Early Western Missions to the Mongols (1245–1248) The Opening of Diplomatic Contacts with a New World Power

General Introduction: The Rise of the Mongols and their Westward Campaigns of 1241-4                                                                                                   

Section I: Intelligence Available to the Papal Curia by March 1245

Introduction                                                                                        

1. The Dominican Friar Julian to the Papal Legate in Hungary (1237/8)     

2. King Béla IV of Hungary to Pope Gregory IX (18 May 1241)        

3. A Hungarian bishop’s account of his interrogation of two Mongol scouts (c. 1239)        

4. King Béla IV to the Curia (19 Jan. 1242)                                      

5. The nobility, clergy and people of Hungary to the Curia (2 Feb. 1242)    

6. Tractatus de ortu Tartarorum: the interrogation of the Russian ‘Archbishop’ Peter (1244/5)

Section II: The Initiatives of Pope Innocent IV

Introduction

7. Pope Innocent IV to the Patriarch of Aquileia (21 July 1243)         

8. Excerpt from Niccolò da Calvi, Vita Innocentii IV                                   

9. Pope Innocent IV to the king and nation of the Mongols: Dei patris immensa (5 March 1245)

10. Pope Innocent IV to the king and nation of the Mongols: Cum non solum (13 March 1245)

Section III: The Papal Missions

Introduction                                                                                        

11. The Hystoria Tartarorum of C. de Bridia (the ‘Tartar Relation’)

12. The Ystoria Mongalorum of John of Plano Carpini                    

13. Benedict the Pole, Relatio                                                                          

14. Salimbene’s encounters with Carpini                                            

15. Abstract of the report of André de Longjumeau                            

16(a). Excerpts from Vincent de Beauvais, Speculum Historiale

16(b). Excerpts by Vincent de Beauvais from the Historia Tartarorum of Simon de Saint

Quentin                                                                                  

Section IV: Responses and Aftermath

Introduction                                                                                        

17. al-Manṣūr Ibrāhīm, prince of Ḥimṣ, to Pope Innocent IV ([22-31] December [1245])

18. Ultimatum of the Qaghan Güyüg to Pope Innocent IV (November 1246)  

19. The Nestorian cleric Simeon Rabban Ata to Pope Innocent IV (1247/8) 

20. Pope Innocent IV to Baiju Noyan (22 November 1248) 

Biography

Peter Jackson read History at St. John’s College, Cambridge, and obtained his BA in 1971 and his PhD in 1977. Following a Junior Research Fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge, 1975-1979, he was appointed Lecturer in History at Keele University, retiring as Professor of Medieval History in 2011. He has published on the Crusades, on the Mongol empire and on its relations with Christian Western Europe, and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2012.