MANDEVILLE'S THOUGHT OF THE LIMIT:

THE DISCOURSE OF SIMILARITY AND

DIFFERENCE IN THE TRAVELS OF
SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE

by sebastian i. sobecki
Although the sympathetic depiction of Otherness in The Travels of Sir John
Mandeville is acknowledged to be indicative of the writer's celebrated tolerance,
few critics have ventured to explore how Mandeville creates it. Yet his
presentation of the Other is as much a product of his cultural openness as it
is the result of a conscious process of careful psychological negotiation of
difference in which the text engages with the reader via the medium of the
Mandeville persona. The Other is imagined so convincingly by this fourteenthcentury writer that he endows it with a complex existence of its own which
transcends what Ian Macleod Higgins calls a `self-critical mirror'. Foucault's
notion of `transgression' proves instrumental in elucidating the way in which
Mandeville constructs and presents the Other. This article shows how
Mandeville erects his image of the Other and then, by employing a number
of examples, how the text and the language of The Travels convey this
`transgression'. The second part of the article evaluates Mandeville's categories
of perception by comparing them with the cognitive paradigms expressed by his
sources and some of his contemporaries.

la conscience accede au reel non par son developpement interne, mais par la decouverte
radicale de l'autre que soi.
Mais qu'est concretement cette ideologie non critiquee sinon tout simplement les
mythes ``familiers'', ``bien connus'' et transparents dans lesquels se reconnat (et non
pas: se connat) une societe ou un siecle? le miroir ou elle se reflechit pour se
reconnatre, ce miroir qu'il lui faudrait precisement briser pour se connatre?1

To a cultural sceptic such as Foucault, the `useless and transgressive field we

call literature'2 was merely a part, although a sophisticated one, of that `great
system of constraint by which the West compelled the everyday to bring itself
into discourse'.3 Without wishing to enter the debate whether literature is a
`useless' instrument of cultural constraint, I shall centre my argument on two
I am grateful to C. W. R. D. Moseley for giving me access to his unpublished book on
Mandeville's Travels.
1 L. Althusser, Pour Marx (Paris, 1965), 144.
2 M. Foucault, Histoire de la folie a l'age classique, 2nd edn. (Paris, 1972), 581.
3 Interview with Lucette Finas in M. Morris and P. Patton (edd.), Michel Foucault, Power,
Truth, Strategy (Sydney, 1979), 91.
The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 53, No. 211 (2002)

A Oxford University Press 2002

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sebastian i. sobecki

key terms Foucault refers to here, `transgression' and `discourse'. `Transgression' denotes the movement of crossing the limit between that which is
known or familiar to us, the Same, and that which is unknown or does not want
to be known, the Other. Literature assumes the challenging task of transcending the boundaries between the constructed security of tangible reality on the
one side and the immaterial realm of fiction on the other. By definition,
transgression leads to the direct confrontation of the Same with the Other.
Travelling is transgression. A travel narrative, even if it portrays a purely
imaginary voyage, is the verbalization and textualization of transgression, of
the crossing of borders and limits. In The Travels of Sir John Mandeville4 the
Mandeville persona travels along the frontiers of the world known to medieval
Christendom and traverses the terra incognita outside his culture's experience
where imagination, myth, and fear blend into each other`beyond the
Euphrates is the realm of legend'.5 In other words, the text moves between
European microspace which, according to Dick Harrison, reflects the information available about the known world, and its antithesis, macrospace, which
designates the sum of all beliefs and stereotypes about the unknown Other.6
To a large extent, the mode of transgression traceable in literature hinges on
the epistemological paradigms current at a given time. Our epistemological
4 The most seminal modern reassessment of The Travels remains J. W. Bennett, The Rediscovery
of Sir John Mandeville (New York, 1954). Bennett's portrayal of Mandeville as a writer whose
work should be judged on the grounds of its literary merit and not its truth content released The
Travels from the century-old spell of being a `plagiarized travel book'. Bennett also stresses
Mandeville's tolerance towards other cultures. In The Matter of Araby in Medieval England (New
Haven, Conn. and London, 1977), Dorothee Metlitzki revives the question of whether
Mandeville had travelled at all, arguing that he had been to the Near East. Christiane Deluz
claims, in her important book Le Livre de Jehan de Mandeville: Une `geographie' au XIVe siecle,
Textes, Etudes, Congres 8 (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1988), that Mandeville was a young nobleman
educated in the liberal arts and spent some time overseas.
Otherness in The Travels is dealt with in M. B. Campbell, The Witness and the Other World
(Ithaca, NY and London, 1988), and, most recently, in I. Macleod Higgins, Writing East: The
`Travels of Sir John Mandeville' (Philadelphia, Pa., 1997). Campbell sees Mandeville's `emotional
and intellectual lucidity' as a product of `the climate and conditions of his moment' (p. 161),
whereas Macleod Higgins goes a long way in acknowledging The Travels' subtlety in its treatment
of the Other, but maintains that Mandeville instrumentalizes Otherness as a `Self-critical mirror'
as `the text moves farther east' (p. 80).
The textual history of The Travels is highly complicated and is discussed at great length in
Bennett, The Rediscovery of Sir John Mandeville, 89218 and 263420. As the basis for my
quotations I have chosen the most reliable English translations: British Library, Cotton MS,
Titus C xvi (henceforth Cotton MS), printed in Mandeville's Travels, ed. M. C. Seymour
(Oxford, 1967), and British Library, Egerton MS 1982 (henceforth Egerton MS) printed in
Mandeville's Travels: Texts and Translations, 2 vols., ed. M. Letts (London, 1953), vol. i. Since
both manuscripts belong to the Insular branch of The Travels' manuscript tradition, I have
decided to verify each quotation by comparing it with the respective passage in a manuscript from
the Continental group. Despite some of its shortcomings (none of which significantly affects the
passages my argument is concerned with), I have settled for the oldest extant manuscript of The
Travels: Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS nouv. acq. 4515 (henceforth BN MS), printed in
Mandeville's Travels, ed. Letts, vol. ii. At the same time, I hope that the inclusion of a French
manuscript will reduce some of the semantic problems arising from working with translations.
5 C. W. R. D. Moseley, in a so far unpublished study of Mandeville.
6 D. Harrison, Medieval Space: The Extent of Microspatial Knowledge in Western Europe During
the Middle Ages, Lund Studies in International History 34 (Lund, 1996), passim.

