Asia in the French Imagination, 1100–1221

The Mongol archive in late medieval France emerged from a tradition of writing about Asia that reached back to the Bible and Greco-Roman antiquity. This tradition established a conceptual framework and horizon of expectation that determined the ways in which information about the Mongols was recorded and interpreted for generations after Europeans first learned of them in 1221. In this section, I will discuss the works in this tradition that had the most direct bearing on the Mongol archive’s development. Of particular importance are texts produced after the First Crusade, which expressed new knowledge of and attitudes toward Asia born of encounters with foreign populations and places. In the twelfth century, Asia acquired new importance for the French and other Latin Christian communities as they sought to conquer and colonize the Holy Land. Traditional conceptions endured, but they were joined by more practical, realist, and instrumentalist paradigms that served the project of remaking the Middle East. The result was a bifurcated vision of an Asia simultaneously ancient and contemporary, eternal and dynamic, whose true scale, Latin Christians understood, exceeded their comprehension.

A rich textual legacy from antiquity and the early Middle Ages influenced French conceptions of Asia for centuries. As concerns the Mongol archive, the most significant works on Asia that predate the crusade era are the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. Both speak of enemies who exist in the far reaches of the world: Zechariah foresees all the nations of the earth attacking Jerusalem (12:3), while Revelation tells of the devil seducing “nations in the four quarters of the earth” (20:8). Of particular importance for the Mongol archive are the Hebrew Bible’s reference to Gog of the land of Magog, an enemy of the Jewish people (Ezekiel 38–39) and the Christian Bible’s prophecy of Gog and Magog, allies of Antichrist who will be “numerous as the sands of the sea” (Revelation 20:8). The Bible’s eschatological geography profoundly influenced medieval French responses to many Asian peoples, the Mongols among them, by assimilating the appearance of unknown foreigners to apocalypse.

Other significant works on Asia that predate the Crusades and are important to the Mongol archive include Solinus’s De mirabilibus mundi, Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies, and the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius. Solinus and Isidore portray an Asia that is inhabited by a wide variety of people, animals, and marvelous creatures, and is home to wondrous natural phenomena and vast riches. As essential school texts, they shaped ideas about Asia for centuries. Pseudo-Methodius tells of how Alexander the Great enclosed Gog and Magog behind the Caspian Gates, from which they would break out at the apocalypse.¹ After it appeared in the seventh century, this prophecy was applied for centuries to various nomadic tribes and invaders from the East, including the Mongols in the thirteenth century.

Another tradition that reflects the Latin understanding of Asia is that of the mappa mundi. The standard school map portrayed the world as a circle divided into three parts: the upper half represents Asia, the lower left quadrant is Europe, and the lower right quadrant is Africa. The earth is oriented toward the east with Asia at the top, in the privileged position. Twice the size of Europe or Africa, Asia was home to the Garden of Eden, to biblical history, and to most of the world’s people and wealth. Mappae mundi were reproduced in countless contexts over the centuries and reinforced the image of an Asia that was vast and mysterious, full of wonders and menace.²

For even the most educated people in France, Asia before the crusade era was a largely imaginary or textual entity defined primarily by these and other sources and not by current information. This situation changed dramatically with the First Crusade, which was launched in 1095. Encounters with eastern Christians and Muslims as embodied actors, able to speak for themselves and living according to their own beliefs and customs, profoundly transformed Western knowledge about the Middle East and realms beyond. Interaction with foreign people, the need for their support (or neutrality) and for political stability, the desire to convert them, military planning, diplomacy, settlement, intermarriage, and plain curiosity led to an enormous influx of information. Direct contact altered how the French learned about, described, and interpreted not only the Holy Land but Asia as a whole. As a result, Asia became much more present in French literary culture and in the French imagination in the crusade era.

This is not to say that texts treating Asia after 1095 were necessarily better informed or more realistic than earlier works. Broadly speaking, the crusade-era Asia corpus may be divided into two spheres. On the one hand are works that employed a rationalist and investigative approach to Asia, chief among which were crusade chronicles and ethnographic descriptions. On the other are the imaginative works that fuse history or learned tradition with fantasy, such as the chansons de geste and the Alexander Romance. The former were often in Latin and for clerical audiences, the latter in Old French and for the laity. However, these social distinctions should not be overstated: much of the clerics’ information came from the testimony of lay knights, and Latin chronicles were translated into French; at the same time, clerics drew on chansons de geste and likely wrote the Alexander material. Moreover, once copied into manuscripts, all of these works had the potential to serve multiple audiences in a variety of ways: for instruction, inspiration, entertainment, and as sources for new texts and manuscript compilations.

A rationalist conceptualization of Asia in the crusade era is evident in the terminology used by authors to designate peoples and places. For centuries, medieval writers in France and elsewhere used biblical and ancient terms: “Ishmaelites” for Muslims, “Parthians” for Turks, and so on. According to Baldric of Bourgueil, Pope Urban II encouraged his audience to “fight against the Amalekites”—perennial enemies of Israel in the Hebrew Bible—when preaching the First Crusade.³ Yet when documenting the Crusades, writers attempted to provide the contemporary names of the peoples involved. Numerous crusade chroniclers whose works were produced or known in France—among them Guibert of Nogent, Peter Tudebode, Albert of Aachen, and William of Tyre—employ ethnonyms that crusaders learned overseas, such as Cuman, Kurd, Pecheneg, and Turcopole. William of Tyre was particularly attentive: he knew the meaning of “Mamluk,” and he distinguishes between the “Toassin” (tawashi, or elite troops) and the “Caragolam” (qaraghulam, or common troops) in Saladin’s army.⁴

While such modernized naming may seem natural to us, it marked a significant break with traditional usage—so much so that Guibert of Nogent commented on it. As he writes in the preface to his Deeds of God through the Franks (1104–1108):

The names of men, provinces, and cities presented me with considerable difficulties; I knew some of the familiar ones were written down incorrectly by this author, and I do not doubt that in recording foreign, and therefore less known, names, errors were also made. For example, we inveigh every day against the Turks, and we call Khorasan by its new name; when the old word has been forgotten and has almost disappeared, no use of ancient sources, even if they were available, has been made: I have chosen to use no word unless it were in common use. Had I used Parthians instead of Turks, as some have suggested, Caucasus and not Khorasan, in the pursuit of authenticity, I might have been misunderstood and laid myself open to the attacks of those who argue about the proper names of provinces. In particular, since I have observed that in our lands provinces have been given new names, we should assume that the same changes take place in foreign lands.⁵

Because so many foreign peoples and places had become real to Europeans through personal experience and eyewitness testimony, new language was needed.

Guibert’s and other writers’ desire to employ current terms expressed a new epistemology of Asia. Words were needed to convey the scope of the geography and human diversity that the crusaders were discovering in Asia. To represent and understand this new Asia also required inquiry into these peoples’ origins and histories. A prominent example of the ethnography inspired by the Crusades is the section in William of Tyre’s A History of Deeds Done beyond the Sea titled “Concerning the Origin and Ancestry of the Turkish Race.” While William does not seem to have used any known eastern sources for this account, he nonetheless provides accurate information: a man named Seljuk was the eponymous ancestor of the dynasty; the Turks conquered and migrated west from Persia; certain tribes accepted Seljuk authority while others remained nomadic.⁶ The importance of this passage lies principally in its realism. William does not resort to traditional apocalyptic or demonizing interpretations of nomads and Muslims, nor does he reduce them to contemporary versions of biblical enemies.⁷ Instead he understands the Turks as a human society that has changed over time and possesses both political order and its own internal diversity. This humanization of a large and menacing Asian community prefigures the treatment of the Mongols in the Mongol archive.

Other ethnographic texts on Middle Eastern and Asian populations circulated in the twelfth century and were verifiably or likely known to French elites. Aimery of Limoges, the third Latin patriarch of Antioch, was a crucial bridge between the church and eastern Christian communities.⁸ He appears to have been the author or patron of the Fazienda de ultra mar, a description of the Holy Land and summary of the Hebrew Bible sent to Archbishop Raymond of Toledo ca. 1140.⁹ Burchard of Strasbourg, the envoy sent by Emperor Frederick I to Saladin in 1175, wrote one of the earliest Latin accounts of Muslim culture in the eastern Mediterranean.¹⁰ Burchard’s text is significant because it considers Muslims more or less dispassionately, and its combination of ethnography, geography, and natural description makes it an important precursor to later encyclopedic works on Asia. Around the time that Burchard composed his report, an anonymous author wrote the Tractatus de locis et statu sancte terre ierosolimitane.¹¹ This is the oldest surviving example of a genre characterized by lists and descriptions of the peoples living in or on the borders of the crusader states. All these texts reflect the instrumentalization of knowledge in the crusade era—the need for current information in the service of preaching, recruitment, strategizing, diplomacy, conquest, settlement, and trade.¹²

Parallel to this historiographic and ethnographic corpus there developed the literature of a fantasized Asia both alluring and menacing.¹³ The chansons de geste are epics of conflict between Christians and “pagans” or “Saracens,” chief among whom were Muslims.¹⁴ Often these poems are set in a mythical Carolingian past and recount battles that occur in the border regions between Christian France and Islamic Spain. Chansons de geste expressed the deep anxieties of Latin Christians about violations of the moral, political, and divine order: apostasy, betrayal, heresy, idolatry, invasion, jealousy, lèse-majesté, madness, miscegenation, seduction, and usurpation. Underlying all of these was the fear that Latin Christendom would be overwhelmed and subsumed by its infidel enemies. For this reason, the chansons de geste celebrate bloody conquest, colonization, and the erasure of non-Christian peoples.

The chansons de geste adapted the new knowledge of Asia and Africa and used it to propagandistic ends largely indifferent to historical or ethnogeographic accuracy. The ethnonyms that appear in crusade chronicles and ethnic surveys are used in chansons de geste as well, but these peoples are portrayed in times and places that are either anachronistic or entirely invented. They are often joined by peoples whose names cannot be traced and are likely made up. Similarly, the geography of the chansons de geste fuses the real and the imaginary. Although frequently set in southern France and Iberia, they are particularly concerned with the threat posed by peoples of Africa and Asia. A famous example is the Song of Roland, in which Muslims living in Spain are aided by Africans, Turks, and Persians. The chanson de geste’s fluid and often outright fantastical geography is evident in a poem such as Guibert d’Andrenas (ca. 1200–1225), which locates “les vax de Comenie [the valleys of Cumania]” in Spain, when Cumania was in fact located north of the Black and Caspian Seas.¹⁵ The foreign menace is never far. A paranoid genre, the chansons de geste imagine a world in which there are multitudes of “pagans” hostile to Christianity, and in which war with them is inevitable.

Another major vernacular corpus that reflected renewed fascination with Asia is that devoted to Alexander the Great. Throughout the twelfth century there appeared several French translations, adaptations, and expansions of the Alexander Romance tradition, culminating in the Roman d’Alexandre of Alexander of Paris in the 1180s.¹⁶ This vast biography became one of the most widely copied and influential romances of the late Middle Ages. Much of its appeal lay in its portrayal of an Asia replete with tyrants, marvels, and riches, and of an Alexander who succeeds against great odds in conquering vast territories with his charisma, courage, and intelligence. This was an Alexander for the crusader age—a model and inspiration for what crusaders, who saw themselves as similarly outnumbered and justified, could achieve.¹⁷ The Roman d’Alexandre is especially relevant to the Mongol archive for two reasons: it repeats the story of the enclosing of Gog and Magog and ties it explicitly to the apocalypse (“Tant que Antecris viegne que ja mais n’en istront [They will not come out until Antichrist comes]”), and Alexander’s conquests represented the easternmost extent of Western exploration of and domination in Asia.¹⁸ Alexander thus became inextricably bound with the mystery of what lay beyond the edge of the known world.

