, the Sultan goes on to express disappointment at how "Christians are so proud, so envious, such great gluttons, so lecherous, and moreover so full of covetousness" (Mandeville 107-108). Mandeville does not merely express the supposed opinion of the Sultan in his text; he clearly agrees with the critiques he places in the Sultan's mouth, and utilizes the Sultan as his method of delivery in order to shame future Christian readers into changing their ways.
Mandeville wryly states that "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" (Mandeville 108). This segment of the travel piece adequately sums up Mandeville's status as an exasperated Christian. While the text is told through a definitive Christian perspective (albeit far more open-minded than that of comparative religious texts of the time), Mandeville offers bluntly accurate critiques of his own religion. He shows himself as more than willing to give credit to the followers of other faiths when they act admirably, while he is unwilling to simply accept the status quo of the European world. Mandeville gives the Sultan one of the most "extensive and positive portraits" of any of the Eastern world's leaders at the timethis is clearly not a mere accident (Higgins 95).
Mandeville utilizes the Sultan as a clear literary foil to the priests and princes of Christendom. By doing so, he shows the heights that the Christian world could potentially have reached, if it had genuinely taken into consideration some of the more open-minded practices of the Eastern world. The Sultan is gracious and accepting of all faiths, and he is willing to question himself and his advisors in order to guarantee the best possible outcome for his realm's longevity. If such practices were adopted in the European world, Mandeville argues, the Christian world would be strengthened through rationality, faithful devotion, and critical selfreflection. Through this story of thoughtful discourse and cross-religious relationships, the author of the piece challenges the prevailing 'medieval narrative' of religious non-acceptance, violence, and hatred of all things unlike oneself.

Conclusion
The Travels of Sir John Mandeville presents a deeply complex and nuanced worldview of the Eastern world that comes into direct conflict with many of the prevalent pillars of medieval Christianity. Whoever the author of The Travels may have been, he successfully created a longlasting, thought-provoking literary piece that deserves genuine consideration. Medieval readers and contemporary literary critics alike do the piece a disservice when they take every passage of Mandeville's adventures at its face value. It would be uncharitable to treat the entire work as nothing more than a fantastic misrepresentation of imaginary places. Mandeville's writing is as much a critique on the immorality and greed of the Christian church as it is a story about an English knight who had the fortune to travel around the Eastern world. To this day, some of Mandeville's more prominent thoughts and opinions about the world around him remain relevant to modern culture and practices. As such, to ignore the importance of the piece's underlying themes and progressive worldview is to entirely miss many of the most important and relevant points of The Travels.