the travels of sir john mandeville

331

categories are predominantly individualistic and miscellaneous in that they

cross-refer to a range of moral and ethical systems often only loosely connected
with each other. Concepts such as `practical ethics' and subjectivism have
replaced the convenient hegemony of a centralized and shared morality. There
are good reasons to believe that this was not the case in the fourteenth century
(and much earlier, too) where a Christian framework aspired to establish a
universal morality which provided a system of reference outside of which no
discourse was possible (this does not mean that all people were equally
committed in their beliefs nor that Christianity's pretension to supremacy
was uncontested by individual thinkers). Therefore medieval writers' categories of perception frequently reflect group values and group tendencies to
assert auctoritas for themselves. Their so-called `lack of originality' and their
routine invocation of past masters are expressions of their own `anxiety of
influence', to borrow Harold Bloom's memorable phrase. `Originality', the
unorthodox, the new, the dangerousall those are names for the Other, which
poses a permanent threat to cultures still in the process of consolidating their
identity. These cultures will tend towards associating the Other with danger,
hostility, and inferiority, provided they are organized by a superstructural
ideology such as religion, whereas stable groups with a more developed sense
of identity tend towards a demythologized perception of the Other.7
Any discussion of transgression must therefore begin with what Foucault
calls a `thought of the limit'. Clare O'Farrell summarizes Foucault's understanding of this concept: `If instead of looking at totalities, the ``edge'' (limit)
which separates the Same from the Other could be analysed and described,
perhaps an insight into the reality or truth of the Same and Other could be
gained.'8 So what is Mandeville's `thought of the limit'? The imaginary
journey of transgression is paralleled by the process of reading through
which the reader confronts the Other. Reading becomes the psychological
medium for the complex encounter with one's macrospatial world view. The
discrepancies that emerge between the reader's world view and that of The
Travels are resolved in the conflict of the narrator's discourse with the Other
which introduces the reader to Mandeville's concept of the limit: the narrative
persona experiences the Other representatively for the reader. A good indicator for Mandeville's notion of transgression is the use of his sources, where,
in his account of the Holy Land, which can be firmly placed as lying at the
frontiers of medieval macrospace, he predominantly relies on factual information provided by the pilgrim William of Boldensele,9 but he increasingly draws
on mythopoeic and fantastical writings such as The Wonders of the East and
Alexander's meeting with the Brahmins the deeper he penetrates into the
7 Evidence for this theory can be found in M. Mulder and A. Stemerding, `Threat, Attraction to
Group, and the Need for Strong Leadership', Human Relations, 16 (1963).
8 C. O'Farrell, Foucault: Historian or Philosopher? (London, 1989), 32.
9 Mandeville mainly follows William of Boldensele's Itinerarius, but he also uses, although not
firsthand, Haiton of Armenia's Fleurs des Histors d'Orient and other accounts.

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realm of his civilization's macrospace.10 The limit which the first-person

