Simon of Saint-Quentin

Simon of Saint-Quentin was from France originating Dominicans , Mongolia traveler and travel writer in the 13th century.

Nicolaus Ascelinus is entrusted with the mission by the Pope and meets Baiju with his entourage. French illumination from the Chronique des Empereurs by David Aubert, 1462.

In the years before 1246 Simon worked as a missionary in the religious province of the Holy Land , where he apparently acquired knowledge of the local languages. Here, in July 1246, he joined the travel expedition of his friar Ascelin , who on the papal mandate led an embassy to the Mongolian general Baiju in Persia . Its field camp, located in today's Azerbaijan , was reached in May 1247. After the diplomatic mission failed, the embassy returned to the papal court in Lyon in the summer of 1248 .

Simon wrote a comprehensive report (Historia Tartarorum) about the expedition, the original of which has been lost today. The chronicler Vinzenz von Beauvais, however, has incorporated several sections from it into his historical work (Speculum historiale) .

expenditure

• Jean Richard: Simon de Saint-Quentin. Histoire des tartares. Paris, 1965.
• Stephen Pow, Tamás Kiss, Anna Romsics, Flora Ghazaryan: Simon of Saint-Quentin: History of the Tartars . Annotated translation into English published in 2019 of the text contained in Vincent von Beauvais' Speculum historiale ; bilingual: English / Latin.

literature

• Gregory G. Guzman: Simon of Saint-Quentin and the Dominican Mission to the Mongol Baiju: A Reappraisal, in: Speculum, Vol. 46 (1971), pp. 232-249.
• Gregory G. Guzman: Simon of Saint-Quentin as Historian of the Mongols and Sejuk Turks, in: Medievalia et Humanistica. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Culture, NS Vol. 3 (1972), pp. 155-178.
• Gregory G. Guzman: The Encyclopedist Vincent of Beauvais and his Mongol Extracts from John of Plano Carpini and Simon of Saint-Quentin, in: Speculum, Vol. 49 (1974), pp. 287-307.