Johannes de Plano Carpini

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The itinerary of Johannes de Plano Carpini (itinerary in blue)

Johannes de Plano Carpini OFM (also Giovanni Piano Carpini , Giovanni da Pian del Carpine or Johannes del Piano Carpini ; * around 1185 in Pian del Carpine, today Magione , near Perugia in Umbria ; † August 1, 1252 in Bar , Montenegro ) was a Italian Franciscan , who gained fame mainly through his trip to Mongolia .

Life

As a missionary in Europe

Johannes was a student and companion of Francis of Assisi and worked in the 1220s as a missionary and organizer of Franciscanism in Germany. There he founded several monasteries in the Rhineland and Saxony. In 1222 he went to Tunis as a missionary and in 1225 to the Iberian Peninsula . From 1228 he headed the Teutonia Order as Provincial and from 1232 the Saxonia , which emerged from it in 1230, and he expanded his missionary work further and further east.

On a mission to the Great Khan

In 1245 Johannes de Plano Carpini was commissioned by Pope Innocent IV with a mission in the Ukraine , which was then occupied by the Mongols . In addition to the mission, he should also visit the Mongolian Great Khan as head of an embassy . The diplomatic background was that after the devastating Mongol storm of 1241 further military campaigns to Europe were to be ruled out, while Innocent IV tried to win the Mongols as allies against the advancing Islam and to secure the crusader states .

On Easter day 1245 he left Lyon , traveled through Bohemia and today's Silesia to the Mongol-occupied Kiev and from there to the Don . Here it went on to the Volga , through the newly formed Mongol Empire of the Golden Horde to the Ural River , over the Silk Road to the Djungarian Lakes and from there to the center of the Mongol Empire. At the Orkhon river the enthronement camp of the Mongols was found, who were about to appoint a new Great Khan after the death of their predecessor and an interim reign. In August 1246, Johannes attended the enthronement of the new Khan Göjük , and only four months later was he granted an audience in the yurt camp . He did not visit Karakoram, but heard of it, as evidenced by a remark that " there are no settlements or cities " to be found among the Mongols , " except for one, which is said to be quite handsome, called the Karakoram . We did not see it ourselves, but we approached it within half a day's journey "

At the said audience in the yurt camp, Johannes de Plano Carpini should have presented the new Khan with a papal letter that he had brought with him, calling on the Mongol ruler to stop the fighting of his troops against the Christians. Ultimately, it is not known whether he actually handed over the letter or whether it was better not to do so out of tactical considerations. Since the unsolicited appearance of an opposing delegation according to Mongolian tradition meant that the Khan wanted to submit to him, he sent this delegation back with a letter from his side after the reception. In this document he now called on the Pope with an added, hidden threat to come to him immediately with the other kings in order to submit to him personally.

The diplomatic goals of the mission were not achieved, but due to his travelogue “Ystoria Mongolorum quos nos Tartaros appellamus” , which shed light on the culture and customs of the Mongols for the first time, the mission was a success, at least in scientific terms.

Regarding the question of whether Christian peoples can be found in the Mongol Empire, he reports on the Christian Central Asian Turkic people of the Uighurs , who were conquered by Genghis Khan : " These people are Christians from the Nestorian sect. " He mentions another from Genghis Khan partially prostrate, wealthy people, probably Chinese, who have a special script: the "Kytai". They are pagans but believe in Jesus Christ even though they are not baptized. “They don't have a beard and their face looks a lot like the Mongal, but they don't have quite as broad faces.” But he suspected the kingdom of the legendary priest-king Johannes to be in India ( Thomas Christians ?): “ Činggis Khan sent another son with an army against him the Indians. ... He also led an army into battle against the Christians living in Greater India. When the king of that country, known to the people as the priest king John , heard this, he went to meet them with an army ... ”.

return

In 106 days Johannes covered about 3,000 English miles , or about 4,800 kilometers. On All Saints' Day in 1247 the company returned to Lyon and Johannes de Plano Carpini verbally gave the Pope a detailed travel report. It is not known with certainty whether the Great Khan's letter to the Pope was actually delivered to him.

Last years in Europe

Back in Europe, Johannes de Plano Carpini was appointed Archbishop of Bar in what is now Montenegro in 1248 , where he was able to assert himself against metropolitan claims from Dubrovnik with the support of the Serbian King Stefan Uroš I. Carpini died on August 1st, 1252 at the age of about 65.