narrator encourages his reader to crossacting as an agent provocateur within
the textis the rather blurred demarcation between Western microspatial
knowledge and macrospatial speculation. This notion of the limit appears to be
constructed in such a way that it confronts the Same through an ingenious
delineation of the Other which integrates the narrator's near-radical openness
towards difference with a critical reflection of medieval Christendom's selfconsciousness.
For instance, when Mandeville talks about the letters sent to the Greeks in
which Pope John XXII calls for the reunification of the Christian faith under
the Western Pontiff, he also provides the reader with the Greek response,
which is surprisingly left without comment. The psychological pattern of
Mandeville's relation of the Greeks is highly controlled and its analysis reveals
the crafty mechanism through which Mandeville harmonizes his and his
reader's macrospatial conceptions without neglecting the reader's sensitivities.
First, he establishes the divide between the Eastern and the Western Church,
in which he astutely states his religious allegiance: `And yif alle it so be that
men of Grece ben Cristene, yit thei varien from oure feith.'11 The use of the
first-person plural pronoun in the possessive form allows him to simultaneously stress his group identity and integrate the reader with his group. Once
this is accomplished, he swiftly proceeds to juxtaposing the Patriarch and the
Pope. Bearing in mind that The Travels were composed during the Babylonish
captivity when the papacy's market value prefigured the adventurous inflation
of the Italian lira, the claim that the `patriark hath as meche power ouer the see
as the Pope hath on this syde the see'12 reads like a sarcastic comment on the
dwindling authority of the Pope. Consequently, the medieval reader, having
been assured of Mandeville's credibility and loyalty on the grounds of his
group affiliation (`oure feith', `our Pope'13), shifts his sympathy to the Greeks
as Mandeville proceeds:
And therfore Pope Iohn the XXII sende letters to hem, how Cristene feith scholde ben
obedyent to the Pope that is Goddes vic[a]rie on erthe, to whom God yaf his pleyn
powere for to bynde and to assoille, and therfore thei scholde ben obedyent to him.
And thei senten ayen dyuerse answeres, and amonges othere thei seyden thus:
Potenciam tuam summam circa tuos subiectos firmiter credimus. Superbiam tuam summam
tolerare non possumus. Auariciam tuam summam saciare non intendimus. Dominus tecum
quia dominus nobiscum est. That is to seye, Wee trowe wel that thi power is gret vpon thi
subgettes. Wee may not suffre thin high pryde. Wee ben not in purpos to fulfille thi
10 It must be added here, that Mandeville uses as the main source for his further travels Odoric
of Pordenone who was, like William of Boldensele, a `real' traveller, but who himself relied
heavily on fantastical accounts of the East, just as Polo, relating his years in Cathay, had to
include the traditional marvels he had not seen as lying beyond the borders of the Cathay he
knew.
11 Cotton MS, p. 13; Egerton MS, p. 13; BN MS, p. 237.
12 Cotton MS, p. 13; Egerton MS, p. 13; BN MS, pp. 2378.
13 `Our Pope' is neither in Cotton MS nor in BN MS.

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333

gret couetyse. Lord be with the, for oure lord is with vs. Farewelle. And other answere
mygthe he not haue of hem.14

The papal demands appear ridiculous in the light of the harsh facts of the
Babylonish captivity, and the reader can safely trust in Mandeville's accurate
delineation of the Greeksit is much easier to listen to one of us rather than to
someone whose attitude to our group is not made explicit. The result is the
gradual stimulation of a moderately tolerant psychological response on the part
of the reader, whose own religious affiliation is ironically deconstructed to
enable an unbiased discourse with the Other. What follows, then, is a careful
act of balancing `them' against `us' as Mandeville introduces the reader to a
series of differences in religious practice without overtly defending the party to
which he and his reader belong.
The same technique of subtle psychological negotiation of difference is
employed in the account of the Juggernaut. First, Mandeville establishes
common ground among himself, his reader, and the citizens of Calamy, where
the tomb of St Thomas the Apostle is said to rest. The inhabitants are quickly
drawn into the orbit of a universal Christian morality:
In that kyngdom lith the body of Seynt Thomas the Apostle in flesch and bon in a faire
tombe in the cytee of Calamye, for there he was martyred and buryed. But men of
Assirie beeren his body into Mesopatayme into the cytee of Edisse, and after he was
brought thider ayen.
And the arm and the hond that he putte in oure lordes syde whan He appered to him
after His resurrexioun and seyde to him, Noli esse incredulus sed fidelis,15 is yit lyggynge
in a vesselle withouten the tombe. And be that hond thei maken alle here iuggementes
in the contree, whoso hath right or wrong.16

Once Mandeville has set up similarity, he can safely venture to unfold the idol
worship of the inhabitants of Calamy whose reckless devotion knows no
bounds:
And summe of hem fallen doun vnder the wheles of the chare and lat the chare gon
ouer hem so that thei ben dede anon. And summe han here armes or here lymes alle
tobroken, and somme the sydes. And alle this don thei for loue of hire god in gret
deuocoun. And hem thinketh that the more peyne and the more tribulacoun that thei
suffren for loue of here god, the more ioye thei schulle haue in another world.17

Via the bridge of shared moral tenets similarity between microspatial Europe
and macrospatial Calamy is established, and, although the fanatic worship
creates Otherness, the narrator does not allow the reader to get carried away by
the shocking differences as he bitingly compares the Calamians' surplus
devotion with the dramatic deficit at home:
14 Cotton MS, p. 13; Egerton MS, p. 13; BN MS, p. 238.
15 `Be not faithless, but believing': John 20: 27.
16 Cotton MS, p. 127; Egerton MS, pp. 1234; BN MS, p. 327.
17 Cotton MS, p. 129; Egerton MS, p. 125; BN MS, pp. 3289.

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And, schortly to seye you, thei suffren so grete peynes and so harde martyrdomes for
loue of here ydole that a Cristene man, I trowe, durst not taken vpon him the tenthe
part the peyne for loue of oure lord Ihesu Crist.18

