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John of Plano Carpini's Return from the Mongols

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Denis Sinor
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In 1943, at the Bibliothèque Nationale, whilst browsing in the Historiae Hungaricae Fontes Domestici edited by M. Florianus, I came across a short notice, No. 2 of Adnotationes Historicae seculi XII et XIII, entitled: “Quos Bela rex Hungarorum, velut dominus papa, nuntios ad Thartaros direxit.” An explanatory note states: “Notitia … de electione novi imperatoris Tartarorum, et nuptiis Stephani Belae IV-i filii cum filia regis Cumanorum celebratis descripta ex codice Parisiensi Luxemb. Fol. 22. sec. XIH-i, edita fuit in opere collectitio cui nomen “Thesaurus historicus” Budapestini anno 1878.” It took me some time to establish that the “Thesaurus historicus” mentioned here was in fact the Hungarian periodical Történelmi Tár. Fortunately I had no difficulty in finding the volume referred to by Florianus, and in it I saw reproduced the same Latin text accompanied by a note to the effect that the MS referred to contained also a version of Piano Oarpini's Historia Mongalorum. There was also a reference to the “Zeitschrift für deutsche Literature, XVII”. I had been chasing this reference intermittently for years when, in 1951, Mile. Marie-Thérèse d'Alverny, conservateur adjoint at the Bibliothèque Nationale, told me that Marczali's reference was wrong, and was to be corrected to “Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum”! There I found an article by W. Studemund, in which the note mentioned by Florianus and Marczali had been published, probably for the first time.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 89 , Issue 3-4 , October 1957 , pp. 193 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1957

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References

page 193 note 1 Vol. iv, Budapest, 1885, pp. 88–89.

page 193 note 2 Marczali, , Árpádkori emlékek külföldi könyvtárakban, (Történelmi Tár, 1878), p. 376Google Scholar .

page 193 note 3 Zu Johannes de Alta Silva De rege et septem sapientibus, (Zeitschrift für deutsches Alterthum xviii, N.F. vi, 1875, pp. 221–249)Google Scholar .

page 194 note 1 Sinica Franciscana, I, Firenze 1929, pp. 3–130Google Scholar .

page 194 note 2 The left column refers to Fr. Wyngaert's text, the right to the Luxemburg manuscript. Bold types indicate pages, figures in italics lines. The manuscript has two columns of 30 lines each on each folio. “c.” refers to the columns.—Transpositions of nouns and adjectives, interjections such as ut dicitur, etiam, autem, etc. have, as a rule, not been recorded. As for the proper names occuring in the left-hand column, I did not take into account the variants given by Fr. Wyngaert. It may happen, and quite often does, that the form in which a given name occurs in the Luxemburg MS is already known through another manuscript and is indicated in Fr. Wyngaert's edition.

page 202 note 1 Hambis, Louis, Le chapitre CVII du Yuan che, avec des notes supplémentaires par Paul Pelliot, Leiden, 1945, p. 71Google Scholar .

page 202 note 2 Scriptores Rerum Hungaricarum edited by Szentpétery, E., vol. ii, Budapest, 1938, p. 563Google Scholar .

page 203 note 1 Roman stands for Coman. A not unusual variant.

page 204 note 1 Translation by Sir Frank Marzials, (Everyman's Library No. 333, p. 260); cf. also Sinor, Denis, Quelques passages relatifs aux Comans, tirés des chroniques françaises de l'époque des Croisades, (Silver Jubilee Volume of the Zinbun-Kagahu-Kenhyusyo, Kyoto University, 1954, pp. 370–375Google Scholar ).

page 204 note 2 Cf. Pauler, Gyula, A magyar nemzet tōrténete Szent Istvánig, Budapest, 1900, pp. 36 and 155Google Scholar. The text of Theotmar's letter, in the edition available to me (Pauler-Szilágyi, , A magyar honfoglalás kútfői, Budapest, 1901, p. 326Google Scholar), does not expressly state that the dog was cut to pieces. I was unable to check Pauler's reference to the Byzantine-Bulgarian treaty.

page 204 note 3 Rockhill, William Woodwille, The Journey of William of Rubruch … with two Accounts of the Earlier Journey of John of Pian de Carpine, London, 1900, p. 39Google Scholar.

page 204 note 4 Cf. Pelliot, Paul, Les Mongols et la Papauté, II, (Revue de l'Orient Chrétien xxiv), p. 69Google Scholar of the off-print.

page 205 note 1 This date is given by Marczali, in A magyar nemzet története, edited by Szilágyi, , vol. ii, Budapest, 1896, p. 513Google Scholar. He gives as his source Fejér, Gy., Codex diplomaticus Hungariae ecclesiasticus et civilis, iv, 2, p. 221Google Scholar, which work is not at present available to me.

page 205 note 2 Theiner, , Vetera Monumenta Historiae Hungariam sacram illustrantiam, I, Roma, 1859, p. 231Google Scholar.

page 205 note 3 A jász-kunok törtenete, II, Kecskemét, 1873, p. 404Google Scholar.

page 206 note 1 Un voyageur du treizième siècle; le Dorninkain Julien de Hongrie, (BSOAS, 1952, xiv/3, p. 601Google Scholar).