Latin Christendom’s appetite for information on Asia is evident too in the hugely influential Letter of Prester John. Prester John is first mentioned in 1157 in a chronicle by Otto of Freising, who recounts that in 1145 Bishop Hugh of Jableh went to Viterbo and reported to Pope Eugenius III that “Presbiter Johannes” had triumphed in a war in the East and that, though he wished to assist the Christians in the Holy Land, he was unable to do so because of unfavorable weather and terrain.¹⁹ Prester John’s existence seemed to be confirmed by the appearance ca. 1170 of a letter claiming to have been sent by him to Emperor Manuel I Komnenos.²⁰ Versions of this letter survive in Latin and in European vernaculars in hundreds of manuscripts produced between the twelfth century and the end of the Middle Ages.²¹ In it, Prester John speaks in the first person and describes his realm, which encompasses the “three Indias” and possesses great riches and marvels. The text is a potpourri of traditional information on the East that draws on the Bible, Solinus, Isidore, the Alexander legend, lapidaries, and bestiaries. It had a very broad appeal that cut across eras, cultures, and social classes. As we will see, it also had a profound influence on European ideas about the Mongols.

There are of course many fascinating and significant texts on Asia that I have not included in this survey. Notable among these are Latin Christian works on Islam and the life of Muhammed, and Latin attempts to translate or paraphrase the Qur’an, several of which were the work of clerics in or from France.²² There is also much to say about the image of Asia in sermons of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Yet as important as they are, these works had little direct bearing on the origins of the Mongol archive. Europeans knew very early that the Mongols were not Muslims, and few sermons about them survive.

I conclude this section with two observations about the twelfth-century Asia corpus and the ways it influenced the Mongol archive. The first concerns these works’ demographic vision. Despite the variety of content and attitudes recorded in these works, common to most of them is the idea that the majority of people in the world are not Christian and are potential, if not likely, enemies of Latin Christendom. As Nirenberg observes, “In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, ideas about Islam played an important role in the creation of a muscular version of European Christianity, one that increasingly saw itself as united by a common destiny to conquer a wider world imagined as Muslim.”²³ Medieval authors greatly inflate the numbers of “pagans” and “Saracens” when describing battles or make repeated references to innumerable foes or to enemies “numerous as the sands of the sea.” Such language was the product of more than exaggeration and biblical citation. Rather, it expressed a belief with profound implications for how Europeans conceived of and acted in the world. As they saw it, global demographics were against Christians, and Latin Christendom could be overwhelmed by the sheer number of infidel others. To forestall this eventuality, it was logical to project Latin Christian power abroad and “make the world safe for Christianity”—indeed, make the world Catholic—whether through killing, colonization, conversion, or all three. The problem of innumerable foreign populations and how to deal with them articulated in the Asia corpus is another crucial issue that shaped the Mongol archive.

In contrast to this anxious vision of Asia, however, are those moments in which authors acknowledge the virtues and rationality of “pagans” and “Saracens.” Kerbogha, the atabeg of Mosul defeated at the battle of Antioch during the First Crusade, is often described in the sources as arrogant. Yet Baldric of Bourgueil also writes that he was “second to none in courage” and “endowed with good sense,” and he has Kerbogha give a logical argument against the crusaders’ invasion: “We are amazed at the effrontery with which you call yours this land that we have long occupied, that our forefathers occupied before that Peter, your object of superstition.”²⁴ This willingness to articulate the “Saracen” point of view is another example of the ways in which direct contact with Asians altered European consciousness. Similarly, Peter Tudebode writes:

None can deny that I speak truthfully in the following statement: “Certainly, if they stood steadfast in the faith of Christ and Christianity and believed in the creed and faith; namely, one God being triune, born of a virgin mother, crucified, resurrected, and finally had they acknowledged the sending of the perfect Holy Spirit as an aid, and recognized thereafter His equally reigning in heaven and earth; if, I say, they had so believed in right spirit and faith, no one could have found more skilled, courageous, and clever warriors than those Turks.”²⁵

The prowess and chivalric virtue of “Saracen” warriors is also a recurring theme of chansons de geste, whose portrayal of worthy “Saracen” princesses I will discuss in chapter 3.

These perspectives—the fearful and the (begrudgingly) admiring—define the spectrum of European attitudes toward foreigners in the late Middle Ages. Nowhere are these attitudes more evident than in the Mongol archive, which expresses European fear, uncertainty, and hope over the Mongols’ beliefs and intentions. At the same time, however, the Mongols forced Europeans to broaden their minds beyond these traditional paradigms—to consider what it meant to treat with “pagans” who were not Muslims, who came from the farthest reaches of the earth, whose fighting ability exceeded even that of the “Saracens,” and whose ideology of universal domination through divine right mirrored that of Latin Christendom. Europeans learned much about Asia in the twelfth century, but the Mongols would expand their knowledge beyond anything they could have imagined.

The Birth of the French Royal Archive

As I noted above, the Mongol archive was not a single repository but a networked corpus that existed throughout the kingdom of France. However, many of the archive’s works—and crucially, many works that were inventoried or that survive to the present—were the property of the kings of France or members of the royal family. As patrons, dedicatees, crusaders, diplomats, and collectors, the kings of France were indispensable to the development and preservation of the Mongol archive. To fully appreciate the archive’s origins and historical trajectory, it is necessary to understand the genesis of the royal archive under King Philip II Augustus.

Philip II’s reign from 1180 to 1223 was one of the most consequential in French history. Philip built the Louvre and the walls encircling Paris, was responsible for numerous public works projects in Paris and other cities throughout France, helped establish the University of Paris, was a coleader of the Third Crusade, won significant battles against powerful neighbors, and quadrupled the territory of the kingdom. Not least among his many achievements was the creation of a permanent royal archive in the palace on the Ile de la Cité.²⁶ Whereas before chronicles, charters, and other historically and legally significant documents pertaining to the Crown were housed primarily in ecclesiastical libraries (notably at Saint-Denis), henceforth they were also—and in many cases exclusively—housed in the royal palace.

Philip’s biographers Rigord and Guillaume le Breton both show that the archive quickly became an important part of royal governance, historiography, and ideology. Rigord composed the Gesta Philippi Augusti (or Gesta Philippi regis) in three redactions between ca. 1195 and ca. 1206.²⁷ Guillaume le Breton wrote a continuation of the Gesta to the end of Philip’s reign and an epic verse biography titled Philippidos (1214–1224).²⁸ Both biographers drew extensively on the archive. Rigord used these sources to portray Philip as a mighty monarch within his realm and a respected figure on the world stage. He quotes from several letters and other sources that were sent from or discuss foreign parts, which foreshadow the archive’s crucial role in French diplomacy and intelligence gathering.²⁹ Rigord’s work shows that from its earliest moments the archive was not only a repository but a tool for statecraft and for the glorification of the monarch.

Guillaume le Breton’s Philippidos provides particularly useful insight into contemporary views about Philip’s archive. In the Philippidos, Guillaume writes that at the battle of Fréteval in 1194, much of King Philip’s baggage was seized by the enemy. Some possessions he could replace with relative ease, but his administrative documents were restored only “cum summo … labore [with the greatest effort].” Guillaume writes that Philip commissioned his chamberlain Gautier the Young to oversee this restoration. Guillaume compares Gautier to the biblical Ezra, who is referred to as “the priest” and “the scribe” in Nehemiah 8:4 and 8:9, reads the text of the law in public, and restores Judaism in Israel after the Babylonian captivity. Guillaume emphasizes how well Gautier reconstituted the archive: “cuncta reduxit / Ingenio naturali sensusque vigore / In solitum rectumque statum [he restored it completely to its former and proper state with his innate skill and energetic attentiveness].”³⁰

Guillaume’s account of the archive’s restoration is remarkable given that medieval sources rarely describe the processes by which archives were produced. If Guillaume is correct, Philip entrusted the project to a layman, Gautier II, who was the son of a former chamberlain (Gautier I de Villebéon) and who would die on the Fifth Crusade at Damietta in 1219 or 1220. Gautier II certainly had clerics working for him, but the fact that he was Philip’s choice to direct the restoration suggests that the king wanted someone from his inner circle whom he trusted and who understood governing from his perspective—as a knight, layman, and administrator. Furthermore, the Philippidos suggests that the re-creation of the archive was a holy act, which is appropriate given the French ideology of sacred monarchy. The biblical comparison suggests too the prestige that royal documents possessed, especially to a cleric and scholar such as Guillaume le Breton, for whom such documents were necessary for writing history, and the very matter of royal power.

As Guillaume’s account demonstrates, the royal archive predated the battle of Fréteval. Before leaving on the Third Crusade in 1190, Philip drew up a will that included detailed instructions concerning government in his absence. Philip demanded that he receive reports three times a year on his baillis and prévôts, that the regents (his mother and uncle) send him an account of the state of the kingdom three times a year, and that the cleric Adam write up the Crown’s financial accounts. Philip’s crusade appears to have been the initial impetus for the archive’s development and led to a profound innovation in Capetian government: the institution of regularly scheduled written records destined for the king.³¹ Moreover, the king’s eighteen-month absence on crusade required him to use written records to reassert his authority after his return, which cemented the archive’s place in royal governance.

Philip was also aware that the papacy and his English rivals had developed bureaucracies that made governing more efficacious. His archive may have been inspired by competition or perceived inferiority. Most significant, the archive grew in tandem with the royal domain, which quadrupled during Philip’s reign. As Potin observes, beginning with Philip Augustus, “every expansion of the royal domain causes an increase in documentation and consequently a reorganization of the archival holdings.”³² The governing of a larger kingdom, with its patchwork of legal customs and international disputes, necessitated an expanded bureaucracy and archive to serve it.

While the archive was above all “an instrument of government, a juridical armory” meant to facilitate the exercise of royal power within the kingdom, it also played a crucial role in serving the Crown’s foreign policy.³³ As Rigord’s biography of Philip suggests, during his reign the archive recorded relations with numerous foreign actors. The most historically significant correspondence is that with the English kings Henry II, Richard the Lionheart, and Richard’s brother and successor John. All were Philip’s vassals and rivals from whom he succeeded in taking Normandy and other territories. Philip maintained consistent correspondence with the papacy concerning crusade, Philip’s marital problems, and church affairs in France and overseas.³⁴ Philip was in contact with lords in the Holy Land and with those involved in the Albigensian Crusade, which began in 1208. Because of the frequent fighting in which Philip engaged and his focus on defending the realm, the archive also housed documentation on foreign forces and secret correspondence with spies and allies abroad.³⁵ The royal archive thus created a place for the production and preservation of documents concerning foreign realms. It thereby served Philip in the many fierce international conflicts in which he was embroiled throughout his reign.