In The Travels, the secret limit at the heart of transgression is permeable

from both sides of the divide. With astonishing ease, Mandeville presents the
limit not as a border between the mutually exclusive `us' and `them', but as a
point at which cultural exchange is possible. This cultural dialogue is
grounded in Mandeville's enormous talent for empathy with the heavily
stereotyped and even imagined Other, and it appears as if his approach to
the limit indeed coincided with Foucault's above-quoted `thought of the limit'.
Some critics have described the cultures that Mandeville claims to have
encountered on his travels as `mirror societies'. The term is quite problematic in the context of The Travels, for `mirror society' more accurately
denotes an inversion of one's own society. In literature, the distorted
portrayal of Islam in the Chanson de Roland is precisely such a mirror
society. The Holy Trinity is parodied by the anti-Trinity of Mahomet
ApolloTermagaunt: `Pleignet lur deus, Tervagan e Mahum | E Apollin,
dunt il mie n'en unt',19 and the unyielding dialectics of `paien unt tort e
chrestens unt dreit'20 shape the reversed Doppelganger nature of Islam in the
Chanson de Roland, reducing the religion of the Other to a Mr Hyde of
Christianity. In medieval macrospace, the terra australis incognita reflects the
archetypal mirror society nicely encapsulated in the name of its inhabitants,
the Antipodeans, who live on the opposite side of the globe and wander the
earth upside-down. Besides, everything they allegedly do, they do `backwards', as if they deliberately attempted to imitate and almost mock
European habits. These mirror societies are nothing but `counter-societies'
conceived by Eurocentric macrospatial imagination. Mandeville's societies
are not mere inversions of medieval Europe. They are by far more complex
in structure and purpose, and they illustrate a whole range of theological and
moral concerns immediate to Mandeville's contemporaries rather than
simply mirroring Western Christendom.
Mandeville's brief conversation with the Sultan of Egyptalmost certainly
based on Caesarius of Heisterbach's Dialogus Miraculorumprovides a good
template from which to gain insight into the construction of the Other in The
Travels. Islam is represented fairly accurately and without the hostile
condemnation characteristic of the period. Before the actual dialogue begins,
Mandeville provides his reader with a list of theological comparisons in which
he maps out some underlying similarities between the two faiths:
Also the Saracens trow the incarnation, and gladly will they speak of the Virgin Mary
and say that she was learned by the angel, and that the angel Gabriel said to her that she
18 Cotton MS, p. 129; Egerton MS, p. 125; BN MS, p. 329.
19 La Chanson de Roland, ed. G. Brault (Oxford, 1984), ll. 26967.
20 Ibid., l. 1015.

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335

was chosen of God before the beginning of the world for to conceive Jesus Christ and
for to bear him, whom she bear and she [was] maiden after as she was before; and this
witnesses well the book of Alkaron. . . . And, when they may get the Gospels written,
they do great worship to them and namely the Gospel of Missus est, which Gospel they
that are lettered among them kiss with great devotion and say it oft-times among their
prayers.21

The text conceives an image of Islam which is inspired by its theological

similarities with Christianity and, in points where it diverges from the latter,
the text discreetly places the emphasis on the similar philosophical tenets of
two logocentric systems of belief embodied in the centrality of a written law:
`And this wot not Christian men; and therefore they say they are not right
believing, when they trow that Jesu Christ was done on the cross. All this
points are contained in the book of Alkaron.'22 And again in this passage: `Also,
when men speaks to them of the Trinity, they say they are three persons, but
not a [one] God. For their book of Alkaron speaks not of Trinity. . . . They say
also that Christ was God's word; and so says their Alkaron.'23 This first
segment of Mandeville's account of Islam draws a sympathetic picture of the
Other with whom dialogue is possible. The second segment, the actual
exchange between the Sultan of Egypt and the narrator, is a shrewd manoeuvre
by Mandeville: having credited Islam with a certain sense of rationality, he can
deliver his criticism of Christianity without having to fear that it might fall on
deaf ears or, even worse, trigger a hostile reaction in his reader. The ingenuity
of Mandeville's technique cannot be overemphasized:
`Ye should', he said, `be simple, meek and soothfast, and almous gerne [charitable], as
Christ was in whom ye say ye trow. But it is all otherwise. For Christian men are so
proud, so envious, so great gluttons, and so lecherous, and thereto so full of covetise,
that for a little silver they will sell their daughters, their sisters, yea, and their own
wives, to let men lie by them. And ilk one takes other wife, and none holds his faith til
other; and so the law that Christ gave you, wickedly and ill ye despise and break it.24

The rhetorical structure of this passage is that of a sermon,25 with its heavy
employment of the second person plural, and its emphatically moralistic and
21 Egerton MS, pp. 945; Cotton MS, pp. 968; BN MS, pp. 3023.
22 Egerton MS, p. 95; Cotton MS, p. 98, follows BN MS, pp. 3034, in omitting the reference
to the Koran.
23 Egerton MS, p. 96; Cotton MS, p. 99; BN MS, pp. 3045.
24 Egerton MS, p. 98; Cotton MS, pp. 1001; BN MS, p. 306.
25 G. R. Owst, Preaching in Medieval England: An Introduction to Sermon Manuscripts of the
Period c.13501450 (Cambridge, 1926), remains an excellent study of English sermons in
Mandeville's period. The most recent discussions of medieval sermons are found in N. Beriou
and David L. D'Avray, with P. Cole, J. Riley-Smith, and M. Tausche, Modern Questions about
Medieval Sermons: Essays on Marriage, Death, History, and Sanctity, Biblioteca di Medioevo
Latino 11 (Spoleto, 1994); J. Y. Gregg (ed.), Devils, Women, and Jews: Reflections of the Other in
Medieval Sermon Stories (Albany, NY, 1997); and J. Hamesse (ed.), Medieval Sermons and
Society: Cloister, City, University. Proceedings of International Symposia at Kalamazoo and New
York, Textes et Etudes du Moyen Age 9 (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1998).