His works contain valuable information about ancient Ukraine and in particular a description of contemporary Kiev.

Works

  • Liber Tartarorum
  • Ystoria Mongolorum quos nos Tartaros appellamus

See also

Editions and translations

  • Enrico Menestò et al. (Ed.): Giovanni di Pian di Carpine: Storia dei Mongoli. Centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo, Spoleto 1989 (critical edition and Italian translation)
  • Johannes Gießauf: The Mongol history of Johannes von Piano Carpine: Introduction, text, translation, commentary (= series of publications by the Institute for History, Vol. 6). Graz 1995, ISBN 3-85375-012-5 .
  • Felicitas Schmieder (Ed.): Johannes von Plano Carpini: Customer of the Mongols 1245–1247. Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1997, ISBN 3-7995-0603-9 .
  • Friedrich Risch (Ed.): Johann de Plano Carpini. History of the Mongols and travel report 1245–1247 (= publications of the State Research Institute for Comparative Religious History at the University of Leipzig. Vol. 2.11). Leipzig 1930.

literature

  • Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken : The Nationes Christianorum orientalium in the understanding of Latin historiography. (= Cologne historical treatises. Vol. 22). Böhlau, Cologne 1973, ISBN 3-412-86173-1 .
  • Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken: The Mongols in the worldview of the Latins around the middle of the 13th century with special consideration of the “Speculum Historiale” of Vincent von Beauvais. In: Archives for cultural history. No. 57, 1975, pp. 117-140.
  • Gian Andri Bezzola: The Mongols from an occidental perspective. A contribution to the question of the international encounters. Francke, Bern 1974, ISBN 3-7720-1056-3 .
  • Johannes Fried : In search of reality. The Mongols and European empirical science in the 13th century. In: Historical magazine . No. 243, 1986, pp. 287-332.
  • Johannes Gießauf: Johannes von Piano del Carpine. Provincial Minister 1232 to 1239. In: Dieter Berg (Hrsg.): Management und Minoritas. Life pictures of the Saxon Franciscan provincials from the 13th to the 20th century. Butzon & Bercker Verlag, Kevelaer 2003, pp. 3–20.
  • René Guennou: Les missions catholiques. In: Henri-Charles Puech: Histoire des Religions. Volume 2: La formation des religions universelles et les religions de salut dans le monde méditerranéen et le Proche-Orient. Les religions constituées en Occident et leurs contre-courants (= Encyclopédie de la Pléiade. Vol. 34). Gallimard, Paris 1972.
  • Max Kratochwill: Johannes de Plano Carpini . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 5, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1991, ISBN 3-7608-8905-0 , Sp. 594.
  • Justin Lang: Johannes del Piano Carpini . In: Walter Kasper (Ed.): Lexicon for Theology and Church . 3. Edition. tape 5 . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1996, Sp. 958 .
  • Raimondo Michetti:  Giovanni da Pian del Carpine. In: Mario Caravale (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 56:  Giovanni di Crescenzio – Giulietti. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2001.
  • Marina Münkler : Experience of the foreign. The description of East Asia in the eyewitness accounts of the 13th and 14th centuries. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-05-003529-3 ( excerpts from Google-book ).
  • Jean-Paul Roux, Sylvie-Anne Roux: Les explorateurs au Moyen Âge. Fayard, Coll. Pluriel, Paris 1985.
  • Michael Taylor: The Myth of Tibet . Voyages of discovery from Marco Polo to Alexandra David-Neel . Westermann, Braunschweig 1988, ISBN 3-07-508986-9 .
  • Bernard de Vaulx: Histoire des missions catholiques françaises. Fayard, Paris 1951.
  • Harald ZimmermannJohannes de Plano Carpini. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 14, Bautz, Herzberg 1998, ISBN 3-88309-073-5 , Sp. 1112-1114.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Johannes von Plano Carpini: News of the Mongols 1245–1247. (translated by F. Schmiederer) Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1997, p. 41 f.
  2. ^ Johannes von Plano Carpini: News of the Mongols 1245–1247 . Sigmaringen 1997, p. 62.
  3. ^ Johannes von Plano Carpini: News of the Mongols 1245–1247. Sigmaringen 1997, p. 65.
  4. M. Münkler: Experience of the Stranger. The description of East Asia in the eyewitness accounts of the 13th and 14th centuries. Berlin 2000, p. 30.