Under Philip Augustus, Capetian France became implicated in international affairs to an unprecedented extent, and this involvement altered both the institutions and the ideology of government. Philip’s was the first “encyclopedic” French government: the first to systematically record vital material about the kingdom and about foreign realms for the more effective exercise of royal authority.³⁶ Philip was avid for news and documents that would allow him to advance his agenda and consolidate his power. There is no evidence that Philip possessed a detailed map of the world, but his archive provided a “documentary map”—a record of foreign authorities and lands that is as significant as any of Philip’s other legacies. A portrait of France’s place in world affairs, the royal archive recorded Philip’s—and subsequently his descendants’—international ambitions, alliances, and rivalries. Philip’s reign is thus crucial to the history of the Mongol archive because it established permanent institutional tools that enabled the French Crown to instrumentalize its extensive contacts with and intelligence on foreign peoples and places.

The Rise of the Mongols, 1125–1227

The third phenomenon that led to the emergence of the Mongol archive was of course the rise of the Mongols themselves. Here I will briefly discuss their history until the death of Genghis Khan as recounted in the Secret History of the Mongols, which provides unique insight into the Mongol worldview.³⁷ I will then address some of the reasons historians have offered for their extraordinary territorial expansion and military success: Genghis Khan’s charisma and mythologized life story, political and economic imperatives, military tactics, and climate all contributed to the creation of the Mongol world empire. I conclude with a brief account of Mongol expansion until the death of Genghis Khan, with a focus on the campaign that brought the Mongols to the attention of Latin Christendom for the first time.

The early history of the Mongols is difficult to reconstruct, as they did not use writing until around 1200 and appear only sporadically in other cultures’ written sources before the thirteenth century. They were one among the many peoples who inhabited the vast steppe that stretched from Hungary to northeastern China; their homeland was the eastern part of what is today Mongolia. They lived as pastoralist nomads who raised horses, sheep, cattle, oxen, and goats, and traded for metal, textiles, and other goods produced by their sedentary neighbors. Mongol society was organized around the clan or tribe, which was bound not by common ancestry but by mutual obligations of service and reward among the free, and by servitude for the enslaved. There was no central government; clans constantly made and broke alliances, and raided each others’ lands and camps. This lack of political unity meant that the Mongols were long overshadowed by both the Chinese and more organized and powerful nomadic or seminomadic neighbors such as the Khitans, the Naiman, and the Tatars, who provided examples of the might and wealth nomads could acquire under the right circumstances.³⁸

Chronologies of the Mongols usually begin with the year 1125, when the Liao dynasty in China was overthrown by the Jürchen people of Manchuria. The Liao were not native Chinese but Khitans who had managed to seize power in northern China in the tenth century and incorporated much of eastern Mongolia into their empire. After 1125, the Jürchen—who became the Ching dynasty—withdrew imperial troops from eastern Mongolia, leaving the tribes there to organize and fight among themselves.

It was in this turbulent political climate that Temujin, who was to become Genghis Khan, was born in the 1160s.³⁹ The most important source on Genghis’s life is the Secret History of the Mongols, a combination of chronicle, epic, biography, and mirror for princes. Its date of composition, historicity, and function have long been debated, but it was likely begun shortly after Genghis’s death in 1227 and thereafter continued and revised into the fourteenth century.⁴⁰ The Secret History is of the greatest importance as a record of Mongol society before imperial expansion and a repository of the stories that were valued by Mongol elites in the century after Genghis Khan’s death.

The Secret History begins with a brief account of the ancestry of various Mongol clans. It recounts how Bodonçar, a paternal grandfather born ten generations before Temujin, was the son of a “man from Heaven”; Genghis Khan and his family thus had divine ancestry. When the story opens, Temujin’s father is a respected leader, but he is poisoned by Tatars whom he had previously defeated. Temujin is still a boy when his father dies, and their clan deserts Temujin’s family. His mother, who is a major figure in the story, manages to keep her four sons alive with great effort. It is from these humble beginnings that Temujin gradually succeeds in acquiring alliances with, and later the fealty of, other clans. His raids grow bolder as more people join him, and he shows that he is willing to defend and avenge those close to him. Initially a warlord for more powerful and established leaders, and possibly for the Ching dynasty, Temujin assembles so many followers that by the end of the twelfth century he is among the most powerful Mongol leaders. In 1206 he is named khan (supreme leader) of the Mongols, and until his death in 1227, he and his generals lead campaigns that extend the territory under his sway from northern China into Turkestan, Persia, and Russia. According to the Secret History, before his death Genghis arranges his succession by having his sons choose their brother Ogodei and swear fealty to him, thereby securing imperial authority and unity within his family.⁴¹

As the story of Genghis Khan’s divine ancestor suggests, a central message of the Secret History is that Temujin’s rise is enabled by the favor of Heaven. To be sure, he possesses the qualities needed by a great ruler—charisma, courage, generosity, justice, mercy, resilience—but the Secret History is equally if not more concerned with those factors in the Mongols’ ascent that Temujin does not control. Divine favor is evidenced by dreams, signs, prophecies, Temujin’s extraordinary luck, and his military victories. As portrayed in the text, his rise is both improbable and inevitable—a heroic trajectory of triumph against great odds that marks him as exceptional and blessed.

At the same time, Temujin’s success is also made possible by others. His mother is but one character whose crucial role in protecting and helping Temujin is highlighted. When he is in dire straits, Temujin is frequently aided by people who put themselves at great risk on his behalf. Equally important are examples of broken oaths, which show how changeable and treacherous social life can be. The most dramatic betrayal is that of Temujin by his childhood friend Jamuqa. When taken before Genghis Khan, Jamuqa expresses regret, asks to be put to death, and says that he will protect the khan and his descendants from the afterlife. In this case, an earthly alliance (and betrayal) transforms into divine protection. The Secret History’s emphasis on these two aspects of Temujin’s rise—the heavenly and the social—seems intended to remind Mongol elites of what was required to maintain and expand their power: respect for and attentiveness to the divine, and generosity toward allies and servants.

The Secret History is also interesting because, contrary to what one might expect, it is not an overt justification of world conquest. Nowhere in the account of Temujin’s life does the text state explicitly that he is establishing a world empire. Even after he is named leader of all Mongols in 1206, his focus is on conquering the steppe, its borderlands, and northern China, and on punishing those who resist, rebel, or escape. Rachewiltz argues that “Genghis” (or “Chinggis”) does not mean “universal,” as was long believed, but “fierce, hard, tough,” so that “Genghis Khan” translates as “fierce emperor.”⁴² There are moments when the text hints at the global possibilities opened by Genghis’s growing might, but they may be later additions. For example, after Genghis has severely reprimanded his sons, three quiver bearers tell him they fear that he will cause the boys to lose their martial spirit. They then note, “From the place where the sun sets to the place where it rises there are enemy people. If you incite us—your Tibetan dogs—and send us on a mission, with our strength increased by Heaven and Earth we shall bring back for you enemy people, gold, silver, satin, goods and subjects.”⁴³ However, what they propose is an attack on Baghdad, which was far beyond the zone of Genghis’s military activity and which the Mongols did not conquer until 1258.⁴⁴ This episode is thus likely an interpolation meant to retroactively justify further conquest in western Asia.

As the Secret History does not provide an explicit explanation of the motivations and reasons for the Mongols’ expansive conquests, we must look to other sources and clues. Three factors stand out among the many that have been noted by historians. The first was the need to reward and maintain the loyalty of a large army and the communities from which it was drawn. It is often observed that Genghis Khan overcame this challenge just as earlier nomadic conquerors had: through conquest that brought booty, tribute, land, and slaves. As Di Cosmo observes, “In order to support such a large body of people now directly dependent upon the ‘state,’ as well as to reward allies and loyal subjects, the ‘charismatic leader’ of the newly-born nomadic empire required far more resources than the capacity of the steppe pastoral economy could provide… . Hence, resources needed to be acquired (quickly) from the outside.”⁴⁵ Military campaigns had the additional benefit of keeping soldiers and their clans focused on external targets instead of fighting each other.⁴⁶ In this way, Mongol expansion echoed the Crusades, which were also an attempt to channel violence toward foreigners for the sake of internal peace.

The second salient factor in the Mongols’ conquests was their military capability. Medieval sources from across Eurasia comment on the extraordinary effectiveness of Mongol arms and tactics. They were expert horsemen and archers who could shoot accurately in every direction while riding at a gallop. Their armor was light but resistant. Trained on horseback and spending much time outdoors from an early age, the Mongols who lived to adulthood were hardy and had great stamina—they were the Spartans of the steppe. Their horses were equally tough and could travel far without eating or drinking. Mongols could thus ride for long stretches without stopping, which meant they could cover great distances in large numbers. With their speed, firepower, and spatial reach, mounted Mongol warriors were the “ballistic missiles” of the thirteenth century.⁴⁷ There was an important psychological dimension to this military capability as well. Their fighting prowess and brutality (or rumors thereof) inspired terror in foreigners, which meant that the Mongols often obtained their enemies’ submission without fighting.

A third factor contributing to Mongol expansionism appears to have been climatic variation. A paleoclimatic study based on tree-ring analysis argues that the political instability in Mongolia in the late twelfth century corresponded to a prolonged drought. Drought at the end of the twelfth century “would have been an important contributing factor in the collapse of the established order and emergence of a centralized leadership under Chinggis Khan.” Furthermore, there was a period of exceptionally warm and wet weather between 1211 and 1225, when the armies of Genghis Khan were undertaking one of the most rapid and extensive territorial conquests in history. The climatic conditions of this period increased pastoral production, allowed the Mongol leadership to establish large camps in the Mongol homeland, and thereby enabled “the political centralization and military mobilization that would make conquest possible.”⁴⁸ In short, more grass meant more food for livestock, soldiers, their families, and their mounts. It is in any event striking that this surplus occurred in the Orkhon Valley at the very moment that Genghis Khan established his capital there.

There are of course many other reasons for Mongol expansion under Genghis Khan. He wished to subdue rival powers to ensure Mongol preeminence throughout the empire’s vast territory and on its borders. He sought to capture or kill enemies who had escaped his forces, as they could regroup and keep fighting elsewhere or plot against him. The survival of enemies also showed that Genghis’s power was not absolute—that there was a limit to his reach, an impression he worked strenuously to abolish.⁴⁹ Related to both of these motives was simple vengeance.⁵⁰ Genghis punished betrayals or, in the case of the Ching, past oppression just as he rewarded assistance and loyalty. To a certain extent, Mongol expansion was about settling scores.

Between 1206, when Genghis united the steppe peoples and became khan, and his death in 1227, his armies went as far as they could in campaigns that encompassed ever-widening territory around the Mongol homeland.⁵¹ To the north, Jochi subdued the “Forest Peoples” of southern Siberia in 1207–1208. To the east, the Ching capital Zhongdu, south of modern Beijing, was captured in 1215, Manchuria was forced to submit in 1218, and Korea in 1218 and again in 1231. To the south, the Tangut kingdom or Xixia was first attacked by the Mongols in 1205 and conquered in 1227. The only obstacles to further expansion were natural barriers (the Siberian steppe, the Pacific Ocean) and, in the south, the powerful armies of the Song dynasty of southern China, which held the Mongols off for decades before succumbing in 1279.