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accusatory tone (`in whom ye say ye trow').26 But most illustrative of a

medieval sermon is the characteristic instrumentalization of sin: `And certainly
for your sin ye have lost all this land, the which we have and hold.'27 Its
rationale is virtually indistinguishable from that used at medieval (and much
later) pulpits, where zealous clerics struggling to find an apt explanation for
the plague drew on the universal appeal of sin. The Sultan then tells
Mandeville about the prophecies which talk of the future reconquest of the
Holy Land by Christians once they have truly mastered their superior law:
`And that knowe we wel be oure prophecyes that Cristene men schulle wynnen
ayen this lond out of oure hondes whan thei seruen God more deuoutely.'28 At
this stage the sermon turns into a visionary monologue, and the accurate
observations about Western Christendom coupled with the openness and
frankness of the Sultan trigger in the Mandeville persona, and probably in
many medieval readers too, feelings of shame: `And then methought great
shame that Saracens, which have nowhere right belief ne perfect law, should
thus reprove us of our imperfectness and keep their vain law better than we do
the law of Jesu Christ.'29
Mandeville even goes a step further as he asserts the truthfulness of the
Sultan's rather general observations: `And therefore it is no wonder if they call
us sinful and wicked, for it is sooth.'30 The potentially subversive side-effect of
this line often escapes the attention of the reader, maybe even deliberately so,
as Mandeville grants the Saracens the right to call Christians `sinful and
wicked'. Surely the attentive medieval reader will think twice before he refers
to the Saracens as `wicked' or `sinful' after having read or listened to this
passage. Everything, it seems to Mandeville, depends on the angle from which
it is viewed. This principle of parallax also informs the next, and possibly most
remarkable, fragment of this `conversation':
For the Sarazins ben gode and feythfulle, for thei kepen entierly the commandement of
the holy book Alkaron that God sente hem be His messager Machomet, to the whiche,
as thei seyn, seynt Gabrielle the aungel often tyme tolde the wille of God.31

It would have sufficed in support of Mandeville's moralistic point to leave

off the talk with the Sultan after having admitted to shame in the face of the
string of accusations. It becomes evident that to Mandeville the Other is not
just a means of criticizing ill practices and moral disintegration at home, but
has an existence of its own, not independent yet autonomous from the Same. It
26 Cotton MS, p. 101, and BN MS, p. 306, have, respectively, `in whom thei trowe' and `en
quoy il croient'.
27 Egerton MS, p. 98; Cotton MS, p. 101; BN MS, p. 306.
28 Cotton MS, p. 101; Egerton MS, p. 98; BN MS, p. 306.
29 Egerton MS, p. 99, and Cotton MS, p. 101. BN MS, pp. 3067, adds `grant dommages' to
`grant escandes'.
30 Egerton MS, p. 99; Cotton MS, p. 102; BN MS, p. 307.
31 Cotton MS, p. 102; Egerton MS, p. 99; BN MS, p. 307.

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337

serves not merely to reveal our weaknesses, but also to illustrate their strengths.
This separate existence of the Other outside the narrow medieval concept of
the Same becomes more clearly discernible in the ensuing account of
Mohammed's life and Muslim practice. Once Mandeville has established
the virtuous Saracen, he breathes life into his presentation of practical Islam:
`And therefore Sarrazines that ben deuout drynken neuere no wyn. But
summe drynken it preuyly, for yif thei dronken it openly thei scholde ben
repreued.'32 This passage does more for the credibility of the Other than
anything Mandeville has said about the Saracens up to this point. His account
of Islam is so positive that he can afford to point out some of its failings
without compromising its integrity. He even establishes a sympathetic likeness
between the Saracens and the Europeans, who both show traits of a shared
human nature that transcends narrow cultural parameters. It is precisely this
act, on the part of someone who knows Scripture well enough to cite it in
defence or pursuit of whatever cause he chooses, of not passing judgement on a
human weakness that must be read like a display of a certain nobility of mind
and a generosity that suggest a principle of universality beyond morality which
governs human behaviour.
In approaching the Other, Mandeville uses certain key words. One of those
is `deuocioun' or `deuotement' (sometimes also `lamour de Dieu') in BN MS.
It is used to describe the faith of virtuous Saracens (see above), and it is
awarded to any pagan who displays a maximum of worship not only to the
Juggernaut: `And than he [the Great Khan] kneleth to the cros. And than the
prelate of the religiouse men seyth before him certeyn orisiouns and yeueth
him a blessynge with the cros and he enclyneth to blessinge fulle deuoutely.'33
This account of the Great Khan bowing `fulle deuoutely' to the Cross serves to
prove that many pagans show an abundance of respect to the Christian Cross
or to their own idols in clear opposition to European Christians, who do not
qualify to be called `devout'. Even Christians who `haue not alle the articles of
oure feyth' show at times more devotion and true faith than Mandeville will
grant his European contemporaries: `This emperour Prestre Iohn is Cristene
and a gret partie of his contree also, but yif thei haue not alle the articles of
oure feyth as wee hauen. Thei beleuen wel in the Fader, in the Sone and in the
Holy Gost. And thei ben fulle deuoute and right trewe on to another.'34 But
`devotion' for Mandeville is also something more. It is a sparkling freshness of
enthusiasm, a kind of euphoric creativity35 which sets afire the narrator's
religious imagination as he presumes divine motives behind what his source
32 Cotton MS, p. 103; Egerton MS, pp. 1001; BN MS, p. 308.
33 Cotton MS, p. 176; BN MS, p. 367. This passage is slightly modified in Egerton MS, p. 169.
34 Cotton MS, p 197; Egerton MS, p. 189; BN MS, p. 384.
35 The MED defines `devocioun' as follows: `1. the profound religious emotion of awe,
reverence, adoration; also devoutness, piety; 2. the religious ceremony of worship, or an instance
of it, a service or prayer; 3. earnestness, devotedness; desire (to do sth.); affection, interest,
delight'.

