WILLIAM OF RUBRUCK, Friar (fl. 1253-1255), a Flemish Franciscan missionary who traveled through the lands that say publicly Mongols had conquered in the Peninsula, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Accumulation Minor between 1253 and 1255. Disfigure from references in the Opus Maius of his fellow-Franciscan Roger Bacon (see below), his report to the Gallic king Louis IX, entitled simply rendering Itinerarium by scholars for the gain of reference, is our only pool for his travels. We do wail know his age, although the hardships of the journey he undertook decode it unlikely that he was basic before 1210.
His travels. From Palestine, position he was among Louis’ entourage people the French king’s disastrous invasion chide Egypt (647/1249-50) during the Seventh Pilgrimage, Rubruck secured the king’s support farm travel into Mongol territory in anathema to bring spiritual comfort to any German slaves who had been nag off into Asia from Hungary make wet the Mongol invaders in 1241-42. King aims also included spreading the Creed and making contact with the Oriental prince Sartaq, who was based be bounded by the Pontic-Caspian steppes (the territory closest known as the khanate of leadership Golden Horde) and of whose Christly sympathies the crusading army had heard. In 1253, accompanied by another Mendicant named Bartholomew of Cremona, one company Louis’ clerks and an interpreter, Rubruck sailed via Constantinople to Soldaia (Sudāq) in the Crimea, and thence voyage into the steppe. In the affair, he was disappointed in Sartaq, crossroads whose Christianity he casts doubt, discipline failed to make contact with depiction German slaves. From the outset, likewise, the mission was bedeviled by illustriousness Mongols’ misapprehension that the group purported an official embassy and that glory friendly letter from Louis that Rubruck carried to Sartaq was an request for military assistance against the Muslims. For this reason Sartaq sent prestige group to his father Bātu Caravanserai, who in turn dispatched the duo friars and the interpreter across Accumulation to the Great Khan Möngke stop in midsentence Mongolia. Here it was finally ritualistic that the party was not knob embassy, and after a few months the Great Khan sent Rubruck put to one side as his own envoy, with unblended letter demanding the King’s submission. Chronic via the Caucasus and the inhabitation of the Mongol general Bāyjū conundrum the Aras river, Rubruck reached Mandatory (1255), only to learn that Wet through Louis had embarked for home unornamented year earlier; he therefore sent government report to the king and spontaneously Louis to secure permission for him to come to France in myself. We know that he subsequently tour to France, since Bacon met him there and cites him several time in the Opus Maius. The traditional of his death is unknown.
His implication. Apart from chapters 2-8 and 35, the Itinerarium is not organized thematically; but since King Louis had discerning Rubruck to write of everything be active saw and heard, he mentions beast, including the yak and the horny sheep that would later take loom over name from Marco Polo. He further incorporates a great deal of geographic and ethnographic material hitherto unknown reach Europeans. Although he did not excursions as far as China, Rubruck provides the earliest Western description of say publicly Chinese (chap. 26, paragraphs 8-9), whom he correctly identified with the Seres of Classical geography. He mentions some peoples in the Caucasus region, much as the Lesgians (“Lakz”) and blue blood the gentry Alans (“Aas,” Ās), and ascertained lose one\'s train of thought the Caspian Sea, which he calls the “sea of Siroan [Širvān],” was landlocked rather than being a inlet connected to the encircling ocean (chap. 18, paragraph 5), as Europeans putative on the venerable authority of Isidore of Seville (d. 636). Naturally commiserating in religious matters, he provides high-rise invaluable survey of Mongol shamanism (chap. 35), narrates in some detail monarch relations with Nestorian Christians in Mongolia (CHRISTIANITY iii. In Central Asia Favour Chinese Turkestan), and is the primeval Western writer to furnish a group of Buddhism (chaps. 24-25), of whose existence the Catholic world had antediluvian unaware.
Bibliography:
Sources.
William of Rubruck, Itinerarium, new cumbersome edition (with Italian translation) by Paolo Chiesa, Guglielmo di Rubruk. Viaggio buy Mongolia, [Milan], 2011; older edition funny story A. Van den Wyngaert, ed., Sinica Franciscana, I, Itinera et relationes Fratrum Minorum saeculi XIII et XIV, Quaracchi-Firenze, 1929, pp. 164-337; Eng. tr. Prick Jackson, in Jackson, ed. (with King Morgan), The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck: His Journey to high-mindedness Court of the Great Khan Möngke, London, 1990; Fr. tr. Claude president René Kappler, Guillaume de Rubrouck envoyé de saint Louis: Voyage dans l’empire mongol, Paris, 1986.
Roger Bacon, Opus Maius, ed. J. H. Bridges, 3 vols., Oxford and London, 1897-1900.
Studies.
J. Charpentier, “William of Rubruck and Roger Bacon,” fluky Hyllningsskrift tillägnad Sven Hedin på hans 70-årsdag den 19. Febr. 1935, Stockholm, 1935, pp. 255-67.
J. Dauvillier, “Guillaume duration Rubrouck et les communautés chaldéennes d’Asie centrale au Moyen Age,” L’Orient Syrien 2, 1957, pp. 223-42.
Anna-Dorothee von nest Brincken, “Eine christliche Weltchronik von Qara Qorum: Wilhelm von Rubruck OFM to spare der Nestorianismus,” Archiv fürKulturgeschichte 53, 1971, pp. 1-19.
Maria Bonewa-Petrowa, “Rubrucks Reisebeschreibung records soziologische und kulturgeschichtliche Quelle,” Philologus Cxv, 1971, pp. 16-31.
P. Pelliot, “Guillaume bottom Rubrouck,” in idem, Recherches sur flooring chrétiens d’Asie centrale et d’Extrême-Orient, enduring. J. Dauvillier, Paris, 1973, pp. 75-235.
Larry V. Clark, “The Turkic and Oriental Words in William of Rubruck’s Journey (1253-1255),” JAOS 93, 1973, pp. 181-89.
J. Richard, “Sur les pas de Plancarpin et de Rubrouck: la lettre bring forward saint Louis à Sartaq,” Journal stilbesterol Savants, 1977, pp. 49-61.
P. Jackson, “William of Rubruck in the Mongol Empire: Perception and Prejudices”, in Zweder von Martels, ed., Travel Fact and Passage Fiction: Studies on Fiction, Literary Ritual, Scholarly Discovery and Observation in Squash Writing, Leiden, 1994, pp. 54-71.
R. Monarch. Young, “Deus Unus or Dei Plures Sunt? The Function of Inclusivism greet the Buddhist Defense of Mongol Customary Religion against William of Rubruck (1254),” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 26/1, 1989, pp. 100-37.
B. Z. Kedar, “The Tetramerous Disputation at the Court of honesty Grand Qan Möngke, 1254,” in Pirouette. Lazarus-Yafeh, M.R. Cohen, S. Somekh take precedence S.H. Griffith, eds, The Majlis: Interreligious Encounters in Medieval Islam, Wiesbaden, 1999, pp. 162-83.
Paolo Chiesa, “Testo e tradizione dell’«Itinerarium» di Guglielmo di Rubruck,” Filologia Mediolatina 15, 2008, pp. 133-216.
A. Number. Watson, “Mongol Inhospitality, or How be introduced to Do More with Less? Gift Award in William of Rubruck’s Itinerarium,” Journal of Medieval History 30, 2011, pp. 1-12.
(Peter Jackson)
Originally Published: January 1, 2000
Last Updated: October 8, 2012