The greatest opportunities for expansion lay to the west, and it was there that Genghis Khan devoted most of his resources, particularly after the defeat of the Ching in 1215. There were several campaigns west of Mongolia in the early thirteenth century, but the one that is most relevant to the Mongol archive began in 1219. In 1218, a caravan from Mongol territory was massacred in the city of Utrar, which was on the eastern edge of the Khwarazmian Empire (see map 1). Under the rule of the Khwarazm-shah Ala al-Din Mohammed II, Khwarazm had grown to encompass much of modern Iran and central Asia. It was one of the Mongols’ most formidable rivals and had been in Genghis Khan’s sights since a brief battle in 1209. After learning of the Utrar massacre, Genghis declared war on Khwarazm.⁵² The Mongol invasion began in 1219; Shah Mohammed fled and died on an island in the Caspian Sea in 1221. After the conquest of Khwarazm, the Mongols continued west beyond the southern Caspian coast and then turned north through the Caucasus.⁵³ This course led them into the Cuman steppe, where in May 1223 they defeated a combined Russian and Cuman force at the battle of the Kalka River, at which point the Mongols established nomadic garrisons and withdrew to the east.⁵⁴ As we will see, rumors of this campaign provided the basis for the first reports of the Mongols to reach Latin Christians.

At Genghis Khan’s death in 1227, the Mongol Empire stretched from the Pacific to the Caspian Sea, its southern border running from south of Beijing, across central Asia, and into eastern Persia. As far as we know, Latin Christendom had no knowledge of this nascent world empire until the last years of Genghis Khan’s life. Perhaps the distances were too great and the intermediaries too numerous for the news to travel; perhaps reports circulated earlier but have not survived. Judging by the sources we have, news of the Mongols first reached Latin Christians in 1221, when Mongol armies converged with an information network of which crusaders were also a part.

The Relationes de Davide

Thus far I have addressed a number of disparate phenomena that occurred in different parts of Eurasia: writing on Asia in France, the Crusades and Latin settlement in the eastern Mediterranean, the creation of the French royal archive in Paris, and the rise and expansion of the Mongols under Genghis Khan. I turn now to the documents in which all these phenomena came together to produce the first entries in the Mongol archive in late medieval France. Remarkably, we not only have these documents, but we know when, where, and by whom they were produced, to whom they were sent, and how they were understood by their recipients and later readers.

The three texts in question are each known as the Relatio de Davide and were produced in 1221 by Latin clerics based in Damietta, Egypt, who led the forces of the Fifth Crusade.⁵⁵ They tell of the advance of an invincible Christian king from India named David who appears to seek the destruction of Islam and the liberation of Jerusalem. This David was in fact an amalgamation of different figures, one of whom was Genghis Khan. The Relatio texts survive because they were interpolated into letters sent by the papal legate Pelagius to Pope Honorius III (January–February 1221) and to King Henry III of England (February–April 1221), into Jacques de Vitry’s seventh letter (April 18, 1221), and into a letter sent probably in April 1221 by anonymous clerics to the canons of Münster.⁵⁶ Despite sharing a common title, the Relatio texts come in three different forms and may not derive from the same sources or authors: there was a bare account of King David in Pelagius’s letter to the pope (which is not included in the Relatio corpus), a long text (“carta I”) in Pelagius’s letter to Henry III and in Jacques de Vitry’s seventh letter, a short text in Jacques’s seventh letter (“carta II”), and another short text in the Münster letter (“carta III”).⁵⁷ It is therefore more correct to speak of the Relationes of David and to see them not as autonomous works but as information that from the outset required shaping and contextualization to make it comprehensible.

I will focus on the two versions of the Relatio that appear in Jacques de Vitry’s letter, which he sent to several people, including friends in Paris, in April 1221.⁵⁸ To fully appreciate this letter’s genesis, it is first necessary to briefly review Jacques’s life. Jacques de Vitry (ca. 1175–1240) was from northern France—the precise location remains unknown—and studied in Paris.⁵⁹ In all likelihood he was a student of Peter the Chanter, one of the most influential intellectuals in Christendom and an ardent proponent of crusade.⁶⁰ Jacques had deep and lasting ties to Wallonia: he was a canon at the priory of Oignies, to which he sent or brought relics and other precious objects and where he was buried; he wrote the life of Saint Marie of Oignies; he had friends at the convent of Aywières and abbey of Villers; and he was auxiliary bishop of Liège from 1227 to 1229.⁶¹ Jacques also had extensive experience outre-mer. He became bishop of Acre in 1216 and spent almost the entire decade between 1216 and 1226 in Palestine and Egypt. There he traveled, investigated, and reported on other faiths and peoples, preached to Christians and non-Christians, managed church affairs, collected relics, commissioned liturgical objects, and helped organize and lead the Fifth Crusade.⁶² During this time he also wrote the Historia orientalis (ca. 1216–ca. 1224), a hugely influential work that was essentially the first Latin encyclopedia devoted entirely to the East.⁶³ On Asian matters, Jacques was one of the most knowledgeable figures of his day. He was also a prolific author of sermons and church history.

Because of his experience and status, Jacques was chosen to be a leader of the Fifth Crusade. This is how he came to be in Damietta, where he wrote the letter that launched the Mongol archive in late medieval France. The letter reveals an educated and experienced cleric in precarious circumstances who has received reports from Asia that make him both anxious and hopeful. Jacques shares translations of the reports, not summaries, and provides his interpretation of them. A news dispatch, an intelligence brief, and a prophecy from a war zone, Jacques’s seventh letter possesses an immediacy and urgency that are still palpable eight centuries later.

The first of the Relatio texts in Jacques’s seventh letter, the long report, begins by recounting King David’s origins. David is the youngest son of King Israel, who was subject to Chanchana, king of the Persians. Chanchana asks his astrologers to prophesy the future. They cut the arms off a virgin boy who before dying predicts that a man named David will subjugate Persia. The only David of whom the astrologers know is King Israel’s son, whom Chanchana invites to his court with the intention of killing him. However, when the boy arrives, Chanchana’s two wives—one of whom is Christian and David’s great-aunt—reproach the king for his evil plan. David leaves, Chanchana regrets letting him go and sends troops after him, but David escapes thanks to divine protection. Three years later David becomes king of India. He attacks Persia and defeats Chanchana “by divine will and with the help of the life-giving cross.”⁶⁴ The rest of the Relatio recounts David’s other conquests over various “Saracens” and others, including Sultan Soniar, Sultan Toghrul, the sultan of Ebebeth, and the Georgians (Christians who had allied with “Saracens,” according to the text). Much space is devoted to David’s war with the Chavarsmisan and the surrender of the caliph of Baghdad. King David repairs to Chata and observes a truce with the Chavarsmisan, who then assembles an army and marches toward Baghdad. The caliph of Baghdad asks Iaphelech, the Christian patriarch of the Indians in Baghdad, to write to King David and ask him to break the truce with the Chavarsmisan so that Baghdad might be spared, in exchange for which the caliph agrees to grant the patriarch and his followers whatever they want. The patriarch writes the letter, King David attacks and destroys the Chavarsmisan’s army, and Baghdad is saved. King David then sends messengers to the caliph demanding that he give up Baghdad but saying that the caliph may retain one-sixth of his land. The messengers also take money to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, which the caliph had destroyed. The caliph offers to become King David’s vassal and rule the land in his name, but the text does not say if the offer is accepted. The text in Jacques’s letter ends by stating that King David’s army has taken Qazvin in Persia.⁶⁵

Some textual traditions reached across Eurasia in the Middle Ages, such as the legend of Alexander the Great. Much rarer are individual texts that traveled across Eurasia and accumulated inputs from different cultures along the way. The long Relatio appears to be one such text—a truly Eurasian artifact and a remarkable example of cultural synthesis. King David is a composite character whose story combines many different narrative elements. His tale begins as an archetypal folktale or hero’s life, with an evil king, human sacrifice, prophecy, protective women, and divine intervention.⁶⁶ The Relatio states that David is the great-grandson of “Iohannes,” which may be intended as a reference to Prester John.⁶⁷ David’s great-great-grandfather is “Bulgaboga,” which was the name of the grandfather of the Naiman ruler Küchlüg. The name of the king of Persia, Chanchana, derives from the Persian “khān-i khānān” (khan of khans), the title for Genghis Khan. “Chavarsmisan” derives from Khwarazm-shah, the title of Ala al-Din Mohammed II (d. 1221), who like Küchlüg (d. 1218) was an enemy of Genghis Khan’s and died after being defeated by the Mongols. Several of the place names are recognizable forms of actual toponyms: “Chata” is Cathay (China), “Samarchant” is Samarkand, and so on. The geography of David’s campaigns related by the text mirrors to a great degree the territory conquered by Genghis Khan’s armies, but with important exceptions. For example, the “Sultan Toghrul” whose lands David seizes was a Seljuk lord of Persia who was killed not by the Mongols but by the Khwarazm-shah Tekish in 1194.⁶⁸

The shorter Relatio that Jacques de Vitry includes in the same letter states that King David is a servant of the Lord and has conquered numerous lands.⁶⁹ These include “Caracher” (Karashar, today in western China), the land of Sultan Betrich (possibly a reference to the Qarakhanid rulers in Transoxiana and Turkestan from the tenth to early thirteenth centuries), and a list of cities that encompasses central Asia as far as northwestern Persia. The text ends by stating that one of King David’s three armies has been sent against the sultan of Egypt’s brother while another army is fifteen days from Antioch, and that David is eager to visit the Holy Sepulcher and to rebuild Jerusalem.

At their core, both Relationes are reports of the Mongols’ spectacular victories under Genghis Khan. In the long Relatio, these reports were combined with stories of other conquests that had occurred in living memory, such as that of Tekish. Judging by the amalgamation of figures that King David represents, the sedentary communities in which the Relatio texts were composed and copied were unsure about when the battles they heard of occurred or how they were related to each other. Nor did they know who the chief protagonists were, no doubt because they found it difficult to keep track of the many warlords feuding in the steppe. The Relationes certainly contain information about events in Asia, but that information was most likely already corrupted by the time it reached the original authors and not fully understood by them in any event.

Who might these authors have been? The role of Iaphelech, the patriarch of Baghdad, in the long Relatio may offer an important clue about these texts’ origins. In the version of the long Relatio sent by the papal legate Pelagius, which is nearly the same as that sent by Jacques de Vitry, there are two interesting variants.⁷⁰ Pelagius refers to “Bulgaboga Nestorinorum, credentis in Iesu Cristo [Bulgaboga of the Nestorians, a believer in Jesus Christ]” and to Iaphelech as “patriarcham Nestorinorum [patriarch of the Nestorians],” whereas Jacques drops the “Nestorinorum” after “Bulgaboga” and calls Iaphelech “patriarcham Indorum [patriarch of the Indians].”⁷¹ Jacques presumably wished to suppress any connection between King David and Nestorianism (which the church considered a heresy), while Pelagius appears to have transmitted the text’s original version (i.e., as it was received and translated by the crusade leaders in Damietta). The Iaphelech episode attributes special influence to eastern Christians and seems to reflect the hope that the Mongol advance awakened among Christian communities in central Asia. It is possible that the Relationes, or at least the long one, originated among the Christian community in Baghdad, whence it traveled west.⁷² This would explain the emphasis on Baghdad in the long Relatio, and why the text states that Baghdad “is called ‘Darheselem’ in Saracen, which is translated as ‘court of salvation.’ ”⁷³ It would also explain why King David demands the submission of Baghdad. Some Christians in Baghdad were apparently already hoping that King David would attack well before the Mongols did so in 1258.