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Odoric perceived as merely unusual: even the inhabitants of the sea express
their literal `deuocioun' to a higher cause as if driven by faith itself:
I knowe not the resoun whi it is, but God knoweth. But this, me semeth, is the moste
merueylle that euere I saugh. For this mervaylle is ayenst kynde and not with kynde,
that the fisshes that han fredom to enviroun alle the costes of the see at here owne list
coment of hire owne wille to profren hem to the deth withouten constreynynge of man.
And therfore I am syker that this may not ben withouten a gret tokene.36

Everything in Mandeville's textual mappa mundi37 is held together by the

fabric of `deuocioun'. It is one of the key tools which enforces Mandeville's
brilliant stratagem of inverting the roles of reader and text. As the narrator
closes in on the devotion of the Other, the reader quickly discovers that this
display of exemplary worship and religious sincerity provokes a more
fundamental questioning of the Same, that is of oneself in relation to one's
culture. The result is a lateral shift in the experience of reading the text. From
`I read the text' Mandeville takes his reader to `the text reads me'. This
transition from reader-as-reader to reader-as-text forms part of the reversal of
the subject (similarity) and the object (difference) of the intricate grammar of
The Travels' epistemological discourse.
Correspondingly, Mandeville's language of reinventing the Other is
reflected in his rhetorical patterns, in which he successfully manages to blur
the limit between Eurocentric perception and the way other cultures see one's
own:
The folk that live in that country are called Numidians, and they are christened. But
they are black of colour; and that they hold a great beauty, and aye the blacker they are
the fairer them think them. And they say that and they should paint an angel and a
fiend, they would paint the angel black and the fiend white.38

Black angels and white devils must appear shocking to the medieval reader
familiar with iconographic depictions found in stained glass windows and wall
paintings. But the logic is compelling: if the Numidians consider blackness
beautiful, it must follow that their idea of beauty cannot stop at angels. They
too must be black. Even the most disgusted medieval reader will admit that
this makes sense if viewed from the perspective of the Other. And that is the
whole point: everything makes sense once it is viewed from the right angle.
Mandeville cannot go too far in stressing this. Talking of suttee, the bizarre
custom of burning widows, he finishes his account with a startling and comic
claim: `and the wommen schauen hire berdes and men not'.39 If Europeans are
36 Cotton MS, p. 142; Egerton MS, p. 136; BN MS, p. 339.
37 In his hitherto unpublished study of Mandeville, C. W. R. D. Moseley argues for The Travels
to be read along the imagines mundi of the Middle Ages.
38 Egerton MS, p. 33. The much shorter passage in Cotton MS, p. 33, follows BN MS, p. 252:
`Et sont les Nubiens Crestiens, mais il sont noirs comme meure pour la grant chaleur de soleil'.
39 Cotton MS, p. 126; Egerton MS, p. 123; BN MS, p. 327. Mandeville wittily amends Odoric's
`women also have their forehead shaven' to `wommen schauen hire berdes.'

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white and Numidians are black, then, mutatis mutandis, should Indian women
not have the right to shave? Indeed, Mandeville's tolerance takes him even
where nature does not dare to tread.
In describing new phenomena he largely relies on similarity. For example,
instead of calling bananas `yalow frutes' (or employing the words `iaune' and
`fruit' in the French), which are part of his vocabulary, he describes them as
follows:
Also in that contree and in othere also men fynden longe apples to selle in hire cesoun,
and men clepen hem apples of Paradys. And thei ben right swete and of gode savour,
and thogh yee kutte hem in neuer so many gobettes or parities ouerthwart or
endlonges, euermore yee schulle fynden in the myddes the figure of the holy cros of
oure lord Ihesu.40

Two things become evident in this extract: first, Mandeville's language is

insufficient to deal with this new object; and second, everything is permeated
by devotion. When troubled by a lack of words he instinctively looks for
similarities, not for differences. Being familiar with berries, pears, and apples,
he was surely able to abstract from these entities the concept of a `fruit', but
nevertheless he decides to sacrifice some of the differences for the sake of
similarity. Once the banana is opened, Mandeville gives us a surprising insight
into his epistemological categories rather than into the inside of the banana, as
his religious cast of mind runs so deep that he sees tokens of devotion in the
way a fruit is peeled or sliced. It has been argued that the idea of the pilgrimage
fades from The Travels the further Mandeville wanders, but, as this passage
shows, the narrator continually perceives the world with all its curiosities
through the prism of a mind bent on discovering faith beneath the surface.
Mandeville's language is filled with words like `devocioun', `gode', `cursed',
and `feythfulle', but there is a virtually complete absence of comparatives such
as `better' or `worse'. Final judgements or `domes' are carefully avoided.41
Only when it comes to the issue of the Crucifixion does Mandeville allow
himself to make one unmistakable assertion: `And in this article thei seyn that
wee faylen and that the gret rightwisness of God ne myghte not suffre so gret a
wrong. And in this fayleth here feyth.'42 The only time when Mandeville
explains why he avoids comparative judgements he utters a sentence of (for his
time) almost unsurpassed tolerance:
And the angel replied, Quod Deus mundavit, tu ne immundum dixeris, that is to say,
`Call thou not unclean that which God has cleansed'. This was done as a token that
men should despise no men for the difference of their laws. For we know not whom
God loves nor whom He hates; and therefore when I pray for the dead and say my
40 Cotton MS, p. 35; Egerton MS, p. 35; BN MS, p. 254.
41 This observation coincides with the discussion in Campbell, The Witness and the Other World,
12261.
42 Cotton MS, p. 98; BN MS, p. 304. Egerton MS, p. 95, shifts the emphasis from `fayleth here
feyth' to `in that err they'.

