The Travels of Sir John Mandeville

Did You Know?

• A short French life of St Alban of Germany appended to some manuscripts calls its author Johan Mandivill[e], knight, formerly of St Alban.
• Jean d'Outremeuse ascribes to Mandeville a Latin 'lappidaire selon l'oppinion des Indois' from which he quotes twelve passages.
• A manuscript of Mandeville's travels offered for sale in 1862 was said to be divided into five books, including one on the form of the earth.

Sources evidently used

The book's distant travels, from Trebizond to China, are largely taken from the narrative of Friar Odoric (1330), with many passages expanded by extravagant interpolations. In some cases, the writer misunderstood Odoric's text; for instance, Odoric's account of tame cormorants used for fishing was transformed into 'little beasts called loyres' (otters). The coincidence between the two works was recognized early, with a manuscript of Odoric at Mainz describing him as 'the companion of the knight Mendavil.' Much of the Asiatic geography and history comes from La Flor des Estoires d'Orient by Hetoum, an Armenian monk who dictated his work in 1307. A story about the fortress at Corycus, or the Castle Sparrowhawk, also appears. Only one passage can be plausibly traced to Marco Polo: the statement that people at Hormuz lie in water during great heat, which was likely interpolated into the copy of Odoric used by Mandeville.

Authorship

The compiler calls himself a knight born in St Albans, England, but 'Sir John Mandeville' is widely believed to be an invented figure. At least part of the work is mere invention, with no contemporary corroboration of Mandeville's existence. Some French manuscripts include a vague Latin letter of presentation to Edward III. Compilation is thought to have largely come from a Liège physician known as Johains à le Barbe or Jehan de Bourgogne, who on his deathbed reportedly revealed himself to Jean d'Outremeuse as 'messire Jean de Mandeville, chevalier, comte de Montfort en Angleterre.'

Possible representation of genuine experiences

Even in parts that might represent genuine experience, the book closely follows the itinerary of the German knight Wilhelm von Boldensele, written in 1336. Mandeville uses Boldensele's thread but often digresses and eliminates the German traveler's good sense. For example, Boldensele noted that the pyramids could not be Pharaoh's Granaries because no place for wheat could be found, but Mandeville reversed this to support the medieval opinion that they were Joseph's Granaries. Only a small residuum of the book may contain the author's own experiences, yet borrowed stories are frequently claimed as such. Mandeville alleges he witnessed the garden of transmigrated souls at Cansay (Hangzhou) and that he and his fellows served Kublai Khan for fifteen months in wars against the King of Manzi, a kingdom that had ceased to exist seventy years earlier.

Manuscripts and translations

The oldest known manuscript of the original, dated 1371, is in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Early printed Latin translations exist, and four unprinted Latin translations have been discovered, mostly in British manuscripts. An English version made from one of these Latin translations survives only in free abbreviations in two 15th-century Bodleian manuscripts. The first English translation direct from the French was made early in the 15th century from a defective manuscript with missing pages, leading to garbled passages; all English printed texts before 1725 followed these defective copies. The Egerton text was printed by the Roxburghe Club, while the Cotton text, first printed in 1725–27, is the current English version in modern reprints.