The Relationes show that the Fifth Crusade’s leaders were part of an international network from which they were constantly acquiring information. As Jacques explains, he and his colleagues were far from the only ones to believe in the stories of King David, and therefore they had good reason to consider the Relationes authoritative. Jacques writes that the Count of Tripoli’s men brought him copies of the Relatio, that merchants from “partibus Orientis” conveyed similar letters, and that “people coming from these parts say the same thing” about King David.⁷⁴ Moreover, he reports that men from the crusader army had been captured by the sultan of Egypt, then sent to Damascus, then to Baghdad, where the caliph sent them to King David as a gift.⁷⁵ When David learned they were Christians, he freed them and sent them back to Antioch, and they “brought back to us the aforesaid rumours about King David and many more things beside.”⁷⁶ Nowhere does Jacques indicate that he has spoken to someone who has met or seen King David, but the numerous reports about him from different quarters clearly impressed the Fifth Crusade’s leaders and sufficed as proof of David’s existence.⁷⁷

Jacques de Vitry’s letter thus tells us much about the ways in which news traveled in early thirteenth-century Eurasia. Equally important, though, is how it illuminates the processes by which Catholic clerics in Damietta made sense of this news. As we saw, Jacques de Vitry probably edited the references to Nestorianism out of the long Relatio because it would not do to have King David descend from a Nestorian heretic. Jacques understood King David’s advance to be providential and a sign that the crusade was on the verge of total victory. He came to this conclusion by drawing on biblical exegesis, homiletics, and the textual traditions on Asia discussed above.⁷⁸ The anxiety he felt leading an army that occupied enemy territory far from home also influenced Jacques’s hermeneutics. Jacques made King David part of yet another story of conquest—Jacques’s and the crusader army’s own—and thereby assimilated the Mongols into crusade ideology and salvation history.

To demonstrate King David’s providential role to his readers, Jacques de Vitry gives his seventh letter a tripartite “penitential” structure that moves from sin, to penance, to redemption. The letter first recounts how the crusader army in Damietta had fallen into sin and discord, while the sultan of Egypt and his brothers had launched attacks against the army and Christian territories in Palestine. However, the crusader army repents thanks to the power of preaching, more Christians come to Damietta, the city’s defenses are fortified, and the “Saracens” grow frustrated at their inability to dislodge the crusaders. It is at this point in the letter that Jacques de Vitry first mentions David, king of the Indies (“regem Indorum David”) in what is essentially a prologue to the two Relationes.⁷⁹ According to Jacques, the sultan’s brother Seraph broke off his attack against the crusaders at the news that David had invaded his lands. The first mention of King David in this letter comes with the claim that he is relatively close to the Holy Land, has invaded the land of the crusaders’ enemies, and has thereby aided both the crusade and Christian Palestine. This first mention also provides independent verification of David’s existence by showing that the Muslims too have heard of and reacted to him.

King David thus appears in Jacques’s letter at the moment when the crusaders have repented and are most in need of him. He is a deus ex machina, a savior, and a reward sent by God for the crusaders’ constancy and virtue. Before reproducing the Relationes, Jacques provides his own brief description and interpretation of King David: he is

a most powerful man and warrior expert in arms, wise in character and victorious in battle, whom the Lord raised up in our time that he be the hammer of the pagans, and exterminator of the pestilential tradition and execrable law of the perfidious Muhammed; he is the one the common people call Prester John. He was the youngest of his brothers, but as we read of the holy king of Israel, the prophet David, he was nonetheless placed above all others and divinely crowned king.⁸⁰

This passage allows us to see the processes by which Jacques transformed the Relationes into meaningful knowledge through compilatio and narration. To describe—or more precisely, to invent—King David, Jacques combines references to different narrative traditions that would have been familiar to his readers.⁸¹ In this way Jacques endows King David with a biography and a historical purpose consonant with a Latin Christian understanding of geography and history.

Jacques’s King David is a composite character drawn from various texts in the Asia corpus. The David of the Indies is said to resemble the David of the Hebrew Bible, a sign of the new David’s sanctity and providential purpose. As Jacques writes, “How wondrously has the Lord advanced him in our time and made great his works, guiding his steps, subjecting to his domination innumerable peoples, nations, tribes, and tongues,” with citations of the Hebrew Bible to emphasize that the new David fulfills biblical prophecy: he is “David redivivus.”⁸² King David’s story also echoes the life of Alexander the Great, another extraordinary conqueror who was closely associated with crusade, Prester John, and apocalypse.⁸³ King David’s role as “hammer of the pagans” highlights his resemblance to historical crusaders and to heroes of chansons de geste. Jacques equates David to Prester John, who remained topical in Jacques’s time as the church learned more about eastern and African Christian communities. Indeed, David confirms the veracity of generations of reports about and letters from Prester John and fulfills their promises of aid to crusaders. Jacques also implies that King David is a forerunner of Christ and herald of the Second Coming. The Christological import of his name and the eschatological portent of his victories, which moved David closer and closer to Jerusalem, were evident to Jacques’s readers.

The Relationes also confirmed the Latin understanding of Asian demographics. Like his European contemporaries, Jacques de Vitry had no clear notion of the territorial expanse of Asia or the size and diversity of its populations. However, as we know from his Historia orientalis, he adhered to tradition and assumed that there were vast numbers of both Muslims and Christians in Asia. He based this assumption on biblical and historical references to innumerable populations in the East, on climatological theory according to which warmer climes lead to sexual licentiousness, and on his own encounters with a wide range of peoples in Palestine and Egypt. While Jacques was concerned that Muslims were producing “more children for the defense of their religion,”⁸⁴ he also believed that there existed a multitudinous eastern Christian community, and he was initially hopeful about bringing them into the Roman fold. The Relationes, with their long lists of cities and accounts of vast armies, confirmed this understanding of Asian populations.

Jacques de Vitry’s brief description of David is thus crucial to his letter’s design because it establishes a horizon of expectation for what is to come in the Relationes. In a mere three sentences Jacques endows “David king of the Indies,” a figure of whom Europeans had no knowledge, with a biography, a character, and a purpose. Jacques “invents” King David in both the etymological (invenire: “to find”) and the modern senses. He discovers in David resemblances to known figures and stories, and thereby makes him already familiar. At the same time, Jacques creates an entirely new character and in effect rewrites salvation history. Jacques defines David by relating him to multiple canonical and sacred narratives: the Bible, Alexander the Great, Prester John, chivalric epic, crusade history. However, in Jacques’s portrayal, King David not only exists at the intersection of these stories and prophecies but is the culmination of them all—the last crusader king.

Jacques offers further confirmation that the crusade is on the verge of victory in the final section of his letter. After inserting the two Relationes, he ends the letter by summarizing two prophecies the crusaders had recently acquired. The Prophecy of Hannan, which is said to have been found in an ancient book, “predicts” the capture of Acre and other events of the Third Crusade, the capture of Damietta (all of which had of course happened when the prophecy was discovered), and the coming conquest of Egypt, Syria, and Jerusalem by the crusaders.⁸⁵ The other prophecy Jacques titles Revelationes beati Petri apostoli a discipulo eius Clemente in uno volumine redacte (Book of Clement), and he writes that it predicted so well the entire history of the church that it must be true.⁸⁶ In Jacques’s interpretation, Clement foretells the capture of Damietta, the destruction of Islam by Emperor Frederick II and King David, and the imminent apocalypse. The letter ends with Jacques describing how Clement was shown to the people gathered on the sand before Damietta, how the crusaders have had news of Emperor Frederick’s approach, and how the crusaders, fortified by all this good news, put their trust in God.

The immediate effect of the Relationes and the prophecies on the Fifth Crusade is difficult to assess. Pelagius, the leader of the crusade, rejected peace overtures from the sultan of Egypt and decided to march on Cairo. Did he do so because the Relationes and prophecies had convinced the crusade’s leaders that victory was near? Donovan observes that “it is not difficult to imagine that a zealous crusader could believe sincerely in a pertinent prophecy even of uncertain origin” but concludes that Pelagius’s motives are ultimately beyond the reach of historians.⁸⁷ Powell writes that the crusade’s leaders were “attuned to the voice of the supernatural, though this does not mean that they were gullible.” He sees the Relationes and prophecies as one factor among many in the leadership’s decisions—although, as he notes, Jacques’s letter suggests “that they were a considerable factor.”⁸⁸

Neither Donovan nor Powell mentions what I would argue is the determining point: the crusade leaders had preached about King David and the prophecies and had shown the Book of Clement to the people.⁸⁹ Having proclaimed that victory was imminent, it is hard to see how the crusade’s leaders could then refuse to act. Given their precarious strategic position, they had to be very attentive to the army’s and populace’s mood and morale. Jacques’s letter suggests the febrile and anxious state of the crusaders and inhabitants of Damietta. Judging by Jacques’s account, the Relationes and prophecies really had convinced him and others that the end of history was approaching. I see no reason to doubt that the Relationes had a profound influence on Pelagius’s decision to march south. Within weeks the crusade army was completely vanquished and Damietta was back in Egyptian hands. Retracing the chain of causation, we can say that Genghis Khan’s victories and the stories thereof contributed in no small part to the failure of the Fifth Crusade.

The Relationes de Davide in France and the Birth of the Mongol Archive

At least one copy of Jacques de Vitry’s seventh letter made its way to Paris. With this letter, news of the Mongols first reached France and the Mongol archive was born. Yet, as we have seen, to their contemporaries the Relationes were not about the Mongols. Instead, they recounted the story of a figure who, despite his distant geographical origins, was ultimately very familiar. King David was a character in a story of conquest that Latin Christendom had been telling itself since at least 1157, when Prester John was first mentioned in a Latin source. Unlike Prester John, however, when King David failed to materialize he was almost entirely forgotten—in France and throughout the rest of Europe.

Convinced of the truth of the Relationes, Jacques de Vitry made sure that his seventh letter reached a wide and influential audience. The openings of the surviving copies list various addressees: (1) Pope Honorius III, (2) Abbot Walter of Utrecht of the Cistercian monastery of Villers, Jean de Nivelles, brothers at the priory of Oignies, and other friends living in Wallonia, (3) Duke Leopold of Austria, (4) Etienne (dean of the University of Paris), Philip the Chancellor, and all other masters and students living in Paris, and (5) “omnibus amicis suis [all of his friends (i.e., of Jacques de Vitry)].”⁹⁰ It therefore seems certain that several copies of the letter were sent from Damietta.