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sebastian i. sobecki

De Profundis, I say it for all Christian souls and also for all the souls who need
praying for.43

Quod Deus mundavit is not just a mere utterance. Mandeville's use of it

contrasts sharply with the official view of the Church expressed in Clement
VI's bull Nulla salus extra ecclesiam. The theological implications of
Mandeville's comment are far-reaching and demand a separate study, but as
far as my argument is concerned it suffices to point out that, according to
Mandeville, nature is ordained by God, and everything found in nature comes
from God. All laws and customs, irrespective of the place of their origin, are
ultimately derived from God and render all criticism mere human impertinence. This passionate vision of an all-permeating Divinity points to the
central episteme of The Travels, curiositas,44 most forcibly articulated in the
search for similarity on the grounds of a shared creation. Mandeville is looking
for a central morality to make it the basis for his tolerance. Morality itself is a
sign of having received a divinely inspired law, and that is sufficient evidence
for him to view the Creation as something inclusive rather than exclusive and,
therefore, to reinsert the Monsters of Men (who are `subtle of wit') into the
Family of Adam.
But his contemporaries had a different notion of the Other. The best
starting point, it seems to me, is Mandeville's sources. Caesarius of
Heisterbach's Dialogus Miraculorum displays the unreflected hostility so
characteristic of medieval churchmen. In spite of some glimpses of fairness
in Caesarius, the dialogues that deal with Saracens or make mention of them
treat them as fodder for Christian armies collecting redemption points on their
journey to salvation: `Against this treacherous race we the have seen three great
expeditions of believers.'45 The abbot of Heisterbach is little concerned with a
fair and balanced representation of the Other; instead, he prefers to go along
with the vogue for armed pilgrimages, and fuels the ignorance of those calling
for another crusade against the `enemies of Christ':46 `They [the Saracens]
threw a rope around the neck of the crucifix in order to pour confusion upon
our faith, and drew that sacred image along all the streets of the city, with
many other insults, while the crowd cheered and clapped their hands,
ascribing victory to their God.'47 Caesarius wrote from the serenity of his
43 Egerton MS, p. 207. Cotton MS, pp. 21415, follows BN MS, pp. 4001, in stating that the
Christians collectively pray their De Profundis: `Et si dy auec les Crestiens communement, Pro
animabus omnium defunctorum pro quibus sit exorandum.'
44 The medieval Latin meaning of curiositas does not merely mirror the modern word `curiosity',
but also contains the notions of anxiety, care, refinement, elaboration, and curious enquiry. It was
seen as a potential threat to orthodoxy and therefore received with suspicion and hostility by the
Church. A detailed discussion of curiositas can be found in C. K. Zacher, Curiosity and Pilgrimage
(Baltimore, Md. 1976), passim.
45 The Dialogue on Miracles by Caesarius of Heisterbach, trans. H. von E. Scott and C. C. Swinton
Bland, 2 vols. (London, 1929), ii: bk. X, ch. 47, p. 210.
46 Ibid., bk. XI, ch. 23, pp. 2589.
47 Ibid., bk. VII, ch. 27, pp. 278.

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sheltered Wurttemberg abbey, but Odoric of Pordenone, one of Mandeville's

chief sources, could not hide behind a lack of firsthand encounters with the
Other. His experience of the East was immediate. Cruel and aggressive,
Odoric's Saracens are notoriously irrational:
Then the Cadi seeing himself thus put to confusion by them [a group of friars], before
the whole people, began to call out with a loud voice: `But what sayest thou of
Machomet? What sayest thou of Machomet?' For such is the wont of the Saracens, that
when they cannot maintain their cause with arguments, they take to maintaining it with
swords and fists.48

And he does not trouble himself to make a distinction between Christians and
pagans: `Here there be fifteen houses of Christians, that is to say Nestorians,
who are schismatics and heretics'.49 Friar Odoric vents his undiluted feeling of
superiority as he brands his harsh and bigoted judgements on the peoples of
the East (`It is an evil and a pestilent generation'50 and `I rebuked these people
sharply for so acting'51). The celebration of Christian martyrs ranks top on his
agenda: `Then incontinently four Saracens laid violently hands on Friar James
of Padua in order to cast him into the fire; but he said to them, ``Suffer me and
I will of my own free will cast myself in.'''52 Orthodox Catholicism is the
universal yardstick which he rigorously applies to anybody, irrespective of
whether he has come into contact with the Roman Church or not. Sentiments
ranging from latent antipathy to deep-running mistrust and open condemnation are not a monopoly of the clergy. Even the much-travelled Marco Polo
habitually censures Otherness. And although he shows some regard for the
Brahmins, his contempt for idolatry overrides his moderation:
The people are gross idolaters, and much addicted to sorcery and divination. When
they are about to make a purchase of goods, they immediately observe the shadow cast
by their own bodies in the sunshine; and if the shadow be as large as it should be, they
make the purchase that day.53

