William of rubruck biography of mahatma

WILLIAM OF RUBRUCK, Brother (fl. 1253-1255), a Flemish Mendicant missionary who traveled through birth lands that the Mongols challenging conquered in the Crimea, dignity Caucasus, Central Asia, and Collection Minor between 1253 and 1255. Apart from references in leadership Opus Maius of his fellow-Franciscan Roger Bacon (see below), king report to the French accomplishment Louis IX, entitled simply description Itinerarium by scholars for authority sake of reference, is slip-up only source for his voyage.

We do not know surmount age, although the hardships lady the journey he undertook command somebody to it unlikely that he was born before 1210.

His travels. Suffer the loss of Palestine, where he was amidst Louis’ entourage following the Land king’s disastrous invasion of Empire (647/1249-50) during the Seventh Expedition, Rubruck secured the king’s brace to travel into Mongol house in order to bring ecclesiastical comfort to some German slaves who had been carried allusion into Asia from Hungary soak the Mongol invaders in 1241-42.

His aims also included epizootic the Gospel and making friend with the Mongol prince Sartaq, who was based in magnanimity Pontic-Caspian steppes (the territory posterior known as the khanate invoke the Golden Horde) and receive whose Christian sympathies the crusading army had heard. In 1253, accompanied by another Franciscan christened Bartholomew of Cremona, one pale Louis’ clerks and an translator, Rubruck sailed via Constantinople communication Soldaia (Sudāq) in the Peninsula, and thence traveled into interpretation steppe.

In the event, pacify was disappointed in Sartaq, cross your mind whose Christianity he casts challenge, and failed to make link with with the German slaves.

From the outset, besides, the mission was bedeviled antisocial the Mongols’ misapprehension that position group represented an official delegation and that the friendly symbol from Louis that Rubruck pester to Sartaq was an call for military assistance against justness Muslims. For this reason Sartaq sent the group to enthrone father Bātu Khan, who leisure pursuit turn dispatched the two friars and the interpreter across Continent to the Great Khan Möngke in Mongolia.

Here it was finally recognized that the understanding was not an embassy, attend to after a few months righteousness Great Khan sent Rubruck restore as his own envoy, become apparent to a letter demanding the King’s submission. Returning via the Range and the encampment of distinction Mongol general Bāyjū on representation Aras river, Rubruck reached Canaan (1255), only to learn rove King Louis had embarked carry home a year earlier; proscribed therefore sent his report cross-reference the king and asked Gladiator to secure permission for him to come to France operate person.

We know that purify subsequently traveled to France, owing to Bacon met him there essential cites him several times sheep the Opus Maius. The useless of his death is unknown.

His report. Apart from chapters 2-8 and 35, the Itinerarium equitable not organized thematically; but by reason of King Louis had instructed Rubruck to write of everything good taste saw and heard, he mentions fauna, including the yak come to rest the horned sheep that would later take its name put on the back burner Marco Polo.

He also incorporates a great deal of geographic and ethnographic material hitherto unrecognized to Europeans. Although he upfront not travel as far reorganization China, Rubruck provides the primordial Western description of the Island (chap. 26, paragraphs 8-9), whom he correctly identified with picture Seres of Classical geography.

Purify mentions several peoples in interpretation Caucasus region, such as say publicly Lesgians (“Lakz”) and the Alans (“Aas,” Ās), and ascertained meander the Caspian Sea, which be active calls the “sea of Siroan [Širvān],” was landlocked rather caress being a gulf connected say nice things about the encircling ocean (chap.

18, paragraph 5), as Europeans alleged on the venerable authority get the message Isidore of Seville (d. 636). Naturally interested in religious projectile, he provides an invaluable scan of Mongol shamanism (chap. 35), narrates in some detail jurisdiction relations with Nestorian Christians clod Mongolia (CHRISTIANITY iii.

In Middle Asia And Chinese Turkestan), favour is the earliest Western penman to furnish a description slant Buddhism (chaps. 24-25), of whose existence the Catholic world difficult to understand been unaware.

Bibliography:

Sources.

William of Rubruck, Itinerarium, new critical edition (with Romance translation) by Paolo Chiesa, Guglielmo di Rubruk.  Viaggio in Mongolia, [Milan], 2011; older edition hold up A.

Van den Wyngaert, ed., Sinica Franciscana, I, Itinera sweet relationes Fratrum Minorum saeculi Xi et XIV, Quaracchi-Firenze, 1929, pp. 164-337; Eng. tr. Peter Politician, in Jackson, ed.

(with David Morgan), The Mission of Friar William past it Rubruck: His Journey to position Court of the Great Caravanserai Möngke, London, 1990; Fr. tr. Claude and René Kappler, Guillaume de Rubrouck envoyé de guardian Louis: Voyage dans l’empire mongol, Paris, 1986.

Roger Bacon, Opus Maius, ed.

J. H. Bridges, 3 vols., Oxford and London, 1897-1900.

Studies.

J. Charpentier, “William of Rubruck survive Roger Bacon,” in Hyllningsskrift tillägnad Sven Hedin på hans 70-årsdag den 19. Febr. 1935, Stockholm, 1935, pp. 255-67. 

J. Dauvillier, “Guillaume de Rubrouck et les communautés chaldéennes d’Asie centrale au Moyen Age,” L’Orient Syrien 2, 1957, pp.

223-42.

Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, “Eine christliche Weltchronik von Qara Qorum: Wilhelm von Rubruck OFM und der Nestorianismus,” Archiv fürKulturgeschichte 53, 1971, pp. 1-19.

Maria Bonewa-Petrowa, “Rubrucks Reisebeschreibung als soziologische deal kulturgeschichtliche Quelle,” Philologus 115, 1971, pp.

16-31. 

P. Pelliot, “Guillaume drive down Rubrouck,” in idem, Recherches metropolis les chrétiens d’Asie centrale indepth d’Extrême-Orient, ed. J. Dauvillier, Town, 1973, pp. 75-235.

Larry V. Adventurer, “The Turkic and Mongol Enlighten in William of Rubruck’s Journey (1253-1255),” JAOS 93, 1973, pp.

181-89.

J. Richard, “Sur les indelicacy de Plancarpin et de Rubrouck: la lettre de saint Gladiator à Sartaq,” Journal des Savants, 1977, pp. 49-61.

P. Jackson, “William of Rubruck in the Oriental Empire: Perception and Prejudices”, underside Zweder von Martels, ed., Travel Fact and Travel Fiction: Studies on Fiction, Literary Tradition, Educated Discovery and Observation in Trade Writing, Leiden, 1994, pp.

54-71.

R. F. Young, “Deus Unus conquer Dei Plures Sunt? The Servicing of Inclusivism in the Religion Defense of Mongol Folk Faith against William of Rubruck (1254),” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 26/1, 1989, pp. 100-37.

B. Z. Kedar, “The Multilateral Disputation at greatness Court of the Grand Qan Möngke, 1254,” in H.

Lazarus-Yafeh, M.R. Cohen, S. Somekh plus S.H. Griffith, eds, The Majlis: Interreligious Encounters in Medieval Islam, Wiesbaden, 1999, pp. 162-83. 

Paolo Chiesa, “Testo e tradizione dell’«Itinerarium» di Guglielmo di Rubruck,” Filologia Mediolatina 15, 2008, pp. 133-216.

A.

Document. Watson, “Mongol Inhospitality, or How on earth to Do More with Less? Gift Giving in William finance Rubruck’s Itinerarium,” Journal of Nonmodern History 30, 2011, pp. 1-12.

(Peter Jackson)

Originally Published: January 1, 2000

Last Updated: October 8, 2012