Of the eight surviving manuscripts of Jacques’s seventh letter, four confirm that it was known for generations in France. The earliest is a miscellany from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries produced in England (Gray’s Inn, manuscript 14).⁹¹ This manuscript is important as one of two preserving a copy addressed to the Parisian group, and it also shows that a copy of the letter made its way from Paris to England in the thirteenth century. Another copy is in Saint-Omer, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 729, which comes from the abbey of Saint-Bertin and dates to ca. 1300.⁹² This manuscript was unknown to earlier editors of the letters. It contains the other copy addressed to the Parisian group, and so also descends from an original sent to Paris. Another manuscript with links to Paris is Vatican Library, Reginensis latinus 547,⁹³ which contains a section of the Liber bellorum Domini pro tempore Nove Legis (The book of the wars of God in the era of the new law), a crusade compilation prepared by Pierre de la Palud ca. 1330.⁹⁴ Although none of the principal commentators on this manuscript proposes a provenance, it must be from a school or monastery in Paris. Pierre de la Palud was a Dominican, a master of theology in Paris, patriarch of Jerusalem, and an advisor to King Philip VI of France (r. 1328–1350). Reginensis latinus 547 preserves excerpts of crusade histories, including Jacques de Vitry’s seventh letter and parts of the Historia orientalis. Curiously, this copy of Jacques’s letter is addressed not to the Parisian group but to the Walloons, which is another indication that the letter circulated beyond its initial destinations. The fourth manuscript showing the letter’s presence in France is a fifteenth-century copy from northern France (Universiteitsbibliotheek Leiden, Vossianus Lat. F 95).⁹⁵ It too is addressed to the Walloon group and copies a monastic manuscript produced in Liège in the second quarter of the thirteenth century (London, BL, Burney 351).⁹⁶

In addition to the two Relationes in Jacques de Vitry’s seventh letter, there is another Relatio that made its way to Paris from Damietta. Paris, BnF, lat. 16079, dates to the third quarter of the thirteenth century.⁹⁷ Although it does not preserve Jacques de Vitry’s seventh letter, it does contain the third Relatio (carta III), which Jacques did not reproduce.⁹⁸ Lat. 16079 was one of seventy-two manuscripts left by Robert de Sorbon to the Sorbonne. It has been suggested that this manuscript was produced with materials and notes from Jacques de Vitry’s personal library.⁹⁹ It could also have been compiled from documents from one of the schools that housed material from members of the crusade and reform movement—Saint-Victor is a likely candidate.¹⁰⁰ This Relatio opens: “Rex Indie David christianissimus Presbiter Iohannes cognominatur veniens in manus forti contra Sarracenos [David, the most Christian king of India, called Prester John, coming in strength against the Saracens].” It then lists regions and cities David has conquered and ends by noting that David has with him 255,000 soldiers not of his faith and 132,000 Christian soldiers. The David of this report, like the king of the other two Relationes, represents the fulfillment of the Prester John legend and is indomitable. Whatever its origin, this manuscript confirms that other material collected in Damietta came to Paris in the wake of the Fifth Crusade and was recorded there.

The Relationes thus circulated in France for two centuries within ecclesiastical circles. There is no record of Jacques’s seventh letter in the French royal archive, and we cannot know if King Philip II Augustus saw it. Yet there is good reason to believe that he did. As discussed above, Philip was a crusader and was eager for information from abroad. His archive preserved exchanges with lords in the Holy Land and with those involved in the Albigensian Crusade. Many French knights, including intimates of Philip’s such as the aforementioned Gautier II de Villebéon, fought or died on the Fifth Crusade. I assume that Jacques either sent the king a copy of his letter that has not survived or expected his Parisian contacts to inform the king of his news. The Relationes and prophecies were too important, and Philip too powerful and implicated, for him not to be apprised.

As the surviving copies show, readers far removed from Jacques in time and space viewed his letter as an authoritative source. Yet these manuscripts raise a crucial question: how did these readers understand the Relationes? There is to date no scholarly consensus on the extent to which Jacques’s letters influenced contemporaries and later generations. As Bolton, Donnadieu, and Huygens see it, Jacques’s letters had limited circulation and little influence.¹⁰¹ Bird, on the other hand, notes that the letters of Jacques and other leaders of the Fifth Crusade shaped “crusade policies, departure deadlines, and sermons throughout Europe.”¹⁰² Her research, with that of Cassidy-Welch, Donnadieu, Hinnebusch, Powell, Richard, and Vandeburie, suggests that the influence of Jacques’s letters should be measured not only by their addressees and surviving copies but by Jacques’s central position in an international network of crusade advocates who amplified reports from Asia.¹⁰³

Nonetheless, the Relationes themselves do not appear to have had any impact on contemporary or later readers. One sign of this is that, aside from carta III in BnF, lat. 16079, they were never copied independently in France—as texts with meaning unto themselves. This is surely due to their vague chronological and geographical setting. Despite the wealth of information that the Relationes provided, it would have been difficult for even an educated reader to situate their events in time and space. No dates are given, nor is King David’s age indicated. The long Relatio implies that he is still young, and thus a kind of Asian Alexander the Great, but that is all. It also states that David is five days from Baghdad, which situates him in the present and in a geography somewhat familiar to informed Europeans.¹⁰⁴ Otherwise the Relationes’ geography was largely incomprehensible to a contemporary European audience. Most toponyms in the Relationes were unknown to European readers, as the variance among them suggests.¹⁰⁵ Modern historians are able to decipher most of these toponyms and correlate them to battles, which was important to discovering that David is an amalgamation of various central Asian warlords. However, the Fifth Crusade’s leaders and their European contemporaries would not have had detailed maps of central Asia and the Far East.¹⁰⁶ Rather than denoting specific places for their European readers, most toponyms in the Relationes signified through connotation: they evoked unknown lands and peoples, the vast territory conquered by King David, and thus David’s overwhelming might.

The toponyms in the Relationes highlight the essential difficulty that Europeans had in understanding not only these initial reports of the Mongols but many subsequent reports about and contacts with them. As we have seen, crusade, settlement, and missions compelled Europeans to broaden and update the geographical lexicon they had inherited from antiquity. The institution and maintenance of Latin power in the eastern Mediterranean required knowledge of the current names of places and peoples. Yet acquiring these names was a challenge, particularly given the variance caused by multilingual transmission and scribal incomprehension.¹⁰⁷ Not until Marco Polo’s account of 1298 would the European conception of Asia begin to approximate the continent’s true dimensions, and it was most likely not until the Catalan Atlas of ca. 1375 that a European map represented Polo’s geography.¹⁰⁸

Perhaps the most important indication of contemporary reception of the Relationes lies in Jacques de Vitry’s own oeuvre, and especially in the Historia orientalis. The Historia was begun around the time of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, when the Fifth Crusade was in preparation and the church optimistic for a successful campaign. While we cannot know how much of the Historia Jacques wrote while in Damietta, we do know that he used his second letter (spring 1217) as a source for his discussion of eastern Christians in the Historia, in which he also included verbatim passages from the fifth letter of April 1219. There can be little doubt, then, that Jacques had copies of his letters, and thus a copy of the Relationes, with him when he finished the Historia around the year 1224—after the debacle of the Fifth Crusade. Yet the optimism of Jacques’s seventh letter is in stark contrast to the Historia’s pessimism. The Historia makes no reference to King David, the Prophecy of Hannan, or the Book of Clement. Jacques’s and his colleagues’ interpretations of these texts and stories had turned out to be incorrect, a fact that Jacques likely did not wish to commemorate as it risked vitiating the Historia and diminishing Jacques’s status.

The chronicle of Alberic of Trois-Fontaines suggests other reasons for which the Relatio was largely forgotten. Unlike the Fifth Crusade’s leaders, Alberic was skeptical of the Prophecy of Hannan, about which he appears to have learned from Pelagius’s letter to the pope. As he writes, “Indeed a prophecy of this sort, although it speaks truly of some things, nonetheless deceives in many others.”¹⁰⁹ Moreover, he writes that in 1221, “it was reported in France that this same King David or his son, as some called him, had already entered Cumania, which is beyond Hungary in the regions of Russia. There he destroyed several lands of unbelievers and a great number of Cumans, and he waged there the most strenuous war for five months.”¹¹⁰ This passage is significant because it quite accurately records the Mongols’ path and shows that other reports of the Mongols’ advance reached France. “King David” was indeed moving toward eastern Europe, not Jerusalem as the Relationes suggested and the Fifth Crusade’s leaders believed. Alberic also comments on King David’s sudden disappearance. Under the year 1222, he writes that when King David heard that Damietta was lost, he and his army returned to their country “per insulas maris [in the islands of the sea]” and there was no more news of them.¹¹¹ From Alberic’s perspective, David disappeared into the unknown and unknowable beyond, his place of origin rendered all the more mysterious and distant by its location across the sea.¹¹² It would seem from Alberic’s chronicle that with no rumors to sustain it, the story of King David quickly receded from European consciousness. In fact, Alberic’s chronicle is the exception that proves the rule: he may be the only European writer to state that the “Tartars” who invaded Hungary in 1241 were the same as those who marched with King David in 1221.¹¹³

Yet scribes in France continued to copy Jacques de Vitry’s seventh letter with other crusade material, and these manuscripts may suggest that the Relatio and King David were not completely forgotten. For example, Saint-Omer, ms. 729, inserts the seventh letter into the narration of the history of the Fifth Crusade. The Vatican manuscript shows that Pierre de la Palud, writing ca. 1330, was familiar with the seventh letter and found it worthy of inclusion in his crusade history. It is nonetheless difficult to know from these manuscripts if King David continued to have any meaning, or if the Relationes became a fossil—preserved in Jacques de Vitry’s letter, but with no comprehensible referent for later readers.

As to the Relationes’ and prophecies’ influence on later readers and writers, here again scholars are divided. Klopprogge and Jean Richard have both noted that the Relationes appear to have been quickly forgotten.¹¹⁴ Certainly it is striking that John of Plano Carpini, Vincent of Beauvais, William of Rubruck, and Riccoldo da Montecroce all wrote on the Mongols and knew the Historia orientalis and presumably other works by Jacques de Vitry, but did not refer to the Relationes. Nor do we have any manuscripts that compile the seventh letter or Jacques’s Relationes with works on the Mongols.

On the other hand, Richard observes that references to an Asian King David appeared in European texts until the end of the fourteenth century, notably in Simon of Saint-Quentin’s report (ca. 1248), the apocryphal letter of Messias to Emperor Frederick II, an apocryphal letter of Hulegu to the king of Hungary recorded by Salimbene of Adam, and in John of Hildesheim.¹¹⁵ Bird argues that “[Jacques’s] popularization of the Prester John or King David prophecies which emerged during the Fifth Crusade and his … histories assuredly helped to revive and maintain an interest in eastern Christians.”¹¹⁶ Jackson notes that the memory of King David may have been retained in European Jewish communities in the two decades between the Relationes and the Mongol invasions of eastern Europe.¹¹⁷ However, even if King David was remembered in some quarters, it seems that in France the Relationes were effectively forgotten.

That the Relationes did not have a significant impact on European understandings of Asia makes it easy to dismiss them as an interesting but ultimately inconsequential episode in Eurasian history. Yet such an assessment misses their true importance. The Mongol archive emerged when European and Mongol expansionism activated a new information network that enabled the transmission of news from northern China to England. We cannot know if this was the first time such a network existed, but we can say that the earliest extant reports in Europe of nearly contemporary activity in the Far East date to 1221. The Romans knew of the “Seres” and other peoples in Asia, but as far as we know, no reports akin to the Relationes survive from antiquity. The Relationes thus represent a watershed moment in world history as the first documents to complete the connection between the eastern and western ends of Eurasia.