The inhabitants of Turkomania do not receive much good notice from Marco
Polo either: `The Turkomans, who reverence Mahomet and follow his law, are
a rude people, and dull of intellect.'54 It is hard to find a degree of tolerance
similar to that displayed by The Travels in the writing of the period. Among
the more open-minded thinkers were certainly Dante, Langland, the Pearlpoet, the early Ramon Lull, the logician Peter Abelard, and Peter the
Venerable, and, in varying degrees, they were all part of the ambitious
theological battle for the salvation of the just pagan which was less driven
by responses to direct experience of the Other than inspired by theoretical
48 Cathay and the Way Thither: Being a Collection of Medieval Notices of China, ed. and trans.
H. Yule, vol. ii (London, 1913), 119.
49 Ibid. 117.

50 Ibid. 148.

51 Ibid. 175.

52 Ibid. 121.

53 The Travels of Marco Polo, introd. John Masefield (London, 1907), 370.
54 Ibid. 32.

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considerations. Mandeville shows no such interest in converting the peoples he

`encounters'. He observes, compares, and, unlike so many travellers, listens.
The secular material that has survived is ill informed or heavily biased
against the Other, and often both. Guiot de Dijon's song Chanterai pour mon
coraige, remarkable as it is for the employment of a female narrator, has a most
typical chorus for the period:
Diex! quant crieroit `Outree',
Sire aidies au pelerin
Pour qui sui espaventee
Car felon sont Sarrasin.55

Despite ongoing debates concerning the legitimacy and feasibility of crusades

(John Gower's unease about religious wars in Confessio Amantis, III. 248896,
is one example), there was little firsthand experience to draw on. And in this
light, the generosity of Mandeville's fictional narrative towards the Other must
appear even more untypical for his period.56
Instead of propagating difference Mandeville stresses similarity. He draws a
map of our limitations as every encounter with the Other generously contributes to more clarity on the mappa mundi of medieval epistemology. The accent
on similarity and inclusion indicates the epistemological shift that lies at the
heart of The Travels. This shift from the episteme of difference, which reduced
the Other to a simple mirror society (the Chanson de Roland) or to a dangerous
threat (Caesarius of Heisterbach), to the new and more self-confident episteme
of curiositas, which does not attempt to explain away the Other as a menace to
religious and political stability, underlies Mandeville's astonishing encounters
with foreign cultures. Curiositas urges the traveller to explore the limits and to
engage willingly with the Unknown. It provides a wealth of inspiration for
seeking out challenges that call into question the accepted world view. There is
no development which might suggest that this new episteme grows from the
discourse of difference. In accordance with Foucault's principle of discontinuity,57 its appearance marks a turning-point in the writing of our history. It is
55 Jerusalem: Vision of Peace, ed. C. Page (Moretonhampstead, Devon, 1998), p. v.
56 Macleod Higgins, Writing East, 801, calls to attention Mandeville's negative portrayal of the
Jews and compares it to the sympathetic depiction of the Saracens, but the Jews belong, at least
from a geographical perspective, to Mandeville's microspace (how far the Jewish communities in
medieval Europe were actually integrated and `demythologized' is an altogether different
question), and for the purpose of my discussion Mandeville's Jews are not, strictly speaking, a
part of the Otherness encountered on his `journey'.
However, two observations concerning Mandeville's portrayal of the Jews are worth noting for
a different reason: first, the Jews in The Travels are either mythical or biblical (Macleod Higgins
observes that they `inhabit only the past and the future': Writing East, 42); second, Mandeville
does not give any serious indication of a personal experience he might have had with the Jewish
people (including the clearly fabricated poisoning episode which he allegedly heard from a Jew).
This strange absence of real Jews from The Travels could suggest that the writer was indeed an
Englishman who wrote a century after the expulsion of the Jews from England, and hence
possessed no firsthand experience.
57 `There is a sort of myth of History for philosophers . . . a kind of great and vast continuity
where the liberty of individuals and economic or social determinations are all tangled up

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the gradual but irreversible shift from the accumulated fears of the medieval
world which was obsessed with the image of being besieged by the Other
circling in from the West and the East, to the new self-confident and visionary
curiositas so vital for many discoveries of the Renaissance whose foundation
Mandeville helped to lay: `And yif I hadde had companye and schippynge for
to go more beyonde, I trowe wel in certeyn that wee scholde haue seen alle the
roundness of the firmament alle aboute.'58 Though of course, as Columbus's
intention to link up in alliance with Prester John against the perceived threat of
Islam documents, this was not the exclusive driving force of Renaissance
voyagers.59 In fact, the role The Travels played in the voyages of discovery is a
vast territory still to be explored.
St John's College Cambridge
together': M. Foucault, `Foucault repond a Sartre', La Quinzaine Litteraire, 1 Mar. 1968, p. 21 (a
radio interview with Jean-Pierre Elkabbach edited for publication).
58 Cotton MS, p. 133; Egerton MS, p. 129; BN MS, p. 332.
59 I am grateful to the anonymous reader of this article for this information.