The Relationes are also important because aside from launching the Mongol archive, they foreshadow its development. On the one hand, like them, later works fuse accounts of the Mongols to familiar epistemological frameworks: biblical and eschatological hermeneutics, traditional accounts of marvelous and monstrous Asia, crusade ideology, and so on. On the other, the Relationes anticipate the thorough description and novelty of the most famous and influential works in the Mongol archive, including Plano Carpini, William of Rubruck, Polo, Hayton, Pordenone, and the Catalan Atlas.¹¹⁸ Like the Relationes, many later works in the archive come from ecclesiastical sources and are addressed to mixed clerical and lay audiences. The Relationes anticipate too the hope that the French had for an alliance with the Mongols against the Islamic world, which inspired many treatises in later years.

The Relationes thus constitute the bridge not only between societies but also between two eras, pre-Mongol and post-Mongol. They are the first wave of a human and information tsunami that was building in Asia and would sweep into Europe less than twenty years later. Their fusion of crusade and intelligence gathering, the traditional and the new, the ecclesiastical and the lay, the Far East and France offers a preview of the influence that tsunami would have on European history. The Mongol archive is the record of the ensuing flood of documentation, which did not recede for nearly two hundred years.

1. Anderson, Alexander’s Gate.

2. Harley and Woodward, The History of Cartography, 1:286–370; von den Brincken, Fines Terrae.

3. Baldric of Bourgueil, History of the Jerusalemites, 49.

4. Kedar, “Western Survey,” 120.

5. Guibert de Nogent, Deeds of God, 26. A similar updating of toponyms occurred in the glosses of the Bible d’Acre, which was completed by 1254. See Nobel, La Bible d’Acre, xxxii, xxxvi, xxxviii; Nobel, “Gloses exégétiques,” 156–158.

6. A. Murray, “National Identity,” 221.

7. William drew on and may have been influenced by Albert of Aachen’s description of the Turks, which is similarly factual though less detailed. See Albert of Aachen, History, 8, 10.

8. On Aimery’s life and career, see Hamilton, “Aimery of Limoges, Latin Patriarch”; Hamilton, “Aimery of Limoges, Patriarch of Antioch”; Hiestand, “Un centre intellectuel.”

9. Hiestand, “Un centre intellectuel,” 8–9. The Fazienda has been edited (see Lazar, Almerich, arcidiano de Antiochia). David Arbesú has created an annotated online transcription available at https://www.lafaziendadeultramar.com/.

10. Lappenberg, Arnoldi Chronica Slavorum, 264–277.

11. For a discussion and edition of the text, see Kedar, “Tractatus de locis.” The terminus a quo is 1168.

12. See Kedar, Crusade and Mission.

13. See Akbari, Idols in the East.

14. For concise overviews of the chanson de geste, see Poirion, Précis, 59–82; Zink, Introduction, 29–44. On the genre’s portrayal of non-Christians, see Besnardeau, Représentations; Daniel, Heroes and Saracens; de Weever, Sheba’s Daughters; Ramey, Black Legacies; Ramey, Christian, Saracen, and Genre; Tolan, Saracens.

15. Melander, Guibert d’Andrenas, 52, l. 1299.

16. Gaullier-Bougassas, Les Romans d’Alexandre.

17. As Fulcher of Chartres writes, “Can there be anyone who does not marvel how we, a few people in the realms of so many of our enemies, could not only remain but could even thrive?” (quoted in Peters, First Crusade, 48). On Alexander in crusade literature, see Cruse, “Alexander the Great.”

18. Harf-Lancner et al., Le Roman d’Alexandre, 430, l. 2158.

19. A concise overview of the legend’s origins is provided by Brewer, Prester John, 4–13; the text of Otto’s account appears at 43–45.

20. Brewer, Prester John, 46–91.

21. Brewer mentions “at least 469 manuscripts” (Prester John, 10).

22. See Burman, Reading the Qur’ān; Daniel, Islam and the West; Kangas, “Inimicus Dei”; Kritzeck, Peter the Venerable and Islam.

23. Nirenberg, “Christendom and Islam,” 155.

24. Baldric of Bourgueil, History of the Jerusalemites, 101, 119.

25. Tudebode, Historia de Hierosolymitano Itinere, 37.

26. Baldwin, Government of Philip Augustus, 402–423.

27. Vernet, “La littérature latine,” 797.

28. The continuation was completed by an anonymous monk of Saint-Denis (Delaborde, Oeuvres de Rigord, 1:299–300n10). The dates for the Philippidos are from Foreville, “L’image de Philippe Auguste,” 121.

29. For example, two letters that he claims were sent “per diversas mundi partes [throughout different parts of the world]” by “astrologi Orientales et Occidentales [eastern and western astrologers]” prophesying storms, earthquakes, revolts, and other catastrophes and marvels (Delaborde, Oeuvres de Rigord, 1:72, letters on 73–77); and a letter sent by Emperor Henry VI to Philip in which Henry relates the capture of Richard the Lionheart in 1193 (Delaborde, Oeuvres de Rigord, 1:121–22).

30. Delaborde, Oeuvres de Rigord, 2:120, ll. 561–63, 568, 570–71. Guyotjeannin and Potin observe that Guillaume makes no mention of the creation of a permanent archive (“La fabrique de la perpétuité,” 22), but the text nonetheless insists on the completeness of the restoration. The comparison to Ezra further implies that Philip wished for these documents to last—that is, to be an archive.

31. “[La] grande nouveauté du règne est … le recours constant à l’écrit [the great innovation of [Philip’s] reign is the constant use of writing]” (Bautier, “La place du règne,” 17).

32. “chaque extension domaniale est à l’origine d’une croissance documentaire et d’une réorganisation des fonds en conséquence” (Potin, “L’État et son trésor,” 49).

33. “un instrument de gouvernement, une réserve d’armes juridiques” (Bautier, “La place du règne,” 17).

34. Vernet, “La littérature latine,” 796.

35. Traces of these international intrigues include the crossed-out draft of a letter of 1209 that Philip addressed to John de Lacy concerning the promise that John’s father had made to launch a war against the English Crown (Delaborde, Oeuvres de Rigord, 1:245–246n4) and the reference to the visit to Paris in 1200 of Margaritus, “king of the pirates,” who offered to make Philip emperor of Constantinople (Baldwin, Paris, 236). Margaritus was a former pirate who in 1178 became admiral of King Guillaume II of Sicily’s fleet (Dalché, Du Yorkshire à l’Inde, 93–94).

36. Surviving records indicate the extent of this mapping, through “charters of urban liberties, inquests into forests, domain accounts … all kinds of lists of castles, bishoprics and abbeys” (Baldwin, Paris, 125), in addition to personal taxes, domanial revenues, droits de gîte, and tolls (Dejoux, “Gouverner par l’enquête en France,” 274).

37. On the Secret History as a historical source, see Morgan, The Mongols, 8–13.

38. On the early history of the Mongols, see Biran, “Mongol Transformation”; Buell, Historical Dictionary, 1–16; Golden, “Inner Asia”; Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 31–37; Morgan, The Mongols, 30–48.

39. On this date, see Morgan, The Mongols, 49.

40. Buell, Historical Dictionary, 238–239; Morgan, The Mongols, 8–13, 49–50; Rachewiltz, Secret History of the Mongols, 1:xxv–cxxvi.

41. On Genghis Khan’s life, see Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan.

42. Rachewiltz, Secret History of the Mongols, 1:460.

43. Rachewiltz, Secret History of the Mongols, 1:193.

44. However, the Mongols did launch attacks in the region of Baghdad beginning in 1238. Rachewiltz, Secret History of the Mongols, 2:956–957.

45. Di Cosmo, “Black Sea Emporia,” 89. As Allsen observes, “Politics, especially imperial politics, was impossible without [sumptuous] commodities” (Commodity and Exchange, 104). See also Allsen, The Steppe and the Sea; Buell, Historical Dictionary, 17.

46. Morgan, The Mongols, 55.

47. Rossabi, “All the Khan’s Horses.”

48. Pederson et al., “Pluvials,” 4376, 4377.

49. As The Secret History of the Mongols recounts, Genghis says to Sube’etei when sending him after Toqtoa’s sons: “If they grow wings and fly up into the sky, you, Sube’etei, will you not fly up like a gerfalcon and catch them? If they turn into marmots and burrow into the ground with their claws, will you not become an iron rod and, digging and searching for them, catch up with them? If they turn into fishes and plunge into the Tenggis Sea, you, Sube’etei, will you not become a casting-net and a dragnet, and get them by scooping them out? Beyond the rivers / You will perhaps lose courage, / But continue to advance / In the same way; Beyond the mountains / You will perhaps lose heart, / But think of nothing else apart from your mission.” Rachewiltz, Secret History of the Mongols, 1:127–128.

50. Buell, Historical Dictionary, 280.

51. A concise summary is in Buell, Historical Dictionary, 17–52.

52. On this event see Allsen, “Mongolian Princes,” 87–90; Buell, Historical Dictionary, 208 (under “Otrar Incident”); Morgan, The Mongols, 60; Rachewiltz, Secret History of the Mongols, 1:181, 2:922–924. As Morgan observes, Genghis likely intended to attack Khwarazm at a later date, but the Utrar massacre gave him justification for an immediate assault. On Utrar as the catalyst for Genghis Khan’s decision to become a “world conqueror,” see Allsen, “Mongolian Princes,” 123.

53. Rachewiltz, Secret History of the Mongols, 1:194, 2:958–959.

54. Buell, Historical Dictionary, 257.

55. On the Fifth Crusade, see Bird et al., Crusade and Christendom, 130–236; Donovan, Pelagius and the Fifth Crusade; Mylod et al., Fifth Crusade in Context; Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade.

56. On the date of Jacques’s letter, see Jacques de Vitry, Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, 54–55.

57. On the chronology and transmission of the Relatio, see Bezzola, Die Mongolen, 14–28; Klopprogge, Ursprung, 110–115.

58. The text of the complete letter in Latin and French is in Jacques de Vitry, Lettres de la Cinquième Croisade, 162–203 (177–191 for the long Relatio; 191–195 for the short). For the long and short Relatio in Latin and English, see Brewer, Prester John (101–113 and 114–117, respectively).

59. On Jacques’s origins and early life, see Donnadieu, Jacques de Vitry, 48–61.

60. Baldwin, Paris, 67. On Jacques’s biography, see Donnadieu, Jacques de Vitry. As Donnadieu observes, Jacques includes Peter “parmi le petit nombre ‘d’hommes honnêtes et craignant Dieu’ [among the small number of ‘honest and godfearing men’]” of the era (92), and Jacques’s Historia occidentalis may echo Peter’s sacramentary theology (93). Jacques may also have studied at Saint-Victor. Although little external evidence concerning Jacques’s education survives, the references to student life that he makes in the Historia occidentalis and sermones ad scolares show that he studied in Paris between ca. 1190 and ca. 1208 (Donnadieu, Jacques de Vitry, 84–106).

61. See Cassidy-Welch, War and Memory, 125–147; Donnadieu, Jacques de Vitry, 243–245. The priory of Oignies was in what is today the municipality of Aiseau-Presles in Namur, Belgium.

62. On the relics and liturgical objects, see Boehm and Holcomb, Jerusalem, 235–236, 249–252; Farmer, “Low Country Ascetics”; Folda, “Before Louis IX,” 149–152. Some of these objects are preserved to this day in the Musée Provincial des arts anciens du Namurois in Namur.

63. These are the dates given by Donnadieu in his edition of Jacques de Vitry, Histoire orientale, 10–12. The Historia orientalis is the first part of the Historia Hierosolymitana abbreviata. The second part, the Historia occidentalis, is also by Jacques de Vitry, but what is presented in manuscripts as the Liber tertius (third book), covering the period from the Fourth Lateran Council to the capture of Damietta in 1219, is a compilation of works not by Jacques. Vandeburie argues that the Historia Hierosolymitana abbreviata was prepared in 1236 for Pope Gregory IX in “Dominus papa volens scire,” 313–315. See also Donnadieu, “L’Historia orientalis”; Hinnebusch, “Extant Manuscripts”; Roumier, “Savoir géographique.”

64. Brewer, Prester John, 109.

65. The text in Jacques’s letter does not include the last paragraph preserved in other copies.

66. Richard, “Relatio de Davide,” 141; Simon de Saint-Quentin, Histoire des Tartares, 27n2.

67. However, for Klopprogge, “Daß im Stammbaum der Relatio der Name ‘Iohannes’ erscheint, besagt wenig [That the name ‘Iohannes’ appears in the genealogy in the Relatio means little]” (Ursprung, 124).

68. On the history behind the Relatio, see the notes in Brewer, Prester John, 107–113; Gumilev, Searches for an Imaginary Kingdom, 165–167; Klopprogge, Ursprung, 119–123; Rachewiltz, Papal Envoys, 114; Richard, Au-delà de la Perse, 25–39; Richard, “L’Extrême-Orient”; Richard, “Relatio de Davide.”

69. For the text, see Brewer, Prester John, 114–117.

70. For the other variants, see Jacques de Vitry, Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, 60–62.

71. For Pelagius’s letter, see Luard, Annales monastici, 3:69, 71.

72. Richard, “D’Algigidai à Gazan,” 58–59.

73. Brewer, Prester John, 112.

74. Brewer, Prester John, 132. As Oliver of Paderborn writes, news of King David “reached far and wide” (Bird et al., Crusade and Christendom, 205). Evidence for the circulation of this news independent of the Fifth Crusade appears in Richard of San Germano’s chronicle. He writes that in 1223, King Andrew II of Hungary informed the pope that King David had invaded Russia. It does not appear from Richard’s account that Andrew’s report was in any way based on the Relatio. Rather, the news seems to have come directly from Russia. Garufi, Rerum italicarum scriptores, 110–111; Sinor, “Les relations,” 40.

75. Oliver of Paderborn writes that the captives taken in the siege of Damietta were freed “by messengers of King David in Baghdad” (Bird et al., Crusade and Christendom, 205).

76. Brewer, Prester John, 132.

77. Mention should also be made of a related report inserted into a letter from Ralph of Merencourt, patriarch of Jerusalem and another leader of the Fifth Crusade, to the pope in 1221. It relates the rumor of the appearance in the East of a man said to be the son of God, who rides on a golden cart, is covered with precious gems, does not eat, glows with celestial light day and night, is considered immortal, and is accompanied by a barbarian people who wear animal skins. Ralph’s account describes another kind of parousia legend that was apparently circulating among eastern Christians. It would seem to confirm that such stories were reactivated by Genghis Khan’s campaigns and made their way to Damietta. See Claverie, “L’apparition des mongols.”

78. On the influence of biblical exegesis and homiletics on the writing of Jacques de Vitry and his Paris-educated contemporaries, see Bird, “Preaching and Narrating.” Gaposchkin observes that “the Damietta campaign included regular liturgical supplication and adopted the sin-prayer/penance-victory framework” (Invisible Weapons, 125).

79. Jacques de Vitry, Lettres de la Cinquième Croisade, 176–177. It is not clear why this figure is named “David.” Richard speculates about the name’s eastern origin and also suggests a link to the kings of Georgia. See his Relatio de Davide, 140, and Au-delà de la Perse, 19; see also Richard, “L’Extrême-Orient,” and Simon de Saint-Quentin, Histoire, 27n2. It is also worth noting that the David of the Hebrew Bible was an important reference for the Fifth Crusade’s leadership. David symbolized trust in divine assistance and mercy after repentance, themes that dovetailed with the state of the crusader army after the capture of Damietta. See Bird, “Preaching and Narrating,” 325–328, esp. 327.

80. “vir potentissimus et in armis miles strenuus, callidus ingenio et victoriosissimus in prelio, quem dominus in diebus nostris suscitavit ut esset malleus paganorum et perfidi Machometi pestifere traditionis et execrabilis legis exterminator, est ille quem vulgus presbyterum Iohanem appellant. Qui cum fratrum suorum minimus esset, sicut de sancto rege Israel David propheta legimus, omnibus prepositus est et in regem divinatus coronatus.” Jacques de Vitry, Lettres de la Cinquième Croisade, 176.

81. Jacques invokes these traditions through pro-récits, which are names that stand for a narrative tradition, just as a pronoun refers to other nominal entities. The pro-récit is a mnemonic shorthand that allows an author to combine story worlds to create referential density; see Trachsler, Disjointures-Conjointures, 24–31.

82. “Quam mirabiliter autem dominus ipsum his diebus promoverit et eius opera magnificaverit, gressus illius dirigens et populos innumeros, gentes, tribus et linguas eius ditioni subiciens” (Jacques de Vitry, Lettres de la Cinquième Croisade, 176). Jacques cites Ecclesiastes 2:4, Proverbs 20:24, and Psalm 47.

83. Much of the letter of Prester John is based on or inspired by the Alexander legend. See also interpolation C in the letter (Brewer, Prester John, 48 in Latin, 70–71 in English). On Alexander’s associations with crusade and apocalypse, see Anderson, Alexander’s Gate; Cruse, “Alexander the Great”; Cruse, Illuminating the “Roman d’Alexandre,” 145–180; Gaullier-Bougassas, Les Romans d’Alexandre, 290–302.

84. Jacques de Vitry, Histoire orientale, 138–139.

85. See Pelliot, “Deux passages”; Röhricht, “La prophétie.”

86. Jacques de Vitry, Lettres de la Cinquième Croisade, 200–201. On these prophecies, see Bird, “Prophecy, Eschatology, Global Networks.”

87. Donovan, Pelagius and the Fifth Crusade, 86.

88. Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, 179.

89. Jacques de Vitry, Lettres de la Cinquième Croisade, 200–201. Oliver of Paderborn writes that Pelagius had the book “read aloud briefly and by means of an interpreter, in the hearing of the multitude” (Bird et al., Crusade and Christendom, 205). Hamilton also emphasizes the importance of the Book of Clement (“Impact of Prester John,” 63). See also Bird, “Prophecy, Eschatology, Global Networks.”

90. Jacques de Vitry, Lettres de la Cinquième Croisade, 162–163.

91. Manuscript I. See Jacques de Vitry, Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, 35–36; https://www.graysinn.org.uk/library/special-collections/medieval-manuscripts/.

92. Available at Bibliothèque numérique de l’IRHT, https://bvmm.irht.cnrs.fr/resultRecherche/resultRecherche.php?COMPOSITION_ID=18714. Jacques’s letter is on 60v–64v.

93. Manuscript V (Jacques de Vitry, Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, 25), available at the Vatican Library, https://digi.vatlib.it/mss/detail/Reg.lat.547.

94. See the discussion of Pierre de la Palud and Reginensis latinus 547 in chapter 3. On Pierre’s life and works, see Benton, “Theocratic History”; Dunbabin, Hound of God; Fournier, “Pierre de la Palu.”

95. Manuscript F (Jacques de Vitry, Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, 23–24).

96. Manuscript L (Jacques de Vitry, Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, 24–25).

97. The Relatio is on 69r. The scanned microfilm is accessible on Gallica at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9081064r/f6.item.r=16079. Folios 71v–72v are blank. The last sixteen folios are from another manuscript (up to 71r the codex is ruled forty-seven lines per folio, thereafter fifty-six) and preserve texts unrelated to the Fifth Crusade.

98. For this text of the Relatio in Latin and English, see Brewer, Prester John, 118–122.

99. Vandeburie, “Dominus papa volens scire,” 306–307. Robert died on August 15, 1274.

100. Saint-Victor “became a centre where the sermons, treatises, and letters of reformers and crusade recruiters were preserved and copied for … students and scholars of Paris and for their moralist collaborators” (Bird, “The Victorines,” 7).

101. Bolton, “Faithful to Whom?,” 54–55; Jacques de Vitry, Histoire orientale, 9; Jacques de Vitry, Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, 4.

102. Bird, “The Victorines,” 15–16.

103. Evidence that word of Jacques’s activities and reports circulated outside of his letters may appear, for example, in the Chronicon Sancti Martini Turonensis of 1225, which states that Jacques “publice predicabat, quod David rex utriusque Indie ad christianorum auxilium festinabat [preached publicly that David, king of both Indias, was hastening to the Christians’ army]” (Brewer, Prester John, 276).

104. Jacques de Vitry, Lettres de la Cinquième Croisade, 188–189.

105. Richard, Au-delà de la Perse, 31–32; Jacques de Vitry, Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, 59.

106. If such maps existed they have left no trace. In the Historia Damiatina, Oliver of Paderborn writes that the crusade leaders “contemplated the antiquity of [the] bindings and maps” of the Book of Clement, but then he speaks only of the text (Bird et al., Crusade and Christendom, 205). Jacques de Vitry does not mention maps in relation to the Book of Clement.

107. Cruse, “A Quantitative Analysis.”

108. On the Catalan Atlas, see chapter 4, and Kogman-Appel, Catalan Maps and Jewish Books.

109. “Huiusmodi enim prophetia, licet in aliquibus verum dicat, in multis tamen decipit” (Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, Chronica, 910). See also Klopprogge, Ursprung, 144.

110. “nunciatum est in Francia, quod idem rex David vel eius, ut quidam dicebant, filius iam venerat in Comaniam, que est ultra Hungariam et in partibus Russie. Ubi quasdam terras incredulorum destruxit et maxime Comanorum, et habuit ibi fortissimum bellum per menses 5” (Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, Chronica, 911).

111. Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, Chronica, 912.

112. Alberic may have intended to recall Isaiah 66:19, in which God declares that he will send those bearing his sign throughout the world, including to “gentes in mare [peoples in the sea]” and “ad insulas longe [to remote islands].”

113. “Supra dictus rex David et exercitus eius quos Hungari et Comani Tartaros vocabant [The aforementioned king David and his army, whom the Hungarians and Cumans called Tartars]” (Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, Chronica, 912). Simon of Saint-Quentin’s reference to David may indicate the same realization, but it is not clear, given that according to him the “Tartars” killed King David. Simon de Saint-Quentin, Histoire des Tartares, 27.

114. Klopprogge, Ursprung, 144; Richard, Au-delà de la Perse, 59.

115. On Hulegu’s letter, see Richard, “Ultimatums mongols,” 221; on John of Hildesheim, see Richard, “L’Extrême-Orient,” 235–236.

116. Bird, “Historia Orientalis,” 61.

117. Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 143–144.

118. It should be noted that the Relationes that have been preserved were apparently not doctored or adapted by any of the Fifth Crusade’s clerical leaders, as they contain almost no biblical citations or references to orientalist commonplaces such as Alexander the Great, marvels, or Prester John. This suggests a careful attempt to preserve the original sense of the texts (and oral reports) and speaks to the crusade leaders’ desire for authentic information.